


V3: Goodbye Despair Academy

by linkzeldi



Series: Dangan Box [4]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Medaka Box, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/M, M/M, crossover AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 19:52:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 97
Words: 784,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18414725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linkzeldi/pseuds/linkzeldi
Summary: Kumagawa Misogi and Enoshima Junko enter the final killing game. The genre swapping, wild, reckless adventure finally ends in tragedy again as Junko fights against the strongest part of herself, her reflection, he own image as the Diva of Despair that always proceeds her.The secrets of the Shiranui Village, Hope's Peak Academy, and the Kurokam Family unravel as the cast looks at their reflections in the mirror and try to find what lies beyond the looking glass. At the same time, Hitoyoshi Zenkichi grapples with the idea that the world may have ended, and his own world Kurokami Medaka may in fact be dead.In the final battle, will Kumagawa finally win?Probably not.





	1. 53rd Time's the Charm

  
  
Have you ever seen it?

 _The far side of the moon_  
_The continuation of the dream you forgot about yesterday._  
_Your possibilities._  
_My possibilities._

 _.ƨɘiɈilidiƨƨoq γM_  
_.ƨɘiɈilidiƨƨoq ɿυoY_  
_.γɒbɿɘɈƨɘγ Ɉυodɒ Ɉoϱɿoʇ υoγ mɒɘɿb ɘʜɈ ʇo noiɈɒυniɈnoɔ ɘʜT_  
_noom ɘʜɈ ʇo ɘbiƨ ɿɒʇ ɘʜT_  
_⸮Ɉi nɘɘƨ ɿɘvɘ υoγ ɘvɒH_

 

🐻

At the end of this story Shirogane Tsumugi will be revealed as the mastermind.  
I mean, there’s no point in lying about it is there? She’s right there in the cover art.  
What is this some new avant-garde style of story-telling where I reveal the shocking twists meant for the end right away at the beginning? Perhaps I’m the type of author who thinks that I can still deceive you. The kind of person who lays their hand in poker face up on the table and still brags that they can win.

Well in my experience, authors who believe themselves to be far smarter than their audience to the point where they start talking down and lecturing them are way too full of themselves. If you write a game about condemning the audience for enjoying the death game genre, aren’t you a part of the problem for writing a death game in the first place?

Hypocrisy, I tell you! Since when did authors start thinking so highly of themselves? All authors are hypocrites, and so are all readers, and so is everybody else.

The moment you pick up a text to read it, you have been duped. The lesson you should take home from this is that every sentence ever written down in a book is bogus.  
This is by no means limited to novels.  
Every word set down on paper is a lie.  
Even if the cover of a book touts it as nonfiction or labels it as documentary reportage, it’s all lies. In fact, trusting the written word is what’s actually strange, if you ask me - the “me” in question ostensibly being Shirogane Tsumugi, the imposter who imitated Enoshima Junko, though even that might not be true.

Authors should not lecture readers at all, because the truth of the matter is all authors are liars. Then again it’s just as insensible to get mad at an author when they lead you to believe one thing, and then reveal it as another. The moment you pick up a book you’re agreeing to read through their lies, if a book leads you to read false information than that’s just a lie among another lie. You’re not being tricked, because from the start you were already tricked into being invested in lies.

Then again, that’s a perfect excuse for a haphazard liar like me to just continue lying as she pleases, without worrying whether or not the lies logically fit together. The entire paragraph above might have just been nonsense. I don’t believe half of what I say and neither should you.

Then again, I’m not completely insensible to the very human impulse to believe the unbelievable, to become invested in fictional things - after all, my livelihood as an author depends on taking advantage of that very impulse.

People want to know the truth.  
Or, they want to believe what they already know is the truth- what’s actually true is secondary.

 

In science for instance it’s natural for new, better theories to come and replace old ones.  
Newtonian physics had the world figured out, and then Einstein did, and then Quantum mechanics.

Yet, there’s an urge to defend and stay attached to old theories. To believe in them, when science has never once asked to be believed in.

Even going as far back as Copernicus, he was resisted just for suggesting the earth might not be the center of the universe. Why would that matter? If you’re living on the surfaece of a planet, it hardly makes a difference where that planet is arragned in the cosmic scale of things when you’re too tiny and insignificant to be affected by it.

They resisted because it contradicted what was commonly believed to be the truth at the time.  
However, even these new truths have become replaced.  
Newton is a liar, and so is Einstein, even though the were telling the truth at the time.

But, if you ask me it’s a mystery why those people put so much faith in Einstein’s theory in the first place. I find it endlessly fascinating - naturally, it’s not like I, a literature major and not a STEM one care that much about newtonian physics or the theory of relativity, but I expect the majority of law-abiding citizens, too, are ignorant of it.

So why were they invested in the “truth” of these scientific principles? Probably because it was easier than doubting its veracity.

Doubting.  
Is.  
Stressful.

Living with even the suspicion that the world may not function the way you’ve been told all your life eventually takes its toll - and human beings have a low tolerance for stress. Even if it’s a trivial suspicion that does not affect you at all, like Copernicus saying Earth, or Enoshima Junko is not the center of the universe.

The point is that it’s less about not doubting than about “not wanting to doubt” - people want to believe they can trust in their surroundings, the world the live in, and want to feel secure.

They went security.  
So they reject what their own mind says about doubt, and believe.  
I mean my dear audience how often do you actually listen to yourself, or do what is in your best interest? Humans live with only themselves, but they are so talented at self deception that they can live without once looking at themselves. Most humans will live their whole lives without facing themselves.

Those who do bad things are afraid of being seen after all, most of all by themselves. If you want to make a human being uncomfortable then place them in front of a mirror.

 

All they will ever have is themselves, but they don’t want to rely on themselves. They want the truth to come from someone else, they want the security to come from someone else, so moronically and mystifyingly they let the wool be pulled over their eyes.

I’m not complaining of course, I think this is a wonderful quality to observe. Our society could not be more comfortable to live in, for an imposter like me. A fake trying to replace the genuine article. Or maybe it’s not a question of society, or the system, maybe it’s just a question about people.

A question of human nature.  
It’s human nature to believe in people, to believe in theories, to believe in stories, and also to believe in apparition - aberrations.

However much as society or the world may change, people never will.  
People are people.  
Humans are humans.  
They won’t change, and what’s more, they can’t.  
Character development only happens in stories.

As lies and truth become interwoven, with fiction and reality, it will only get more doubtful from here on. Some lies are easy to be determined. If I tell you I’m actually TeruTeru, that’s obviously a lie because nobody would ever want to write in his voice. However, while lies are easy to prove false, it’s impossible to prove the truth too.

This is called the black swan theory. The term is based on an ancient swaying that presumed black swans did not exist. The moment you find a black swan in the wild, that saying is proven false. However, it was impossible to begin with to prove it true, because it’s impossible to gather up every single swan in the wild, or every swan that ever existed in history, or will exist in the future.

Even if you disprove all the lies, the truth may never be clear.  
If you were expecting this story to ever eventually start making sense, I encourage you to do some serious self reflection.

And I do so shamelessly.  
If you don’t want to spend your life making a mess of things, be skeptical. Be skeptical of my urging you to be skeptical.

If you want to know the truth, first you’ve got to know the falsehood.  
So what if your heart and mind grow sick from it.  
Naturally, you should be thoroughly skeptical about theories, about the existence of black swans, and you really should be skeptical about whether I’m even Shirogane Tsumugi.

I might even be Enoshima Junko, pretending to be Shirogane Tsumugi. Even if nobody was waiting, even if it makes you go, “What, again?” This story might just end with Enoshima Junko really being the mastermind again.

And that might be a lie too, for all we know.  
So if there are any patient readers who haven’t closed out of the window in a huff the seond they realized how pretentious the narrator was, much respect to them. In place of the usual introduction, let me give you some advice.

Some solid advice.  
Prepare yourself.  
Get ready.

Unlike some childish prankster always laughing about lies, or devious devilish lover of misery whose always smiling, I have no intention of upholding even a minimal level of fairplay in narrating this tale.

I swear to narrate unfairly in the spirit of all tricksters that have come before me.  
I will lie to my heart’s content. I will make things up whenever it’s convenient to suit the story, and I will purposefully hide truths and falsify events. I will exaggerate, I will embellish, with style and great flourish.

If lying is like breathing for those guys, then it’s like cutaneous respiration for me.

I advise you to pay careful attention to what is true and what is false as you read on, in other words to doubt everything, to jump at shadows - then again, I hasten to add at that point you may have already fallen into my trap.

Now then.  
Interweaving truth and fiction, and throwing in a dash of half truth just for fun, I will now relate to you the love story of Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa MIsogi.

I’ve never been interested in high-school puppy love, then again I’ve never been to highschool, but those kids got in the way of my plans so I feel its only fair to have a little fun at their expense.

Fairy tales.  
Stories.  
Characters.  
All of these are lies - and therefore they fall into my area of expertise.  
They’re my bread and butter, the proof that I am me.

I can’t guarantee honesty, but I can guarantee quality.

A story that began and ended in despair.  
A story about nothing.  
A story about a world destroyer and a zero.  
The previous narrators had no idea what they were talking about, from beginning to end there has only ever been one way to describe this messed up story that’s gone on for far too long.  
This is a twisted story.  
A story of lies twisted into the truth.  
A twisted love story.  
And I hope that when we reach the conclusion of their tale, everyone of you reading at home thinks, “Serves them right.” From the bottom of my heart.  
If I have a heart that is.  
If there is an “I”, that is.  
So let the games begin.  
As we begin what will be the final tale - though obviously that may not be true either.

 

🐻

**INTRODUCTION ARC 1: This side of the Mirror**

Enoshima Junko dreamed.  
You might as well start a story off with a dream, as typical as it is, dreams are just metaphors after all.  
“The moon’s bright tonight.”

“The moon itself doesn’t provide any light. The moon shines because its surface reflects light from the sun. It’s only because we’ve turned away from the sun and there’s no other light that it looks bright by comparison, the moon reflects only between three and twelve percent of the sun that hits it.”

Enoshima Junko was four years old, as she lectured her five year old friend Matsuda about it. Around others she was a bright, cheerful, and mischievous young girl who was always smiling and snickering as she got into trouble. Sometimes when it was just the two of them, her bight features faded away and became much duller, and her voice lost its usual energy.

She stopped joking around and responded to all of his questions in a straightforward way like this. However, Matsuda was too young to understand tone. His mother had not yet forgotten about him, so he was by all rights just a normal child. He just thought it was wonderful that his friend knew so much. He was curious about everything just like a child ought to be.

“You really do know everything don’t you?”

“Mm, I know everything. There’s nothing I don’t know.”

Junko was a liar. He knew this about her even though he was still happy back then. She would hide her shoes and walk around barefoot, and then cry to Matsuda like her shoes had been stolen only for him to find out that she had hidden them herself. She would get into a fight with another child, and cry like an innocent girl getting bullied, and only when Matsuda jumped in to protect her did he learn after the fact that Junko had started it on purpose.

It was because of that nobody else in their neighborhood really liked her, barring her own sister. Sometimes even Matsuda got fed up with her antics, and would throw a tantrum and say that he was not going to be friends with her anymore. Usually, he came back on his own by the end of the day.

Sometimes he really did wonder why he was the only one who was friends with her. All it did was bring him lots of trouble. In a childish way though, he thought that Junko who was smarter than all of the other kids and adults around her, really needed him. When they walked home in the rain he held the umbrella over her head. When they walked together on the road, he walked on the outside between the road and Junko to make sure she did not get splashed if a car ran by.

Perhaps that girl really did not need anybody. However, isn’t somebody who doesn’t need to depend on anybody really lonely? In that way she could still need him, Matsuda childishly reasoned all on his own. If he was gone she would no longer have any friends.

“If it only reflects a little bit of the light, where does the rest of the light go?” Matsuda asked, the question childishly popping into his head.

“It bounces off into space and becomes radiation-”

“What- Junko stop with the big words you’re making my head hurt. Again.”

“It disappears, more or less.”

“If the moon was a mirror, it’d probably be a lot brighter.”

“Mirrors don’t reflect all of the light either.”

“Is that why you’re always staring into them? Your face isn’t that cute you know.”

“Shut up, I’m your super cute friend.”

“You’re always looking like you expect somebody else to show up. I don’t think any kid spends as much time looking into the mirror as you do.”

“That’s because I’m looking for the inaccuracies.”

“In-what now?”

“Even a mirror doesn’t reflect one hundred percent of the light that shines on it, only about eighty percent. While we recognize ourselves in the mirror, we only have a vague understanding.” The girl rolled over. The two of them were sitting on a grassy hill watching the moon, it would have been a precious childhood memory, if the girl’s behavior was not so eerie. She closed the arms her head was resting on even further around her head, obscuring her face as she muttered. “The details become blurry, inaccurate.”

In other words no human really knows exactly what they themselves look like.Thinking of that the little girl spend an excessive amount of time staring in mirrors, and thinking of everything else as well.

“Well, anyway I was thinking you and I should go and live on the moon if we run out of games to play on earth.”

“...”

“There’s no oxygen, but I’m pretty sure if I’m the one planning it, things will work out. I’ll think of a way around it.”  
“...”

“You don’t need the rest of the world right? You should come to the moon with me.”

The boy next to her had been oddly silent. She peeked through her fingertips. “Yasuke-kun say something.”

“...”

 

Clang. A sound rang out from the ground. It was a knife tainted by blood. It was a knife engraved with the Hope’s Peak emblem. Blood could be seen dripping down around it, and soon it developed into a sizeable pool of red.

“Y-you don’t give a damn.. Is what you’re saying, huh…”

Matsuda was now a troubled young man. He wore a buttoned up white shirt stained with blood. He muttered those words as he laid on his back, gazing towards the sky. They were no longer on a hill though, and they were no longer lying together as children.

Staring at that face from straight above was that girl. Their faces were close enough for the tips of their noses to easily touch. But, even so, his gaze didn’t exactly match up with hers, as it began to absent-mindedly falter.

“I guess… I don’t have anything to do with this… t-that really was the case after all.”

Because of the overflowing blood, she felt an unnatural warmth developing in the back of her throat. But, that was soon faded away. “H-how long have you felt that way… has it been… since we were children?”

“There’s no way this would have nothing to do with me…”

There was a hint of sadness laid somwehere in that murmuring voice as Junko responded.

“After all… you were the most important person to me of all…”

Those were her true feelings.  
However, Yasuke could not hear them because he was long since dead. The body that lied in her arms was completely still, and then it exploded into a splash of red. Her eyes saw nothing but red, but her mind understood what had happened. She had destroyed him with her own hands.

That’s why her hands were red. That’s why she only saw red. That was all those red-stained hands were capable of. That’s the person she was. But now she was starting to doubt herself. Did she really want things to end this way? Did she want to continue being this person?

Eighty percent of the image was there, but twenty percent of it was missing.  
Enoshima Junko woke up again.  
She woke up to the pleasant discovery that she was still Enoshima Junko, and therefore the best possible person to wake up as. But because she was Enoshima Junko and had not yet changed, it was also a boring thing to wake up as the same petty person every day.  
A moment later she realized her surroundings were narrow, and she wondered why she had been crammed into a locker.

Student No. 16 Enoshima Junko  
Talent: Ultimate Fashionista  
Mentality: Abnormal  
Likes: None in Particular  
Dislikes: None in Particular  
Favorite Phrase: “I’m bored…”

 

🐻

Enoshima Junko, Kumagawa Misogi, and Hitoyoshi Zenkichi came toppling out of a locker all at once when the door finally opened from Junko’s kicking, they fell on top of each other naturally.

Oh, about the previous sequence.  
I’m not someone who claims to be omniscient like Ajimu, nor is this a virtual world like Junkai controlled, so there’s really no way of me knowing what people are thinking or dreaming about.  
Perhaps that entire dream sequence was just a metaphor.  
Perhaps I made it up because I thought it was a suitable intro.  
Perhaps Junko told me about her dream after the fact in great detail.  
If that were the case, that would be a spoiler to the fact that I live to the end of this story.  
It’s just as possible that this story is just a flashback I have as I recall the details that led to my death. Continue to doubt me my dear readers, because as I’ve said this story is nothing more than a lie.

They were a mess of limbs and shoving for a moment, as all three of them were rude children. Kumagawa was the first to untangle himself from others. He stood up completely on his own, scratching at the shaved sides of his head.

“Jeez, how did I end up getting shoved into a locker with two people I hate? I really do have the worst luck.”

He complained in a frank voice.  
Kumagawa was a child of misfortune.. I could rant and rave about his bad luck in the past, but it would not be anything new. The fact that his life had become hopelessly entangled with Enoshima Junko’s at some point before this, is evidence enough of his bad luck.

I don’t even need to describe how twisted of a boy he was. You see his definition of good and bad were all twisted up, and he believed meeting Junko to be his one moment of good luck in a life of constant losses.

Well, some people can’t be helped. There’s not much more to be said.  
Enoshima Junko shot up from the floor then, getting in his face. Kumagawa was only a centimeter shorter than her, so standing so close their eyes were almost exactly alligned and there noses nearly touched. It was close enough to kiss, or close enough to bite if they closed the small gap between them.

“Excuse me? What could you ever find hateable about me, the wonderful Enoshima Junko. You should be grateful I let those loser eyes of yours view me from up close. What do you think, a better view than the magazines, huh?”

『Ahahaha, I don’t hate you Junko. That was obviously just a lie. You know like our usual banter, isn’t it cute when couples say with a smiling face ‘I hate you, please die.’』Kumagawa said with one of his usual pronounced smiles.

“Don’t try to fool me! I know when you say things in quotation marks you’re being honest, and when you use brackets you’re lying.”

『How could you know I was talking with brackets when we’re having a verbal conversation?』

“Because I know everything, and most of all I know more than you!”

『Well, you’ve got me there I guess...』Kumagawa let his head dip as if disappointed. 『It’s hard to stop fooling around though, when fooling is my favorite, but from now on I’ll be the serious Kumagawa. Like, I seriously hate you!』

“Now you’re back to hating me again. If I had feelings you would seriously be hurting them right now.” Junko said, a devilish look flickered on her lips like she was actually being tempted to smile. “Seriously, what did I do this time? I’m trying all that self reflection nonsense but, I can’t spot a single flaw. Is it fair that somebody as perfect as me exists?”

『Junko, didn’t you just go on a rant on all your flaws, and how you’re actually basically a pretender in all aspects?』

“Oh did I?” Junko’s face went black for a moment. Then she rapped her knuckle on her head, and stuck out her tongue in a cute expression. “Teeheehee, I totes forgot.”

 

『Forgetting isn’t even your thing, it’s Ryoko-chan’s!’』Kumagawa snapped at her.

“I forgot that it wasn’t my thing, so I forgot about that speech I made.”

『Don’t pretend to be forgetful now to cover up the fact that you’re embarrassed!』

“Oh please, I’m Enoshima Junko. I don’t get embarrassed, other people get embarrassed that they’re not me.”  
『No, they’re just feeling embarrassment for your sake! That’s called secondhand embarrassment!』

“Well anyway.” Junko said, her eyes flicking back and forth with disinterest. “Don’t you think it was kind of weird in Persona 5 when it was thematically supposed to be about the evils of adults exploiting children that it turned out to be some weird fake god in the end influencing everything. I mean, don’t you just hate when a mastermind shows up out of nowhere in the end and claims to be behind everything?”

『Don’t randomly change the subject. We’re talking about you, that’s your favorite subject.』

“Hey, Misogi since you saw both of us at the same time and sized us up whose boobs were bigger? Mine, or the fake Junko’s?”

 

『Yours obviously, wait-what does that have to do with anything?』

“Hey, Hey Misogi? Do you think the moon really fell from the sky? That’s a pretty lame way of ending the world if you ask me. It’s much more fun to bring out the latent despair hidden in everybody and simply encourage people to destroy everything around them, while those who are powerless to stop it continue living on like normal. Well, I guess there is a symbolic value in dropping a moon. Especially if we’re entering a moon arc right now. Hey, Misogi do you think we’re like in a moon arc?”

『Oh, okay. Junko’s brain is just channel surfing until it decides what it wants.』

Enoshima Junko got bored easily, even when speaking. She somehow talked way too much, and at the same time could barely string two sentences together without changing the subject. It confused and bewildered everybody, exept for Kumagawa whose entire life was confusing.

“Wait, right, so like why are you mad at me again? You mad bro? What’s wrong? Did I insult Shonen Jump or something? Awe, look at you tremble. You’re gonna burst a blood vessel because I dissed your black and white paper waifus.”

『It’s obviously because you killed Kaiki-kun!』

“Oh.” Junko’s expression went flat. “Whoopsie.”

『Don’t whoopsie me! Kaiki-kun died because of you, and I got dragged into another killing game. You brats spoiled by talent really don’t think of anybody but yourselves.』

“Well, that was only like half my fault. The other half was totally that other Junko’s.”

『It was all your fault. Just like everything else is. You’re the one who was too immature to accept the fact that I might be influenced by somebody other than you. Are you just going to kill everybody I talk to besides you now, are you just one of those stereotypical yanderes?』

“Well…” Junko drew a blank for a moment, as usually she was thinking about everything at every second. Her mouth fell open but all that came out was a quiet. “My bad I guess.”

『Wait what?』

“...Mm.” Junko closed her red lips tight and looked away.

『No, Junko I was just setting you up for a yandere joke. Wait, are we having a serious conversation? No wait, I can’t handle reality, go back to being fake as usual.』

“No, we’re not bantering. Jeez learn to read the room already, mouthbreather.”

Kumagawa stumbled like he had been shot straight through the heart. He dramatially mocked like he was dying with his hand over the chest. 『Nooo, how scary. An actual human conversation. This is true despair!』

Kumagawa really did look angry a moment ago, and he really did look despairful now, but then the next moment came and he had laughed it all off. He smiled blankly at her as usual. It was a wild and nonsensical conversation but the two of them were used to each other’s nonsense by this point.

Enoshima Junko was someone to be worshipped, or someone to be feared as the enemy of the whole world. She inspired the deepest of loves, and hates in others. She could easily bend those at the top of humanity, the greatest talents of history to her whims. She loomed over others larger than life itself.

There was only one person who ever criticized her. A small and insignificant loser. When she was around him, she felt much smaller.

They were always by each other’s sides, but that did not necessarily mean they got along. Both of them were selfish to the core, and treated their relationship itself like a game. They believed if they won against the other things would go their way. They wanted different things, Kumagawa tired of despair wanted something else, and Enoshima tired of hope wanted despair. Yet, they also both wanted each other, neither wanted to be apart. So they squabbled, they argued, they fought, they saved each other and they damned each other. It would be exhausting for any other pair of human beings, but Kumagawa was used to endless conflict, and Enoshima craved conflict.

 

I’m sorry my dear readers, but I can’t even lie to be kind, you’re stuck with these two as your main characters. Hitoyoshi Zenkichi was stuck with them as well, as watching that show being played out in front of him he finally sat up interrupting them.

“Can you two quit it with your usual routine? It’s a little bit played out by now.” Zenkichi said as he punched the ground to get to his feet.

“Played out? That’s like the worst thing anybody’s ever said to me. Ever.” Junko said, taking a step back and reacting with mock horror. “Do you get off on verbally abusing cute girls Hitoyoshi-kun? Do you? Do you?”

“Quit it you. I already get pushed around by one way too smart for her own good girl, I’m not getting pushed around by two.” Zenkichi snapped back at her. He looked around. The had woken up in an empty classroom that looked abandoned. It took him a moment to realize the obvious, he only caught on when he reached up to scratch at the side of his head and felt his own shaved hair. “Huh? What the hell who cut my hair? Wait, somebody messed with my clothes too!”

Zenkichi’s outfit had been lovingly redesigned by yours truly. He wore the black and white uniform jacket of Sandbox Academy unbuttoned, and underneath he was wearing a bright orange shirt which had the words ‘ZERO’ written on it in all english letters. There was an orange scarf tied around his neck as well, he looked halfway between a delinquent and a dancer.

“What’s with the outfit, Hitoyoshi-kun? Did we receive a dancing game spinoff for the franchise?”

『Zenkichi-chan why did you steal my haircut? Have you secretly been looking up to me all this time?』

“Shoo, you clowns! I’m not the one who chose this outfit! This isn’t my bad taste on display!”

His outfit was lovingly handcrafted and sewn by the mastermind, it was a sign of her good taste. Boys just have no sense of fashion these days. I’m the narrator so if I say it, it’s true. I know I went on and on about lying but this time it’s true.

 

『Don’t shoo out the clowns. The clowns are friendly.』

“Neither of you are my friends.” Zenkichi grumbled. He would help them because Medaka had decided to help those two, but he did not have to like it, he would grumble and complain the whole way. That was Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, the dog that was always following Medaka loyally. “Besides, my outfit isn’t nearly as stupid as yours.”

Kumagawa Misogi looked down. He was wearing an apron. Excuse me, he was wearing nothing but an apron. See, he had been wearing that all along but I forgot to mention it until now for humorous effect. Jokes are another form of lying.

『Waaaaaah! The desire I’ve been hiding all along was to see Junko in a naked apron so why did I end up wearing one?』

“Yeah. You didn’t hide it at all.” Junko said in a flat voice behind him.

『Ah! I remember now! I was preparing a surprise for Junko and then suddenly a luchador appeared behind me and hit me over the head. Typical bad luck.』

“You didn’t have to mention that first part.” Zenkichi grumbled again.

『Zenkichi-chan, you poor, sweet, innocent, uwu boy. I should be more careful since I’m talking around such virgin ears.』

“You didn’t have to mention that last part either!” Zenkichi was currently engaged to be married with his childhood friend, but she was so proper he barely got to hold hands with her these days. It was a sore spot for him. “Wait, that’s the last thing you remember?”

『What do you two remember? We've been in this shelter for awhile as far as I can remember, you kept getting impatient waiting for the killing game to kick in.』

“We went back to the academy and then nothing.”

“I’m not as brainless as Zenkichi but I don’t remember anything either.” Junko added.

『Then, your memories were wiped. Memory wipes don’t work on me though so they just hit me over the backside of the head.』

“You certainly act like you got hit in the head.” Zenkichi remarked bitterly as he looked around the room. In one of the desks he found a bundle of clothing and threw it straight at Kumagawa’s chest. Zenkichi did not find what he was looking for though. “Medaka-chan’s not here.”

“Matsuda-kun isn’t anywhere around here either…” Junko sad, muttering it underneath her breath.

Kumagawa slid off the naked apron and looked at the clothes that were for him. He could not find the JUNKO LOVE sweater present among the folded clothes. He took a moment to mourn the death of the JUNKO LOVE sweater, that had been burned by the mastermind. That’s me. Kumagawa got over it the next moment and then shrugged off the naked apron. Zenkichi avertd his eyes, while Junko watched the entire time, and did not even bother to hide the fact that she was staring.  
His body was covered in countless scars. It told a story of indescribable pain. Quickly, he stepped into and zipped up a pair of pinstripe pants. Then he pulled a loose fitting white shirt over his head. He threw his arms into one sleeve, and then threw a black coat so long that it dipped to below his nears over both of his shoulders. He pulled up the hood, seeing black and white bears had been printed on the side of the hood.

『A big coat? Who am I, Komaeda?』

No, but you’re his character foil.  
That’s what the author would say, if she felt like she needed to justify her design choices. There’s no way I would ever be that insecure though.

Junko looked away finally and glanced at her own reflection in a broken window. Her own outfit had only been changed slightly, instead of a jacket she was wearing a red and black vest, she could see the white sleeves of her buttoned up shirt rolled up underneath. “A vest, really?”

Hey, vests are in.

Her red and black polka dotted eyepatch had been replaced with a black eyepatch, that had the emblem of Monokuma’s red left evil eye drawn in the center. She reached up to touch her missing eye and realized, Mukuro’s gloves were still on her hand. One of her gloves was fingerless showing her real fingers underneath, but for her fake hand the glove concealed her entire hand.

It was just light redesign. I mean, Junko’s design is already perfection but who could resist the temptation to add their own personal touch to their favorite character? Oh, I should stop gushing I have a story to tell.

“Missing memories and a sudden kidnapping, that’s killing game 101. Ugh, guess I have no choice but to foil the mastermind now. Let’s go.” Junko said as she crossed her arms and started to move out of the room.

Zenkichi stopped her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Wait, wait, wait, how am I supposed to believe you’re on our side? You’ve only ever been on your own side this entire time.”

“What are you going to suspect me of being the mastermind again? That’s like, so last killing game.” She dusted his hand off her shoulder. “I’m not doing this for you I’m doing this for…” A change. “I just think the killing game genre’s way too played out okay? I don’t do things that bore me, that’s all.”

A game of chess between her and the mastermind.  
The real Enoshima Junko who was nothing more than a petty brat, and the one who had stolen her image as Ultimate Despair.  
Kumagawa walked next to her as they set out to explore the school.

“Well, I guess we should find all the pieces that are in play.”

『You mean players, right?』

“Oh, uhm yeah totally. The other people, that matter as people, and not as toys totally.”

『You’re doing terrible at pretending, oh and you are terrible but that goes without saying.』

“Then don’t say it! I thought you only wanted to see me smile!”

『But you’re crying face is just as cute.』

As they walked next to each other, Kumagawa tilted his head to observe the features of Junko’s face. Even though she was just rattling off whatever thought came to mind as usual, her expression was different. She looked excited.

Nothing made Junko more excited than the anticipation of a game. It was like she was sitting on one end of a black and white board, while the mastermind waited for her at the other. Kumagawa appreciated that, because few things brought that lonely girl joy, she might as well play games. He did not mind too much continuing to play games with her, as long as she was not lonely.

He also knew Junko was a sore loser, and would usually stop having fun halfway through any game she was playing. Her response after she stopped having fun was to destroy the board. Well, for now it was fine he thought, in his usual devil may care way.

Kumagawa smiled.  
Next to him Zenkichi frowned. “There’s no getting the truth out of her, but you could tell me what side you’re on at least. We’ve known each other since middle school.”

『My own. Obviously, I’m the only one allowed to win against Junko so I’ll have to crush whoever thinks they can challenge her.』

“Usually when you say you’re going to crush someone you’re the one who ends up getting crushed.”

 

『You didn’t have to point that out! You’re supposed to be the sensitive one, Zenkichi-chan.』Kumagawa whined.

Student no. 15 Kumagawa Misogi  
Talent: None  
Mentality: Minus  
Likes: Shonen Jump, Noisy Places, Ugly People, Enoshima Junko  
Dislikes: Beautiful Places, Beautiful People, Enoshima Junko  
Favorite Phrase: “Once again I’ve lost.”

 

Zenkichi tailed a little bit behind the two of them as he saw Kumagawa jog to catch up to Junko once more. He scratched the back of his head, and muttered to himself. “Where are you Medaka-chan, I can’t babysit these two all on my own.”

 

Student no. 19 Hitoyoshi Zenkichi  
Talent: Ultimate Student Council President  
Mentality: Zero  
Likes: Kurokami Medaka, His Mom  
Dislikes: Lazy People  
Favorite Phrase: “You won’t know until you try.”

🐻

The building they woke up in was the old school building. The same one Junko remodeled into a death trap. However, there were several differences. The walls were covered with green vines overgrowing from the plant life outside, and the windows were sealed shut with barbed wire. The board was not a chalkboard, but rather a digital display LCD board that looked like a flat screen, but currently it only made white noise.

The hallways that they walked into were similarly overgrown as well. Streams of light fell on a floor mostly covered in grass, and weeds. Junko stepped on the sole flower she could find, and ducked low to avoid vines that were hanging down from the ceiling.

They made their way into a classroom marked “Classroom 1-A.” Sleeping on one of the desks, was exactly the kind of boring middle of the road student you might expect to zonk out in the middle of class.

He had brown hair and a face that could be found anywhere, but in the center of his head one piece of hair stuck up as a spiky antennae. If this were a slice of life show, he would be the exact kind of dull protagonist the audience is meant to relate to.  
Naegi Makoto slept peacefully on the desk.

Sitting in a desk next to him, a girl with brown hair and an equally plain face was sleeping as well. Their hands were crossed over the door as they slept.

She was Ikusaba Mukuro, sister of Enoshima Junko and adoptive sibling of Kumagawa Misogi. Junko’s response to seeing both of them was to start digging in the desk nearest to her. “Come on, is there a marker anywhere near her? I have to draw a big L on the loser couple’s faces.”

Considering she was dating the guy who called himself ‘Good Loser’ she should be talking. Well, even your favorite characters make decisions you disapprove of sometimes.

Just s Junk found and uncapped a marker, she was suddenly grabbed by the hand. She looked to see who the hand belonged to, and her colorless eyes met with pair of lilac ones.

Student no. 11 Kirigiri Kyoko  
Talent: Ultimate Detective  
Mentality: Special  
Likes: Her Hair Braids  
Dislikes: Goya, Coriander  
Favorite Phrase: “We need to stay calm.”

“Oh no, it’s the fun police.” Junko groaned.

Kirigiri only tightened her grip on the other girl. Junko possessed a mind that could predict every single punch before it was ever thrown, and therefore she never bothered to gain the strength of reflexes for combat. “What you enjoy could never be called fun by an sane person’s definition.” Kirigiri said, her monotone voice made it difficult to tell how agitated she was. “If you want to settle things with me that’s fine, but why did you drag those two into this game?”

“Chill out! I didn’t drag anybody nowhere!” Junko looked to her sister and Makoto. “Didn’t we do this last time, you accused me of being the mastermind the whole game and I turned out to be innocent.”

“No, the mastermind was an artificial intelligence that was an exact copy of your brain that masterminded the game in your place following what was your original plan. So, basically you.”

“Oh, she wishes she was me.” Junko’s lips parted into a sly smile. “Come on, there’s no need to be so rough. You’re the detective and I’m the criminal mastermind so that basically makes us besties, right?”

“What?” As usual Kyoko did not comprehend Junko at all.

“Come on, let’s have a slumber party after this! We’ll do each other’s nails. Then I’ll cause a crime and you can solve it!”

“I am not your bestie. That’s a bastardization of the traditional detective slash mastermind relationship.”

“Ohhhh, that’s so you! Do I know my bestie or what?”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

『Conan-chan, she’s just trying to annoy you don’t get all worked up.』Junko was a master manipulator who could break people with words alone, she could use that knowledge to control them, or she could pester them in the most childish way possible. Kumagawa had watched Kirigiri’s only facial expression be a sight twitching of her eye and then read that as her getting worked up. He was an idiot who missed things easily, but he was oddly perceptive when it came to people.

He walked over to Mukuro sleeping on the desk and nudged her shoulder. She raised her head slowly, and caught a blurry image in her eyes that looked like a terrifying, smiling shadow. “My… family…”

Immediately the chair fell behind her and she threw her arms around Kumagawa. The boy merely awkwardly looked away and let his hands hang there because he did not know what to do with them. 『Such a cute girl hugging a person like me, really...』Kumagawa muttered.

“Hey, why did you go hug him first when you said family? Your freaking twin sister is right here.” Junko said with her hands on her hips.

Mukuro still holding onto Kumagawa felt emboldened. “Oh, we’re family now but when we were eight for one month you tricked me into thinking I was adopted. You even somehow forged government papers to prove to me that I was.”

『Methinks Junko doth protest too much.』Kumagawa said, joining in on the teasing.

“Cram it, Misogi. You can’t even read. Let alone read shakespeare.”

『I can read manga...』

 

“Well at least he can um… be nice to me… for once in my life… umm with nice words.” Mukuro’s train of thought for coming out with witty comebacks on the fly was completely derailed. She shyly hid behind Kumagawa. She was a strong and serious looking girl whose eyes had been completely deadened by witnessing battlefield after battlefield, but the battlefield of snappy comebacks and insults was too much for her.

『It’s okay you tried. Everyone banters at their own pace. Pat. Pat.』

“You don’t have to say pat, you can just pat me on the head.”

『Oh, you’re not disgusted by the idea of me touching you, how nice.』

It was an awkward family relationship the young boy had stumbled into. Ikusaba Mukuro the responsible older sibling rough hued and military minded, the younger troublemaking sibling, cunning, and compulsively attracted. Then there was Kumagawa who found himself lost in the middle.

Student no. 8 Ikusaba Mukuro  
Talent: Ultimate Soldier  
Mentality: Abnormal  
Likes: Her sister, Army Knives  
Dislikes: Make-Up  
Favorite Phrase: “Oh, Junko…”

Junko stuck out her tongue. “Ugh, disgusting can one of you acquire higher standards please?”

Kumagawa simply let go of Mukuro and smiled back at Junko. 『If either of us had any standards at all we wouldn’t like you.』He took Junko turning away from him in a huff as a sign that he had won that particular bount.

Naegi Makoto woke up, or rather he was pulled into being awake as suddenly Zenkichi sprung forward and lifted the boy up from his chair into a great big hug. Makoto spat out the air in his lungs and immediately struggled to breathe.

“Man, I was so worried I wouldn’t see you again!” Zenkichi said with genuine affection, partly just glad he found someone sane and normal among the weirdos. Their friendship was special because among the oddball eccentrics, theirs was the bond between two normal boys.

“Zenkichi, I’m glad to see you too but can you please stop hugging me, my body is very tiny and my bones are very weak.” Makoto said. He was let down, but a moment later the other boy buried him in boyish affection by noogieing his head. His bed hair looked even worse than usual by the time that Zenkichi was done.

“Wait, what is this place guys?” Makoto said as he straightened up.

“It’s the killing game, duh? Why else would you wake up unconscious in the middle of a school with a foggy memory? Well I guess you’re the type of protagonist who wanders around blindly until a fun cartoon mascot just tells you what’s going on-”

“Can somebody besides Junko answer my question.” Makoto said, looking away from the girl. He was the kind of easy going guy who likes everybody, but there was one person he had a pronounced dislike for. “I’m getting kind of sick of being constantly told what kind of protagonist I am by this point, I mean protagonists aren’t even real for one. You can keep your confusing fakey fake talk to yourself.”

“The old school building was where the first killing game was planned to take place, but it never happened.” Mukuro answered instead, stepping by his side to lean on him. Makoto really hated Junko, but he also happened to be dating her sister.

“If Kiri and you are here, that means you’re both in danger again…” Makoto’s expression fell, however it just as quickly picked back up. “But this time the three of us are together at least. I couldn’t stand the thought of you suffering through this alone.”

“Well aren’t you just a ball of sunshine.” Junko sniped, sarcastically.

“It’s better than being the human equivalent of a black hole, Junko.” Makoto sniped back.

“What a nice compliment, I’m responsible for the collapse of everything around me and even light can’t escape my grasp. How cool.”

“I wasn’t trying to be nice! Not to you at least!”

They were Ultimate Despair and Ultimte Hope, or at least they were supposed to be. However in this version of events neither of them had stepped up to the title, so they just argued like in-laws who did not get along.

Student no. 0 Naegi Makoto  
Talent: Ultimate Luckster  
Mentality: Abnormal  
Likes: Curry, Trendy things  
Dislikes: Dried Mackerel, Dried Bean Curd  
Favorite Phrase: “We can’t give up guys, not when there’s still hope.”

Makoto looked down at his own hands. “Hey, so ummm… what’s with these outfits? I don’t think I stand out enough to dress this cool.”  
Naegi Makoto wore a pair of pinstripe pants, whose legs had been rolled up to about his knees. His black jacket was open and unbuttoned, and rather than a button down shirt he wore a bright red shirt covered in stars and the word HERO repeated over and over again in english.

Mukuro wore a green flack jacket vest that hung loosely around her skinny body. Underneath the best, she wore black shirt covered in stitch marks, like the shirt itself had been wounded and stitched up over and over. She wore her usual skirt though her stockings went up to her thighs now, a detail which Makoto noticed and let his eyes linger on for a moment. It was a rather punk look nd the most fashionable she had ever been, but Mukuro was too distracted by her flack jacket. “I saw this in a magazine. It’s made of bulletproof fibers. It’ll be really useful if a gunfight breaks out. I always feel more comfortable in combat gear.”

Mukuro smiled innocently. The military Otaku was having the time of her life with her new look.

“There’s no hope for you, big sis.” Junko sighed.

Kirigiri was wearing her lilac hair tied back in a single ponytail with bow. She looked down and saw her jacket was gone and she wore a collared long sleeved shirt, and tight skirt. She picked up the black jacket she found on her own desk and pulled it over. It was marked with a strange emblem. Her hands were covered by black leather gloves as always. “I’m dressed like I belong to some secret organization. Who do we know that’s immature enough to believe in such things, Junko?”

“As if I would grace any of you with my fashion knowledge!”

Zenkichi had gotten bored, so like the over energetic puppy he was he did squats in the corner. When he noticed how lost the others seemed, he decided to speak up before they broke out into more arguing. “Hey guys, let’s search for other people in the school! Do you want to come with me, Makoto?”

“Umm… it’s fine, really. I think I need a minute to get my head clear.” Makoto just did not want to go with Junko.

“Alright, come on you two. Be helpful for once instead of causing problems for everyone.” Zenkichi said as he grabbed onto both Junko and Kumagawa and started to drag them out of the room.

Kirigiri played with one of the purple strands of hair that fell in front of her shoulders. She looked at Mukuro and Makoto leaning on each other, and then herself standing there all alone. “Shuichi-kun might be here too. I’m going to go looking for him.”

“We could help.” Makoto said, with an oblivious smile like usual.

“It’s fine, I search better when I’m on my own.”

Kirigiri said.  
Her exit was quiet and empty, except for the sound of the door slamming behind her.

 

Mukuro and Makoto both glanced at each other. Makoto made a complicated expression, it almost looked out of place on the boy’s usually happy go lucky face. “Kirigiri doesn’t know about Shuichi… Do you think I did the right thing, trying to save him instead of treating him like an enemy?”

Makoto thought he had finally lived up to his empty platitudes for once, and fought with everything he had against Shuichi, only to get knocked out. That was the last thing he remembered before waking up here.

“I know how you feel. The reason my Kumagawa tries so hard around my sister is because I was the one who asked him to protect her. You have to take responsibility for those that you save but…” Mukuro leaned over to catch his eyes. “You chose to save him because that’s what you believe, didn’t you? I don’t have any beliefs of my own, so I’ll fight for your beliefs until the end.”

He had taken a chance on Mukuro and gained an invaluable ally, but that did not meant every single person would respond that way. The naturally nervous boy felt himself getting even more nervous, he needed to think about this more.

🐻

Kumagawa had found a monopad in his jacket, and was skimming through the information present on the pad. 『Hey, what’s with these favorite phrases on our student profiles? They make us all sound like one note characters. Is the mastermind mocking us?』

“Ugh, I’m so bored of searching. Can you just carry me on you back Misogi? Actually, do you think you could get a throne, that you and Zenkichi could carry while I sat on, and a third stupid boy to feed me grapes?” Junko complained.

Zenkichi who was running ahead of them looked back. “Come on guys now isn’t the time to be lazy. Our friends need us, we have to try even harder to find them.”

『I guess they wouldn’t listen to a loser like me...』Kumagawa said, his eyes falling to the monopad.

They made their way through the ruined school building and found a common eating are. The table was the only thing not covered in plant life. The first thing they heard upon entering the room was a high pitched scream.

The voice belonged to none other than Fukawa Toko who was hiding behind, a sharp dressed boy in glasses. “L-l-look at her, sh-sh-she’s a normal!” Fukawa said, pointing at the girl who was standing at the other end of the table.

“Hey, pointing is rude.” An unremarkable brown haired girl in a high school sailor uniform crossed her arms. She had a normal face, a normal waist to hip ratio, and she sort of looked like Makoto. She was his sister, Naegi Komaru after all.

Togami Byakua coldly pushed the other girl away from his shoulder. Her narrowed his eyes behind his glasses in impatience. “What is it, Toko? You’re composing yourself in an utterly ridiculous manner, even for your outlandish standards.”

“That’s a normal girl! That’s the most terrifying kind of girl. They pretend to be your friends and then spill your secrets to the whole school the next morning. They ask you to share lunches with them, and then make fun of what you’re eating and say ‘Oh that explains why you’re so fat, Fukawa-san’.”

“Can you please get her off of me, um…” Togami stopped for a moment, adjusting his glasses. “Whoever you are.”

“I already told you three times my name is Komaru.”

“Yeah, your name is not important enough for me to remember.” Togami said, looking at her like she was a potted plant that was in the corner of the room rather than a person.

“Oh, but you remember her name?” Komaru said, gesturing at Toko, which caused her to flinch.

“She’s the Ultimate Writing Prodigy, and I’m the Ultimate-”

“The Ultimate Meanie I’m sure.” Komaru said, actually thinking that was a good insult for a few moments.

It barely even scratched Togami’s ego but Toko suddenly felt the need to defend him. “The nerve of some people. After we graced you with our presence. Don’t you know how to talk to your betters?” Toko was afraid of normal people, which is why she developed a superiority complex towards them instead.

Togami quickly corrected her. “Don’t include you and I in the same category because I’m superior to both of you.”

“You didn’t grace me with anything, we just woke up unconscious in the same room.” Komaru sighed. “I don’t really get what your problem is but… I’m Komaru, let’s try to get along at least.” She had no idea what was going on, so Komaru’s response was to simply try to be normal. Just keep pretending things were alright until they were not. She had never really expected to deal with an extraordinary circumstance in her life.

Neither Togami nor Toko had any concept of what normal was though. Her peaceful entreaties fell entirely on deaf ears. They both just looked confused by her friendliness.

Komaru just then noticed the three that were watching them. “Whoa! It’s a girl, and she looks so pretty just like a model. That boy too, he looks like pure sunshine, and behind them… is that a ghost? It looks like a creepy boy who bleeds black ink from his eyeballs. You two, watch out you might be haunted.”

The creepy boy Kumagawa Misogi smiled in response.

“Oh no, he’s smiling at me! Have I been cursed?”

『Toko-chan’s just not that used to having friends at all.』

Toko bit her nail, feeling a sudden flutter of nerves. “Why would anybod want to be friends with me anyway? The moment everybody looks at me I can tell they’re thinking about how ugly I am, a-and when I try to talk to them they’re just coming up with insults in the back of their head.”

『I’ll be your friend, Toko-chan. I think your ugliness is a good thing! All those insults are like whispering sweet nothings into our ear if you’re a minus!』

“I don’t want to be friends with you, manga reader.” Toko said those two last words like she wanted to spit immediately afterwards.

『Hey, I’ve read a book before.』

“Oh, what book?”

 

『Dazai Osamu’s No Longer Human.』

“You just read the manga adaptation didn’t you?” Toko said, her eyes narrowing behind her glasses at him in suspicion. “Someone too stupid to read is never going to become my friend. And hey, make eye contact when others speak to you? And what’s that smell? Do you always have to smell like blood?” Fukawa channeled ten years of bullying, taking it out on Kumagawa Misogi at the moment.

Kumagawa nervously smiled and fidgeted with is fingers.『I’m being bullied by Toko-chan whose only friend is a stink bug, I really am the lowest of the low...』

 

Student no. 6 Fukawa Toko  
Talent: Ultimate Writing Prodigy  
Mentality: Minus  
Likes: Togami Byakuya, Romance Novels  
Dislikes: Light Novels, Manga  
Favorite Phrase: “Don’t look at me or talk to me.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with manga? Some series can be really fun to read.” Komaru said, standing up in his defense.

Kumagawa Misogi began crying tears of pure joy. He took Komaru’s hand in his.『Finally, after searching for so long I’ve found a true companion.』

Komaru was just weirded out by his sudden friendliness, and his ability to cry on the spot. “Umm… so you’re like not a ghost right?”

“I think the fact that you’re a serial killer might also have to do with the fact that you have no friends, Fukawa-san.” Junko said.

Fukawa reacted like she had been stabbed behind. “Ack! The busty blonde with the gorgeous face has come to torment me with her huge boobs. Begone, you!” Fukawa said, with much drama.

 

『Junko can torment people with her boobs? I want to try.』Kumagawa said.

“Wait, what?” Komaru took a step back. “A serial killer? Why are you treating me like I’m the scary one.”

“Normal people are way scarier than serial killers.” Fukawa snapped at her.

“That doesn’t make any sense at all!” Komaru snapped back.

Fukawa gave Togami a desperate, pleading look which Togami proceeded to ignore. He walked away from them. “All this tomfoolery aside, Junko explain what’s going on. Posthaste.”

“Wait, you shouldn’t ask her. She’s not trustworthy.” Zenkichi said, stepping in between them. Without Medaka around as a failsafe he was genuinely worried what the despair loving girl might do.

Togami cared very little for his concerns. “You aren’t even qualified to breathe my air, normal blood.”

“Hey! We’ve been on the same student council together for like-ever, you can use my name! Besides, I’m getting married to Medaka which means I’m marrying into the prestigious Kurokami Household.”

He was going to marry his childhood friend when he got out of highschool. Hitoyoshi Zenkichi was very happy about that.

 

“I can’t see why. Does she want a really beautiful, and well-chiseled baby or something?”

“People get married for more reasons than just breeding y’know? Like love!”

“Whatever delusional commoner nonsense that’s supposed to mean.” Togami shrugged like he simply had no idea what the other boy in front of him was talking about. He pushed him to the side and addressed Junko. “I’m really disappointed in your Enoshima, I thought you got this killing game nonsense out of your system. Well then, how much will I have to pay you to let me escape from this place alone?”

“Byakuya-sama’s going to save us! I knew he would!”

“I’m completely willing to sell out all my friends if it means my own survival. You can have Toko right now.”

“Nooooooo.” Toko gave a dying shriek in the background. She was fine, just being dramatic again. “Death is better than separation from you, Byakuya-sama.”

“Quit acting like a tragic princess in one of your stupid romance novels, you are the farthest thing from it.” Togami harshly snapped at her.

 

Student no. 4 Togami Byakuya  
Talent: Ultimate Affluent Progeny  
Mentality: Special  
Likes: Coffee, French  
Dislikes: Plebeians, Microwave Meals  
Favorite Phrase: “Peasants…”

Naegi Komaru sighed. She looked desperately around the colorful characters that gathered around the otherwise plain and colorless existence that she was. If you dropped her into a bucket, she would hardly make a ripple, let alone a splash.

Nervously, she reached forward and tugged on to Hitoyoshi’s sleeve. “Umm… Is there someone sane around here to explain what’s going on? Pretty please?” Desperation creeped into her voice, even though she was doing her best to speak like she normally did.

“I can’t believe the mastermind dragged Naegi’s stupid sister into the killing game. Even I didn’t think of going that low. Game recognizes game.” Junko said, licking her lips as she could taste despair in the air.

Kumagawa suddenly appeared beside her. 『Hey, Junko remember how you were going to try not being the worst person here…? Yeah, you’re drooling.』He reached forward and wiped the drool from the corner of her lips with his thumb.

Student no. 2 Komaru Naegi  
Talent: None  
Mentality: Normal  
Likes: Girl’s Manga, Whatever’s Trending  
Dislikes: Lightning, Rainy Season  
Favorite Phrase: “There’s nothing special about me.”

Toko ignored the rest of the people she did not like and focused on Togami once more. “Byakuya-sama, you’re dressed just like a prince!”

Togami looked at his own clothes. “These are the same clothes I always wear, I’m just wearing a vest instead of a jacket. Who put me in a vest though, it’s not even the season for it.”

Shows what he knows, vests are always in season. They’re sleek and cool. Do all authors get critiqued by characters for their design choices like this?

🐻

They decided to leave the other three alone, or at least Kumagawa decided to drag Junko away before she hurt Makoto’s sister on an impulse to cause despair in the boy she hated the most.

Junko walked casually with her arms folded behind her back. The sight of the building she had worked so hard to remodel into a death trap in utter ruins made her feel a little bit. She wondered what this mastermind was even planning. Then she got bored of wondering about that. “Well, it looks like we found everybody worth finding.”

『We haven’t found Nagito-chan yet.』

“You’re right. If we really are in a death game we should find him fast, he doesn’t really react well to those.” Zenkichi’s sharp eyebrows tightened a bit, in genuine concern. By ‘not reacting well’ Zenkichi was of course referring to Komaeda setting himself up to be the first death, and then later threatening to kill the whole island. Zenkichi considered Komaeda a friend, so he got over all of that remarkably fast. While he still held a grudge over the one time Kumagawa called his hairstyle stupid.

“Who?”

 

『You know who Nagito-chan is. Don’t look down on him, you talented elite.』

“Ugh whatever. Walking all around this school better not ruin my pedicure.” ` ` 『You know he tried to kill you in the past, you could pretend to notice him at least a little bit. Nagito-chan is important.』

“Oh, yeah right he did! I totally forgot about it. I remember now, he almost made me late for my manicure.” Junko said, as she inspected her nails on her sole remaining hand taking far more interest in them than the idea of finding Komaeda.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!”

A scream rang out through the hallways.

“A dead body! Aaaah, it’s moving! No, don’t touch me you freak I don’t want to catch your zombie virus!”

“Welp.” Junko tilted her head in the direction of the noise. “I guess we found Komaeda.”

『Junko, there’s sharp and witty banter and then there’s just being plain mean.』

“Please, I’m not plain mean. I’m fabulously mean, I’m gracefully cruel.”

The last thing Komaeda remembered was a noose pulling tight around his neck. Then he felt nothing at all, but the breeze swaying him back and forth. Most people only felt this sensation, this helplessness only moments before their death. For Komaeda that was life though. He knew there was always a noose around his neck, whether it was loosened or pulled tight it would not change the fact that it was there.

How was one supposed to live like that? So delicately? So fragile? When one wrong step and the ground would disappear underneath his feet and the rope would pull tight on his neck until it broke. He could try smiling and tugging at the noose around his neck like it was a joke. He could playfully pull at the rope and dare it to tighten. He could pretend it was a necktie and ignore it going about his daily life. No matter what he did though, one way or another the rope would pull him somewhere and he would swing wildly out of control. He would swing into good luck, or he would swing into bad.

Snapping your neck sounded like a painful way to die, but sometimes Komaeda thought it was a relief. A much more horrifying way to die would be if the neck did not snap right away. Then a hanging could last for hours. In the end it was not the rope around the neck, but rather the weight of the body that slowly suffocated you to death as the body became unable to support its own weight. That was what Komaeda felt like, this body was too heavy for him.

There were times he wished his neck would just snap, or the rope would snap and he would plummet off the cliff and be dashed on the rocks below. There was a foolish boy who appeared before him though, and he tricked him. He did not tell him to live, moreso as he made Komaeda finally listen to the voice inside of him. Even being strangled by the rope, he wanted to speak up, his voice wanted to escape his throat and his lips, he wanted to say the words I want to live. Komaeda always so hope as a bright and brilliant thing that burned away all the unpleasant things, but that kind of hope was a smaller and weaker light inside of him, but as he felt it flickering he felt warmed by it.

Realizing he wanted to live was painful too, because he knew this was not living. He lived like he was always dying. The walking corpse. The shinigami. The friend of the reaper. He had heard them all. He thought being inspired to live would be less painful than this.

He was always so convinced of his ideals, he believed in them like a fanatic, and that only made him more lost when he turned out to be wrong. He thought for instance, that love was a soft thing. He was used to pain from other people. He hurt them and was hurt by them. He thought being around him did nothing but cause others pain so he kept his distance. He knew though, that there were strong humans who were capable of reaching past the pain and still embracing one another. The soft touch that can look beyond pain, for the boy who rambled madly about his one-sided loves he had a rather quaint and quiet view of love. However, love could hurt too. Love could hurt more sometimes. You could be betrayed by someone out of love, they could make decisions for you.

Everybody always told Komaeda how complicated he was, but he thought he was simple. He was sure any other lost boy might act the same way he did. He did not think he built anything special or unique from the tragedy of his life.

Student no. 10 Komaeda Nagito  
Talent: Ultimate Luckster  
Mentality: Minus  
Likes: Beautiful places, Beautiful People  
Dislikes: Noisy Places, Ugly People  
Favorite Phrase: “We can’t give up guys, not when there’s still hope.”

 

He thought other people were far more complicated than him. Every time he thought he understood them, he was surprised. As his eyes slowly peeled open, a name escaped his pale lips. “Hinata-kun…”

However at that exact moment, Soda Kazuichi had found him in the corner of the room and mistaken him for a corpse. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!”

Student no. 1 Soda Kazuichi  
Talent: Ultimate Mechanic  
Mentality: Special  
Likes: Coke  
Dislikes: Sugar Free Anything  
Favorite Phrase: “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek!”

Komaeda blinked. Soda Kazuichi, his classmate and former member of Ultimate Despair. The Ultimate Mechanic. He gained his talent working for his parents bike repair shop, keeping it afloat entirely on his own. Komaeda knew a lot about him, though they had never been friends. They were still classmates. Komaeda sat up trying to calm him down. “Soda-kun it’s just me…”

“A dead body! Aaaah, it’s moving! No, don’t touch me you freak I don’t want to catch your zombie virus!”

Komaeda had just reached out because he thought that was what humans were supposed to do when they wanted to calm other human’s down. Apparently he had gotten that human behavior wrong, and he was just causing Kazuichi to freak out more.

Koameda caught a glimpse of himself in a cracked window. His skin was colorless as usual, the same as a corpse when all color and blood had drained from his face. His white hair spiraled in every direction. His skin was slick with sweat, nd parts of his hair stuck to it. His cheeks were shallow and cavernous. His face sloped in such angles it looked like the contours of his skull could be seen just underneath his skin.The only difference was a pair of glasses over his eyes he had taken to wearing recently.

“It’s just me, Soda-kun. Your classmate Komaeda.”

“Oh, that’s Komaeda. That’s even freakier.”

“Haha, I guess that’s a fair reaction.”

When Kumagawa finally caught up to him, he noticed right away. 『Nagito-chan, what happened to your green jacket it’s missing?』

Nagito looked down at his body. His lips curved downward in disappointment. “I always liked that jacket, it was so warm too…” He had found it in a dumpster behind a trendy clothing store, but he did not want Junko to make the obvious Komaeda is trash joke so he kept it to himself. It was his favorite piece of clothing, he felt like himself when he wore it. He lost and found things very easily due to his luck, but sometimes he got attached to possessions like that. They were oddly comforting.

What he was currently wearing was a black zip-up hoodie, with a plain white t, and a pair of black pants so tight he was sure the others could see the bones in his legs and hips. He zipped up the jacket and pulled up the hood. The black hood had a strange cartoonish design, a pair of sly white eyes were on the top of the hood and two antennae. It looked a bit like the heartless from kingdom hearts.

He was not sure a heartless would ever attack him though, Komaeda was in doubt whether he had a heart or not. There were times that he could not feel it beating at all.

“Hey, you look cool!” Zenkichi tried to be encouraging.

 

“There’s no way I could ever look cool in any kind of outfit. I don’t know why morticians bother to dress up corpses if they’re going to be dead in a few minutes anyway. Hitoyoshi-kun is trying to flatter me at least, how kind of him.” His attempt at being encouraging totally failed, and Komaeda responded in his own way. That was the best way that the other more normal boy understood him. Everything he did, it became something that seemed like Komaeda would do. Komaeda Nagito is Komaeda Nagito, that was the way Zenkichi regarded him. It was not really understanding but… at least there was someone willing to try to accept him.

Komaeda Nagito curled a finger around his chin and tried to think, well he was always thinking it was more like he was trying to sort through and order his thoughts into something useful. “Have you guys seen Hinata-kun?” That was all he could think about, in the end. He was useless.

Zenkichi and Kumagawa looked at each other. Junko just looked away because she was bored.

“Wait, what’s going on I don’t remember anything. Nagito, hey, hey Nagito.” Soda waved his hand in front of Nagito’s face not reading the room at all.

“Soda-kun, I know I never really treated you like a classmate in the past but we’re not strangers. If we can cooperate for now that might help you calm down at least.”

“Who’s not calm, I’m totally calm.” He was in fact, the opposite of calm. Despite his pink mane which flowed in every direction, he was a cowardly lion. “Don’t start acting all reasonable, that’s creepier when you act creepy.”

“I… If I’m creepy when I act creepy and creepy when I’m not acting creepy, I’m not sure how to I’m supposed to act then…” Komaeda said, genuinely confused.

 

Kazuichi lifted his shirt, and lazily scratched the flat stomach underneath. He was not wearing his usual yellow mechanics suit either, but rather a pitch black suit with red markings on it, and pink blood in some areas that had never washed out. His scowl revealed his razor sharp teeth. He grabbed the pair of goggles that was sitting on his forehead and pulled them over his eyes to hide them. He definitely looked like someone to be afraid of, but like most wild animals he was more afraid of you than you were of him.

They all agreed to search the school together, or at least the areas that were open to them. Even with all of them searching, they could find no trace of Hinata, Matsuda, or Medaka. WHen they had looked, and it looked like there was no hope of finding them Komaeda’s only response was a soft “Oh.” He did not feel a strong amount of hope, or despair, but rather that there was something inside of him missing now. It was an empty, disappointing feeling.

Junko was disappointed for a completely different reason, as the hung around the door that led to the outside. “I can’t believe after all of that the only new characters we’re going to introduce are Soda-senpai and Naegi-kun’s lame sister! Ugh, what is this mastermind even thinking, I know all of these losers already!”

 

『Speaking as one of the losers, can you chill a little bit? For once in your life?』

“Are you implying I’m high maintenance.”

『Marie Antoinette was not nearly as high as you. She just wanted some cake.』

“Well of course, the disciple could never measure up to the master.”

『Well maybe there’s more people outside.』

“Don’t be stupid. We’re supposed to be trapped in one school building, that’s how it goes. The mastermind is at least competent enough to figure that out if she’s worth her salt.”

『Maybe stop complimenting the person who’s trying to kill us?』

“Well, now that you mention it though. There is one more person I’m looking forward to seeing.” Junko suddenly grabbed her cheeks as they turned red. Her entire body overheated, and her shoulders shook with anticipation. “My heart’s beating a mile a minute just thinking about him, is it normal to feel this way about someone, could this emotion be…”

“Huh? What is she doing?” Zenkichi said, more confused by her behavior.

 

『She’s talking about Monokuma. She’s kind of weird about bears.』

“Noooo, I couldn’t feel that way about Monokuma-sensei! A teacher student relationship is forbidden! He’s the headmaster it would destroy his reputation.”

『Maybe we should go look for him outside.』

“I already told you this door is sealed shut.” Junko said as she suddenly kicked the door. It flew open as she did, and she stopped in shock for a moment. “Wait what? We can go outside? What about the claustrophobia? The building sense of paranoia? Does this mastermind know what she’s doing at all? Ugh, I gotta give her my notes or something.”

Junko walked boldly to the outside world.  
“I want to see Monokuma, I want to see Monokuma, this feeling building in my chest, is it hope that I’m feeling for the first time? I can finally look forward to the future.”

Kumagawa and Zenkichi both stared at each other behind her.  
Upon opening the doors, those three were immediately greeted by…  
Blue skies.  
Bright sunlight.  
Gentle wind.  
And…

“A cage? A wall?” Zenkichi said.

 

『How symbolic.』Kumagawa added.

What stood before them was a cage and a wall. Either way the enormous wall struck a terrifying chord. No matter where they looked, the cage surrounded the entire school, like the campus of Hope’s Peak was cut off from the rest of the world.

“RISE AND SHINE URSINE!”

Enoshima Junko’s head turned crookedly and slowly around as she heard the familiar and unfamiliar voice. What she saw was not the black and white bear she had been expecting but rather five bears of assorted colors.

“We’re the monokubs!”

“M-m-m-m-monokubs…”

Junko said, stuttering like she had been broken. Her intellectual property, her original character do not steal, had totally been destroyed in front of her eyes and turned into spinoff babies.

At the sight of it, Enoshima Junko despaired.


	2. Through the Looking Glass

**Introduction Part 2: The Other Side of the Mirror**

Nothing.  
No light. No sound.  
No form. No Voice.  
No knowledge of who I am.

...Who I am?  
Who am I?  
I extend a hand.  
A hand that belongs to no one.  
To take hold of my existence-  
  
But I can’t, because I don’t exist anywhere.  
I don’t exist in people’s eyes.  
I don’t exist in people’s minds.  
I don’t exist in people’s hearts.  
Everything I say will be forgotten.  
If someone were to reach out and take my hand,  
They would have nothing to take hold of.  
  
I can’t become the person I want to be.  
I can’t live the life I want to live.  
I think even a mediocre life would be worth living.  
If you could fill it with good friends.  
And make unique memories.  
But, I don’t even have any friends.  
Every day I think about how I don’t want to live this way anymore.  
But I never do anything to change it.  
There are stories of people who remake their lives from tragedy.  
But I’m not one of those people.  
I can’t bring myself to do a single thing.  
I do nothing.  
Therefore I’m nothing.  
I start to wonder why someone like me

with no good qualities,  
who can only be a burden to others,    
was even born in the first place.

Nobody would want to write a story with me as the main character. _  
_ _  
_ His memory had been scrubbed clean. It was fitting for him, he considered himself a washed out existence in the first place. No matter how much they tried to erase him until he was blank, it seemed he had still clung onto a fundamental memory.

It was blurry in his mind and the image was distorted. He reached out to take hold of it. The memory who made him who he was. His hand grabbed onto something, he was clinging onto the hand of another. His hand was small and easily eclipsed by the hand he was holding onto. A child held onto the hand of an adult’s.

  
They were not peacefully walking along. He was being pulled harshly by that man’s hand. He was just a child though, so he had no choice but to keep his head down the entire time. Every noise that came from that man’s body sounded like barely restrained anger. Every time the hand holding onto his so much as twitched or tightened, the boy’s entire body shook.  
  
As a child he knew there was something wrong. He could sense the emotions that were bubbling under the surface. He lacked the understanding to put words to it. Children are perceptive, but cannot contextualize what they perceive. All he could feel was fear.  
  
He tried his best to put on a brave face, but he had never once in his life been brave. If he was stronger, or older, he could try screaming for help. All he did was whimper. He was not sure anybody would help even if he did make a sound. At home nobody listened to him anyway.

 

They finally arrived at the doorstep. The man started to explain in a stiff and informal way. “From now on, you’ll be living here with your uncle. You’re not his child, so don’t take up too much space, and don’t make too much noise. He’s already doing you a huge favor by supporting you, so make sure you show him you’re worth keeping around. If he kicks you out you won’t have anywhere else to go.”  
  
“N-nowhere?”  
  
“Where else are we going to put ya? Most parents can barely stand their own kids, you think people are out there lining up for problem children?”

 

“I… I…” He hated the way the man spoe so informally, putting him somewhere as if he was just lining up a toy on a shelf. He finally pulled back against the hand freeing himself. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. Perhaps all he could do was kick, scream and throw a tantrum but that was better than nothing. “I don’t want to go there! I want to go back to mommy and daddy!”  
  
The man finally raised his head. He could see angry details carved into the man’s face. It was the most curious thing though, because of the way the shadows fell on the man’s face from the angle where the boy was looking up, it was like he did not have any eyes. The area above his nose was just two dark holes, two empty spaces. “Your parents told me to entrust you with him, he’s your foster uncle from now on. Aren’t you going to listen to them?”  
  
The man did not need to hit or strike him, the angry look was enough to stop the boy’s protests. “Okay, I’ll be good for Uncle. I’ll do whatever he says.” He said in a small voice. A child cannot process complex emotions but just then he understood the feeling of abandonment.

🧸

 

A lot of people will say that characters write themselves. That in the process of writing they will show you sides of themselves you have never seen before.  
  
What a reckless philosophy of writing, really. Isn’t the point of fiction that you control everything? The reason that people sink their beliefs into fiction is because there is nothing they can control of their real lives. In a fictional world, everything is controlled, everything is purposeful, everything is meaningful.  
  
Therefore I know my characters better than they know themselves. They think this way because it suits my story, they remember this memory because it suits my story, characters are just toys that the author moves around and the world of fiction is my toybox. They won’t move unless I pick up the pieces and moves them.  
  
God complex, much? Someone in the audience scoffs at me.  
God, is the most hard working author of all. There’s got to be an entertainer out there who’s writing a saga about five billion people. He’s head over heels for them. He couldn’t possibly write the saga of this world continuously and restlessly without love! I’m sure he has loads of fun writing it, enjoying his own work all the while. God loves human virtues like courage and hope, but he loves screams, blood and despair just as much.  
  
I really believe that from the bottom of my heart. No, wait, maybe I just made that all up in lieu of a proper introduction. In the case of Shuichi Saihara at least, I know him better than he does. He’s the protagonist I erased into a blank slate for the sake of my story. I know what memories I erased and which ones I left behind.  
  
Ajimu Najimi submitted Hitoyoshi Zenkichi as  new world main character, because he surpassed all other main characters before him by disposing the merits of being a main character and getting rid of plot armor, situational convenience, luck. Then, allow me to present my New DanganRonpa main character. The worst main character. One inferior to all other main characters before him.  
  
For the moment though he doesn't know anything about himself, or his existence. He does not even know that he belongs to me. And neither does she.  
  
Before Shuichi could find a way to open his locker from the inside, he heard the locker next to him open. A voice muttered under her breath. “This is me…My name is Akamatsu Kaede. Nice to meet me. I’m the protagonist of this crazy story.”  
  
In the real world there’s no such thing as protagonists. There’s no antagonists. There’s no characters at all. There’s just boring old people.  Nobody has control over their own lives, it's all too random, incoherent to call it a story. She was lucky that she was in the world of fiction, that she could get away with saying such a bold thing.  
  
She stumbled out of the locker in a daze, but as soon as she did she fell onto the floor. SHe couldn’t even brace for impact as suddenly a blinding pain rushed through her head. “Agh… ughhhh…” Quickly, her mood soured from dazed to annoyed real quick. “Huh? Wait, where am I? What is this place?”  
  
She looked around and saw classroom in front of her, that she did not recognize.  
  
“Where am I…?”  
“What am I doing here?”  
“Oh! Is this a dream? I just have to pinch myself right.”  
  
She pinched herself hard, but all she accomplished was making her head hurt in two places instead of one.  
  
“Umm.. Okay, hold on a second. Let’s just stay calm and think this through.”  
  
Just as she said that Shuichi finished banging from inside of his locker. He was too weak to force the door open all on his own. Kaede could tell someone was trying to get out. She reached for the handle trying to pull it open while the whoever pushed from the otherside.  
  
Suddenly, the door flew open faster than she expected and a boy came stumbling out, knocking her over and landing on top of her. A normal by dressed in a school uniform. He must have been a highschool student too. He slowly lifted his head and looked down at her. A girl with blonde hair and lilac eyes, the moment he looked into her eyes he screamed. “...Ah! Augh!!!”  
  
He pushed himself off of her like he had just seen a monster. He fell on his butt, and scooted back all the way to the wall. Kaede looked on to his hysterics in slight annoyance. He was the one who fell on top of her after all.  
  
He looked around like everything was unfamiliar. “W-who are you?”  
  
“...Who am I!?”  
  
“Are you the reason I’m here!? Did you kidnap me?”  
  
“Kidnapped?”  
  
“W-where am I…? What are you going to do to me?”

“Hey! Hold on!” She stepped forward and raised a leg kicking the wall he was leaning against. She placed her foot right next to his head. Just being close to her like that sent a ripple through the guy, it was like he was all water. He gripped his face and tried to look away from her skirt. She ignored him and spoke, looking down into his eyes under the brim of his hat. “What’s your name?”  
  
It took him a moment, like he had forgotten his own name. “...Huh? Ah, I’m Saihara Shuichi.”  
  
“I’m Akamatsu Kaede. Now, listen to me, Saihara… Shut up! You’re not the only one who’s confused right now!”

 

“Ah, sorry…”  
  
After making him shut up, she removed her leg from the wall and left him there to cower or whatever. She was too bus retracing her steps. “That’s right, I was kidnapped too! I was walking my usual route to school when all of a sudden someone shoved me into a car. I shouted for help, but no one came to rescue me… Everyone pretended like nothing happened… It made me think how rotten the world is. And then, I lost consciousness… And when I woke up, I was inside that locker.”  
  
“You remember being kidnapped? I just remember waking up here.”  
  
“It seems like it… But… why me? My family’s not rich, and I’m no one special. I’m just a normal high school girl. There’s no reason to kidnap me.”  
  
“Me either… I’m just a regular guy. I don’t remember being anything special. And… this is a school, right?” He looked at the wall, printed on it was an emblem with a ‘x’ like symbol through the middle. “The Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles? Why did they take us to a school?”  
  
Hearing his questions pour one one by one she had no answers to any of them. She walked up next to him once more, and held out a hand to help him up. “Anyway, let’s just stay calm and think. I’m sorry I shouted at you earlier.”  
  
He stared at her hand like he had no idea what to do, and then Shuichi just stood up on his own instead. He leaned his thin body against the wall for support as he caught his breath. “No, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Anyway, this place is… weird. You don’t think we got caught up in something bad, do you?”  
  
“Something bad…No way, let’s just get out of here and find help as fast as we can.”  
  
“Uh… Okay.” Shuichi had no idea what to do on his own. The first other person he met was unlike him, so decisive, and immediately acting. All he could think of was to follow her. The moment they walked out of the room, suddenly they were bathed in a red glow.  
  
“Hell yeah! I found you!”  They were face to face with a mechanical monstrosity. Dozens of red eyes, and sparking wires glared at them.  
  
“What?  
“A monster?”  
  
Kaede put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him aside, protectively.  “This is bad, we need to get out of here.”  
  
“O-Ok!”  Shuichi was the first to run, turning on his heel and taking off in a sprint. When he noticed that the other girl did not flee as quickly as he did, he waited for her turning back around. “Kaede! Over here!”  
  
The two of them took off running through the zig zagging corridors of the hallways, but it seemed every time they turned a corner they found another monster. Despite being much larger and faster, somehow the were able to escape from them, like they were only chasing them as a game. Finally Kaede and Shuichi together threw the doors of the gym open.  
  
Only to see nine other children waiting for them. They all glanced at each other, all of them confused.  
  
Only one of them seemed to know what was going on. He scratched at the back of his head, his eyes turning into a resigned expression. “And that makes eleven.”  
  
“What?”

  
“I’m talking about us. There are eleven of us, all highschooler. What do you think that means? Oh, right. Didn't answer your question.” The mysterious looking boy with green eyes and green hair had a causal air about him despite the situation, as he threw his hands up in the air behind him. “My name is Amami Rantaro. Let’s leave it at that for now.”  
  
“Huh? Um… Okay. Why does it matter if there are eleven of us, there might be more coming.”  
  
“Nah, I think this is all of us. If this is what I think it is, anyway.” Rantaro said. If they were anywhere else, his messy green hair and sharp featured face might give him the look of a playboy, but in this situation acting like he knew more than anybody else just made him look untrustworthy.  
  
It was at that moment… An unknown voice suddenly echoed throughout the gym.  
  
“Okayyyy, quiet everyone! Shimmer down, Shimmer down, Shimmer down!”  
  
“No it’s simmer down.”  
  
“Kyahahahahahaah! Thanks for bearing with us.”  
  
Suddenly, throughout the gymnasium five more of those monsters arrived.  
  
“They’re not monsters, they’re exisals. They’re highly mobile, bipedal weapons platforms.”  
  
“Weapons!” Shuichi cried out as he staggered backwards.  
  
Getting attacked by giant robots was in fact not the weirdest thing to happen to the two of them in their introduction. Suddenly, the mechas opened and five plush bears stepped out. They were colored like a set of sentai rangers.  
  
“We’re the monokubs!” They announced in unison with five colorful voices.  
  
“Wait! You guys call yourself the monokubs?” Kaede said, stepping up to the plate to replace Hinata Hajime as the main character who asks dumb questions so the mastermind can explain things.

 

Rantaro was the only one not confused by the scene. If Shuichi was water, he was earth itself, implacable, immovable. “Looks like I was right. This is exactly what I thought it was. But, who’s behind all this? All these ridiculous theatrics-” He sighed, a tired look in his eyes as he combed his messy hair back with a single hand.  
  
“Actually! Don’t you think their clothes look kind of boring?”  
  
The red bear said, agreeing with the author that they definitely needed a redesign.  
  
“Wait, weren’t they supposed to wake up with their first memories?”  
  
“Hey, answer my question! If you guys are the Monokubs, than that means-” Kaede spoke up, trying to cut through their bickering. She did not find it particularly funny. Even though the author had put a lot of hard work into creating these new marketable spinoff mascots. Everybody loves baby versions of old characters, it’s marketing gold.  
  
“We’re just wondering… Do youse guys have Ultimate Talents or anything like that?”  
  
“I.. don’t have one. I have a skill that I devote myself to… but I wouldn’t call that an Ultimate Talent.” Kaede said, grabbing her arm as she looked away in shame.  
  
“M-Me either… I-I don’t… have anything like that…” Shuichi pulled his hat down to over his eyes.  
  
The blue bear spoke up. “Told you so! They haven’t gotten their first memories yet!”

  
“A-anyway, if you guys are really the Monokubs th-then where is she…” Kaede tried to speak up over them a third time.

  
“Don’t worry about us. The real issue is youse guys. Youse have all forgotten about your talents and become generic high school students. You’re nobodies who forgotten they were somebodies. See, according to the backstory there’s this Ultimate Hunt going on… it’s dangerous to be an Ultimate these days You’ve all lost your memories and become different people. Well, in your current state it’s impossible to talk to you guys like this. The first thing we need you guys to do is remember your true selves.”  

  
“Yeah! You need to reclaim your sealed talents by regaining your memories!”  
  
“First, we’ll update your warddrobe so you guys all look cute and spiffy.”  
  
Kaede saw suddenly costumes being thrown out in the air. They were all connected by red thread. Before she could even process what was happening with the absurd bears, and the robots, she felt the red thread wrapping around her pulling at her arm as if inviting her forward. Her old clothes disappeared and it felt like her old self was unraveling slowly. The feeling was like that of a doll getting dressed.  
  
The kids around her too, they all looked like plain colorless existences a moment ago. Now suddenly she was surrounded by color and character.  
  
She heard the words. _Now the flashback light will help you remember your amazing talents. This amazing story will begin for real this time._  
  
Whatever part of her remained, the moment that light shined, every shadow of it was burned away. _Finals. Classics. Friends. Friends. PIano. Interests. Chatty. Moonlight. School. Name. Likes. Piano. Friends. Friends. Piano. Hope. Optimism. Friends. Piano._  
  
If for example Kaede was a book, she felt like every single letter had been stripped from her pages one by one and then jumbled in the air in front of her, only to realign themselves back on her pages again. The kanjji characters were smashed into pieces in front of her and faded away. There was no story left, just living breathing person.She finally became somebody. She regained consciousness again…  
  
…  
  
And found herself in a locker once more. The mastermind must be some kind of bully she has a predilection for shoving people into lockers, or maybe these characters are just all nerds.

 

🧸

 

Kaede found a locker door opening in front of her once more. She stared blankly at the classroom which revealed itself before her. Her head emptied out, she stepped out of the locker and looked around the classroom trying to think. Just as she was about to reach some conclusion, the locker next to her started banging.  
  
She had no feeling of deja vu for these events, unlike the dear readers who have to read through the introduction twice. She touched the handle of the locker trying to gently jostle it open for whoever was inside, only for the locker door to suddenly be shoved open and a teenage boy to come spilling out and collide with her face to face.  
  
It was not any kind of romantic first (second) meeting because all they managed to do was headbutt one another hard before falling back together. The boy who fell on top of each other blinked, before looking down to see a round faced blonde girl staring back up at him. He caught his breath for a second, probably never being this close to a girl let alone another human being in his life.  
  
Then his reaction to their meet-cute style introduction was to start screaming in her face. “Ahhhh! Auugghh!” The boy said clutching the sides of his face as his dark pupils trembled at the sight of her.  
  
Kaede’s face centimeters away from his did not flicker, or even join in on the screaming. The stubborn and hard headed type of girl, her pretty features got visibly angry for a moment as she glared at him. “How rude! Don’t freak out at me like I’m some kind of monster!” She reached forward crossing the gaps between their faces to poke him on the nose.

 

Her look alone had been enough to break the boy out of his fright. “Ah, sorry…” He had woken up not remembering a thing, and scared of everything around him he did not know. However, her clear voice broke through his haze in a moment. Now, he was scared for a completely different reason. He was far too close to another human being. She probably thought he was a pervert, she probably thought all kinds of bad things about him, he did not even know who she was but already her opinion of him mattered far too much. He basically sprung off the floor and retreated from her leaning against a wall.  
  
Kaede sat up on her own too, staring blankly again for a moment. She looked oblivious as to why a boy would get flustered standing so close to her. Her mind was filled with music so much, she rarely thought of people outside of abstract terms. The constantly whispering insecurities that bothered the boy so much, she did not even seem to hear them. Perhaps the music she was hearing was drowning it out.

Shuichi slouched when he stood up, like he was always hiding from something. No matter where you viewed him at, he was always at an angle. His body was tall and thin and his uniform clung tightly to that body. His features were more girlish than even hers, he was wearing dark eyeshadow and his eyelashes were long and delicate. His hair was a silky blue that fell in front of his face, and fluttered slightly when he moved. She leaned in wanting to see more of his face, but Shuichi shied away. He was wearing a pinstripe school uniform that made him look like a detective prince. Not that the author plays persona 4 or anything. His body language was entirely lacking in the pride of a prince. His black hat with three white stripes on the side which he pulled over his face to block her gaze.  
  
She felt a little bit disappointed when she could not catch his eyes, and then a little embarrassed she had been caught staring at a boy she only met a few seconds ago (for the second time). She looked at herself in one of the broken windows. If Shuichi was all sharp, angular features, then Kaede was round. She had soft cheeks, and large lilac eyes. She wore a large sweatervest over her uniform, giving her a baggy appearance. Her blonde hair was neatly combed and secured with several musical note hair clips, but no matter how much she tried there was one large antennae that always stuck to the side over her head. He hair antennae waved slightly when she noticed Shuichi sneaking a glance at her underneath his hat. She did not think he had any reason to be looking at her, he was wearing even more makeup than she was.  
  
Shuichi would never say it, but his first impression of her was that she was bright, too bright to look at for too long.  
  
Kaede finally spoke up between them, turning around and sticking a finger up in the air between them, as if she was composing a symphony only she could hear. “I’m sorry too, okay? I just have no idea what’s going on. But… all the more reason why we need to stay calm. Oh! Gymnopedie no. 1 by Erik Satie. Try to imagine that sorrowful melody filling your head and soothing your heart.”  
  
Before either of them could say anything else, they were suddenly interrupted by the appearance of five colorful bears.

 

**Rise and Shine Ursine!**

Shuichi lifted his hat looking at them oddly calmly. “A teddy bear?”  
  
Kaede jumped behind Shuichi, “N-no it’s a monster! You can freak out about this!”  
  
“That’s so mean.. You humans are the real monster for calling us monsters.”  One of the bears said, pouting with its cute little stuffed cheeks.  
  
Shuichi looked at Kaede, and then the bears, and then immediately hid behind Kaede who was hiding behind him a second ago. “Wh-what are they? Why are they talking? Are they talking stuffed animals?”  
  
“You have amazing talents, don’t go forgetting again!” Another of the bears said.  
  
Shuichi was the only one to catch note of that detail, tilting his head from behind Kaede’s shoulder where he was hiding still. “What do you mean, forgetting…?”  
  
“Shut up and get started!”  
  
“Get started with what?” Kaede repeated.  
  
“Exploring the academy of course. You should hurry up and introduce yourselves to the other Ultimates, because you guys are going to be doing an activity later with the transfer students.”

  
**So Long Bear Well!** **  
  
**

With that the bears disappeared. Kaede’s mouth fell open agape, already feeling exasperated. “...Ah, they left! But I still have so many questions!”  
  
“Oh no, the annoying bears left…” Shuichi muttered to himself, before looking up at Kaede once more. “This… This isn’t a dream right?” Just like a dream, he barely remembered anything at all.  
  
However, there was no way this could all be a dream after the fourth entry in the series. Making such a stupid suggestion is the reason why you’re a character and not an author, dear Shuichi.  
  
“No, but I wish it was.” She glanced at Shuichi, meeting his eyes again. For some reason she heard lyrics to a certain song in her head. _I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream._ Songs were always getting stuck in Kaede’s head though so she did not think much of it, sharply she looked away to the door. “ A-anyway we have to find a way out of here! Uh-uh…?”

 

She realized she did not even know his name.

Shuichi took a step closer to her. Then he took a step back because he figured he must have read the signals wrong. He kept his eyes low to greet her, but then he thought she might think he was staring at his chest rather than her eyes so he raised his head up higher, but then he thought she might think he was too gross to look in her eyes so he looked down at his own feet. He had been told that several times before that he had a gross look in his eyes, for some reason he remembered that. “Y-yeah. W-well then. I’m… Shuichi Saihara. They call me the Ultimate Detective, but…”

 

After all of his fussing about how close to be or where to look, Kaede took two steps and was right in front of him again like it was nothing at all getting in his face, she balled her hands up and held them at her chest. Her eyes glowed like starlight in excitement. “What? You’re a detective? That’s amazing!”

 **Student no. 18 Saihara Shuichi** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Detective** **  
** **Mentality: Minus** **  
** **Likes: Novels** **  
** **Dislikes: Gossip** **  
** **Favorite Genre: Detective Stories**

 

Shuichi tilted his chin back desperately needing room to breathe. “Ah, no… I don’t have the credentials to call myself a detective yet. I just… happened to solve a case that I came across… and people call me that.”  
  
Kaede got in his face again, arguing with his self deprecation.“Not many people can “just happen” to solve a case. You should be more proud of that. Oh, yeah… My name is Akamatsu Kaede, I’m the Ultimate Pianist. Nice to meet you.”  
  
“Ultimate Pianist.” Shuichi murmured the words as if awestruck.  
  
“Well, no one calls me the Utlimate Pianist. Usually just Piano Freak. Ever since I was a child, I would play the piano whenever I got bored… There were even times I played the piano so much that I would forget to eat and sleep. Eventually, I won trophies and concerts and people started praising me.”  
  
**Student no. 17 Akamatsu Kaede** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Pianist** **  
** **Mentality: Special** **  
** **Likes: Piano Keys** **  
** **Dislikes: Bicycles** **  
** **Favorite Genre: Inspirational Stories**  
  
“That’s how you got your Ultimate Title? That’s way more impressive than me.” Shuichi said, trying to change the subject. He hoped if he praised her she might stop praising him.

  
“No. That’s all I’m good for, really. But this is my first time meeting another Ultimate Student.”  
  
“Well, ever since that school closed down Ultimates have been hard to find haven’t they?”

  
“Even so, they said there are other Ultimates gathered here right now? If so, why were we kidnapped.”  
  
“About that. I… I don’t remember.” Shuichi pulled his hat over his face once more.

  
“Huh? You don’t remember.”  
  
“I’ve been trying to remember it, but I can’t no matter how hard I try. I don’t know what I was doing before this. I don’t remember anything about the outside world. It’s like… that memory just fell out of my head.” He murmured trying to describe it. Suddenly, when he let his eyes closed he saw his own head surrounded by wires. Someone was looming over him he saw them out of the corner of his eye, all he could make out was a smle, and one glowing red eye. He grabbed his head as a sharp pain entered his forehead.  
  
“What happened?” Kaede asked, grabbing his shoulders in concern. Shuichi suddenly noticed he was being touched. She was touching him. And that broke him out of his momentary feeling of his mind being out of sync with his body.  
  
His skinny body easily slid out of her hands, and he slinked way to a comfortable distance. “I just got a sudden headache.” He said with his head turned to her. “It can’t be a coincidence we both don’t remember what happened to us.”  
  
No matter how many times he shrugged her off though she did not seem to notice. She looked over his shoulder.“I-I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Probably not a big deal. We’re confused. We just need to relax, is all. Oh! Let’s imagine Maurice Ravel’s ‘Sonatine’.”  
  
She looked at him, only for him to look away again. “Is that... Music? I-I don’t really know much about music, or anything really.”  
  
She looked confused for a moment at why he was so distant, but then immediately forgot about her confusion and turned around. “I see… that's unfortunate. When we get out of here I’ll share it with you. But first, let’s look for a way out. And if there are other Ultimates we should talk to them too. One of us has got to know something.”  
  
He wondered why she could make promises like that so easily. Making that promise meant looking forward to the future. The future filled him with nothing but anxiety, and he was almost glad he had forgotten about the past because it filled him with nothing but self loathing. All he had was this present moment, that girl he could choose to follow or simply let walk away.  
  
He did not feel like he could walk next to her, but as he quickened his pace to catch up with her he at least tried to walk behind her. If nothing else, he could be the shadow at her feet.  
  
He wondered why he was following around somebody he had just met, because he had forgotten in stories it just worked that way. First meetings, first glances, they’re all special things, there’s nothing special about reality and that's why I infinitely prefer fiction.

 

🧸

The unlike pair of main characters continued down the hallway, the cheerful, loud blonde, and the silent gloomy dark haired boy. Which is totally different from the other main characters on the other side of the mirror.

 

Nope they were not meant to parallel each other at all, why would a story ever make connections between people like that?

 

Shuichi had found a data pad called a Monopad in his pocket, and Kaede found a similar one in her backpack. As they walked Shuichi spent the entire time fiddling with the controls of his, because it gave his hands something to do, his eyes somewhere to look, and when he was partially distracted he had less of a mind to be anxious. Of course, Shuichi’s mind always found a way to be anxious, he was resourceful like that. He could be bleeding to death and he would worry if his blood getting everywhere caused too much trouble for everyone else.  
  
There nine other student profiles than just the two of them but their details were not filled in yet, and curiously enough there were also eleven other student profiles he could not even access yet like they had been locked away behind a glass wall.  
  
Because he was walking with his head down, he did not even notice until he walked straight into a girl with blue hair standing in the middle of the hallway. He stumbled backwards immediately apologetic, “I’m sorry! I know I’m probably already the worst person you’ve ever met but please don’t hate me!”  
  
Kaede looked at him, and the girl they had run into. Shuichi hung his head. Even he thought he was being a bit too anxious for the moment.  
  
Kaede walked up to the girl frozen in thought. She got in her face once more, and Shuichi made a face of slight disappointment once he realized Kaede was just like that with everybody. From close up, Kaede’s face was round, and she might never notice this detail about herself but her skin had a certain glow to it. Her cheeks were flush with life, they glowed red just underneath her skin.  
  
“Hey, you’re an Ultimate Student, right? Can we talk-”

Not only that but under her breath the entire way here Kaede had been humming softly. Shuichi heard it, and now even the girl in blue hair noticed. It was like she breathed music. Her lilac eyes blinked in confusion, they were so wide, so open to new possibilities.  
  
“Heeeeey! Hellooooooo!”  
  
Kaede started to shout in the blue haired girls face. She certainly did have a bold and loud appearance, one immediately drew everyone’s eyes in the room to her. She had the looks of a natural born performer, though Kaede would never realize this about herself. She thought the only good thing about herself was her ability to play piano. She never would realize her entire body, her voice, her mannerisms, all of it came together like a symphony-  
  
“What? She still can’t hear me? Maybe she’s a really detailed mannequin.”  
  
Shuichi put a fist to his chin and tilted his head behind her. He looked shocked that she had been able to keep persistently trying to get the attention of the girl for so long, if somebody ignored him even once he just got scared and ran away. He was hardly someone worth paying attention to anyway, but maybe that was how Kaede was different than him. She paid attention to everyone. “...No, I don’t think that’s the case…”  She naturally drew others attention to, she had his at least. But he thought because she stood out so much, she understood very little about boundaries.  
  
“You never know. We already saw a moving teddy bear.” As she said that, she leaned forward and poked the girl’s cheek.  
  
Even Kaede’s finger glowed with a certain warmth. She felt sun touched from the small annoying gesture.  
  
“Poking her doesn’t work either? Then.. maybe she is just a doll… But she looks so real. Try, it, Shuichi! Poke, poke!”  
  
Shuichi tried to back away slowly. “Ah, no thanks…”  
  
“Just do it! It’s so fun!” Before he could escape, Kaede grabbed him. He realized how much stronger the girl’s grip was and how large her hands were in that moment, as she jerked him forward forcing him to poke the other side of that girl’s face. He did not like to touch or be touched by others, and suddenly he was being pulled into both.  
  
At that point, Tsumugi decided it was time to stop zoning out and narrating and actually become a part of the scene. One could only render so much prose out of being poked by two children with no sense of boundaries. “I never thought I’d be poked from both sides. How truly unexpected.” She said in a delighted voice.  
  
“Ah!” Shuichi immediately backed away, terrified of what he had done.  
  
“So, she wasn’t a mannequin. Well, I knew that!”  
  
“If you knew that, why did you make me poke her?”  Shuchi snapped at her.  
  
Kaede blinked, not getting what Shuichi was feeling again. “Because she wasn’t responding.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean any harm… I was just deep in thought. So I thought if I ignored you, you’d go somewhere else.” She was narrating, or perhaps she wasn’t. Perhaps the narrator isn’t Tsumugi at all, perhaps it’s Kokichi, or even Ajimu Najimi back from the dead in a shocking twist reveal. Well anyway, it’s best at this point to reat narrator Tsumugi and player Tsumugi like two separate characters.  
  
Narrator Tsumugi is the witty, charming, and irreverent self-referential narrator you all have been enjoying so far. While player Tsumugi is just a plain girl. I am not even going to spend that long describing her. She doesn’t get a paragraph like everybody else because she doesn’t deserve one.  
  
She had long untamed blue hair, blue eyes, and glasses. Her curvy body was hidden well behind her bookish school uniform and general appearance. That’s all she gets. The rest will have to be left on you to imagine, but please do not spend too much imagination on her.  
  
“You were ignoring us? Isn’t that a bit rude?” Kaede said, still not understanding that not everybody was an extrovert like her.  
  
“Umm, well isn’t it rude to force someone to talk when they don’t want to?” She leaned in suddenly changing her mind as if on a dime. “Oh, but it’s fine. I feel like talking now. Now, let’s talk. What do you want to start with? My favorite Doraemon episode is #53. The one with security cameras and target practice.”  
  
Elsewhere the mention of Doraemon made Enoshima Junko shudder in her sleep, but this awakening took place an hour before that.  
  
“Um, before you talk about that… Can you tell us your name?” Kaede said, taking a step back.

 

“Oh, my name is Shirogane Tsumugi, I’m the Ultimate Cosplayer.”

 

 **Student no. 21 Shirogane Tsumugi** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Cosplayer** **  
** **Mentality: Minus** **  
** **Likes: EVA Foam** **  
** **Dislikes: Disorderly Queues** **  
** **Favorite Genre: Anime (All of Them)** **  
  
**

“Why does it just say, Anime parenthesis all of them?” Shuichi said, staring at her profile.  
  
“Well, I like everything. Even the most trashy light novel adaptations I find myself getting into them. I don’t see a reason to hate on fictional shows when you can enjoy them. Isn’t that called having an eclectic taste?” Tsumugi began to speak, picking up with energy.  
  
Shuichi muttered “I think that’s called having no taste at all.” Shuichi muttered under his breath.” When he saw the other two looking at him and noticed they might have heard him, which meant he was speaking his thoughts without realizing it again he hastily changed the subject. “So, you’re a cosplayer!” He said, louder than he had meant to.  
  
“Are you… surprised? I get that a lot, since I’m so plain.”  
  
Immediately detecting that Tsumugi was trying to deprecate herself like Shuichi did, Kaede jumped to praise her. “I mean, it sorta makes sense. You have this strange, almost sexy aura about you. I bet it’s because you’ve got people ogling all your curves on a daily basis, huh?” She tried far too hard.  
  
“Kaede… You sound like  creepy old man…” Shuichi hovered cautiously behind her.

  
“Normally, I don’t really like people looking at me like that… I just like making cosplay I’m fine with others wearing them… But lately, ore cosplayers are putting themselves before their characters. I kind of totally despise the type of people who get all dressed up and always put on a show at all points of the day just for the attention it gets them.  Even if the costume is flashy usually the person underneath is really underwhelming, and literally the worst kind of person! If that’s the case I’d rather wear my outfits myself, with love, than give them to people like that.”

 

Kaede was blown back by the sudden passion from a girl who had a completely empty look in her eyes a few moments ago. “Wow, you’re pretty intense.”  
  
Let’s just call that little slip foreshadowing. There’s no way Tsumugi would let her personal feelings come out of her mouth on accident.  
  
“It makes me happy when I get to show people the outfits I’ve made. And thanks to my sponsors, I can use materials that are just plain expensive.”  
  
“Ohhh! Well, of course the Ultimate Cosplayer would have sponsors.”  
  
“It’s not a big deal. People just crowd around like I’m a panda at the zoo, it’s just the spectacle is all they don’t appreciate the art.”  
  
As she tried to calm Kaede down, Kaede’s eyes were just shining brighter. “That’s so amazing! You’re pretty much a celebrity, you know?”  
  
It was only Shuichi who was still paying attention. “Ah, is it alright if I ask you something too? Earlier… you looked as if you were thinking hard about something. What was it?”  
  
“Oh, yeah! We needed to ask her that! Nice job, Shuichi!”  
  
“Ah… that Bronze Dragon Statue over there. I’m just plain curious about it. It almost seems like it’s floating, right? DOesn’t it look pretty out of place?”  
  
Kaede cared much more about people than the environment around her, so it took her a moment to swivel her head away and look down the grassy hallway to see the dragon statue she was pointing at. “Now that you mention it… you’re right. It sorta bothers me, too.”  
  
“THis is a school, right? But I’ve never heard of the Academy for Gifted Juveniles, but that symbol looks kind of familiar for some reason. And everything’s so weird...It’s like we stepped into one of those episodes where the protagonist enters a mirror world and everything is the same but subtly different. There’s trees and grass growing inside, I can’t find any exits… And it seems like we’re the only people here. Are we going to be okay? Are we going to be able to get out?” Tsumugi was the kind of person who stayed quiet, and then let all of her thoughts out of her mouth all at once. Because of that she turned bluer as she spoke, until her face matched her hair and she could not breathe.  
  
Kaede was simply staring the whole time. Shuichi suddenly felt concern for her. “Kaede? What’s wrong?”  
  
“Hehe. That frightened look on her face was sorta sexy.”  
  
Shuichi was beginning to have a hard time believing someone like Kaede even eixsted. “... This again?”

 

Oh, for those of you concerned I am not having the main character praise my self insert character for her looks. I could care less about that sort of thing, really in fact I’d rather she not. It’s just Kaede is the kind of person so desperate to see the beauty in everything she will even see it when there is nothing there. Some call that being optimistic, I call it a delusion.  
  
“I’m just kidding…” Kaede said playing with her blonde hair between her fingers, she seemed to genuine to ever be kidding though. “Well, it’s not a big deal. Our present situation is our main concern. Once it’s over, we’ll all be good and dandy.”  
  
“You’re… pretty optimistic, Akamatsu.” Tsumugi said, partially in shock.  
  
“Well, people do say I’m carefree! Worrying won’t get you anywhere, you know. It’s better to just be carefree!”  She closed her eyes and smiled brightly. Behind her Shuichi looked on in awe, or perhaps envy. She worried about nothing, and he worried about everything.  
  
“Yeah… I guess so. Being all depressed won’t help anything.” Tsumugi found herself agreeing. She seemed to be sucked into Kaede’s tempo rather easily, and decided it was easier to be bullied into optimism.  
  
Which made Shuichi look even more sullen than he had a moment ago. Well, he already knew his attitude was not something that could help anybody, unlike Kaede. That was why he was sticking so close to her.

 

🧸

 

When they invited her to come along searching with them, Tsumugi declined. Shuichi could understand she probably just did not want Kaede to give her any more attention. He sympathized as someone who tried to avoid attention at all times.  
  
He did not seem to mind Kaede’s attention too much though, even though he was very cognizant of her quirks.

  
The moment they stepped outside, both of them were stunned by the vast cage that was in front of them. Both of them stared in silence at each other, until the silence was broken by the sound of laughter.  
  
“Nishishishi-nishishi!”  
  
There were already a group of three students who had woken up before them and found their way outside to the wall. One was a tall boy wearing an oversized jacket on his shoulder. The other was a boy dressed in all white who was much shorter, and seemed to laugh as easily as he breathed. He had a black and white patterned scarf around his neck. There was a girl behind the two in a red uniform staring at them both in disinterest as she leaned her back on the wall.  
  
“Okay, I’ve got a plan to get over this wall for sure this time Kaito-chan! Get down on your knees-!”  
  
“I already said I’m not doing that man. It doesn’t matter what kind of hardship he’s stuck in, Kokichi! A true man will never beg or ask for help!”  
  
“What did you think I was going to tell you to get down on your knees and beg?  Look at my cute face, do I look like that kind of character to you?”  
  
“Umm, I don’t really know anything about you man.”  
  
“Well, that’s good because looks can be deceiving. I’ve tricked you into learning your first lesson. You can thank me when this saves your life later! Anyway, I was only telling you to get on your knees so I could climb up on your shoulders!”  
  
“Wait, how would that help?”

“Umm, obviously if I’m on your shoulders then we’ll be twice as tall and the wall won’t be as high.”  
  
Kaito suddenly punched himself in the side of the head. “Shit man I didn’t think of that! Let’s do this! We’re gonna destroy this wall with teamwork!” He got down, and Kokichi immediately like a monkey climbed up his back and on his shoulders.  
  
Kokichi feeling tall all of a sudden enjoyed his newly gained height, waving his arms in the air carefree like a child. “It’s like a giant combining robot. I’m the head, you’re the body, now we just need the arms and the legs. Form sword! Meteor punch!”  
  
A moment later though when the the thrill of it wore off Kaito spoke up. “Wait. Even with the two of us we can’t climb that much higher.”

 

“That’s why we need to get every single person in the school together, and we’ll all stand on each other’s shoulders!” Kokichi said energetically.  
  
“But that won’t matter because there’s still a roof on that cage!”

  
Kokichi put a hand over his mouth, but the corner of his smile was still visible. He did a poor job of hiding how much he was enjoying this at Kaito’s expense. “Shishi, he finally realized.”  
  
“Hey! Quit screwing around, we’re all really trapped here! We’re all we got to rely on, there’s no reason to play games when we can trust each other!”  
  
To Kaito the logic of escape seemed simple. The same way it seemed simple to Kaede. Shuichi noticed though, hearing the word trust made Kokichi shudder with some unpleasant emotion he was hiding. He cracked another smile. “I was just kidding, now I’m going to tell you my real plan. While I’m on your shoulders like this, the two of us together are the size of one adult. We’ll succesfully disguise ourselves as an adult and sneak out of here.”  
  
“Hey, Kaito is one hundred percent fully grown man already. I just look like I’m giving a kid a piggy back ride.”  
  
“That’s why, we need a big coat to disguise us. They’ll never know. I know all of the adult code words. Taxes. Vegetables. Job.” Kokichi said, patting the coat that was on Kaito’s shoulders. “Come on, Come on, give me this.”

 

Kaito relinquished it. A moment later, Shucihi was standing with Kaito’s coat on top of his shoulders. Then he immediately jumped off of the boy in a feat of acrobatics and started running away from him. “I can’t believe Kaito-ch let me have his super cool coat, now I’ll be the hero! Flutter, flutter, just like a cape!”

 

“Hey, you brat! Don’t tell me all of that was just to steal my coat.” Kaito said as he raced after the other boy.  
  
Shuichi got the sense that Kaito was not really that dumb that he thought either of Kokichi’s escape plans were serious, but rather he was the type to play along with others. Some people’s IQ’s dropped when they had friendship on the brain.  
  
Shuichi and Kaede both looked at the girl who was quietly watching the boys fool around. She had red eyes, and a tired expression on her face. Her hair was tied back in two long pig tails behind her.  
  
Unlike Kaede, Shuichi could sense the loud don’t touch me vibes she was giving off. He stayed back while Kaede walked right up to her. “Um… Are you an Ultimate Student, too?”  
  
“Yeah, that’s right.” She said before falling quiet once more.  
  
“I’m Akamatsu Kaede. I’m the Ultimate Pinaist.”  
  
Shuichi noticed that girl was glaring at them and wanted to just walk away and leave her alone, possibly forever, but Kaede caught him by the wrist again before he could escape. “I’m Saihara Shuichi. And I’m the Ultimate Detective, I suppose…”  
  
Kaede’s fingers tightened around his wrist. “Geez. Not ‘suppose’ you **are**  the Utlimate Detective, okay?”  
  
Kaede had more strength in he fingers than he had in his entire upper body, but for some reason what really bothered him was not getting pushed around by her, but rather the way his heart was already beating in his ears. He just wanted to give in to her to make the feeling stop. Feelings were bad and most of his were icky. “Y-yeah, you’re right.”  
  
“...”  
  
“And what about you?”  
  
“Harukawa Maki… Ultimate Child Caregiver…”

 

 **Student no 13. Harukawa Maki** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Child Care Giver** **  
** **Mentality: Minus** **  
** **Likes: Morning Lake Shores** **  
** **Dislikes: Winter Lake Shores** **  
** **Favorite Genre: Bloody Stories** **  
** **  
** “Why does it say your favorite genre is bloody stories?” Shuichi asked.  
  
“Yours is detective novels. Don’t most of those usually involve murder? Aren’t they just as bloody? If there’s a detective around they basically attract murderers.”  
  
“I w-wouldn’t know. I don’t think you could rely on an ameteur detective like me ever solve murders or anything I’d rather avoid that if possible.” Shuichi said as he backed away from her, only for Kaede to glare at him for calling himself an ameteur detective. He

  
“You can relax I was just messing with you.”  
  
“Umm… how does one relax exactly?”  
  
“You seem pretty easy to mess with.”

“What would ever give you that impression?” Shuichi asked.  
  
“Dunno… you’re kinda… high strung.”  
  
“What?” Shuichi took the insult rather personally.  
  
Kaede cheered on from behind him. “Don’t worry, if you were a musical instrument I’m sure your strings would play beautiful music! I’d play with you any time!”  
  
“Leave my strings alone!” Shuichi said, feeling flustered for no reason at all.

 

Maki sighed, wondering if she stayed silent those two would just continue to bother each other and leave her alone. When she decided that was likely not the case she spoke up again. “I just like to tell the kids scary stories so they’ll leave me alone. Surprised? I don’t look like someone who’d like kids, do I?”  
  
“Huh?” Kaede said, in shock. She would never have a negative thought about anybody in her first impressions. She just did not think that way.  
  
“Well, you’d be right. I don’t like kids all that much.”  
  
“Do you think you could do something about those two?” Kaede asked, as Kaito and Kokichi ran past them in the background still chasing each other.  
  
“No.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I hate babysitting too.”  
  
“B-but if you’re the Ultimate Child Caregiver, then the children must like you a lot, right?”  
  
“...Kids are weird. They come to me on their own. I’m not that gd at taking care of them… I’m not that good at taking care of them. I’m not that friendly, either.”  
  
“But they say kids are very intuitive. If they like you that much… then they can probably tell how loving you really are, Maki!”  
  
Maki simply looked away from Kaede’s shining optimism, and back at Shuichi who was standing in her shadow. “Is she always like this?”  
  
“Umm… I just met her, but yeah she kind of just seems like that.”  
  
“If that’s what you’re into.” Maki said with a shrug.  
  
“What do you mean I’m into!”  
  
Kaede missing their entire conversation, too busy talking to herself trying to talk Maki up. “Yeah! That must be it! You’ve chosen a perfect career for yourself!” The moment she saw someone with low self esteem she immediately decided it was her job to fix it.

  
“It wasn’t my choice to begin with.” Maki was the exact opposite. The moment she saw someone enjoying themselves she felt the need to ruin it. She was the human incarnation of rain on your parade.  
  
“Huh? What do you mean by that?”  
  
“Nothing. It’s just I grew up in an orphanage and got saddled with helping out a lot.”

 **  
** “Ah, by the way. Do you know anything about the Monokubs?” Shuichi brought up, noticing the sad look on Kaede’s face and deciding to change the subject. It was so strange that she could sympathize with others so easily like she was feeling their emotions, just feeling his own emotions was  way too much for him.  
  
“Yeah! SOmeone’s gotta be controlling them, right? Any idea who it might be?”  
  
“How would I know? Hey, boy detective, shouldn’t you have figured out what’s going on already?”  
  
Shuichi took a step back. “...What?”  
  
Kaede stepped in front of him protectively. “W-well, he’s a detective, not a god! He can’t know everything!” The only person who knew everything was the author.“I mean, who cares about some stuffed animals! Escaping this place is way more important.”

 

“Seriously? YOu think we can escape? Abducting Ultaimtes from across the country would require massive resources and planning. What makes you think a group capable of that would just let us walk out of here?”  
  
Kaede gave her same carefree smile as always. She held out her hand. “If they won’t end this, then we will! I know we can do it if we work together! I mean we’re all supposed to be super geniuses and like the best of our generations, right?”  
  
“What are you going to do, drop a piano on them?”  
  
“What, no! I would never do that to a piano! It wouldn’t be able to make beautiful music anymore!”  
  
It was the first time Shuichi had seen kaede so offended. If Kaede wanted to hold onto the strings that tied people together and play them until they made msuic, it seemed Maki wanted to sever them as quickly as possible.  
  
“Work together? With strangers? You’re a naive fool if you think you can end this so easily.” She stared at Kaede’s outstretched hand. “Yeah, can we… can we just not…” and walked away leaving the two of them alone with the two boys.  
  
“Wait, don’t you know those boys?”  
  
“I told you I don’t associate with idiots!”

 

“Awe, I was hopnig we could be friends.” Kaede said, her head drooping slightly.  
  
“I think you just insulted yourself a little there Akatamatsu.” Shuichi said behind her.  
  
As they turned around suddenly Kaito and Kokichi’s chasing had come to a close with the both of them fighting over the same jacket in a game of tug of war. Kaede decided to get in between them, snatching the jacket away leaving both boys looking disappointed.  
  
Kaito scratched at the back of his spiky hair, feeling exhausted.  He wore long baggy pants, a purple uniform, anda goatee was grown on the end of his chin. He looked very much like a boy eternally trying to look older, and taller. “Geez, now I exhausted myself over nothing. How’d they even make this big ass wall?”  
  
“Seriously, I just don’t get it.” Kaede said.  
  
“I wonder what will happen now… If we can’t escape, then-”  
  
“What, are you complaining?” The moment Shuichi began talking, Kaito spotted his weakness.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Quit complaining and grumbling, or it’ll turn into  habit. You don’t want to grow all rotten like that one over there.” Kaito sad, pointing at Kokichi.”Besides, this cage is nothing compared to the vastness of the universe.”  
  
Kokichi pulled down one of his eyelids to glare back. “Hey, pointing is rude.”  
  
“Huh? The universe?” Kaede repeated.  
  
“Oops, I haven’t introduced myself yet. My bad. I’m Momota Kaito, Luminary of the stars. Even stinky little brats like that adore the Ultimate Astronaut. How about it! I’m an astronaut! Isn’t that cool?”

  
**Student no. 12 Momota Kaito** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Astronaut** **  
** **Mentality: Special** **  
** **Likes: House PLants** **  
** **Dislikes: The occult** **  
** **Favorite Genre: Hot Blooded Shonen**  
  
“Stinky, you’re the one who smells all sweaty.” Kokichi lobbed an insult back. “Boo! Lame character introduction! Not enough explosions!”  
  
Ruining the atmosphere as Kaito tried to pose and look cool when he took his coat back from Kaede and threw it over his shoulders. He wished cage was gone so a breeze could pick up and cause his coat to dramatically sway behind him. His coat had every colo of the stars on the inside fabric.  
  
“Y-yeah… I’ve never been to space, so I don’t know much about it.” Kaede said taken aback.  
  
“Haha! Well, of course! Not ust anyone can get up there! I may be an astronaut, but… I’m actually still in training.”  
  
“Oh, I see. So you’re still a trainee..”  
  
“BUt, I’m the first teenager to ever pass the exam! I mean, normally you need a college degree to even take the exam?”  
  
“Huh? Then how did you take the exam?”  
  
“I had a friend who was pretty crafty… SO I had him forge some stuff for me.”  
  
“That’s illegal!” Kaede snapped.  
  
“Yeah, cheaaaater!” Kokichi mocked in the backgund.  
  
“Shut it, bat!” Kaito said, before turning and giving a much more friendly face to Kaede.“Yeah, I ended up getting caught. I was in pretty deep shit! But the people up top decided they liked me and let me in anyway. Course I aced the exam anyway.”  
  
“Th-that’s reckless.”  
  
“Sometimes you gotta be a little reckless to make your dreams a reality! No way I can wait till after college. I wanna get to space as fast I can!”

  
Shuichi felt left behind. Kaito and Kaede were already up there with the sun and the stars and he was just plain exhausted. “You sure have a lot of.. Energy.”  
  
“Yeah, everyone told me it was impossible, but I never gave up! Not for a moment! That’s because limits don’t exist unless you set them for yourself! There are no walls you can’t get over! The same goes for that one!”  
  
Kaito said that and immediately took off running for the wall. He actually managed to run up a few feet, before gravity took him and he fell flat on his back.  
  
“So, do you have any ideas?” Shuichi asked leaning over him.  
  
“Th-that’s not the problem!”  
  
“Um… no, that is the problem. Geez, this guy sure talks big game.” Kaede said quietly into her hand. “Oops did I say that out loud that’s nice.”  
  
Kokichi stood over Kaito too, a smug expression on his face. “Duuummbaaaaaass.”  
  
“Asshole!” Before Kaito could get to his feet Kokichi already scrambled away.  
  
“Hey, Kokichi what exactly is your talent?”  
  
“Being annoying!” Kaito said as he chased after him. He was only stopped by Kaede stepping in the way to break up the fighting. Shuichi did not dare bet in between them.  
  
Kokichi stopped and swung around on his foot, with his arms folded behind his head. “Nishishi, well yes I’m very good at that but I’m a man of many talents. Oh, I’m just the supreme leader of an evil secret organization. That’s all.”

 

 **Student no. 20 Oma Kokichi** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Supreme Leader** **  
** **Mentality: Minus** **  
** **Likes: Carbonated Drinks** **  
** **Dislikes: Pigs Feet** **  
** **Favorite Genre: Stories about Master Thieves like Lupin 3rd.**  
  
“What?”  
  
“I gotta say, it’s pretty impressive. My organization has over 10,000 members!”  
  
“Seriously? The supreme leader of an evil secret organiza-”  
  
Before Kaede could finish, Kokichi cut her off. “Who knows? I am a liar, after all.”  
  
“So.. were you lying or not?”  
  
“Nishishishi! I’m not telling youuuu.”  
  
Shuichi spoke up, touching a curled finger to his chin. “Ah, by the way… What is the name of that organization?”  
  
“It’s a secret. Y’know, cuz it’s a secret organization.”  
  
“But I’ve never heard of such a large secret organization like that…”  
  
“Of course you haven’t. Because it’s a secret organization.”  
  
“Hey… Everything he’s said so far has sounded like a lie, so that’s gotta be a lie too, right?” Kaede was far too straightforward a person to comprehend Kokichi at all.  
  
“Just leave him alone. Everything he has been saying has been a lie. We need to work with everybody but him to get out of here, that’s for sure.” Kaito said, peering out from the other side of Kaede.  
  
“Oh, you mad? Are you gonna hit me with a rocket punch?”

  
“Oh, hell yeah I’m gonna! A free ticket to space right here.”  
  
“Waaaaaah! I’m against violence! I’m a pacifist! Don’t hurt me!” Kokichi broke out running away again, and Kaito chased after him.  
  
“What a weird boy… He’s like a mischievous little kid. This is no time to be joking around. Unless… he really is an evil supreme leader?”  
  
“Umm Akamatsu-san.” Shuichi said moving to stand next to her. “Do you always say what you’re thinking aloud like that?”  
  
“Oh, no I’m doing it again!” Shyly she clapped her hand over her mouth.

 

🧸

 

When they finally made it back inside they started to scour the overgrown hallways for signs of other kids. They made their way into a lunchroom, just in time for Shuichi to get nervous again.  
  
“W-wait, is it okay for us to wander around carelessly like this? This place could be trapped.”  
  
“Worrying about that isn’t necessary. I have already examined the doors in this area for traps.”  
  
Shuichi let out a squeak like a mouse and jumped a full foot from the man he had not noticed standing behind him. He dashed to hide behind Kaede who only looked mildly surprised.  
  
“Oh.. Uh…” Kaede muttered.  
  
“You wonder, ‘Who is this?’ Yes… I shall make that clear first. My name is Shinguji Korekiyo. I am called the Ultimate Anthropologist.”  
  
Korekiyo said stealing my job as the narrator.

 

 **Student no. 5 Shinguji Korekiyo** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Anthroplogist** **  
** **Mentality: Minus** **  
** **Likes: Straw Ropes** **  
** **Dislikes: Air Conditioning** **  
** **Favorite Genre: Mythology-Based Anything.**

  
“Korekiyo? Anthropologist?”  
  
“Plese, call me Kiyo. As for Anthropology, would you like a simple explanation?”  
  
“Oky, sure....”  
  
“Anthropology… studies, customs, legends folk tales, songs and much more. There may even be customs in your daily life, the origins of which you do not know. For example… certain aspects of birthday or new year celebrations. Anthropology sheds light on traditions and customs such as these through rigorous analysis. It is a study that examines the thought behind culture, faith and customs.”  
  
“Okay,... I sorta get it, but not really… Well even if I don’t understand it I’m sure it’s fun.”  
  
Korekiyo raised a single bandaged finger in the air as if to lecture her. “Well of course, it’s fun. It is a study focused on humanity. I believe… that human beings are creatures who possess infinite beauty.” His hand traveled to the side of his face, he posed without even realizing it.  
  
“Oh, um…” Kaede switched places again, hiding behind Shuichi this time.  
  
“I find all aspects of humanity- even the ugly parts - to be beautiful. Our present situation is rather… intriguing. What beauty will I be able to witness here? Kehe… Kehehehe… People are wonderful.”  
  
“This guy looks like a creep and it turns out he is one too..” Kaede muttered to herself, louder than she meant to.

 

It was true Korekiyo did not look out of place on a horror movie poster with the words curse written on it in bold english letters. He had long black hair, a hat and his school uniform looked like a uniform from a previous era giving him the appearance of a ghost. His face was covered by a mask so it was impossible to make out his expression, and it was hard to discern it from his voice as well as he said it with the same raspy monotone.  
  
“Akamatsu-san, please!” Shuichi gave a stunned gasp.  
  
“Um… So, is the reason you’re watching those two because you want to be friends with them?” Kaede said trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.  
  
There were two other children in the lunchroom they had just walked in. A much younger looking girl and a green haired boy who were sitting next to each other.  
  
“No, that is unnecessary. All observation of humanity is best done from a distance without the risk of personal investment generating a bias.”  
  
“Oh, I get it you’re just shy. Are you smiling underneath that mask? There’s no reason to be embarrassed. Maybe if I poke you, you’ll stop being creepy.”  
  
“Enough with the poking, please Akamatsu-san!” Shuichi yelled, but she had already walked in front of him.  
  
She reached out and grabbed the nose of Korekiyo’s mask and pulled it all the way down to reveal-  
  
A second mask he was wearing underneath the first mask.  
  
“You had to have seen that coming.” Shuichi said in a dry voice.  
  
“You should find the answers to the mysteries of your life on your own.” Korekiyo said, as he grabbed his first mask and pulled it over his nose again fixing his face. “The moment your hopes are shattered… That, too… may be beautiful…”  
  
“Sh-shattered…? WHat does he mean by that?” Kaede looked to Shuichi but Shuichi could not reassure her in return as he was just as nervous. The two of them decided to go talk to the other kids in the room instead, and leave Korekiyo alone to haunt it like a ghost or whatever he wanted to do.

“Paint them red, oh and make them pointy too!”  
  
“I’m not sure I can make them pointy unless we find fake nails.”  
  
The scene looked much more pleasant than the one they had just witnessed. Perhaps Korekiyo stayed far away from it because he did not think he could be near this light, Shuichi wondered. If Korekiyo were to describe the scene though, he would say that humans always hide unpleasant tensions under such seemingly happy scenes.  
  
Kaede clapped her hands together. THere was a boy and a girl both sitting in a pair of chairs, the boy had his chair turned around. He was sitting in it a bid oddly, as his posture was bad. The boy was much older, and was painting the girl’s nails. They both had green hair, though his was a shade lighter.  
  
“Are you guys family?”  
  
The boy looked away at the mention of the word.  
  
The girl simply smiled. “I can’t believe you used the F word how disgusting. Don’t you know not to swear in front of children?”  
  
By the time the boy looked back his face had a carefree expression similar to Kaede’s. “Oh, hey there. You guys get kidnapped too? Well, you both look alright. That’s good. Situation could be better, though.”

 

“Yeah… totally.”  
  
Shuichi wondered how both of them could be so casual about this whole thing.  
  
“Hey, let me ask you something… Do you guys remember how you got here?”  
  
Kaede spoke up for both of them. “If you’re asking us, then… you don’t remember either, do you?”  
  
“Ha, you’re the same way too, huh? You don’t remember anything, do you? I guess that means everyone here’s the same.”  
  
“Huh? Everyone?”  
  
“I asked the others too. THey all said they don’t remember.” Rantaro said, his face dropping and suddenly becoming serious. A moment ago he looked like somebody who could easily fool around in the middle of a crisis, but apparently he had that side of him too.  
  
“So, the others don’t remember, either…”  
  
“It’s like… We all have amnesia or something.”  
  
“Ah, but that’s not normal. If everyone has amnesia-” Shuichi spoke up.  
  
Rantaro easily interrupted his weak voice. His face angled even lower. As he stared forward, shadows seemed to collect easily on his brow. “Welp, I guess we’re all in a pretty abnormal situation then.”

 

“..What?”  
  
“Wait.. Amnesia’s a stretch. We’re probably just confused… I’m sure we’ll remember eventually.” Kaede chipped in with her usual optimism.  
  
“Or it could be group hypnosis, or maybe brainwashing…” As he kept listing conspiracy theories, the carefree expression remained on his face, but that only made him look darker and darker. “In any case… I hope we remember soon. Otherwise, I’ll end up the outcast.”  
  
“The outcast? What do you mean?”  
  
“To tell you the truth, how I got here isn’t the only thing I don’t remember. I also forgot my own talent.” He finished painting the girl’s nails red and then turned  around and crossed his arms in a huff. He looked like he had forgotten something mildly inconvenient like his keys, not a significant portion of his memory.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Phew, I’m in trouble. I know I must have been some kind of Ultimate. I just don’t remember.”

 

“Is that true?” Kaede looked more concerned than suspicious. Shuichi thought anybody else but her would have been suspicious in this situation.  
  
“Course it is. But then again, I don’t blame you for not believing in me. Oh… I never told you my name, did I? It’s not like… I already told you, but then I forgot I did, right?”  
  
He did not just seem forgetful, he also seemed irresponsible in general. Shuichi’s eyes narrowed. He gave off a mysterious air, but perhaps the real mystery was that he did not know anything at all.  
  
“My name is Amami Rantaro. I can’t remember my Ultimate Talent at the moment.. But I promise, I’m not a bad guy. Nice to meet ya.”

 

 **Student no. 5 Amami Rantaro** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate ????** **  
** **Mentality: ??????** **  
** **Likes: Extraterritorial Rights** **  
** **Dislikes: Cars** **  
** **Favorite Genre: The X Files** **  
** **  
** “The X Files isn’t a genre it’s just a tv show.” Shuichi said staring at the Monopad in his hands.  
  
“It’s a way of life!” Rantaro snapped back at him.  
  
Apparently, he had forgotten everything about himself but he remembered his favorite tv show. Whatever, Shuichi said as he looked shly away. The boy had uncombed green hair that spilled over his face, with uneven, messy, bangs and a pair of eyes the same color. His eyes looked particularly soft. He wore a long striped shirt that hung off of his skinny body and revealed a lot of his collar bone, down to his well muscled chest. One of his ears was fully pierced.

 

“Is it weird? That I’m not really bothered by the fact that I don’t remember my talent?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You know, I’m actually kinda looking forward to finding out. I wonder what Ultimate I am… Anyway, it’d be nice if we could get along. We aren’t going anywhere for awhile.”  
  
Kaede’s expression quickly grew angry. “Stop that. We’ll escape soon.”  
  
“You really think it’s gonna be that easy?”  
  
“Huh? What do you mean?” Shuichi grew suspicious.  
  
“Nothin’. Just a feeling. Hey, hey, don’t worry about it, alright?” He said holding his hands up in the air to dissuade them.  
  
“You guys should stop talking to him anyway, guys like that are basically worthless. What you see is what you get.” The girl with green hair was busy inspecting her nails and said that without looking up.  

  
“Awe, man are you making fun of me for being a playboy again?” Rantaro did not seem particularly bothered. He was probably the type of push over who was just nice to everyone by default. He was less agressively nice like Kaede at lest.

She looked barely thirteen or fourteen, but she sounded much older than that like she was imitating an older teen idol. When she did and noticed the two girls looking at her, she smiled. “Oh, did Monaca say that out loud? Monaca has to remember to act nice for a little while so the twist reveal about Monaca’s true nature becomes all the more jarring.”  
  
“What?”  
“What?”  
  
“Nevermind. Actually, shouldn’t you two go back to talking to freakazoid over there? He’s way more suspicious than I am. I don’t really feel like giving a long introduction sequence anyway because Monaca doesn’t really like you.”  
  
“Umm… Okay.” Kaede said, not wanting to upset a little girl.  
  
**Student no. 7 Towa Monaca** **  
** **Talent: Former Ultimate Homeroom** **  
** **Mentality: Minus** **  
** **Likes: Time for talking with others, Warm Futons** **  
** **DIslikes: Spending time alone, cold meals**

**Favorite Genre: Despair**

 

“Is despair really a genre?” Shuichi asked.  
  
“Yeah, it’s like umm when really tragic things happen and it’s exciting for some reason. Monaca doesn’t really get it, it’s just the person that Monaca likes likes that kind of thing a lot so she’s trying to find the appeal.”

  
Her hair was pulled back in two pigtails, and fell long and straight over her shoulders. It looked like she had not cut it in awhile trying to grow it out. She wore a school uniform with a red bow tied around her collar. There was also a red bow around one of her pigtails, the other looked like a white bear. She had a doll like cute face, but it was entirely ruined by her eyes. Despite everything about her from her small height to her way of speaking seeming childish, her eyes looked nothing like a child’s eyes.  
  
“I have no idea what’s going on in either of their heads…” Kaede whispered to herself.  
  
“Hey, don’t suddenly start announcing your thoughts aloud as narration in a cute, but clumsy way, that’s Monaca’s thing.”

 

🧸

 

 **  
** While they were walking through the hallway again, suddenly Kaede and Shuichi heard a large crash. Kaede immediately rushed kicking a door open thinking somebody might be hurt. Shucihi followed after her a few steps behind.  
  
“Damnit, get off of me you fatass!”  
  
“I am not fat, my body is just made of a metal that’s much more dense than your fleshy human parts.”  
  
“Yeah, refer to me as a fleshy human that sure doesn’t make you sound like an alien robot that’s going to suck out my brains or anything.”  
  
“Gasp! That is a harmful stereotype! I would never do such a thing.”  
  
“Did you just say gasp, out loud?”  
  
“Well I lack the air tanks to physically gasp and breathe in so I must recreate the gesture with audio communication only.”  
  
When Kaede and Shucihi arrived they saw that a white haired robot had fallen on top of a blonde girl. As she looked like she was about to be crushed, both of them rushed to help pick the boy up. In the end Kaede contributed a lot more than Shuichi’s skinny body could to helping the boy get back on his face.

 

  
  
The blonde girl stood up, and then immediately punched the wall. “Damnit! I should have said ‘I don’t want to be underneath some guy I just met’ that was the perfect opportunity for that gag.”  Immediately she turned around and began to wiggle her fingers in the air. “Come on. Wait up! Let me touch your body a little, I just want to see what’s going on under the hood.”  
  
The white haired boy took another step backwards. “Please stop! Don’t come any closer. This is how I fell on top of you the first time.”  
  
“What? A robot?” Kaede asked suddenly catching up to the present moment.  
  
“What is it? Are you another robophobe? I have a recording function. If you make any robophobic remarks, I will see you in court.”  
  
“Wait, you’re a robot? Are you, for reals, a robot!?”  
  
“A-are you… one of the Monokubs?” Shuichi added to her surprise.  
  
“Do not compare me to those toys! I am not just any old robot! I am K1-B0, the Ultimate Robot. But please, address me as Keebo.”  
  
“Utlimate Robot?” Kaede repeated.

 

 **Student no. 14 K1-B0** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Robot** **  
** **Mentality: Normal** **  
** **Lies: 100-240 Volts** **  
** **Dislikes: Vending Machines** **  
** **Favorite Genre: Slice of Life**

 

“I thought it would be sci-fi…” Shuichi said staring at his monopad.  
  
“What’s so fun about sci-fi? It’s just a bunch of science stuff I don’t get. People having fun every day adventures is much more relevant to real life don’t you think?” K1-B0 said in spite of his very science fiction appearance.  
  
The boy had colorless skin, because whatever was on the surface of his body was never skin in the first place. He had marings that ran from the bottom of his eyes down his cheeks that looked like black teardrops but were probably just the place where his face plate came to an end so he could move his mouth. He wore a high collared jacket that obscured most of his neck. HIs body was covered with bulky machinery. In the middle of his white hair one strand stuck up like an antennae but considering he was a robot that may have been an actual antennae.  
  
  
“That’s not fair! Don’t look down on other machines! I’ve made things way better and more interesting than him in my sleep.”  
  
“And, you are?” Kaede asked.  
  
“Huh? S-seriously? You don’t… know who I am? I’m the gorgeous girl genius whose good looks and golden brain will god won in history! I’m the one, the only, the legendary Ultimate Invetor herself, Iruma Miu!”  
  
“Um… I’ve never heard of you.” Kaede said aloud without meaning to again.  
  
**Student no. 3 Iruma Miu** **  
** **Talent: Ultimate Inventor** **  
** **Mentality: Special** **  
** **Likes: Children’s Television** **  
** **Dislikes: Taking it Easy** **  
** **Favorite Genre: Fanservice Shows**

 

Miu’s image was one that immediately left an impression due to certain features. She had long blonde hair that fell in slightly mad looking split ends. Her uniform was pink, nd covered in black belts. She wore a set of brass steampunk looking goggles that probably did not do anything and were just there for aesthetic. There was what looked to be barbed wire around her neck, but it was really just a rubber fashion accessory.

Kaede looked to Keebo and then back to Miu. “Are either of these people, real?”  
  
“Hey, I’m the real deal! Unlike you, you obvious dye job!”  
  
“Umm…” Kaede was the only genuine natural blonde here, but she did not feel like arguing over something so stupid when the other girl was clearly trying to provoke a fight.  
  
“Hey, you over there! The twink in the pinstripes! Are you staring at my tits?”  
  
“What!?”  
  
“Help yourself! A guy like you can only dream of landing a big-boobed hottie like me! A blonde girl would never end up dating some gloomy dark haired guy like you, go on, get yourself a good eyeful>”  
  
“N-no, I wasn’t staring! My eyes just happened to look there.”  
  
“Haha-haha! Everyone knows that only pervs wear hats! You just wear that so you can sneak a peak.”  
  
That seemed to hit a chord with Shuichi as suddenly his eyes darkened. “Stop it… Leave me alone! I can wear a hat if I want to!”

“Heee! Wh-what are you gettin’ pissed off at me for?” Despite the fact that she was picking a fight with everybody present, she quickly turned coward when she was fought back at all.  She turned away from them and back to Keebo. “B-besides, I got a good reason for wanting to look at him! You see, I don’t know how he works just yet, and what I don’t know I wanna learn it as fast as I can. Nobody’s allowed to know something about machines that I don’t know.”  
  
“Hey! You can’t treat me like some kind of thing to study. I may have the apperance of a robot, but I am a high school student just like you.”  
  
“You’re a high school student?” Shuichi asked.  
  
“I was created by Professor Idabashi, the leading authority in the field of robotics… He installed in me a “Strong AI” capable of learning anything and maturing like a human brain. That’s why, at the time of my creation, I didn’t know anything. I was like a baby… But the professor raised me like I was his own child. He taught me so many things… Until finally, he enrolled me in high school. ANd now I stand here before you all! See? I’m just like everyone else!”  
  
“Oh neat.” Kaede said, the moment they started talking about advanced AI she started to zone out a little bit.

  
“Anyway, please protect me from her. There’s a fine line between genius and insanity, and she’s definitely beyond insane.” Keebo said as he suddenly hid behind Kaede.  
  
“Eh? Aren’t you made of metal?”  
  
“Well yes, but considering how advanced and complicated my robotics are I have the body strength of your average old person, and I can only run as fast as a child.”  
  
“Jeez, do you even do anything?” Miu asked. "Come on let me upgrade you, I could make you shit lasers!"   
  
“No, that sounds uncomfortable. I have many powers, like… the power of friendship, and the power of creativity.”  
  
“Those are wonderful powers!” Kaede said with a smile.

Kaede decided to protect him, as Keebo clinging to her felt like a child as well even though he was so heavy that she was about to collapse from the strain of it.

 

🧸

Through some miracle or another, Kaede had persistently persuaded all nine other students to meet her outside, with Shuichi helping sometimes when he could. It took almost an hour. The easiest was Keebo who had not stopped clinging to her the entire time.

 **Rise and Shine Ursine** **  
** **  
** Just when she thought things were finally starting to make a little sense, the cartoon bears were back. Kaede worried her lip trying to hide her anxiety from Shuichi, who was still looking to her face for confidence whatever chance he got.  
  
Then, to make things even more confusing suddenly in the distance she spotted eleven other kids.  
  
“Wait, there are more kids than just us?”  
  
She held her hands over her eyes to get a closer look.  
  
“Why is the super sexy supermodel trying to fight one of the bears, and why is that creepy boy holding her back from fighting him?”


	3. Welcome to Despair Highschool

**Introduction: Final** **  
**

The moment they spotted each other on opposite sides of the mirror, the illusion was over. They reached forward and touched the mirror, only for it to shatter. The fate of those on opposite sides of the mirror never to meet had been violated.  
  
Junko had broken free from Kumagawa’s hold and stomped right on one of the Monokubs, interrupting whatever banter filled scene they were about to perform. “You’re freaking insane you know that? Monkubs What the hell is that? I don’t want anything to do with that? You had a mascot that was scientifically proven and vetted by my freaking brain to capture the world by storm and you had to go sell out? Super Sentai Rangers? Spinoff babies? This isn’t marketable, this is just being a cheap slut! Why did you do this? Explain yourself!”

Junko had finally seen the outright horror of the killing game, and all it took was ripping off her original character do not steal into cheap knock off mascots. Kumagawa watched in annoyance, as Junko this of all things to suddenly start caring about to discard her usual apathy towards everything. 

  
“Well, why not?”   
  
“Whaddaya mean why not? Are you saying not only am I going to have to waste my time with this killing game again just to show the mastermind for the poser they are, but I also have to put up with this halfassed cheap imitation of MY MATERIAL. MINE. Instead of at least being entertained by the comedy stylings of Monokuma whose every line is an instant classic and top of the line genius banter?”

 

“What? Are you saying you’re not gonna participate? Don’t be so selfish! But I won’t give in to such evil! It’s the style of the main character to stick it out and resist until the very end-”

 

Just as he said that, Junko raised her boot and slammed it onto the red bear’s head. The bears aren’t even that necessary to the story, I’m not even going to bother to name them. I don’t understand my favorite characters obsession with them, but I guess every character has weird and unique quirks of their own to flesh out the character.    
  
“Are you laughing now mastermind? Are you?” Junko said, as she raised her boot and smashed it into the red bear’s skull again and again. Kumagawa was filled with the same feelings of the time his neck was turned all the way around and he watched Junko stomp Matsuda’s corpse. The despair of killing a loved one.    
  
“Violence against the headmasters are not allowed. You’ve broken a school regulation I invoke the mighty summon spell! Help! To me-”   
  


Before the Monobear could even finish, Kumagawa had already tackled Junko to the ground. The spears which missed her raked across his shirt making him look like he had been mauled by a bear on his side. Junko stopped for a moment as she noticed several bullet wounds, the scars that remained from his suicide attempt against Iihiko. They looked healed over, months old by this point. 

  
His reward from saving her from her own impulsivity, was an annoyed look from Junko’s colorless eyes. “You know for a petty villain, do you always have to play the hero?”

 

『Do you always have to be the pain?』Kumagawa never expected gratitude to begin with, from anyone on earth least of all her, he fired back just as quick.『I guess Izuru-chan was right and stupidity is contagious, you should have known that’s the exact way you were planning on killing Mukuro.』   
  
“You realize you were insulting yourself as well just there. If I caught stupid from anybody it’d be you, loserboy.” 

 

『I was insulting myself to insult you to commit double suicide. It was a lover’s suicide.』

 

“You’re the last person on earth I’d want to commit suicide with.”   
  


『Oh, so you’re going to kill everybody else on earth and then save me for last? How romantic. If only you didn’t show your affection in such weird ways.』

  
“I was just testing the mastermind. It’s different than Junkai, she’d never resort to petty tricks and rule violations. She wanted to corner me in a class trial or have me murder someone. This mastermind’s different though, they’re a fan who thinks they know better than the source material.” 

 

『Maybe we shouldn’t talk about death games like they’re a long running franchise like star wars or something instead of a thing where people get murdered. Oh wait, that would require you seeing losers like me as people.』Kumagawa mouthed off spitefully. 『If you were just testing then why didn’t you back off when you knew the spears were coming?』   
  
“Oh, well if I had backed off I would have had to practically run away. If I stood still I knew you were going to come tackle me out of the way and save me, that way I didn’t have to move.” 

 

『Please tell me that’s just you exaggerating your own laziness for the sake of the banter.』

  
“I don’t do sweating, Misogi.” Junko reached up and pinched his cheek between her red fingernails. “You should be thanking me, you got a chance to show off in front of the person you love.” 

 

『You mean Mukuro?-chan』   
  
“Try again.”   
  


『Myself?』   
  
She twisted his cheek in annoyance. “Well, she tried to kill me with a reference to the past so it’s obvious we’re dealing with a fan here.” 

 

『It’s surprising, I thought you yourself were the president of the Junko fan club. I didn’t think it was possible for someone to be more into you, than you.』He smiled wide enough to show his perfect white teeth, if he had any fangs he would proudly displaying them. Despite the fact that bitter remarks dripped down those fangs of his with his biting words, he looked to be truly enjoying himself. 

  
At the moment he was on top of the girl he cared about, sweating from the exertion of running so fast, and jumping into danger in a split second, and he still felt adrenaline coursing through his veins, not only that but as he straddled her he could feel the curves of her hips aligned against his. Despite all of that he was just thinking about continuing to bicker with Junko, perhaps banter was better than sex.    
  
The next moment a kick slammed into the side of Kumagawa’s head and he was launched off of her and into the air, his body felt light as he crashed back down to earth. 『...Ah?』   
  
“What are you doing creepazoid? I know you virgins get pent up but that’s no reason to tackle the first blonde that you see.”    
  
Kumagawa understood immediately, from afar people saw him push over Junko and immediately assumed the worst of him. The talented are so shallow, he thought, but what he meant was human beings are so shallow. He decided to explain himself.『No, it’s a misunderstanding, I’m not a virgin.』He explained the wrong thing.    
  
“Huh? Whose fault is that?”    
  
Kumagawa pointed to Junko like he was a little kid tattling on her.    
  
Miu blinked. “Really? The fuck? You have a screw loose to match your lose hips?” 

 

Junko merely tilted her head to the side taking in the situation analytically. “Hm, yes. The mastermind must have included a shallow person like you in the game to make me feel despair.”    
  
“Huh? Are you mocking me? Don’t you know who I am? I’m Iruma Miu, bitch! Your boobs seem big and all… but don’t get cocky cuz mine are way bigger!” 

  
“Okay, I really must be changing. Because for the most part I’ve always been apathetic to people, I think this is the first time I’ve felt genuine hatred for a people.”    
  
Kumagawa caught the look in her eyes and grabbed Junko from behind once more, wrapping his arms in the stomach and lifting her into the air. 『The point of changing is to get better, not worse! You’re changing in all the wrong ways.』   
  
“But getting worse might be just as fun as getting better, I’m just trying to stay open minded.”

  
Zenkichi had been watching quietly the entire time, surprised to see Kumagawa move so fast to save someone and the appearance of eleven other children. “What’s her deal this time? She doesn’t make any sense.”  

 

『Oh, Junko? I think she just gets territorial when other blondes are around.』Kumagawa put Junko down in between himself and Zenkichi so she would not run amok. 『I think my original guess was correct. Stupidity spreads like a virus.』

  
“Don’t use my metaphors, that’s to only be used in my villainous monologues only. You lack too much aesthetic to play the villain role properly, you just come off as a wannabe hero.” 

 

『Please you’re the one whose lacking as a villain, you don’t even have a tragic backstory. Medaka-chan’s backstory is way cooler than yours.』

  
Zenkichi sighed at his predicament. “How the hell exactly did I get stuck between you two listening to you argue on how to be a villain?” 

  
After that scene the Monokubs, partially terrified of Junko told them all to assemble in the gymnasium. Before that though, the two groups of teenagers tried to make awkward introductions to one another. 

  
The most normal introduction went first. Keebo held a hand out, “My name is K1-B0, I’m the Ultimate Robot.”   
  
Kazuichi and Komaeda who were standing next to each other as each other’s only point of familiarity in the crowd reacted at the same time. Kazuichi’s eyes began to sparkle. “Whoa man, a living, talking machine, what do you do? Rocket punch me in the face right now!”   
  
“Umm… Soda-kun.” Komaeda muttered nervously, not sure if he was reading the situation well enough that he had the right to speak up.    
  
“I don’t have that function.” Keebo said sheepishly. 

  
“What? Then what do you do? What’s so Ultimate about you?” 

 

“Ummm… I exist.”   
  
“Don’t give me that ‘I think therefore I am’ crap, that’s basic AI 101!”    
  
“Well, I perfectly model all of the life functions of a normal teenager, including the anxiety you ae currently making me feel by yelling so loudly in my face. Please back off.”   
  
Kazuichi did not seem to notice the boundary he was stepping over. “Come on they could at least have made you a girl robot! Imagine how sexy that would be to disassemble-”   
  
“Kazuichi-kun, even I think you’re being weird.” It was then Komaeda stopped swaying back and forth and grabbed Kazuichi by the sleeve. He hesitated for a moment looking at the other white haired boy with lifeless skin. “Wait, are you allowed to be an Ultimate just for existing? Wait, I shouldn’t think about this my brain doesn’t need to get any more broken.”    
  
Zenkichi arrived for the save touching Komaeda’s shoulder from behind. As Komaeda felt a slight shudder run through him, he started to wish Zenkichi was a little more self aware of what effect he had on others. “Whoa, relax there you two. We’re all stuck in this situation we might as well get along. You’re the Ultimate Robot right? I’m friends with the Ultimate Cyborg.” 

 

“An Ultimate Cyborg?” Keebo twitched. “Cyborgs aren’t true machines they’re only half robots, I bet she doesn’t have even half of the functions that I have.”    
  
“Well, Koga can run up walls, rider kick, rider jump, rider chop, all of her muscles have been replaced with synthetic ones. She still eats, sleeps and can convert that into body energy.” 

  
Kokichi popped up out of nowhere sensing an oppurtunity to insult Keebo. “Whoa, that sounds like a way cooler robot! She can do a kamen rider kick any everything? Why did we get stuck with you again.”

 

Keebo’s features twitched in jealousy. “I would never have any use for such functions, I’m better than those lowly trash robots that appear in children’s television that just fight and look cool.”    
  
Kazuichi looked back at Komaeda who was next to him. He shook Komaeda’s hand off his shoulder because Komaeda still had not let go. “Hey, look he does the superiority complex inferiority complex switch faster than you do.” 

 

“Don’t you think it’s out of character for you to suddenly say something so smart?” Komaeda asked while giving him a passive glance.    
  
Kazuichi overreacted as usual. “See, you just did it right there! Some classmate!” Komaeda’s body shook slightly at the accusation of being a bad classmate, but he gave no further response. 

 

Korekiyo had distanced himself from the crowd as much as possible, and found himself standing next to Komaru of all people who wanted to avoid the fuss of a big crowd to. He put a bandaged hand to the side of his face. “You are the most exemplary specimen of a normal human being I 

have ever witnessed. Do you mind if I observe you for a little bit?”    
  
Komaru was slightly taken aback by his appearance. Of course this entire situation overwhelmed her so much that she was still processing it and had no idea how to react. She tried to just talk like she normally would. “Umm, have I seen you before? Like, straight out of one of my nightmares? Or in a cursed photo or something?”   
  
“Cursed photo? You believe in such a superstition, how quaint and unfitting of your appearance.”   
  
“Whatever that means. I mean, I did wake up in a school that looks like a post apocalyptic ruin and that lady over there just tried to pick a fight with a walking teddy bear I don’t think ghosts are that much of a stretch at this point. You don’t believe in ghosts?”    
  
“There are several accounts of an afterlife in mythological records all over the world. As somebody who observes their culture, who am I to believe or disbelieve? I find such tails fascinating, regardless of my own personal thoughts.”    
  
“Oh I don’t know a lot about mythology, sorry. I’m not the type of person to drop them in the middle of conversation just to sound deep.”    
  
Hey, mythological allusions are fun for authors to make. The inferno is basically bible self-insert fanfiction but nobody calls Dante pretentious.    
  
Komaru looked at Korekiyo staring at her and figured out he probably was not going to go away. Maybe he was just shy and socially awkward. If this was her brother, he would find some way to get along with this guy thinking the best of him. “Ummm… do you by any chance like girly manga?”    
  
“Actually, I do.” 

  
Komaru clapped her hands and smiled in surprise. At the same time, Mukuro and Makoto were catching up at the edges of the crowd. Mukuro being less oblivious than Makoto noticed Komaru right away. She processed the silent horror of seeing that innocent girl in the middle of a killing game in half a second, and then decided to redirect Makoto away from her because in the middle of this chaotic crowd was the worst place to find out.    
  


While she was pulling Makoto by the hand along the edges of the crowd, Kirigiri trailing behind them she bumped into somebody without looking. Mukuro immediately turned around to see a girl with red eyes and a red uniform trying to push past he.    
  
“You’re in the way.” 

  
Mukuro could look any enemy in the eye on the battlefield, even if they had just recently shot at her. However, trying to navigate any kind of social altercation was completely impossible for her. “Um… did I do something wrong? You look uh… angry in a quiet way.”    
  
Mukuro was good at reading anger at least since she was so used to Junko, whose mood was always so bad it could turn ona  dime. The girl just kept staring forward like Mukuro was not even there. “You’re annoying.”   
  
“Ohhh…” Still gripping onto Makoto’s hand she suddenly thrust her head forward in an over-dramatic bow of apology. “I’m sorry!”    
  
“Even the way you apologize is annoying. I’m going to the gym first so I don’t have to put up with any more of this…” Maki regarded the entire crowd with disdain, before walking away. 

  
“She’s scary.” Mukuro said raising her head and gripping Makoto’s hand.   
  
Makoto was always shocked by how quickly she could go from lone wolf to shivering puppy. That most of all reminded Makoto that before she was a killer, Mukuro was a human, and a victim in pain at that. “What’s so scary about her? She’s just a person. Maybe she’ll even be a friend later. Togami didn’t like me much at first either.”   
  
“Togami still doesn’t really like you, you just don’t notice.”   
  
“I’ve seen you jump out of a plane before without any hesitation.” Makoto continued, like he did not hear her.    
  
“Parachuting into a mission, enemy fire, guns, knives, those are far less scary than talking to people. That’s why I think you’re really brave Makoto.”   
  
“I think you’re giving me way too much credit here.” Makoto looked at the bickering group of teenagers in front of him. 

 

At the same time not a few meters away from them Kaede was having the exact same conversation with Shuichi. “Don’t you think it’s suspicious that eleven other students were in this school but we didn’t see them until now? Where did they even come from?” Shuichi said, watching them with a gaze he hid underneath his hat.    
  
“There’s no reason to suspect them. We’re all in this mess together aren’t we? Just look at it this way, it’s eleven more friends to make!”   
  
“Akamatsu-san, don’t tell me you’re planning to become friends with everybody? That’s just impossible. It’s hard enough talking to one or two people, I don’t think I can survive getting dragged through another meet and greet.” 

 

“It’s not impossible. I’m just going to try really hard to become friends with them. If they resist me, I’ll try even harder!” Kaede said, pumping her fists into the air.    
  
“You can’t force people to be friends with you. You know that, right?”   
  
“You can if you’re strong enough!”    
  
Kirigiri was the first to notice their conversation, as she had been glancing away from Mukuro and Makoto. Her features barely changed, but there was hope in her eyes. “Saihara-kun. Even with my detective skills I couldn’t find any trace of you. I was beginning to…”    
  
She stopped herself from admitting she was worried, because she needed to be the strong one here as everyone else reacted with their emotions only forgetting about logic.    
  
“Huh?” Shuichi blinked, no recognition in his eyes for her whatsoever. “Do I… know you?” 

  
“You have a friend, Saihara-kun?”    
  
“Why do you sound so surprised at that!?” Shuichi muttered back at Kaede, before realizing he could not remember the names or faces of any friends. “But uhhh… I don’t have any friends.”    
  
“You have on right here.” Kaede said pointing to her chest.    
  
“I just told you, you can’t decide if you’re going to be friends with someone all on your own you aggressive optimist!” The passive aggressive pessimist was starting to become a little bit afraid of her power.    
  
Kaede kept going like she did not even hear him. “She must have heard of you before because of your work as a detective!”   
  
“No way, none of my work was enough to even make it on the news.”

Kirigiri had realized at that moment Shuichi’s memory had been wiped and he did not recognize her. Just like Mukuro, she processed this in a few seconds without letting the emotion show on her face, because now was the worst time to get emotional. “I’m the Ultimate Detective, Kirigiri Kyoko.” 

  
“R-really? Then I’m glad, if there’s a real detective here then I don’t have to mess up and ruin things for everyone.” Shuichi said.    
  
Kaede got in his face again. “Come on Saihara-kun you can’t give up that easily! You’ve gotta defend your title as a detective! Maybe the two of you could have a secret underground detective duel, whatever that would be.”    
  
“That sounds dangerous.”    
  
“No way, it sounds cool! You’d get the chance to show off in front of me, wouldn’t it be worth it?”    
  
Kirigiri felt stupid. It was a rare feeling for somebody who had been hailed as a prodigy, and a ‘pure detective’ since birth to feel. Yet, she felt it. She felt stupid for being jealous of Enoshima Junko for having such a loving sibling in Mukuro only to treat her horribly. She felt stupid for after all this time of having Shuichi follow in her shadow, wondering it would have felt like if she had a younger brother. As she saw how close Kaede got to Shuichi, so easily stepping over the boy’s delicate boundaries, she remembered every time she had spoke with him in the past that boy somehow always kept a careful distance with her as if he was afraid of something. 

  
She gave a gentle smile, and spoke in a soft voice even though she felt the opposite on the inside. “There’s no need for you to compare yourself to me. Every detective is shaped by their motives, methodologies, and case histories. Should hercule poirot not exist because Sherlock already does? There’s more than one way to tell a story.”    
  
“Wow, what is with that girl it’s like Makoto but with a spine. How disgusting.” Junko stuck her tongue out as she commented from afar. 

 

At the same time, Togami and Toko sat at the far edge of the crowd. “That Amami fellow comes from a well to do family, I’ve heard of the Amamis. I wonder if he would be an ally to increase my wealth or a rival to crush within these walls to establish my standings.”    
  
“Wow, it’s a good thing you and I are both so above the crowd that we can stand here alone together don’t you think Byakuya-sama? We don’t need all those noisy, obnoxious people, nobody can understand us but each other. We’re alone together.”    
  
As usual they were talking about two completely different things as both of them were too self-obsessed to actually converse, so their parallel ramblings had to pass for a human conversation. 

 

Byakuya looked down to Toko. “I wonder if I could sell you to him for a significant sum of capital.”   
  
“Wait, Byakuya-sama I’m not into that kind of roleplay!”    
  
“The progeny of the Ultimate Writing Prodigy and another Ultimate who comes from a well to do family shouldn’t be underestimated.”    
  
“Noooo, the ship is progeny x prodigy. I don’t want to write it any other way.”   
  
“For the last time Toko this is’t one of your novels. The only place your writing actually matters is in that delusional, broken brain of yours.”    
  
“It’s not nice to refer to people with mental problems as broken. There’s a limit of being charmingly rude you know.”   
  
“Then please let me know so I can surpass it and finally convince you to leave me alone.” Togami said, towering over her as usual. He was sure she had already cast him as some byronic heart throb lead whose price-like qualities would shine after some character development so no matter what he did, he could not break the image of him she saw.  He still wanted to try at least.    
  
Before he could say any further, he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a blue haired girl who did not look like anything much at all. “Did I hear that right? Are you a writer? I try to write myself sometimes, though obviously I’ll never be good as you.” 

 

Toko turned around to see Tsumugi. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Ultimate or not. Creation is an embarrassing process but it’s well worth doing, you should be proud of what you write.” She received her unexpectedly warmly, perhaps she was not threatened at all by the girl’s average looks. 

  
“You really think so? At the moment I’m so obsessed with other people’s characters that all I ca write is fan fiction.”    
  
“FAN FICTION!” Toko repeated, like the words had stabbed her in the chest.    
  
“I hope one day though I’ll be confident enough in my original characters that I could write a light novel of my own. If it got published, I’d be able to see it adapted into an anime, or a manga, and see people cosplay my characters.”   
  
“ANIME! MANGA! COSPLAY!” Toko suddenly coughed in an overdramatic fit like she was a sickly victorian performance. She felt something wet and sticky drip out of her nose. As she wet to wipe it she noticed it was blood.   
  
Before she could pass out, Togami moved first. He brought a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at her face with it. “I’m sorry about that, she has a weak constitution. I’m sure she will be happy to talk about whatever frivolous nonsense you waste what little money you have on in order to distract from the fact that your pointless and empty lives exist to enrich people like me.”    
  
“Umm… Okay, then. Nice to meet you.” She gripped the edges of her long skirt awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to get between whatever is going on with you two.”    
  
“Byakuya-sama, you’re finally protecting me like I always knew you would.”    
  
“Ridiculous.” Byakuya said as he pinched her nose in annoyance. “Anything you would do would reflect poorly on me for the moment. I’m only interested in protecting myself.”   
  
“Then I’ll protect you, Byakuya-sama.” Toko said, smiling and hearing only what she wanted to hear. 

 

Ranataro had followed Monaca, even after she told him not to. It was hard for him to ignore somebody who gave off such strong little sister vibes. “Are you sure your big sister is not here among these people?”   
  
“I already told you I don’t have a big sister. She abandoned me. I don’t recognize anybody in this crowd, I’m the cute amnesiac character from now on.”    
  


『Eh? Monaca-chan did you forget about me? I guess my face is pretty forgettable.』Kumagawa said, appearing suddenly. 『I’m your Senpai, remember?』   
  
“If I had a shitty senpai like you then I don’t want my memories to come back.” 

 

『Monaca-chan, no! Remember my name was Naked-Apron-senpai?』   
  
“Why are you going by such a dirty name? Are you a playboy or something just like him?” Monaca said, sticking a thumb back at Rantaro who held his hands up in the air to declare his innocence. 

 

『Monaca-chan,  being a good senpai is all I have. When you forget about me it really does make me want to disappear!』

 

At the same time Komaeda had finally found Kokichi and was having a similar conversation. “Not that my face is worth remembering or anything, but do you remember me Ouma-kun?”   
  
  


Kokichi tilted his head to the side. “Obviously, you’re my long lost brother who came to duel me over the right to the throne. It’s too bad, I won’t let you have the key to the safe where I keep every flavor of Panta locked up even if you kill me for it.” 

  
Komaeda let his head fall. “Umm, I give up.”    
  
“Hm? Oh, looks like I won in the end! But you weren’t half bad! We can always duel again next time! Wait, what game were we playing?”    
  
“Well, we weren’t really competing, were we?” Komaeda sad, closing one eye and gripping his forehead. He was trying to figure out something important, but as he felt a sharp pain behind his eye it became harder and harder to thik. 

 

“Oh, really? Then, why did you give up?”   
  
“Sorry… Did I say something confusing? Honestly, in the past I wanted to figure out what your talent was, so I tried to look into it… But I couldn’t find a single thing about the location of your secret organization.”   
  
“Nishi-shishi. That’s why it’s a secret. You’re not gonna find it that easily.”    
  
“That’s just what I’d expect from an Ultimate Supreme Leader! Despite my luck, I couldn’t learn a single thing about your organization. It’s almost like it doesn't exist… Oh, but I’m not doubting your talent or anything.”

  
“If you’re interested, just ask me directly. For you, I’ll tell you anything you wanna know.”   
  
“No, I think I’ll pass on that. Scum like me wouldn’t dare ask an evil supreme leader to reveal their secrets.”   
  
“Huh? Bored of me already? Too bad because my answers would’ve been the end for you…”   
  
Komeaeda gave a carefree smile. “Sorry, but I plan on living so don’t say something cliche like ‘I could have told you but then I would have to kill you’. I know I have no right to challenge someone of talent, but I’ve decided I’m going to try to figure you out. If you’ve forgotten me or remembered me, I don’t know but I think that’s important…”    
  
“Trust me if I had met someone like you I’d remember it. I only forget boring things.” Kokichi said, folding his hands behind his head. “I don’t think talent should stop you from playing games with other people if you want to. Go ahead, have fun.”

  
“I’m not very good at having fun. Most of the time my luck sabotages any board game I try to play, and nobody wants to play with me anyway.”   
  
Kokichi just laughed at his gloomy response. “You can’t play any games, huh? What a lonely life you must lead.”

 

Zenkichi noticed nobody seemed to be getting anywhere and the crowd had descended into chaos and tried to stand above it. He shouted as loudly as he could. “Hey, everyone! We all need to come together in order to escape from here-”   
  
However, at that exact same time Kaito as well had decided to take in all the air he could and shout at the top of his lungs. “Everybody follow me! We’re going to work as a team to escape, I’ll take the lead! No more wasting your time grumbling, just because we got kidnapped and hit so hard in the head we forgot everything!”    
  
Immediately both boys who were trying to take the lead noticed each other. Kaito and Zenkichi stared each other down from across the crowd and met in the middle. “Come on man,” Kaito began, “We obviously need someone to inspire everybody to unite! I’ll be the hero this time and you all can follow the blazing trail I leave behind me!”   
  
“Who cares about heroes? We need to work together. It’s going to be impossible though if all of these extraordinary children and their extraordinary egos don’t get over themselves first!”   
  
“Nothing’s impossible! We can all combine our amazing talents to escape!”   
  
“They need to actually be able to hold a human conversation first, not just have a loudmouth yell at them to inspire them.”   
  
Zenkichi slammed his forehead against Kaito. The two of them seemed to be competing to see who was the more hot-blooded. Shonen main characters loved their rivals after all.    
  
Just then Kaito noticed what Zenkichi was wearing. “Who made that outfit for you, your mom?”    
  
“My mom makes me clothing all the time! He sewing skills are phenomenal! What’s wrong with that?” Zenkichi grabbed Kaito by the coat and lifted dragged him closer, balling his fist up in the fabric. Until he noticed how colorful his uniform coat wore on his shoulders was. “Wow, this coat is amazing! It’s way cooler than mine! Did your mom make this?”    
  
“Umm…” Kaito suddenly spoke in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. “My grandparents made it…” 

“Wow, your grandparents put a lot of love into it. You must wear it with pride. No wonder you have such a cool look, I wish I could pull this look off. I never looked this cool even when I wore a sweatshirt under my uniform, or that time I dyed my hair and went punk.” Zenkichi and Kaito had a similar amount of hot-bloodedness, but Kaito could never hope to match the puppy boy’s aggressive kindness. He was starting to feel flustered at the undivided attention Zenkichi was now giving him for reasons he did not quite understand.    
  
“Wh-whatever! Follow me to the gym I’m going to kick all the asses of whoever put us here.” 

 

🧸

 

“Alright, alright! Enough with the fanservice and the comic relief! Get in the damn gym already!” 

The moment all twenty two of them assembled in the gym, they were met with five giant robots staring at them with multiple sets of glowing red eyes.   
  
Tsumugi reacted first letting out a scream straight out of a horror movie. “Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”   
  
“Whoa, giant robots. That’s so cool.” Junko said, reacting in the exact opposite way holding her hands to her oversized chest in excitement. 

『And then Junko says she’s over it already one whole second later.』  
  
Junko’s features lost their childlike wonder and gave way to dull apathy. “Nah, nevermind I’m already over it” Junko then realized what Kumagawa had said and turned around to glare at him. “Quit predicting what I say!”

『Why, it’s a cute couple thing we do, like finish each other’s-』   
  
“Executions!”   


『No, I was going to say sentences.』  
  
“I’m sentencing you to execution! Aren’t you listening to me?”    
  
“Whooooooaaa! So cooool!” Kokichi said, not struck by boredom right away like Junko was. “What are they?”   
  
“They’re Exisals - highly mobile, bipedal weapons platforms!” 

  
Miu hid behind Kokichi. “Whw-hatever they are, they better kill off the uggos and save me for last!”    
  
“You know back in my day we didn’t have to threaten people with giant robots to get them to participate in the killing game. I guess Mastermind’s were smarter back then.” Junko grumbled to herself bitterly.    
  
Kumagawa watched her from the side. 『You’re starting to sound like an old man.』   
  
“Don’t say old!” Junko’s voice squeaked back at him in distress. “I’m forever seventeen!”    
  
Maki sighed, not reacting to the Exisals at all. “Didn’t somebody say they were going to kick all their asses? Well, go ahead you can try first.”   
  
Kaito’s eyes bulged and he started to sweat as he tried and completely failed to save face. “Wh-what the hell? Nobody told me about these!”    
  
“Alright, chill out, no need to panic… We’re probably not in any danger.” Ranataro said, almost too relaxed for this sort of scene. “If they wanted to kill us they would have done it by now.”    
  
With that Rantaro casually walked up to the Exisals. It was difficult to tell if he was brave, or just did not think that much of his own life. “Well, what do you want from us? You obviously want something if you’re pointing guns at aus. Let me guess. You’re gonna force us to do something, and if we don’t, we get hurt. Well you have our attention, so what do you want?”   
  
“Well aren’t you a wise guy. I’ll start us up, so here’s what we want! Uhhh, just give me a second. I have to get the dramatic timing right. Hell yeah it’s a….”   
  
“KILLING GAME!”   
  
Most of the eleven from Hope’s Peak who had gathered barely reacted. When he heard the words though, Kumagawa reached out to Junko. She smiled when she could feel how much he was trembling, even though she admitted it was a terrible thing to enjoy. He was such an odd one, his face kept on smiling even when his body betrayed him like this.    
  
“What…?”   
  
Of the eleven newbies Kaede reacted the worst of all her entire gaze emptying out. Even Shuichi started to feel worried for her.    
  
“Hey, you stole my line!”    
  
“You wanna go?”   
  
The bears were back to goofing off. Not that Junko cared about their antics at all. In her mind Monokuma had already been sold out. She liked Monokuma before he was cool.    
  
“Wait, are those robot suits going to duke it out right in front of us?” Iruma worried.    
  
“Hell yeah, giant robot fight!” Kazuichi cheered. 

 

“A giant robot fight is absolutely ridiculous. We need to flee to safety right away.” Keebo said, appearing between the two eccentric mechanics and trying to drag them away.   
  
“Now, now, now. My cute little cus you gotta knock off this awful fighting.” 

 

At that moment, the lights in the gymnasium shut off. When they flashed on again, a bear descended from the skies landing on the podium. “I am the god of this world, and the headmaster of Ultimate Academy. The one, the only… Monokuma! Nice to meetcha!”    
  
“You’re a sellout and a slut!” Junko cried from the audience. “Nevermind, just let me do it. I can do Monokuma voice way better, and your incompetence is making me bearry angry right now!”    
  
Junko slipped into the Monokuma voice on accident, causing Kumagawa to grab her again from behind.『Junko we’re here to destroy the killing game, you have to let go of the past.』   
  
“No, I want to keep clinging forever until it invokes tragic consequences.”   
  


『Junko...』   
  
“Misogi…” Junko whined back in the exact same childish tone. “It’s my character, mine, not theirs, mine, my toy.” 

 

『You still have me.』   
  
“You’re not a toy.” 

 

『Huh?』   
  
“I mean you’re not nearly as cute as Monokuma was in his prime, before he was ruined by the stupid old Monokubs, shut up.”   
  
While they argued, the bears were still performing their routine. “My cute little bears. Eve when the prologue is going way too long, I’ll allow it because you guys are cute. Well anyway, I’ve been phoning it in this whole time and it’s kind of awkward so I’m just going to say it.” Monokuma smiled revealing his mouth half filled with fangs. “I want you and all your Ultimate Talents to participate in a killing game!”    
  
“K-killing game? Us?” Kaede said, her voice sounded even more hollow in disbelief.    
  
“Huh? You guys don’t want to do it? But you’ve looked at the academy around you so you already know. You’re cut off from the outside world, and as long as we have the Exisals here I hold the power of life and death.” 

“Y-you gotta be kidding me? Why would friends kill each other?” Kaede asked.   
  
“Who said you were friends? You guys are not friends at all. You’re enemies out to kill each other.”   
  
Shuichi stumbled backwards next to Kaede. “Enemies…?”   
  
“Yes, here the killing game is punctuated by class trials.”   
  
“Class… trials?” Kaede repeated.    
  
“Okay, let me explain again. If one of you kills someone there has to be a trial. The blackened is the killer and they face off against their spotless classmates. At the end of the trial you vote who does it, ad if the majority is right then only the blackened killer will receive punishment. After the blackened is punished the rest of you live together, but if you vote for the wrong person, the blackened gets off scot-free and all the spotless students get punished instead.”   
  
Monokuma stopped for a moment as if thinking, and hit the side of his head with his plush hand. “Oh, I forgot this is a special double game! That’s why the cast list is so huge this time around! That’s why a special rule is being added.”   
  
“Who gave you permission to add rules to my perfect killing game!” Junko hissed from the crowd.   
  
“Huh? What was that? It sounded like somebody who didn’t matter was talking. Well anyway, this time around since the number of students far exceeds sixteen then there’s a special rule for class trial attendance. Only eleven students have to attend a class trial! The blackened of course has to show up among the eleven. It’s those who will choose to convict and murder the blackened for their own survival, and they have to vote no matter what. But if the rest of you want to keep your head down and ignore what’s going on you can keep your hands clean of the whole thing.”   
  
“Ewe, what is she trying to inject some social commentary into my killing game?” Junko groaned from the audience. 

 

『I thought your original killing game was a commentary on how even the most talented of mankind will turn on each other like normal people.』   
  
“Well, yeah but obviously when I do it, it’s way less pretentious-”   
  


『Wait nevermind, you’re too shallow to think about anybody but yourself when you do these things, let alone society.』   
  
“Ahhhh! Too much explanation, I’m exhausted. The point is, it’s not enough to kill someone you also have to survive the class trial. Kill without being caught and survive.”   
  
“Sounds a lot like the real world.” Rantaro said, unamused.    
  
“You think so?” Monkuma touched his fat cheeks in delight. “The outside world must be masterfully designed - even at its cruelest.”    
  


“One can likely imagine, but I must ask just in case. What is the punishment you mentioned earlier?” Korekiyo inquired, what little of his face showing was not too bothered by the sudden life or death circumstances.    
  
“In society if you do a crime you get punished. In a killing game the punishment is much more deadly, execution! Alright, I’m over this boring exposition-”   
  
“That’s my line!” Junko snapped again.    
  
“Let’s get this heart pounding killing school semester going already! You have free reign to murder however you like too, like bludgeoning! Or stabbing! Feeling cheap? Try strangulation! Feeling lazy! Try posioning. Whether you shoot, burn, drown, blow up, crush, electrocute, or laugh your victim to death. You can use any method you like to kill, at the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles you will realize your murderous potential. Twenty two talented teenage prodigies, all competing for first place in a killing game...”

 

『Oh, I’ve died all those ways except being laughed to death. How come nobody has tried to laugh me to death yet, that doesn’t sound so bad...』   
  
Junko dug her nails into his shoulder. “You’re not allowed to die on me, remember?”   
  
“Wait… Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles? Not Hope’s Peak?” Komaeda noticed, speaking aloud his thoughts in a quiet whisper. “But we’re clearly in the old school building that Junko used.”    
  
Zenkichi appeared behind him putting a hand on his shoulder. “You okay? Not going to break out into evil laughter or try to get yourself stabbed on the first round or anything?” 

 

“No umm… thank you for wasting your concern on me, Hitoyoshi-kun.”    
  
“There’s no better setting for an event like this than the Ultimate Academy.”   
  
“Killing school semester.” Rantaro’s face darkened with unknowable thoughts moving through his head. “It’s like a game.”    
  


“It doesn’t sound like it will be boring though.” Kokichi said putting a finger to his lip.   
  
“Th-this has to be a lie, right? It’s a light, right?” Tsumugi said, reacting as a member of the crowd. 

 

Kaede had not been listening for a while though. The moment he mentioned they were going to kil each other, it was like gravity had upended for her. Kaito must have had really impressive talents to endure all that training after all, because this feeling of having her feet float away from the earth and everything turn upside down just made her horribly nauseous.    
  
She had always been simple and straightforward, to the point that others taunted her as an obsessive freak because she did not seem to think about much besides piano. She just wanted her music to reach other people, and to see them smile. For the sake of that childish dream she had worked so hard up until this point.    
  
The truth was she did not understand the feelings of other people all that well. She did not know why Shuichi constantly put himself down. She did not understand why Kaito was trying so hard and talking up such a big game. Just because she was not able to understand those things though did not mean she did not care.    
  
What she longed for more than anything else had always been a connection. Because she did not understand them on some level, she was able to thoughtlessly get close to them but she knew that was not enough. In the past she played piano and tried to use that as her sole connection to the world. She imagined that every single person in the audience was her friend waiting to see her perform.    
  
Now that she thought about it though, she wondered if there was any one in the real world that would have missed her. That thought occurred to her as she saw everyone around her looking at one another in distrust. She wondered what the point of practicing until her fingers bled were, what was the point of cutting everybody off and trying to connect to them through music instead.    
  
She was sure everybody here was just like her, they all just wanted a connection too. Now they were going to kill each other for the sake of somebody’s game. She had been naive before this, she thought if you worked hard, if everybody smiled in the end, than that would be the best ending. That life was as simple as endlessly practicing on the piano in order to make others happy.    
  
Her nausea and revulsion at the idea of the killing game would not subside. A lie. A lie. A lie. Tsumugi’s voice repeated in the background with her frantic screaming. It was a lie. She knew it was a childish ideal, but she wanted to see everyone smile. She did everything for the sake of that ideal. She was sure that’s what other people wanted to, so why was the world in front of her nothing but misery. A lie, a lie, a lie. A lie….    
  
“A lie… More like fiction.”    
  
Kaede accidentally said her thoughts again.    
The world in front of her blurred, it looked like it had heat waves running through it. She collapsed against Shuichi and the boy nearly jumped in surprise to see her relying on him.    
  
“Like a story on TV. A scenario so removed from reality, we can hardly believe it’s happening.”   
  
“I-I don’t want to be in a killing game. It’s wrong I’d never do that.” Shuichi spoke up in a weak voice. He was trying at least for Kaede’s sake seeing how affected she was.    
  
“Puhuhuhu. Well if you don’t wanna participate in the killing game, that’s gonna be a problem. Cuz the killing game is the only reason you’re here. You can thank Enoshima for that. You’re just pieces on the board.”   
  
“Enoshima? W-what? Who?”    
  
“Now then, unleash your horrific talents and have a happy, homicidal, horrific, hilarious killing game!”    
  
Kaede finally pushed away from Shuichi regaining her confidence. She cried out in a voice louder than an opera singer, no longer worrying if she sounded like pleasant music to the others or not. “W-wait just a minute!”   
  
“Hm?”   
  
“No matter what you say… We won’t do it! We’ll never participate in a killing game! Whatever you have planned, I’m not going to let you get away with it.”    
  
“What welcome resistance! Much better than a protagonist who just waits and hopes passively.” Monokuma said excited at the microphone. “It’s fun to watch the defiant ones eventually snap, and get their hands dirty…” 

  
“Wh-what do you mean by that?” Kaede said, her voice shaking again.    
  
“Everyone loves the unconventional brutality of the death game genre! It never gets old! It’s so fun and entertaining that I just get un-BEAR-ably pumped up! Plus, as the headmaster it’s my job to force you to do it. THat’s why the death games are never going to end! If the Genre ended then as the mascot, I’d be out of a job!”    
  
After that, he laughed with all the others joining him.    
  
  


The students stood in dumbfounded silence, surrounded by the squealing laughter of Monokuma and his cubs. Only one wicked looking person among the students seemed to know what was going on, and she turned to her dark and gloomy looking partner with a sly smile. 

“Everything about the situation is so messed up.”   
  
Kaede said, sweat trickling down her face. It was strange, she had never felt more like crying in her life. There were plenty of times she cried, she always felt things more easily than other people. She broke down crying over the keys many times and just picked herself up. When others felt things towards her, even though she did not exactly understand what they were feeling, she could feel it like sharp strings of piano keys being hit hard in her head. Yet, right at this moment she did not feel like crying at all. Her eyes, they were fierce, they were burning, they were like blinding light, they were shaking, they wanted to cut everything in their sight, they were full of hatred, and therefore they were empty.    
  
“An Academy surrounded by a giant wall. Sixteen students trapped inside. Mysterious stuffed bears and deadly weapons. And new friends… forced to play some killing game. It’s like something out of a sadistic work of fiction. A sadistic story, no different from reality itself…”   
  
Her wish was so simple, she just wanted this to be a happy story.   
Why did it look like it was farther and farther away from coming true?   
  
“Against my will, I’m now a character in this story.” 


	4. Broken Rabbit

_An endless dance spinning in a cycle of hope and despair,_ _  
_ _Like a dream within a dream._

**SELF IMMOLATION: Die for Love / Live for Love** **  
** **Daily Life: Chapter One.**

Naegi Makoto never made it to the gym. He never stepped on stage, even though he’s the one who's supposed to take the starring role, as the bland self insert who has no noteworthy qualities except for his exceptional ordinariness. None of the dramatic highs or lows of the the drama queen protagonists exists within him, he’s the kind of guy who takes everything in stride. That was why he could accept everyone, that was why he could accept every situation.  
  
The moment he caught sight of his sister standing in front of the gym however, Makoto wanted to reject that simplistic viewpoint of the world. For some reason it was different that knowing she might be put into danger if he chose to continue fighting despair like this. It was even different than when Mukuro told him to his face, that her plan originally had been to kidnap Komaru under Junko’s orders and hold her as a hostage against him. Even if she appeared on a video screen kidnapped as a motive to murder, it would not have registered the same way to him.  
  
Here she was in the flesh, Naegi Komaru, his only sister in the whole world. She looked confused, and biting back fear by trying to keep her face normal. It was not like they had an especially deep sibling relationship, he never once thought about Komaru in such dramatic terms as whether or not he would die for her. As memories flashed by his eyes he found their time together to be especially dull, they fought over petty things that came with living in the same house and also got along watching television and talking about manga together. Kumagawa went out of his way to hang out with Mukuro, even though they were just a fake family who only met a year ago. Had he done the same? Had he spent enough time with Komaru before this point? Had he been a big brother she could depend on?  
  
This feeling was different somehow that she was right in front of him, because he could see her suffering. Komaru while right next to him, might suddenly disappear, and he would be the one who failed to protect her. He reached out and grabbed Komaru by the wrist, locking his thing fingers tight around her. He feared if he let go even for a moment he might never be able to hold her like this again.  
  
“Eh? Big Bro, you’re here too? Thank god somebody normal I was really starting to get weirded out.”  
  
Komaru said, but the casual nature of her voice was forced. She noticed how hard Makoto was holding onto her wrist, to the point where it was starting to hurt, and her happy go lucky big brother who never got too upset over anything usually because he was too much of a pushover to get mad, had such a sad look on his face.  
  
“Makoto, why are you making such a lame face.”

Komaru did not get to hear an answer to her question. Suddenly in the background Monokuma’s voice announcing the rules of the killing game, drowned out everything else, all sound, all thoughts, all emotion. She woke up in an unfamiliar building with no memory at all of how she got there. She met a bunch of kids who she had almost nothing in common with. Perhaps it just did not occur to her, because she never thought anything out of the ordinary would disrupt her normal life. She would go from cradle to grave, go to middleschool, go to highschool make friends, go to college, get a decent job, marry a husband have kids and brag about how much cuter hers were than her brothers kids, grow old and die. An utterly mediocre life, but one she was used to at least with a modest amount of happiness.  
  
The odd thing was when Makoto received that ticket in the mail inviting him to Hope’s Peak, Komaru never even felt jealous that he was the one going and not her. Her friends at school were all confused about this, why she was going to such a normal school when her brother got a lifetime golden pass to Hope’s Peak, but it never even occurred to her to be jealous. Sometimes she wished she was attending an all girl’s school for the elite, like the kind you found in shoujo manga but when she thought about how hard she would have to study to climb up to that level from where she started she lost interest. She sometimes read in Shoujo manga about a whirlwind love affair with a troublesome boy who secretly turned out to be rich and deeply in love with her, but outside of the fantasy the idea of dating someone like that in real life sounded tiresome to her. She had not even really dated anybody yet, when she thought that one day she would have to marry she just thought about doing it out of obligation because that was what a normal person was supposed to do.  Technically it was possible for her to become someone extraordinary if she pushed herself to her very limit, but if she was born lacking in something it was probably that desire. She just never thought anything extraordinary would happen to her in her life, and because she never thought about it she did not know how to deal with it.

The words killing game echoed in her ears, but she did not process it. She just kept staring at her brother’s face in disbelief, watching him break down, from an empty look of surprise, to trying to be brave, to failing to be brave.  
  
“Makoto, you know at times like this you’re supposed to throw your arms around me and go ‘Don’t cry, because no matter what I’ll always protect you’. You really are so unreliable, j-jeez, why are you crying anyway?”  
  
Makoto stayed silent. The only sounds he made were the muffled sounds of his own weeping, he was fighting so hard not to cry but in the end he just couldn’t. Her brother had always been like that it was like he ran on pure emotion. He could never set those emotions aside. That was why she worried about him, despite being the younger sibling, because he was so soft.

Yet Komaru’s broken, fragmented rambling came to an end as she realized her situation. A look of dull acceptance flashed across her face. Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him, Fyodor Dostoevsky said once. I doubt such a normal girl had ever read such a book, but her life philosophy was probably something similar.

“S-so, I’m going to die, right?”

Those words finally made Makoto’s face snap out of it. He looked like he wanted to reject everything, the killing game, Enoshima Junko, Hope’s Peak, and every decision he made to reach this point. If only the day he had saw that letter marked hope in the mail, he had torn it up and thrown in away then things might be different. Komaru would not have to suffer for the sake of her foolish big brother. However, he could not bring himself to reject hope, even if all else was gone he would still have that.

“No, you’re not going to die. None of us are going to kill each other. We’re all going to get out of here.” Makoto reached forward and put his second hand around his sister’s, tightening his grip on her.  
  
Makoto’s grip felt warm, and he looked so inviting like the gentle glow of the sun. There really was something in him that she lacked. If only she could think about things the way he did she could be brave in the face of this fear, but she could not.  
  
“You’re kidding, right? Are you that stupid? That’s what literally everybody says in these situations. We’re not going to hurt each other, we’ll all work together to get out, and it never happens. All it takes is one person to give in, a-and then, you could die Makoto? You could die can’t you see that? Or I could die!?”  
  
Her voice became more and more panicked as she struggled against him. Komaru crossed the gap between them and got in his face. She was crying now too. There was nothing elegant about it, these were not the gentle tears of a shoujo manga heroine. Tears and snot streaked down her face in equal amounts, and when she raised her voice to yell at him spit came from her mouth.

“Don’t we have to hope for the best though? We’re never going to make it out of here alive unless we think we can, we can’t just sit here and give up-”  
  
“Not everybody thinks the way you do, Makoto! It’s like you don’t even think about all the bad things that everybody else is worried about! The more you hope, the more despair follows you.”  
  
“Then, what am I supposed to say?” Makoto asked. “Do you want me to tell you there’s no hope at all, that we’re screwed?”  
  
“I’m trying to be realistic here, what are you going to do protect me? But… I don’t want you to get hurt either, and you’re not that strong…”

Mukuro had been watching the whole scene play out silently the whole time, thinking that she had no place in it. She had no place in the image of a normal family after all. Her presence would only stain the canvas.  
  
At that exact moment though she reached forward, not realizing what she had done until a moment later. She knew that Makoto was weak, that his ideals were poorly thought out, that they might not hold up in the face of an unrelenting world. She was not Munakata though, she did not think this boy needed to be broken because of it. If Makoto was weak, than she would be his strength. That was why she stepped in, grabbing Komaru by the collar and jerking her up to her height in order to calm her down.  
  
“I’ll protect you. I’m strong, it’s all I’m good for.”  
  
Mukuro said, directly.

“Y-you. I thought you were nice, and shy, but we only met once before this. You don’t even know me.”  
  
“I don’t need to know you. You’re important to Makoto, that’s all I need.”  
  
“That’s not enough for me. Y-you, you’re some kind of soldier right? That means you’ve killed people before. You could easily get out of this game by killing.”  
  
“No, I won’t kill-”  
  
“I didn’t even think about it. I figured out you were some kind of soldier who was sitting down and eating with us, but it didn’t even occur to me that you’d killed people. I didn’t even think about how dangerous it was. It was like when you read about a character who's a murderer in a manga, it’s not even real. B-but, you really are, you’re a murderer.”  
  
“K-komaru, I would never-”  
  
“But you did at one point right? D-don’t kill him, don’t kill my brother please. He relies on people too easily, and because of that he gets hurt easily too.”  
  
Mukuro’s grip weakened. Even at this moment she had been trying to forcefully calm Komaru down. She knew no other way, that was all she was good for. She tried to think of words to say to calm the girl down, but she only knew the words to break people. She could spell out how Komaru was just using her as a scapegoat for her fears, and how normal it was to react that way but Mukuro in the end could not bring herself to say that.  
  
Dropped on the ground, Komaru ran away from her and clung to Makoto’s arm. When she saw Makoto turn to Mukuro in concern, she nearly collapsed on the spot. She forgot about where she was standing, and just curled up around herself kneeling low to the ground. “No, no, no, this isn’t happening. Nothing like this would happen to me. I’m not going to die, I don’t want to die.”  
  
It was neither extraordinary hope nor despair, it was just ordinary fear. Makoto still looked weakly at Mukuro. At the moment Mukuro was making a face that if she saw it in the mirror, even she herself would not be able to quite read it. “I… I’m going to walk her back to a dorm.” Makoto shot her another apologetic look, as he tried to drag Komaru away. She clung to her brother the whole time, repeating the same words over and over again. Mukuro knew Komaru had not gone mad, because that was how any normal person would act to having their life threatened.  
  
She was the abnormal one, who thought nothing about life or death, and nothing about killing. She was the empty one in comparison. She did not move, or go elsewhere. She waited like a loyal dog for Makoto to return.  
  
When Makoto finally did, he looked like he did not know what to say. Awkwardly, he gave a status update. “She went and hid in the closet. I’m going to try to get her out of there tomorrow, I’m kind of afraid she’s just going to lock herself in that room the entire time.”

“If it’s you, you’ll be able to get her out Makoto.”  
  
“I’m going to lecture her about saying all that stuff to you too!”  
  
“It’s fine.” Mukuro’s face did not change. “Nothing she said was untrue. I am a murderer.”  
  
“She doesn’t know though, she doesn’t know your sister says the absolute worst things about you-”  
  
“Makoto, you look more upset than I am. You really are weird.”  
  
“It’s not weird! You can get sad for yourself, you know. It’s okay. You have those feelings too.”  
  
“I already knew that the vast majority of people wouldn’t accept me, even if I was being completely honest when I said I wanted to make up for what I did. I can’t live for myself, I don’t have the right anymore, but if it helps you it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. I accepted you, so other people can too.”  
  
Mukuro said flatly. “You’re just messed up in the head, that’s all.” She reached forward and put her hand on Makoto’s head, patting it, causing Makoto to glare up at her. Really, now of all times using his height against him. “It was a nice dream, sitting down and eating a meal with a normal family, but at the end of the day all I have is that fake family of mine.”  
  
Junko and Kumagawa.  
They were the family that chose her.  
  
“Aren’t you even a little bit sad?”  
  
Makoto would not give up, no matter how much of her usual stone face she showed him. He had been tricked by the distance Mukuro drew between herself and others in the past and because of it he had almost never met such a wonderful person. She looked like she was made of stone, but behind that there was a girl more fragile than anyone else. A girl who knew nothing but violence, and wanted something else, but she had no idea how to escape so all she could do was bow her head and beg like a dog.  
  
Mukuro’s face looked puzzled. “I don’t know, would a normal girl be sad?”

 

🧸

When the bears finished talking, an alarm on the monopads rang all at once. When Kaede took hers out a message was displayed on the screen.   
  
**#1 Students are required to cohabitate at the Ultimate Academy for the remainder of the unforseeable future.**  
**#2 When a murder is committed in the academy, a class trial will be conducted. Participation in this trial is only mandatory for eleven students, and the killer.**  
**#3 If the killer, (hereinafter referred to as the blackened) is correctly identified during the class trial only the blackened will be punished for the crime.**  
**#4 If the blackened cannot be identified, or if an incorrect student is identified as the blackened all students except the blackened will be punished for the crime. Including the students not attending the killing trial.**  
**#5 If the blackened survives the class trial, they are declared the winner. At which point they will graduate from the Ultimate Academy and re-enter the outside world.**  
**#6 If innocent students (hereafter referred to as "the spotless") continue to survive class trials, the killing game will continue until two students remain. When there are less than 12 students only half of the remaining students need to attend a trial.**  
**#7 "Nighttime" is officially designated as the hours between 10:00 pm and 8:00 am. During this time, the dining hall and the gymnasium are closed.**  
**#8 All acts of violence are strictly permitted.**  
**#9 Monokuma will never directly participate in a murder.**  
**#10 Your monopads are very important items make sure you do not damage them.**  
**#11 A body discover will occur when three or more students discover a body.**  
**#12 Students have free rein to explore the Ultimate Acadmey as the see fit.**  
**#13 Students who violate these rules will be exterminated with exterme prejudgice by the Exisals.**  
**#14 The headmaster may add additional regulations to this list at any times.**  
**#15 In a weekend at Bernies scenario, the corpse discovery will not be announced until the people who discover the body realize it is a corpse. Therefore if the killer is puppeteering around the corpse they do not count as one of the discoverers.**  
**#16 In a murder of the orient express scenario all the students are convinced to gang up and murder one person, for trying to cheat the rules of the system all of the students who dealt any damage to the body will be executed.**  
**#17 In a scenario where a character attempts to escape by simply killing every single other character in their sleep, the murderer will be punished by the Exisals as there will be no one left to stand trial.**  
**#18 In cases of multiple murders within the same round, only the one whose victim was found first will be the blackened.**  
**#19 The killing party may only kill a maximum of two people during any single "killing game" to avoid the above mentioned scenario which will be now referred to as "cheating."**  
**#20 In the event of a suicide which attempts to frame every single person for the murder by making them all complicit by say, throwing cans of poison or something as a completely random example the murderer will be named as the person who masterminded the suicide to avoid any game breaking scenarios.**  
**#21 Corpses from previous scenarios are not to be stolen. Anyone who is caught stealing a corpse from a previous scenario, and then presenting it as a new murder body in an attempt to frame someone else for a murder will be punished like the blackened instead.  
  
**And the rules continued on like that for awhile, detailing just about every attempt to cheat the basic rules that a normal person might come up with.   
  
"Why are there fifty three rules? Is the mastermind trying to make us sign a terms and service agreement or run a killing game!" Junko shouted, raising her monopad up into the air to impulsively smash it before Kumagawa stopped her."  
  
"You... gotta be kidding me." Kaede said staring blank faced at her monopad. "I will never... I will never participate in a killing game." She was rejecting the reality in front of her. She wanted no part in it. She wanted to destroy it.   
  
"But the rules seem pretty cut and dry. The game doesn't seem like it'll be boring." Kokichi said, folding his arms behind his head in a carefree manner.   
  
"Please lower your voice, it's ruining the atmosphere." Korekiyo had no reaction of his own, he was merely watching the face of others. 

  
"Why does it say the trials will continue until there's only two students?" Komaeda noticed an oddity in the rules right away, a rule Junko would never have placed there as well as the several detailed murder scenarios which were given rulings beforehand.   
  
"Perhaps it's because you couldn't do a trial with two people." Shuichi answered.   
  
"You're and observant one, befitting of your talent." Komaeda nodded and sunk back into his thoughts.   
  
"Q-quit screwing around... Killing game... School regulations...To hell with all that crap! Who'd go along with something like that." 

Kaito smashed his hands together and then ran for the doors. He seemed to be looking for a fight, with the Exisals that had run out of the room.   
  
Maki had been waiting by the door and she only made a cold attempt to stop him. "If you violate the rules you'll be eliminated by the Exisals."  
  
"I don't care about the rules! No way I'm gonna play this messed up game! The only way we're getting out is if we all jump those Exisals at once and one of us tries to hijack." Kaito was somehow completely confident in the plan he had half concocted in his head. He kicked the door open.  
  
Maki sighed but gave up on stopping him. 

Suddenly Kaito ran in between Mukuro and Makoto who had just finished their conversation. The other kids went chasing after him, but the one who caught up ran ahead of the crowd because he was trying the hardest. He would never reach the level of an Ultimate Track Runner but he was quiet fast.   
  
He cut in front of Kaito, and hit him with a low leg sweep. Kaito was kicked back, but immediately went on the offensive. He met Hitoyoshi Zenkichi head on. The moment he had started an argument with him in the crowd he felt something might happen between them.   
  
"We need to take charge of busting this door down! Are you saying we should cooperate? If that's the case you should never lead."   
  
Zenkichi hit him with an equally hot blooded argument. "It's not a matter of playing the game, but it's too dangerous for everybody if we risk going against the Exisals now! If you want to have everybody behind you, then you have to think of everybody not just what's going on in your own head."

"How do you know that? What do you know?" They were exchanging pretty harmless blows before that, Zenkichi deflecting Kaito's clumsy blows with a few rapid fire kicks but somehow Zenkichi had struck a chord. 

"Ehhhh, why is the twunk fighting the hunk?" Miu asked.   
  
Next to her, Toko was watching with just as much fascination. "Hitoyoshi-kun is creepy like most boys are and way too friendly. I refuse to believe anybody is as genuine as he is, he's probably secretly a serial killer behind everyone's backs... but I think I fantasized about this once but their shirts were off."   
  
"If Hitoyoshi wins this fight, since he's currently in my employment that makes me the leader by proxy." Togami said, clearly with his priorities straight.  
  
"Hey, Hunk you should just forget about him. That's one less dumbass to hold us back!"  
  
Miu yelled at the both of them. She took the side of Zenkichi just because he was the most handsome boy in the school at the moment, she was shallow like that.   
  
Kaede was the only one taking the situation seriously. Junko was still off to the side complaining about the lengthy amount of rules that forbid her usual strategies for messing around with the killing game when she got bored. Kaede the entire time had been shaking in disbelief at the idea of entering the killing game, she wanted to reject the reality, she wanted to protect everyone. Only to see everyone in front of her descend into fighting right away. Kaede sucked in as much air as she could, and raised her voice to scream like it was opera.   
  
"HEY! QUIT FIGHTING ALREADY!"   
  
"Whoa! What the-!?" The serious look was gone from Kaito's face and he was completely startled.   
  
"We shouldn't be fighting amongst our selves. Right now, we *need* to work together. Honestly, it'd probably be more inspiring if I played a song rather than gave a speech. Chopin's military ponaise will help us!" Kaede said as she brought both of her hands in the air. She just wanted everyone to hear the same music she did, they called that mutual understanding.   
  
"Yeah, I could get behind some bolognese, I don't even like meat or tomatoes."  Kokichi added trying to sound supportive, or maybe he was not trying at all.   
  
"I like speeches." Makoto said, as giving speeches on hope was considered his only strong point. He had been watching the crowd just as confused as everybody else, too overwhelmed by the conflict between Komaru and Mukuro. He wanted to raise his voice like Kaede did but for some reason he could not bring himself to. He did not think he had such a strong voice inside of him, that could come out under any circumstance. When most people gave him praise or importance, they were just exaggerating, he had not even been able to convince his sister to hope a few moments ago. 

『A-anyway, you're all panicking too much. Y-you need to stay calm like me.』 Kumagawa said, but his death game trauma had been activated and his whole body was shaking like it might fall to pieces. 

"Whoever trapped us here wants us to fight each other. So let's show them we're not going to fight each other. We're gonna work together, okay?"

  
A calm hush fell over the crowd.   
  
"Why are you quiet...? Did I say something wrong?"  
  
"Akatmsu-san, they're all speechless at how amazing you are."  
  
"I was gonna say the same thing, but you beat me too it. You're exactly right we can't give up that easily!" Kaito said, giving a thumbs up.   
  
Zenkichi nodded next to him, he did not mind the fight at all, all he cared about was that Kaito did not get himself hurt rushing off to danger. It reminded him of Medaka, always running ahead of him to play hero and leaving him behind. Never thinking that somebody might be worried about how she feels.   
  
"Th-then, if I have everybody's attention we should search-"  
  
"The sun's already set, I want to go to bed." Ranataro said, scratching at his shoulder in a lazy way.   
  
"What are we supposed to do until tomorrow?" Kaede asked.   
  
Makoto pointed at the dorms in the distance. "There's a building dedicated to dorms over there, they all have our names marked with these cute chibi nameplate drawings. Wait, I don't want to compliment the nameplates the mastermind probably made them." 

"We'll go back to the dorms tonight and then tomorrow we'll search the school grounds for an exit. Until then, we should all go back to the dorms and nobody should go out at night. I'd never doubt anybody here, but we need to make sure nobody goes missing in the middle of the ni-"  
  
"Yeah, that's a stupid plan." Junko said immediately cutting Kaede off. "If you want to have a surefire plan for victory instead of clinging to a false hope then come meet at my dorm tomorrow. It'll all go perfectly if you all just listen to whatever I say because I know better than you." 

While the students started to rally behind Kaede, most of them just ignored Junko's announcement. They assumed her to just be an eccentric and rude blonde girl like Miu. It was an association she might kill them for if she ever found out about it. The only one next to her in the end was Kumagawa.   
  
The moment they got to the dorms though, they noticed something curious there were twenty two students in attendance but only twenty dorms. There were nameplates for everybody but Kumagawa Misogi and Naegi Komaru. Kumagawa fished around in a trash can and found his.    
  
Makoto explained to everyone that Komaru was his sister and she was staying in his dorm for now and that was no problem. He also said someone should host Kumagawa, because he would have done it if Komaru were not here. Everybody else looked at each other and started to give fearful looks at the idea of sharing a room with Kumagawa.  
  
Kumagawa was completely oblivious to their apprehension and kept smiling. Junko just grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him into her dorm. 

🧸

Junko did not even bother to go to sleep that night, but she did stay in her dorm long enough to give the impression that she did. Her precious school had been remodeled after all. Her brain was in overdrive trying to comprehend all the details and work through them. Every time she saw a puzzle whether she wanted to solve it or not, her brain would run the puzzle through her mind again and again.  
  
Perhaps that was why she could not get the unsolvable puzzle known as Kumagawa Misogi out of her head no matter how many times she tried, no that was a stupid thought.   
  
She snuck out of bed while she thought Kumagawa was still sleeping and decided to work out the energy of her hyperactive rain. She needed to know exactly what changes had been made to her school. There was still a network of secret tunnels she herself made to make sure she could get between the master control room and all the other rooms unseen. She wondered if the mastermind really was waiting in the control room or she kept her promise and was one of the students.   
  
If only Junko was reading this narration then she would know the mastermind was Tsumugi Shirogane, something everybody in the audience knows. An author has to be smarter than her own characters.   
  
She snuck back in the school and started with the classrooms. She kicked things over, and accidentally moved things around and yet nothing changed about the classrooms. She went to the ventilation shafts next and saw that they were too small for anyone to fit through, which disappointed her a little bit as she loved that cliche. She tried every single secret passage way she had left behind before, only to find them all broken. She went down to the bottom floor where the dorms used to be, only to find the area completely remodeled into an entertainment room.   
  
Junko stopped trying to use the secret passageway she installed, and instead tried to just make guesses based upon what she saw in movies. None of that worked either. The person who had made these secret passages understood how she thought at least and put them somewhere she would not normally guess.   
  
Junko stopped to think a moment and wondered if she should get Komaeda and use him as some kind of hot and cold sensor for finding secret passageways. Maybe if she chucked him down a flight of stars he would stumble on the switch on accident.   
  
Suddenly, a bell rung interrupting Junko's train of thought. Over the loudspeakers she heard a familiar voice. "Good morning everyone! It is now 8 a.m. it is now 8 am and night time is officially over. It's time to rise and shine! Get ready to greet another bee-yutiful day! In any normal school, Mr. Monokuma would be a kind teacher. But when I think about  what's coming up... I'm just so full of pride and joy. Our ceremony earlier today was very splendid thank you very much. Remember you are all students of the Ultimate Academy and refine your ideals. I swear to you, I will send you all off into a new tomorrow!" 

  
"Shut uuuuuup! That would have been a hilarious case of irony if you were the real Monokuma, but you're just a fakey fake. The Ultimate Academy isn't even real, it's just a rip-off like this entire thing." Junko shouted back at one of the loud speakers even though it could not hear her.   
  
Then she realized she had spent the entire night trying to look for secret passageways and had not slept once. Yep, that happened. Her brain was probably not going to allow her to sleep this morning either. Stupid brain, the one time she wanted to figure everything out instantly and have all the answers so she could just get this over with already her brain refused to comply.   
  
Junko made her way down to the dining hall craving caffeine like a zombie that subsisted entirely on it. Nobody else was awake yet, because they did not spend the entire night awake like she did.   
  
The first thing she noticed was Kumagawa all alone in the dining hall. Apparently someone was awake after all. 

Rather than look at Kumagawa the first thing she did was go into the bathroom. Even if he had seen her morning face, she did not want to be seen that way. There was no point looking like a girl with a common face that could be found anywhere. Less than a minute later she was out, her hair done, and her face properly on.   
  
Kumagawa's back was to her and he was cooking something. She ignored that for now and walked up to steal the entire coffee pot. Nobody else was going to get coffee the first morning of the killing game, upupu sucks to be them.

『How do you do that so fast? There’s talent and then there’s just cheating.』Kumagawa said, referring to her change of makeup.   
  
“I’m better than you.” Junko answered simply. 

『I’m sure the real reason is, you’d get bored if you spent hours working on your makeup.』

Junko did not answer, she just bitterly sipped her coffee. 

『Junko, how much coffee do you need? Eh? Is the black coffee a metaphor for the bitterness of life or something.』  
  
Well maybe not everything was a metaphor. Junko put the coffee pot aside, letting her head rest on the table. “It’s not like I wanna. Brain needs energy to think. Don’t wanna think. Too much time wasted thinking already. So boring.”

『Yeah, so when you wanted to start making sense. You’re confusing me of all people.』

Junko raised her head finally. She looked a bit like a corpse who had just dragged herself out of her grave, if that corpse also happened to be a smoking hot super model with huge boobs. Either way, it was not the strongest beginning for the girl who swore she would crush the mastermind at her own game.  
  
“You know strangulation is an especially personal way to kill someone. You have to look them in their eyes while you’re doing it.”

『Please don’t let this turn into another evangelion reference.』  
  
“Most people when fighting back against strangulation fail because they try to remove the person’s hands from their neck, instead of just attacking their body.”

『I’ll remember that the next time I’m being strangled, which will probably be soon considering my rotten luck.』

“You know because my brain burns so many calories thinking I can basically eat whatever I want without ever getting fat. Even if I do gain weight it goes directly to my boobs. All of the other models were always jelling on me.”

『Wait, your boobs can get bigger?』  
  
“Maybe I should eat like L from death note, just sugar from every meal.”

『Junko no, if you ruin your teeth like that you won’t be able to smile!』  
  
“I’m sure it’ll be fine if I’m the one doing it, consequences don’t apply to me.”

『Stop saying that with such brazen confidence! It’s like you want something bad to happen as a result of your hubris!』  
  
“Exactly. Wait, what were we talking about again?” Junko tilted her head to the side. Conversations between them tended to be like this, they danced, and Kumagawa always kept pace with her when she led. Occasionally, while they were spinning around, she stepped hard on his toes on purpose just to see what kind of face he would make. Then she lifted her head, and realized. “Hey, Misogi what are you wearing?”  
  
Kumagawa suddenly turned around with a great dramatic flourish. The only thing that covered his body was the pink apron he had wrapped around his front. The rest of his emaciated body was there, she saw everything his pronounced collarbone, the place where his ribs were visible. She had touched that body and tickled his scars before, but for some reason it was embarrassing to look at.  
  
She was oddly uptight and prideful, for a girl who wanted to lose everything to chaos. She put her red nail covered hand in front of her face, but did not exactly close her eyes.  
  
『Happy biiiiiiirthday, Juuuuuunkooooooo!』  
  
Kumagawa said, finishing the breakfast he was making and putting it on her plate. It was so burnt he had to scrape it off.  
  
『I know you hate your birthday but I’m glad you were born. For your birthday I thought I’d give you, the worst birthday ever to fill you with despair. What better way than to spend it with a loser like me! Oh, and the mastermind helped to by making the killing game start on this day!』  
  
Making the killing game start on her birthday was so obviously a dig against her, but Kumagawa looked blissfully unaware. Junko observed the details of his frilly pink robe tied with a bow in the back, on the front in giant pink letters it said KUMALOVE.  
  
Even if it was just the two of them coming to the dining hall in that outfit really was embarrassing. Kumagawa was completely shameless. As a person who disregarded all rules she almost respected him, but also as a teenager his age she wanted to die from embarrassment. It was hard being the self appointed embodiment of chaos and entropy and also some random blonde teenager. 

“Another reason I need to kill that mastermind, this and the Monokubs.”

『And the fact that Yasuke-chan and Medaka-chan are gone, and our school life that was taken from us, and having to go through the killing game again.』  
  
“Yeah, whatever.”

『Don’t make all those reasons sound like an afterthought! Why is your interests still ‘none in particular’ when you’re clearly a freak about bears.』  
  
“Misogi, I can’t eat this it’s 100% ash there’s not even any egg left. I’ve got to eat more. A grizzly bear eats almost 20,000 calories a day. Grr grrr.”

『See, you just ignored me but you’re proving my point! You’re way too exhausting to straight man for.』  
  
“A Bear River needs to ingest so many calories a day to keep straight manning me. Anyway, where’s my present.” She held out a greedy hand.

『Junko, you don’t even like your birthday.』  
  
“Don’t care, I like getting things.”

『You don’t like anything!』  
  
“Look Misogi, there are obviously cameras watching us. I have my reputation as a materialistic bitch to uphold.”  
  
Kumagawa leaned over the table. The robe was barely clinging to him at this point. She really was greedy, she wanted all of him and she wanted to scrape him away with her red claws. She wanted to use him until there was nothing left. She wanted to see him utterly broken underneath her. Her heart raced with the thought.  
  
When he got closer, her dull and dead heart came to life. She could feel her icy veins melting. Every centimeter closer he got. The fact that he was so close. She could have him if she wanted. She could take him. Her mind raced with the possibilities. She really did not need to think of 5,000 different scenarios right now, it was not helping her fluster at all.  
  
She might do worse than melt though, if she got close to that source of warmth she might burn up. That was why she backed up until she hit the edge of her chair. The burning feeling in her cheeks, was why she grabbed him by the face and pushed him away from her. She would do anything to feel things, but she was so unused to feeling. “There are cameras watching us, idiot. As if I’d let unworthy eyes look at my perfect body, I’m not some fanservice character.”

『Mm. Okay! It’ll be more fun later. Oh, but why do you always wear such a revealing outfit?』  
  
“It’s to use my boobs to inspire despair in those who can never have me, and can never have this body.”

『You're using boobs for evil?Why must you corrupt everything that’s good about the world?』He said this rather dramatic line nonchalantly. Kumagawa could take everything in stride because he had already endured everything. It seemed like the only thing he disliked outright was dying. 『Junko, you know I’ve seen your perfect body.』 

Junko picked up a spoon from one of the dining hall tables. “You’re right, then I guess I have no choice but to scoop out your eyeballs with a spoon. It’s crazy how many deadly weapons we handle on a daily basis.”

『Junko, quit flirting with me! I’m not going to be distracted, it looks like there’s something on your mind.』  
  
If she was being honest with herself they two of them would probably flirt like this in public too even if the other kids had woken up because neither of them had any shame. 

“There’s like a thousand things on my mind at any given moment.” Junko said, but there was something lingering. He said he was happy she was born. Even though all she did was drag him into misery. Every single person she tried to drag to despair she succeeded, but the boy who seemed like he was in the most despair of all never fell to despair in front of her. That always made her more and more interested. Falling in love with the one thing you could not control, what a lame cliche. Now, Ajimu was gone, Medaka was gone, and all he had was her left the worst one of the bunch. “Why do you always say such stupid things?”

『Well they say stupidity is only curable by death, but I’ve died like a thousand times and haven’t gotten any smarter. So I guess I’m unfixable.』  
  
“You know the last thing I remember you made a suicide attempt, and now you’re back to clowning around as usual. I guess you weren’t serious, just like you’re not serious about literally everything else.”  
  
Kumagawa hesitated for a moment. She got frustrated when he hid her emotions from her. Of course if he was completely honest with her all the time she would probably get bored of him faster. There was no winning with a person like her. That was exactly Kumagawa’s type though, trying to win no-win scenarios.  
  
Kumagawa had no idea how to confront those feelings. He only knew how to tell lies. If he ever confronted them he felt like he would lose what he had now, and he barely had anything to begin with. He was so afraid of losing the ego he had scraped together from broken pieces he picked off the ground and held close to his chest.

His hands were shaking once again. Kumagawa looked like he might collapse. Even though he was made of flesh and bone and it was impossible for him to do this, he wanted to fall apart and shatter. Trying to keep things together was probably far more painful than simply losing his mind had ever been. The only time he was going to be ever be beautiful was when he broke apart into sparkling pieces, when he became transparent for a brief moment and let the colors shine through him.  
  
When Kumagawa regained himself, he had collapsed against Junko. His chin rested in her shoulder. She barely even changed her expression. In a dry voice she muttered, “You’re always so uncool in front of me.”

『You know what I thought? I thought for everything I had endured, it gave me a will stronger to live than anybody else. That as long as I wished to keep living, I had something. But that was just a lie. Losing things doesn’t make your will stronger, or anything beautiful like that, it just takes everything. There’s nothing left inside of me.』  
  
“That’s so dramatic MIsogi, your stupid sad boy emotions are almost not boring to me when you put it that way.” Junko was as usual the least empathic person on earth. It was like trying to embrace an ice statue. She could feel him shaking against her but she barely moved in return.  
  
“Losing Ajimu was that much to you, huh? You wanted to throw away the one thing you had.” She just wanted to poke at his wound for her own amusement that’s all.

『Hey, Ajimu. There’s nothing left. Hope and despair disappeared from the world the day you died.』  
  
“Is that what’s bothering you? Your feelings have never been poetic, Misogi. They’re much uglier than that.”  
  
His ugly feelings, deep inside of him. He had never once been able to suffer beautifully or in the right way. He never learned from his suffering. He became fragmented, damaged, lesser, and lesser, and lesser. He took on the feelings of his tormentors, he started to hurt others the way he hurt him.

『I don’t get it… why did Ajimu-san hate me so much?』  
  
That was all he could read from her actions. Ajimu was somebody he cared about in the place of a family. For him it was just enough to be by her side. Yet in the end, all Ajimu ever thought about was herself.

Ajimu could not keep living for someone like him. She could not even choose to live. Kumagawa could only read that, her cold actions to him, her seeming indifference as hate. Perhaps Ajimu did hate him for tearing her face off, and sealing her away for three years but in Kumagawa’s mind she had only ever hated him. He lacked the foundational memories that everybody else had.  
  
Hope and happiness were just a status quo, but not for Kumagawa Misogi because he had never experienced either once in his life. He only experienced chaos, and that shaped him into a person capable of understanding her. Enoshima Junko had dabbled in brainwashing, manipulation, and torture to try to get someone to think the same way she did, and then suddenly one unlucky loser popped up out of nowhere.  
  
It made her happy to have someone exist who was that miserable… but lately, she was thinking differently.

“Misogi, did you ever really know Ajimu-san that well? Her true self?”

『Is this another evangelion thing?』  
  
“Most people don't show you their true selves. Who they are always falls short of who they want to be, so they put on an act and pretend to be someone better.”  
  
For the sake of a person like her, he killed Komaeda, he tormented his underclassmen Medaka and Zenkichi, and she was not the one who manipulated him into doing it. He decided it on his own. He betrayed them because he loved them, in a way that only made sense to himself.

『You sound extra psychotic when you’re explaining things.』  
  
“This is probably the closet thing I have to a true self. This girl who knows everything about the world and is bored with it.”

『No way Junko, you put a lot of effort into your theatrical fake self than you ever do this one. You’re all checked out when you’re using this personality to speak.』  
  
“Whatever, my point is. In the end Ajimu was very human don’t you think? Ajimu was afraid to face herself so she kept putting on performance after performance. While she may have loved you those feelings never reached you. She kept them all to herself and only allowed you to see what she wanted you to see. That's how most people are too, they think they can hide everything behind such lame acts-"

『Junko, you’re starting to rant. Don’t you think a dramatic rant like that needs proper timing, like a reveal of your true nature at the class trial?』  
  
“What I mean is, you’re different than most people. You never bother to hide how terrible you are. For a liar, you’re strangely honest too. You’re always just your loathsome, petty, vulgar, immoral, unstable, violent, cruel, twisted self.”

『You said I was just pretending to find an identity in being the world’s biggest loser because that was all I had.』  
  
“I said that to make you go away from me.” Junko said, her voice softening. At the end though all she could do was dull her blade, it would still be like cold metal pressing against his skin. “When I’m around you, I feel like I can be myself too.”  
  
You don't have to worry about what Ajimu felt.   
It doesn't matter.  
In the end she was boring alive, and then she became dead and she was even more boring.   
Junko did not say anything else though she stayed silent with that small confession.   
  
She saw the bones that were readily apparent in Kumagawa’s back arch, and the muscles underneath his skin pull tight. She heard him make an ugly noise where he was hiding his face away. All evidence pointed to yes, but still Junko could not feel things the way Kumagawa could. She would never be able to.  
  
“Are you sad?”  
  
Without Medaka, and Ajimu around he felt like he would lose sight of himself. He had no idea why he was still alive when they were gone. He could not even answer her question. He finally let go of her and took a step away. As he turned his back to her he covered his eyes with his hand.

He did not have a home.  
He did not have parents.  
He did not have a school.  
He did not have friends.  
He did not have dreams for the future.  
He wondered how having nothing he could still feel this feeling of loss. 

『I don’t really know, but tears won’t stop falling.』

There was no lesson to be learnt. He did not learn some moral from choosing to live. Living just meant he was lonely without Ajimu. There was something missing. He could not make sense of it, there was only pain. And clinging to this strange relationship of mutual understanding. They made each other miserable, but they were the only ones who could understand each other’s misery.  
  
“See, don’t say something stupid like there’s no hope or despair left. Lucky you, that’s despair your feeling.”  
  
Junko said, before changing the mood of the scene completely on her whim. She raised her foot and kicked him to the ground.   
  
“Put some damn pants on.”  
  
When Kumagawa put back on his black pants and black jacket, Junko smirked.  Kumagawa dug through his pocket. 

In the next moment Kumagawa’s hand was over hers. She uncurled her fingers and looked inside. He had given her a present after all. A small bunny barette. One of the eyes was missing.

『A broken rabbit, just like me.』  
  
“Why would I want something to remind me of you?"  
  
『So you never forget me.』  
  
"I'm trying as hard as I can."   
  
She said in a bratty way, but, she ended up pulling out one of her pigtails to replace the white bear with a white rabbit anyway  
  
 “You know when you let me become your only emotional support, I’ll just use it to destroy you just like I did Matsuda-kun.”

『Sure, sure, destroy me as many times as you like.』The tears still had not stopped from his eyes. 

 

🧸

  
Junko did not stay to eat with the others. Whatever happened to that scooby gang of murder mystery solving teenagers will probably be covered next chapter, though Junko did not experience division of time in chapters nor could she no matter how much meta talk she used, as this all occurred at roughly the same time for her. 

“Alright, it’s recap time! Junko’s super awesome, highly detailed, not at all boring to kill the mastermind in the first round and totally pown that noob.” Junko said, beginning that early morning meeting with a bang before things really got into swing. The were all crammed into her dorm. She hesitated for a moment as she looked at the people around her, peeps, there were only two of them, just two boys. “Hey, wait where is everybody else?”  
  
There was a pair of glasses sitting on her nose. “We need to combine our information for maximum synergy.”

『Nobody came to the meeting besides me and Zenkichi-chan because nobody likes you.』Kumagawa said, leaning back on two legs in the chair he was sitting on.  
  
Zenkichi was leaning against a wall with his arms crossed, trying to look cool. “No, it’s because nobody trusts you. I have to watch you because Medaka-chan’s not here.”  
  
“Yep, Hitoyoshi-kun’ doesn’t know what to do if Medaka-chan isn’t giving him orders, so he came to bother me instead.”  
  
“That’s not what I said at all! Do you only hear yourself when you speak!” Zenkichi angrily snapped back at her.  
  
“It’s not my fault everything I say is far more interesting than what other people have to say.” Junko looked back at her boring dorm room where seven copies of the exact same outfit because the mastermind was pushy with her clothes redesign were hanging on the wall. “Ugh, why don’t people just do what I want when I want them to, see it’s their fault I always have to resort to manipulation.”

Junko grabbed a table and pulled it in front of her. She pulled out a chess board and set it up, with eight pawns on each side, then a king, queen and night. She need symbolism to make her speech pop. “So, what’s the last thing we all remember.”

『It all started out with the Shiranui village. While we were working on getting everybody out of the Neo World Program, suddenly the Shiranui Village was destroyed and Shiranui-chan returned home.』  
  
“Ajimu told us that the Shiranui were the secret eight family to the Kurokami branch families. That they served a specific job, but as usual she was really vague as to what that job was. They were like ninjas, or bodyguards or something?” Zenkichi added. "Shiranui Hansode, my best friend forever was hired to follow around Medaka-chan and meddle in her life. There was another Shiranui agent at the school the same time as Hansode, but they were a rogue who stabbed Junko."   
  
“Well it’s obvious why she was vague. It’s meant to be a revealed later in the future, and Ajimu-san had a strict no spoilers policy.” Junko quickly observed and went back to her thinking.

『Then Ajimu-san just went and died, because she’s selfish like that. At the same time Junko killed Kaiki-kun. So all of us teamed up together under Medaka-chan’s leadership. The one who killed Ajimu-san was an impossibly strong ability user named Iihiko who could defeat Medaka-chan in one blow and easily fended off Izuru-chan. No abilities worked on him so Medaka-chan suggest we finish the work I started with Kaiki-kun and learn a style.』  
  
“Then we found out that Medaka-chan’s other father was dead all along, and the hospital was just a trap to get rid of both Medaka-chan and Hinata. Medaka-chan was made to get in a rocket ship to try to stop the moon from falling. Yasuke betrayed us too, in order to get the person pretending to be Junko to let the three of us go. At which point Junko challenged the fake Junko to a killing game where they both hid within the cast members of the killing game and attempted to kill each other within the game as a final showdown. We don't know what happened to Komaeda and Kamukura because they were separted fro us." 

『So both Medaka-chan and Matsuda-kun are dead. Junko and I made a bet over whether Medaka would live or not.』  
  
“They’re not dead!” Zenkichi snapped back at him.  
  
『The three of us went back, and went back to our normal lives but you don’t remember that part. I’ll fill you in. We lived out our school days until suddenly the riots started up again and Hope’s Peak was destroyed more or less. This time though rather than stay and fight pretty much everyone fled the sinking ship beforehand. Junko grabbed me to drag me into the old school shelter because that’s where the death game would take place, then Zenkichi-chan came on his own, I grabbed Mukuro-chan, who grabbed Makoto-chan, who grabbed Toko-chan, Byakuya-chan, and Conan-chan.』  
  
“That’s eight, but the standard killing game number is sixteen. Why is she trying to pull it off with twenty two people?” Junko wondered before muttering to herself. “She has no respect for tradition at all.”  
  
Zenkichi noticed a more important detail because he was not trying to give unasked for constructive criticism. Jeez do they ever think of the mastermind's feeling? It's generally considered good conduct when commenting on fanfiction to only give constructive criticism when asked for, especially since the author writes this for free out of her good will. "Are you serious? Half of our friends were missing there's no way we'd go back to our normal school life. Your memories are messed up."   
  
『No, my memories can't be wiped. What's the last thing you two remember?』  
  
"I remember making a bet on whether or not Medaka-chan was going to croak and watching her walk off."  
  
"I remember trying to stop Medaka-chan from walking off but then you guys knocked me out to stop me. So our memories line up perfectly, yours only continue a little more because you weren't knocked out."   
  
『I remember more than that, there's no gaps in my memory except for yesterday when I was hit over the head. Besides, if the game continued right away from when we last left off we would not have time to have the school remodeled and overgrown like it's all post apocalyptic punk aesthetic like it is now.』  
  
Junko took Zenkichi's side, much to Kumagawa's annoyance. "Zenkichi does have a point though, for one your memories don't tell us what happened to Komaeda even though he's clearly here. Nor do we know why Hinata-kun is missing."   
  
Zenkichi punched the wall, hard trying to get in between the two of them. It had been less than one and a half days and he was already sick of their bickering. He hung himself the last time he had been stuck in a building alone with the two of them. “So that’s the scenario, and that’s the antagonist.”

『Yeah, Zenkichi-chan now you just need to step up and be the hero. Then us villains won’t have to do anything.』  
  
“You’re just being lazy!”

『This is what I get for having faith in my underclassmen.』  
  
"Upperclassmen are supposed to be the reliable ones! But you're the least reliable person on earth!"  
  
Junko thought over the information they had gathered so far. Then she was done thinking about that, and started to think about one thousand other things. Before remembering she had to talk to people. “Well that is the scenario if Misogi isn’t lying to us. He did sort of keep a big fat lie from us the entire last killing game.”

『I have to tell you lots of fun lies Junko, otherwise you’ll get bored of me. The only way I can stay by your side is by being your enemy just as often as I’m your ally.』  
  
“I’m pretty sure you stole that line from me.” Zenkichi said, kicking the chair that Kumagawa was sitting on.

『It’s cooler when I say it!』Kumagawa whined back.  
  
“Ugh, I can’t believe I’m stuck with you two. Mukuro could have come at least.”

『You know your sister loved you her entire life no matter how terrible you were to her, the least you could do is support her back when she’s finally trying to be independent.』  
  
Junko grumbled, but gave no real response.

『Oh, there’s one last thing Junko. Shuichi-chan. You knew he was the traitor all along, but you thought it’d be more interesting if you kept that from us.』  
  
“Oopsie!” Junko said with a girlish giggle, as she removed her glasses. “I'm such a ditz. It's a good thing being so cuuute is my one and only personality flaw!"  
  
Zenkichi and Kumagawa both glared at her. In response, Junko grabbed her shirt and lifted it up revealing her stomach. However, something was missing. The scar from the time she was stabbed and hospitalized. “It seems like they’re trying to erase proof that Saihara-kun is the traitor. All we know for sure is that Shiranui Hansode-san from the Shiranui village was hired to follow Medaka-chan, and Saihara Shuichi-kun from the Shiranui village was hired to tail Kirigiri. Then, who are the ten other losers? Did she convert the 79th class into her own Ultimate Despairs? Did she mind wipe them to make them forget they were loyal to her? Is she planning a Hinata-kun style twist with Shuichi.”  
  
Both Zenkchi and Kumagawa just stared at each other, because it was clear Junko was just trying to figure out the evil machinations on her own at this point. Kumagawa was only a petty villain, so he could not think exactly the same way a mastermind could.  
  
All of a sudden at the door they heard a knock. Komaeda appeared in the doorway. “Even though there’s nothing I can possibly contribute to this conversation that an Ultimate like Junko hasn’t already figured out…” He began. He was so pale and so slight he looked like a skeleton in the doorframe. “It’s rude you know, starting without me.”  
  
『Nagito...chan?』  
  
"Being in the spotlight is a tiresome and challenging role, but... I thought I'd give it a shot for once... and try my luck at it." 


	5. Hang the Moon

  **You are my Reason to Live / You are my Reason to Die** **  
** **Daily Life: Chapter Two.**

Kaede returned to her dorm last night to find there were several exact copies of her uniform in the closet, as if the mastermind expected her to stay there for weeks. Rather than thank the mastermind for her consideration and for the cool character design she had been given, all she could think of was how this place was designed to be a cage.   
  
When she was younger she would stay inside to play piano day after day. Even when the other children came to ask her out to play she never joined them. Eventually they stopped asking for her. It’s not like she wanted to shun them, she just had a hard time thinking of anything else when she set her mind to it. Other people just never even factored in her mind, she could only think about what she wanted and what was directly in front of her. It was a childish habit that she never quite grew out of. She never meant any harm to others, but she never thought about how they might feel either.   
  
Eventually the day came when she found herself alone with just a piano. By the time she had realized it, she had no idea how she had gotten there. Playing the piano was her entire world, but having no one to share the music she was playing with made her sad. It was the first time she realized that despite all of her talent there was something missing inside of her. She could not live her life with talent alone. If she did, there would be no one to hear the same sounds she did, with nobody to hear it there’s nothing beautiful about music it’s just a series of oscillations of varying pressure in the air that fall into a pattern.   
  
Noticing her daughter’s increasing loneliness, her mother bought her a bird in order to have someone to play with. She kept it in a cage painted gold next to her on the bench as she played. At first she thought the bird was happy between the bars of its cage, because sometimes when she played notes on the piano the bird would sing along.   
  
The bird quickly became the only thing she had besides the piano. She fed it, carefully took care of it, and even went on walks outside holding the age by the handle at the top. Because she had something to care about besides piano, Kaede stopped forcing herself to practice until her fingers ached, she stopped skipping meals or even going entire nights without sleep because she could not stop practicing.   
  
One day though she realized as happy as the bird made her to be around, she had no idea if that bird’s feelings were the same. She was a child so she had forgotten until just that moment that birds were supposed to soar through the skies on their wings. As happy and safe as the bird was, he would never be able to spread his wings within that cage. On a childish impulse, Kaede opened the cage door to see what would happen.   
  
The bird immediately flew far away to a place in the sky she could not see. When she saw his quick escape, the idea that the bird had never chosen to be with her all along made her a little sad, and a little lonely. That day she realized she had no idea what a bird’s songs really meant. What she thought was happy singing were songs of sadness. It was the same for other people as well, no two person heard the same songs alike, and their head was probably not full of music the same way hers was. Even her habit of telling people to imagine a certain song when they’re feeling emotional in order to calm them down, Kaede realized most of the time from the funny looks that others gave her that they had no idea what she was talking about. She had no idea how to connect to their emotions otherwise though, she could only tell them what worked for her.

 

The Kaede who was in front of others all day long was energetic, and strong standing on her own two feet. It was like playing one long piano performance, she just had to hit the right notes to get others to believe in her. She did not want to look down on her fellow talented students but it seemed a lot of them were socially awkward, she was the only one with any experience performing in front of a crowd. The moment she was gone and there was no one else to observe her, all of that energy drained away.

  
“I’m tired…”   
  
As soon as she hit the bed her body immediately froze. After everything that happened, she forgot how physically and mentally exhausted she was. She thought she could achieve anything as long as she did not give up. Up until this point everything to her was like that, just like practicing piano. But maybe, playing piano was easier… because she was blessed with that talent…

 

Everything in her life before this point had worked out through hard work and effort alone. Her efforts were always rewarded. She was accomplished, she was praised, she was always able to move forward. She wondered though if she did not have talent would that be the case. Would she have the same optimistic attitude? If she were just a mediocre student, who went to a mediocre school and whose only ambition was to work full time in an office to support herself until retirement would she be as friendly to others, be as kind, be someone who believed the best in others? Would she be able to look forward to the future the way she did? She must have been living a pampered life until now, kept comfortable and safe by her own talent.   
  
No, that was not  what she felt at all, she needed to suppress her doubts, she needed to try harder. She could not succumb to her worries now, or there would be no hope at all. Fighting back was the only option, the idea of them killing one another was so terrible it made her feel like vomitting even though she had not eaten a single thing all day. She was able to swallow the feeling for now but it felt like swallowing back poison. She wondered if she could make that poisonous feeling go away with a good attitude and sweetness alone, but she had to, she had no room to doubt.

 

As she lay in bed though earlier in the day when she saw the cage appear suddenly to block out the sky the moment she walked outside, falling like lead on her hopes, she could not help but think about the bird in the cage. It lingered in her thoughts all day like an unpleasant melody singing in the back of her head, and even now she could not get rid of it. As her body succumbed to the heavy feeling of sleep, the last thing she saw was the image of that bird in the cage.   
  
The next morning, Kaede sprung out of bed as energetic as ever. It would be nice to pretend that a sleep had replenished her, and gotten rid of the heavy feeling that all of last night’s worries had left her with. She put her hands on her hips. “Phew, it was all some terrible dream… Ha, wouldn’t that be nice?”   
  
She had no time to joke around there, and nobody was even around her. As the morning announcement played in the background, she remembered they all made plans to search the academy grounds for an exit. Which meant they were skipping breakfast in the Dining Hall. _In any normal school, Mr. Monokuma would be a kind teacher._ She ignored the rest of the comedic and well written irony in the morning announcements and instead rushed out of the dorms and to the campus. She was the one who made everybody agree to meet and work together, she was the one they were all relying on, it would be a typical empty-headed Kaede move if she was late.

 

She skipped breakfast but that was fine because she was used to skipping meals anyway. On the way she ran across the paved path to see an Exisal trimming the overgrown grass outside but lacked the time to wonder what that was all about. She only stopped when she saw Tsumugi lingering away from the rest of the group who had gathered to meet in front of the school.   
  
“Morning, Shirogane.”   
  
“Umm… good morning, Akamatsu”   
  
“What’s the matter? Not feeling well?”   
  
“I woke up a bunch of times last night… and each time, I realized this all wasn’t a dream.” Tsumugi looked into the distance with an unreadable expression. Well, the only reason Kaede could not read it was probably because her face was just too boring to read. “But even so, I still woke up this morning hoping it was a dream  and in the end it still wasn’t.”   
  
It’s foolish for readers to trust authors, because authors are liars. I guarantee you there will be a twist at the end of this story, there always is a last act twist in these kinds of stories. Unless there isn’t and that guarantee is just a lie. Either way, if there were a twist I would never settle for a twist as lame as its all a dream. It’s impossible to get invested in a story where none of the events really happened, they were all fiction as Kumagawa might say.   
  
“Yeah, same here. But in the end we need to fight against this reality and…” As Komaeda might say, the only way for a character to develop is to face the obstacles in front of them. In the end a story has to progress whether the characters want it to or not.  Tsumugi’s listless look suddenly disappeared, she probably thought she was being impossible to understand, or she was boring the other person she spoke with. “Oh, sorry for the weird conversation so early in the morning. I bet everyone’s waiting.”

 

Kaede stopped for a moment thinking of what Tsumugi had said. She had struck a chord within the girl, though Kaede doubted it was on purpose, Tsumugi seemed too spacy to understand other people that well.  The only way she would get back to the world she wanted was to fight for it. Just like playing piano. She repeated over and over again to herself to silence her doubts.  
  
When Kaede finally made it there, she ordered everybody to split up and search for clues. Though she did not use those exact words. They knew Junko would not show up, apparently Kumagawa and Zenkichi also left to do their own thing. Makoto also explained that his sister was too scared to leave her room right now, but that still left all of them accounted for and most of them cooperating.

 

As they split apart into groups she heard Korekiyo whisper to himself.  “Looks like most of us are here… Keehe… I’m glad. It looks like there was no victims.”   
  
“But of course!” Keebo said standing next to him, genuinely offended so much so he walked away. The actual human being was acting less human than the robot right now.   
  
Kaede almost wanted to deck him for making that observation. None of them were going to kill each other, she would say it again and again until it became true. That was her hope believing more than anything else.   
  
Just as she was about to follow after one of the groups searching behind the school, she noticed two boys were lingering behind everyone else, Shuichi and Rantaro. Shuichi probably just wanted to search alone because being around others made him nervous, but Kaede made a mental note to grab Shuichi by the arm and drag him into searching with her if he tried to sneak away on his own. Rantaro she had no idea why he was lingering around her, she was no good at reading people beyond the loud characters they displayed on the surface, but Rantaro especially was someone she could not get a read on.   
  
“Kaede, that was pretty cool back there.”   
  
Kaede did not think she had done anything special, either today or yesterday, just said what needed to be said. She thought it was obvious the only way to get out was for all of them to work together. It was only natural to desire the happiest ending right. What was unnatural, what was repugnant was wanting to turn on each other, wanting to kill each other. She could not even imagine what kind of horrible person would think it okay to kill another human being even if it was a matter of survival. There always had to be another way. You had to fight for the best way until the very end.   
  
Oh, wait she was zoning out thinking about ideals again. She focused back in on the conversation. Rantaro looked too sleepy to notice, the closed eyed open mouthed smile he gave her was like that of a lazy cat yawning. “Huh? What was?”   
  
“The way you changed the mood completely. Seems like everyone looks up to me.”   
  
Kaede looked to the side, thinking he must be talking about somebody else rather than herself. “L-looks up to me? C’mon, that’s ridiculous. I… I just spoke from the heart, is all.”   
  
“So, it comes naturally to you, then. That’s even more cool.” Ranataro’s lazy eyes suddenly darkened, and he gave her a dead looking stare. Rantaro’s appearance reminded her of the earth, his dirty and messy look, his grassy toned hair, but at this moment Kaede remembered dirt was what people buried corpses in.   
  
“What…?” She asked, hesitant about his sudden change of tune.   
  
“I was just thinking, what you said back there would have pissed off whoever’s running this. They definitely don’t want us holding hands, working together. They’re going to come for you, Akamatsu. With everything they’ve got. I’m a little worried for you. You’re just so straightforward.”   
  
“Then, if you’re worried about me you should just stay around me…” She did not care if holding hands made her a bigger target, the only thing she knew how to do at times like this was reach out her hand and clasp another’s. However, by the time she said that, Rantaro had already shown her his back and walked off. It seemed like he did not want to get along with others when he could remain on the fringe of the group. Kaede sighed. “And… away he goes. That guy could really stand to be less cryptic.”   
  
Shuichi finally spoke up. Oh, he had been watching her the entire time without her noticing. She was not used to that. She only thought people paid attention to her when she was putting on a performance. When she was not singing or dancing in front of others (metaphorically of course) she really was no different from everybody else, there was nothing about her that stood out. That boy’s eyes were on her though, even when she was surrounded by others, like she was the only thnig in the room. “Ah, perhaps it’s a warning? That’s what I think, anyway… Being strong-willed could get you into a lot of trouble around here.”   
  
Kaede tried to hide her fear by gripping the side of her arm hard enough to wrinkle her shirt. She thought she got away with it, until she noticed Shuichi suddenly backpedaling. That boy was good at picking up what others were feeling, perhaps too good.   
  
“Ah, s-sorry… I didn’t mean to sound so negative at a time like this.”   
  
“It’s fine. You only said that because you’re worried, aren’t you?” She saw the good intentions in Shuichi’s actions, and calmed herself letting go of her arm.   


“Yeah… Rantaro is a mystery. He forgot his Ultimate Talent as well…Is that something you can really forget?”  
  
“Well, there’s no use thinking about it right now. We need to look all around the school just like yesterday.”   
  
“Ah, you’re right…”   
  
Without even thinking about it, she had already planned to spend the entire day at Shuichi’s side like she did before. Shuichi accepted it easily too, following a step behind her when she turned to walk away. With a smile she turned on her heel to walk backwards and face him for a moment as she teased. “If you’re worried about me then you should keep watching me.”

 

“I am!” The boy said far too quickly, he nervously fumbled with the next words out of his mouth. “I-I mean… I am watching you, always.”   
  
“Stalker.”   
  
“W-what?” Shuichi clutched his chest like his heart might explode.   
  
“Don’t private eyes get paid to follow people around? Aren’t all detectives like professional stalker?”   
  
“I-I’m not even a real detective!”   
  
Kaede giggled. “I’m just kidding, Saihara-kun. I’m supposed to be the naive one, but you’re way too easy to mess with.”   
  
Shuichi was too distracted by the sight of her carefree smile and the musical sounds of her laughter, he could not even be angry.   
  
🧸

 

After the two of them spent the entire day walking around the whole school, time seemed to fly, even though they were searching for an exit from a life or death game that they needed to feel from. The heaviness Kaede felt was lifted just a bit. Yes, this was why she needed the others around her, because she knew she was nothing special on her own.   
  
Suddenly in the middle of their searching, the strong but silent looking girl Ikusaba Mukuro got their attention. Anybody would assume that she was a dangerous type from how distant she looked, and how emotionless her face was, but Kaede thought the best of her and assumed she was just shy.   
  
“We found a manhole. Makoto tripped over it and hurt his ankle.” Mukuro said, before she returned to the boy in the corner. She had already set his wound. She was the Ultimate Solider, which was a scary sounding talent but that probably also meant she had field medic training.   
  
When they were all gathered, Rantaro was the first one to speak up. “Well, well, where is this manhole?”   


“Jeez that manhole looks heavy can we even lift it.” Kazuichi complained, looking at his skinny body.   
  
“Leave it to me!” Keebo said, stepping up and wrapping his mechanical fingers around the edges. “Ggh…! Grrrrrrrrrgh…!” She could hear his inner workings whine with the effort but it did not move. “How embarrassing. It won’t even budge.”   
  
“You’re not strong enough to move it? Are you sure you don’t need a tune up man?” Kazuichi said.   
  
“Oh, don’t worry. My physical strength is approximate to that of a strong senior citizen.”   
  
“That’s fucking pathetic!” Miu joined in.   
  
“Th-the professor did not want a repeat of the tragedy that occured during the trial production.” Keebo’s antennae wavered back and forth nervously as he found himself once again being bullied by the gears for brains duo.   
  
“Umm… Now I’m just plain curious about what happened during that trial.” Tsumugi said, mostly to herself.   
  
“That’s it, let me do it.  I’ll show you how the man who passed the astronaut’s physical fitness trial all on his own does it.” Kaito said, quite the braggadocio as usual. He approached the cover only to have his face turn red with all of the effort of lifting it, and fall backwards completely exhausted having had as much success as Keebo. “Listen, there’s no gravity in space so I didn’t need to do hardcore strength training, everything’s weightless there. The rockets do all of the heavy lifting to get out of earth’s gravity.” Kaito said already making excuses that nobody else was listening to.   
  
Mukuro stopped fussing over Makoto’s ankle, and walked over to the lid. While it still took a great deal of effort because she was not superhumanly strong like Sakura, and her body was not even developed to have brute strength as a specialty she managed to lift the lid and set is aside. As Mukuro’s face did not change the whole time it looked like she had done it effortlessly. In reality her muscles were screaming at her for pushing herself like she always did, she just ignored them.   
  
Kaito was still on the ground, and he yelled between exhausted pants. “I-I loosened it for you.”   
  
“Oh, you did. Thank you.” Mukuro’s dry tone sounded like sarcasm but she was being one hundred percent sincere.

  
“Kehehehehe. What strength you have, you could do obtain anything you want with that strength. People must break so easily in your hands.” Korekiyo commented from the background, snickering to himself as usual.   
  
“I d-don’t want to do that. I’m not that strong either, real strong people are like Makoto. I’m only good for brute strength.” Mukuro said, walking away shyly back to Makoto.   
  
The new children they had met this day had no idea what was so special about Makoto, other than he seemed like a chill guy though. The one who had taken his spotlight as the posterboy for hope was already Kaede.

  
“Gosh, you don’t need to take yourself so seriously. You’ve already proven yourself more reliable than some bean counting robot!” Kokichi yelled after her, trying to lighten the mood, or perhaps he just wanted to bully Keebo.   
  
Keebo looked stunned. “Are you talking about me? Because I can count many things, not just beans.” He had totally misinterpreted the insult.   


While everyone else was talking, Kaede looked down at the open manhole and saw a ladder descending down into darkness.   
  
“That place looks creepy? Are we really going down there?” Tsumugi said, solidifying herself as a background character lacking any bold qualities.   
  
“I’m sure it’s fine. At the very least, we definitely won’t die down there.” Kaito stood up picking himself up as he did.   
  
“Awfully quiet, Where are is Monokuma and the Monokubs?” Rantaro was the only one to notice their suspicious absence.   


“I was certain they would show up at some point and crush us like rotten gnats…” Korekiyo said, not looking too bothered by the idea of being crushed.   
  
Fukawa standing next to Byakuya as always finally spoke up. “Maybe Enoshima has them distracted! Pretty girls are always so attention hungry like that!”

 

“Then, let’s hurry up before they show up to mess with us. Playing with guys like that is no fun.” Kokichi said as he rushed everybody along.   
  
When they got to the bottom, they saw a room covered in piping with steal hooks from the ceiling looking like an access tunnel that had been carved from the concretes.

  
“Yoodelaaayheeo hoo!” Kokichi cried right waay hoping to hear his voice echo. “Oh it echoes well, so exciting. I want to play hide and see in a place like this. I’m a master of hide and seek. As the leader of an evil organization I’m always on the run from the law. I became an expert at hiding. Actually, that’s a lie.”   
  
“I didn’t even ask.” Maki replied, next to him. Maki looked annoyed at his antics and spoke in a much quieter voice. “What is this place?”

  
“Looks like the kind of tunnels that a factory would use for underground transportation,” said bolts for brains, I mean Kazuichi.   
  
“ANd this is all that’s left of ‘em.” Kaito agreed.

  
As usual though it was Rantaro who first took notice. “Hey, look at this.” He pointed to an obvious wooden sign that had been stuck in the ground. “What a considerate sign… Apparently, the end of the tunnel is the exit.”   
  
Kazuichi, the natural straight man of the group got nervous. “Ummm… isn’t it a little weird that they went and wrote it out on a sign? Doesn’t that seem a little trappish to you? It’s like in the horror movies when the monster pops out of the most obvious place, and you yell at the tv screen but the character never listens to you. Yeah, we should listen right now maybe.”   
  
“Hey, quit sweating it so much.” Miu said, rudely grabbing his head and messing up his pink hair further. “Your natural scent is bad enough as it is, greasemonkey.”   
  
“I-I”m not scared!” He was scared. “And I smell just fine!” He did not.

  
“Well then, go on ahead. No point in standing here.” Rantaro shrugged causally.   
  
“That’s uh…” Shuichi began to worry as usual.   
  
Kaede decided to cut him off. She was starting to get a supernatural sense for when Shuichi was going to worry about something. Maybe that kind of thing would be helpful in the future. “There’s no need to worry! It looks a bit dangerous, but we’re all Ultimates here! As long as we work together, everything will work out just fine!”   
  
“Y-yeah… You’re right.”   
  
“That’s exactly what I was gonna say!” Kaito said, looking a little bit like he was trying to steal the credit again. “We’re really on the same wavelength, Akamatsu! Gimme a hug!” Or perhaps he was just happy somebody followed the same kind of poorly thought out shonen logic he did.

  
“Um… no.” Kaede said folding her arms behind her back. She assumed it was just Kaito getting over excited again, not thinking about it too much. The idea that anybody might want to hug her just never occurred to her. She liked beautiful people, and beautiful music, but she mosty just appreciated them, gazed at them from afar.

  
Behind her, Kokichi and Keebo were bickering again. She ignored them and turned to Shuichi first before anyone else. Shuichi seemed to notice the moment she was looking at him and spoe up. “Ah, if we all… work together… it’ll be okay. I’m sure of it.” Shuichi repeated what she had just said.   
  
Knowing for sure that at least one person believed in her words made her feel a little softer, at least to him she was more than just talk.   
  
Kokichi called out from his bickering with Keebo. “Hey, you two, quit flirting? Can’t you read the air?”   
  
“Huh? I don’t get it. How did that look like flirting?” Kaede said, as clear as day not even flustered by the accusation. In these situations yelling in denial that you weren’t flirting was a pretty clear indication that you were in fact flirting, but Kaede’s oblvious response was hard to read.   
  
Shuichi on the other hand was gripping his chest again. He was so sickly looking already, Kaede began to wonder if he had heart problems.   
  
“You guys are so annoying.” Maki groaned to herself.   


Kokichi went back to bickering with Keebo.   
  
“It looks quite dusty in there. Prolonged exposure to this polluted air may be detrimental to one’s health.”   
  
“Whaaaaat? You don’t even breathe though, you know ‘cuz you’re not technically alive.”

  
Kiibo suddenly felt defensive. “While it’s true that I do not breathe, I also do not like polluted air any more than you do.”   
  
“I see, you have a function for sensing poisonous gasses! Okay then, leader the way.”   
  
“N-no, I don’t have that function! Do I look like a canary to you?”

  
“Whaaaat, you don’t? Then you’re even more useless than a canary.”   
  
“Ggh!”

  
Kaede took the lead as she heard the others bicker in the background still. She took the lead because she knew somebody needed to take the first step, so she would force herself to do it. There would be an exit at the end of the tunnel, and they would all make it out of here. There was a happy ending if you worked for it. She clung fiercely to that belief as she stepped into the tunnel.   
  
The moment that Kaede took the first step forward, they all followed her. Even Makoto who had sprained his ankle was carried on Mukuro’s back as she held up the end of the line. The only one who did not go, was the one who never considered himself an Ultimate in the first place.   
  
Komaeda Nagito had been silently observing the others from the edge of the crowd the entire time. In a rare moment of foresight, or perhaps just fear of himself, he thought if he opened his mouth he might ruin the unity that everybody else was showing right now. He bit his tongue to keep himself quiet, until he tasted blood.   
  
Perhaps that was not blood however, but bitterness when he saw Kaede tell them they were All Ultimates and they could use all their talents together to escape this situation. When she said it, everyone believed in her, instead of laughing it off. However, he reminded himself immediately that of course they would listen to Kaede, for one she was a real Ultimate, not a faker with a useless talent like luck. It was only natural to prefer the real deal over what amounted to a hollow imitation. He also reminded himself that even though he was convinced he was saying that they all needed to work together, maybe he was saying something else entirely without even realizing it. Sometimes he was convinced he said one thing, and other people heard it a different way. At that time he could only doubt himself. He trusted that they were seeing things more clearly than he was, after all.

 

His self awareness was only just passable at the best of times, and the worst of times. That is to say, with terrible timing he sometimes became aware of how awful he was, like the fog in his head suddenly cleared. At this moment for instance, he realized he was being petty but there was nothing much he could do about it. He imagined his ability to perceive things would only get worse and worse, and after a time the glasses he was wearing around his eyes would stop helping. He felt a headache, and a sharp piercing pain behind his eye and covered up one of his eyes with a hand. He was glad that no one else was around to see that. It occured to him as he stared at the empty tunnel that if that really was the escape route, they might all disappear to the outside world. Even so he could not bring himself to follow them, because his luck might sabotage their attempt.   
  
Oh right, they had to come back for sure. Not for him of course, he never expected anyone to risk anything to try to save a lost cause like him. Naegi had left his little sister hiding in his dorm rooms. Well, her cowardice was to be expected after all, she was not an ultimate.

 

Komaeda stared at the empty mouth of the tunnel. He felt a bit lonely, because he could not be a part of the struggle of ultimate talents with everybody else. In the past he would have thought this feeling was one of disappointment, because he would not get to watch the battle of hopes up close. Now though, he did not think about watching fireworks or anything like that, he was just a little lonely, because he knew he was practically useless to the people struggling in the tunnel.

 

🧸

 

Komaeda’s eyes widened in slight alarm when not too long after they all disappeared inside the tunnel, the tunnel spit them back out hard. Kaede in particular flew across the room and landed at his feet.   
  
He thought for sure if he did not follow them they would not get hurt. Perhaps it did not matter if he was there or not, his presence changed nothing about the end result. He had no idea what to do, so he leaned down hearing his body creak as he did so. He really did sound like the rusted up tin man when he was moving, he must look more inhuman than Keebo. He poked Kaede awkwardly in the cheek.   
  
“Uh… What?”

  
“You’re awake? You’re not hurt are you? Did something unlucky happen? Did you trip on your shoelace? A meteorite striking you from nowhere? A banana peel that wasn’t supposed to be down there.”   
  
Komaeda could only gather he had said something odd from the weird look Kaede shot him. “I-I’m fine, but wht about everyone else?”   
  
The others were all sitting on the ground slowly recovering as well. Everyone sat in stunned silence. A sobering sadness filled the air.   
  
Komaeda did not quite understand the reality in front of him. It was different from what he had witnessed on the island, everyone was trying to live up to their titles as ultimates and struggle against despair directly together. In fact, if it were not for his bitterness he might have gotten pulled into Kaede’s reverie too. That was how difficult a person he was though, even when exactly what he wanted at the bottom of his heart to witness happened before his eyes, everybody coming together for the sake of hope under the banner of a particularly talented Ultimate who only ever seemed to think of others, Komaeda still found some way to be disatisfied.   
  
“Geez, this is quite the pity party you sad sacks are throwing for yourselves.”   
  
“Monokuma?”   
  
“Wow, you all look exhausted. POor things I feel sorry for you.”   
  
Now the bears were here to taunt them. There was no way this could get any worse, Komaeda thought, ignoring the advice of his dear senpai Kumagawa who told him things always could and would get worse.   


“Tch… So you guys crawled out of your holes? I guess you guys finally noticed what we were up to.” Kaito said, trying to look tough still even at the point of exhaustion. At least he failed in style, Komaeda wanted to give him credit for that.   
  
“Huh? I’ve known for awhile that you guys would botch whatever escape plan you had.” Monokuma tilted his head to the side, confused.   
  
Komaeda wanted to reject someone like Enoshima with everything he had, but he could not help but sympathize with her in this one regard. Somehow, Monokuma was even more annoying when Junko was not the one controlling him.   
  
“W-what?” Kaede said in shock.   
  
“I told you guys this was a trap!” Kazuichi shouted.   
  
“No, there is an exit! Keep going! There’s nothing you ultimates can’t accomplish if you work together. Puhuhu, if at first you don’t succeed try, try again. Try as many times as you wait until you accept reality.”   
  
Komaeda bit down hard on his tongue again. It was a good thing he was used to the taste of blood, back on the island he coughed it up all the time but nobody ever seemed to notice. If his beliefs coming out of Kaede’s mouth made him slightly bitter, than it being parroted mockingly by Monokuma made him want to scream something back.   
  
He knew though if he opened his mouth, he would not sound inspiring like Kaede. He would sound deranged just like Monokuma did, and just make everyone’s mood worst. He had learned enough about himself in that last killing game to conclude that at least.   


  
“That’s probably why they let us try. They want us to see that underground passage so we will believe escape is impossible.” Togami analyzed in a cold voice.   
  
Rantaro seemed to understand too, like he always seemed in the know. “Instead of blocking off every exit completely, they leave that little bit of hope… They want us to be desperate to go home. Corner us mentally.”   
  
“That’s just rotten…” Tsumugi said in a weak voice, joining in with the crowd.   
  
A small, weak hope, like a tiny ray of light at the end of the tunnel.  Such a tactic never should have worked, as long as there was hope then Ultimates could make that hope into a miracle. That’s what Koameda’s long held beliefs taught him. They were going to regret leaving them this hope, because the Ultimates would show them what hope was capable of.   
  
That was what he wanted to think, but Komaeda felt a sliver of doubt. It was in his nature to doubt himself. He could not comprehend hope causing people pain. Say there was someone who held out hope over and over again, no matter how broken they became, they would keep crawling forward as long as that light existed at the end of the tunnel. At some point they would probably start to associate that pain with hope, as it was what led them to keep hurting themselves trying to walk forward. The would think it was kinder if they just curled up away from the world, and stopped moving at all until death set it. It would be less painful at least. However, if hope was also the only thing keeping them alive at this point, they would hate it while at the same time needing it, and that conflict would only drive them further mad… but, Komaeda stopped thinking about that right there. Too much self awareness, he did not want to look too hard at himsef.   
  
He was an ugly boy after all, teehee.   
  
“Yeah, but we can’t just give up…”   
  
Despite all the complicated thoughts running through his head, and his sense of foreboding for exactly what kind of trap they were laying with hope’s slow poison. (No, hope can never be poisonous, shut up). Komaeda said nothing in the end. It was Kaede who got to her feet, and gritted her teeth like a determined hero.   
  
“Right, you guys? I mean we’ve only failed once you know. We can’t give up this early, right?”   
  
“Getting out of here is impossible. I should just start my next novel on life in the killing game, this is already too much stress.” Fukawa said, instantly reverting to gloomy pessimism.   
  
“No, it’s not! It may take one more try, or a lot more tries, but it’s not impossible. Forget about Monkuma, it doesn’t matter what he says to us. I don’t wanna lose to him! I don’t wanna lose any of you either! I refuse to lose to someone who would do these terrible things to us!”

 

If she were the main character in Junko’s killing game, Junko would have broken the rules and framed her for a murder in the first round, probably with the corpse of her sister. Komaeda thought he was terrible for thinking of something like that. He should have been reached by such a radiant hope.   
  
“Akamatsu-ksan…” Shuichi looked so cold that he was constantly shivering. In that moment, he repeated her name as if that was enough to warm him.

 

“So let’s all work hard to escape this place together! And once we get out of here and make it to the outside world! Why don’t we all stay friends?”  
  
Somebody like Kaede might even be able to become friends with a person like him, Komaeda thought. That was why, she did not even seem real to him, like a phantasmal trick of the light. Shuichi too, who was so captivated by that illusion, was probably only seeing what he wanted to see.   
  
“F-friends?” Toko said, shocked at hearing the word. Kaede was probably just average looking enough with her chubby body, and unfashionable looking sweatervest that Toko did not feel threatened.   
  
“Yeah…! After going through an experience like this, I think we’d all be the best of friends. I mean it’s not every day you get to meet Ultiamtes, so what do you say.”   
  
That was what Komaeda wanted on the island too. It was so strange, being confronted with the embodiment of his beliefs, what he had always thought he had wanted, and then being so hesitant. Perhaps he just thought he did not deserve to be a part of the group. There were lots of reasons for this strange feeling of suspicion, he was fickle and unreliable after all.   
  
“THat’s not bad.”   
  
“THat’s a great idea.” Tsumugi said joining in with the crowd. Another chorus of voices joined together.   
  
Kaito slammed his fists together. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter if Monokuma says it’s impossible! We’ll show him what we can do!”   
  
“Yeah! You’re right! Everyone!”

  


‘Aaah, humanity is truly wonderful! The way you confront adversity is wonderful!” Korekiyo said, hugging onto his own body. Komaeda wondered if that was what he looked like to other people in this moment. No, that was also too much self awareness, he felt a stabbing of pain.   
  
He watched everyone’s bonds stronger than ever, step into the tunnel once more. He wanted to stop thinking, but no matter how much he tried the thoughts kept swirling in his head causing his eyes to cloud up as well. He wondered why… it felt like… it was wrong to hope.   
  
Kaede was spat out by the tunnel again. Komaeda watched her entire body shake in pain. He wanted to beg her to stop right then, because he had always been such a sensitive boy when others were in pain.   
  
“Th-this time! This time… We’ll reach the exit.”     
  
She got back up, and those words carried her.   
This time.   
This time.   
This time.   
This time.   
She repeated them to the point of madness.

Komaeda wanted to scream at her to stop, but that would be betraying hope.   
It was no good.   
They refused to surrender, even when it was no good.   
But, they just kept failing after that point.   
It was like each retry, they loaded up characters with weaker stats.   
They kept saying this time.   
But in the end they just couldn’t do it.   
As long as they never gave up hope they should have been able to escape, but it made no difference in the end.   
Komaeda wondered if everyone listened to him on the island, if they all worked together like this, would it have been the exact same result. He wondered if he was telling them to hurt themselves like this when they put faith in hope.   
No wonder everyone looked at him like he was mad.   
  
“I can’t… go on…” Tsumugi said, her voice weak and insignificant.   
  
“Wait, we can’t give up. This time we’ll-”   
  
This time, everybody looked in pain when they heard those words. The words that were encouraging them were only hurting them.   
  
Komaeda wanted to speak up, but a small voice belonging to Kokichi beat him to it. “Knock it off, already…”

 

“Huh?”  
  
Kokchi kept one eye closed, as just moving made him wince in pain. His usually comedic voice had dried out, his throat was hoarse, he sounded like quite the sad clown. It seemed pagliacci had gotten sick again. “You’re free to keep trying on your own, but forcing us to join you is basically torture.”   
  
_Hope is torture._   
  
“T-torture?” Kaede stuttered just like Komaeda did mentally.   
  
“You know what really hurts? Being denied the right to give up in an impossible situation. You won’t let us give up, and no matter what you say, you have the moral high ground. That doesn’t sound like torture to you. When you say we can’t give up, you’re not inspiring us, you’re strong arming us!“   
  
Kaede was just trying to force herself to believe.   
She probably did suspect what he was saying was true.   
She probably realized it herself and that’s what made her push harder.   
She saw the tears drip down Kokichi’s face.   
Exhaustion, disappointment, it was a well worn mask.

She probably believed he was genuinely crying too.   
A shadow of a smile appeared on Komaeda’s lips, because he was terrible.   
  
“I-I didn’t mean it like that!”   
  
“Hey, stop being so selfish! Just because you’re cute doesn’t mean you can have whatever you want, the world belongs to us ugly people too!” Toko said, totally not projecting at all.   
  
“I-I’m not being selfish. The others feel the same way, too.”   
  
“What?” Kaede recoiled in utter disbelief, at her blindness towards those around her. “E-everyone…?”   
  
“My spirit is nearly broken. The hardship gnaws at me.” Korekiyo said dramatically.   
  
“Give such a circumstance the most logical course of action would be to give up.” Keebo pretended that he had made any calculations on this, but he was actually quite bad at math.   
  
“Yeah, I feel like Hisashi Mitsui in the second half of a basketball game.” Tsumugi made a reference only Junko would get.

  
“I knew this was impossible from the start.” Maki said cynically.

  
Only Kaito was still on her side. “You guys! Are you really okay with not getting out of this place?” His bravado really was impressive. He would probably still be bragging with his dying breath.   


“We shouldn’t have to push ourselves… Let’s just find another way out okay.” Kokichi teasingly traced the contours of his lips like he was pulling a zipper.   
  
“You mean the killing game don’t you?” Rantaro asked, for an easygoing looking guy, he got suspicious fast.   
  
“OH, so you’re gonna interpret it like that, huh?” Kokichi just looked amused.   
  
“S-stop it guys! We shouldn’t be fighting, or suspicious of each other.” Shuichi spoke up, but he once again just sounded like he was parroting Kaede’s ideals.   
  
Togami adjusted his glasses. “Leave it to the rabble to fall apart so quickly. This is why you should only be led by your betters.”   
  
“I’m sorry… This is my fault. I’m so sorry.” Komaeda watched the color drain out of her skin. She had been a shining emblem of hope a moment ago, and now she looked like a scared little girl. He almost made the revelation that they might have all been just that. Scared children. He stopped himself just before though, because he did not think he deserved to be something vulernable or innocent like a scared child. Someone born distorted like he was had never once been innocent.   
  
“No, Kaede…” Shuichi made a weak attempt, but he could not say the things she could. He could not be strong in the ways she was.   


“I-idiot! What’re you apologizing for! It’s not your fault at all!” Kaito kept trying too, but sweat was running down his face and he looked like he was about to collapse. “I can go one more time, I know it, I”ll show you all for Akamatsu’s sake.” All Kaito accomplished was falling forward and hitting the floor face first.   
  
“Really? I think it’s Kaede’s fault.” Maki said, watching him fall in front of her.   
  
Komaeda looking at that scared little girl, finally spoke up. “You really think you’re smarter than everybody else, don’t you Oma-kun?”   
  
“What are you talking about? Little old me? I’m just a silly little kid-”   
  
“You shouldn’t brush off other people’s compliments so easily. If you do you’ll hurt the feelings of someone like me whose never once been praised in his life. I was praising your performance,” Komaeda said, clapping his hands together with growing excitement. “After all, you turned everybody against Kaede so easily with a few words. If you’re that good at controlling people maybe you should have been the leader instead of her.”   
  
“But, I only lead the forces of evil. You good, kind, children are all yucky to me.”   
  
“That’s exactly it. You have the talent to know better than everyone here, but you didn’t step up to lead. In that case what gives you the right to bitch and moan? If you really cared about the others, you would have spoken up a long time ago. I’m sure you realized it was pointless from the beginning. You didn’t tell anybody though. And not for a good reason either.”   
  
“Of course it wasn’t for a good reason. It was for a bad one, I’m bad! I’m bullying a girl in front of everybody aren’t I? That’s why you’re speaking up to defend her, from mean old Kokichi.”   
  
He was not defending Kaede.   
He was only defending himself, his own belief in hope, because he was terrible.   
  
“Don’t act like it has some grand hidden meaning. You just don’t trust them, that’s all. That’s why you’re using such an underhanded trick. You’re scared aren’t you? You’re scared to do what Akamatsu-san does, so you’re just uniting them passive aggressively by making Akamatsu-san into the scapegoat and yourself into the naysayer. I can’t believe it, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” Komaeda gripped the sides of his face. He felt like cracks were appearing, but only he could see them. His brain was heating up, it oozed, it was gonna melt and drain out of his ears. “I can’t believe someone with talent like you is so transparent! AN UNWORTHY SCRAP OF NOTHING LIKE ME FIGURED OUT WHAT YOU WERE PULLING! HOW CAN SOMEONE LIKE ME WITH NO SCRAP OF TALENT UNDERSTAND HOW YOU’RE THINKING!?”

 

Komaeda’s voice was hoarse.  
Oh, he was screaming.   
He only now realized.   
  
Kokichi frowned. “No wonder nobody likes playing games with you.”   
  
Komaeda’s voice wisped. “Ah, did I say too much?”

  
“Maybe you need a rest. Thinking about truth and lies can be fun, but if you think about it too much you’ll go bad. Well, nothing we can do but suck it up! So what’s our plan for tomorrow? Since the dining hall opens at 8 a. M, how about we meet there at that time?”   
  


As soon as he said that, Kokichi ran away as fast as he could. Komaeda got the sense that he had scared him away, but he thought there was no way he could possibly scare someone who possessed talent.   
  
Everybody else looked at him strangely, like Kokichi and Komaeda were speaking in a language nobody else understood. Kaede still looked like she wanted to cry, but she looked with wide open eyes at Komaeda who had spoken up for her in front of everybody. That expression glowed with hope.   
  
Komaeda.   
Could not stand to be looked at with such eyes.   
He saw his reflection in them and ran away.

He ran back to where Junko was. He should have known from the start, he loved hope more than anything else but never once had he been an ally of hope. That time at Hope’s Peak with Junko, that time he met Kamukura, that time he fell to despair, that time he betrayed Kumagawa, all of those times he had only ever been an obstacle to hope.   
  
He ran away from them, leaving Kaito, Shuichi and Kaede behind. He had no idea what happened after that point, only that he did not belong there. He would have to survive all on his own, that was what he decided.

 

🧸  
  
Komaeda finished recounting his tale of the morning’s exploits to Junko, Zenkichi and Kumagawa. The hope of so many united Ultimates, apparently dissipated after only a few hours.

  
When he told Junko this, she gave him an I told you so expression that Komaeda found very annoying. Junko interrogated him about his memories, and he recounted a story that matched theirs up until the point they were separated in the abandoned hospital.   
  
He wanted to continue but he hesitated for a moment. Even though Hinata had betrayed him, even though it felt like nothing had changed from the last time Hinata strangled him while looking deep in his eyes just before abandoning him, he could not bring himself to tell the others of Hinata’s betrayal.   
  
Kumagawa would accept that betrayal no matter what, he would just smile and say betrayal is how a minus shows affection.   
Zenkichi would say that they needed to rescue Hinata from Tsumugi, and would not blame him at all for being tricked by her.   
Junko would say something something despair, Komaeda did not really care.   
  


Yet, even though he had a sense that none of them would hate Hinata he could not bring himself to tell them. He wondered why. Perhaps he was afraid that he would hate Hinata if he admitted it out loud. When he kept it quietly to himself it seemed less real. Besides, he was a terrible, spiteful person, who could not forgive the world for what it had done to him. He probably would hate Hinata. He would hate him. He would blame him. He would want to be cruel to Hinata just like Hinata was cruel to him. He was awful like that.   
  
So, that too he kept to himself. He dragged his fingers along his face and reset his expression. “I don’t know what happened to Hinata-kun. When I woke up, he was already gone.” He hoped that was a believable lie, there were times that he was a good liar, and there were times where was not. It was just a roll of the dice with him, just like everything was with him.   
  
No, he was not protecting Hinata.   
He was not the kind of person who could protect others, or do something for the sake of others.   
He was just selfish, protecting his own fragile feelings.   
  
Junko just nodded along. Whether she believed him or not, she seemed too distracted by something else to pay much attention to him. Haughty bitch. Not that Komaeda thought he was someone worthy of being paid attention to.

  
“Let’s wait until lights out and go investigate it.” Junko said kissing her red nail in a coquettieish expression.

 

『B-but Nagito-chan just said it was impossible. In shonen manga the heroes are supposed to show determination, not the villains, we’re supposed to be lazy and selfish.』

 

“If it’s me, then it’ll work out I’m sure. They were probably just doing it wrong.”

 

『Do you have a plan?』

  
“No, I’ll just figure it out when I get there. Last time I checked I was still better than everyone.”

 

『Can you lend some of your confidence to me?』  
  
“No, it’s mine!”

  
“Jeez, even I don’t think everything will work out if I try it.” Zenkichi said, watching Junko’s antics and just feeling exhausted by this point.   


『That’s a lie, Zenkichi-chan. You never give up, you’re the ultimate try-hard.』

  
“I’m really just a normal dude! I don’t have superhuman determination or anything.”

 

『If normal people were actually like you, the world would be a far less miserable place.』  
  
Komaeda watched the atmosphere between the three of them. He was a loner stuck between two extremes, so more of the usual really. He had no place in either Kaede’s group, or even this small fraction. He watched the window until it became dark enough that no one would see them.   
  
Then he led them to the area behind the school where they had found the manhole cover. It had been replaced while he was gone. Zenkichi easily went to it, and with all of his hard effort picked it up just enough to remove it, make it a few steps away and then drop it. If Kaito saw him do that, he would probably be jealous Komaeda thought. Then he thought that he had no right to pretend like he understood Kaito so he was probably wrong.

  
After they climbed down.

 

Junko casually pointed a red fingernail at both boys, switching between the two. “Eenie, meenie, minie, Zenkichi! You get to be my horsey!”   
  
“What?” Zenkichi said, staggering back.   
  
“Your Medaka-chan’s whipping boy. You’re the one whose the best at following orders. So here’s how this is going to go, you’ll carry me and the moment I tell you to do something, you do it without question.”

  
“Gh… I’m doing this to get to the outside world and see Medaka-chan again. I’m not doing this for you.”

 

『What about me?』Picking Zenkichi over him was obviously going to make Kumagawa jealous. Even Komaeda who was oblivious to the feelings of others could tell Kumagawa’s natural aura of gloom tripled from the unpleasant emotions that welled up in him.   
  
“Well, useless children like you get abandoned when they fall behind, right Misogi? I guess I’m bored with you! Goodbye!”   
  
Junko said, as she jumped onto Zenkichi’s back. Zenkichi struggled to carry her for a moment, and then shot an apologetic look at Kumagawa. Regardless of their history, even he thought Junko was saying something too cruel. However, Zenkichi’s sympathy probably only made him feel worse.   
  
Zenkichi and Junko disappeared into the tunnel.   
Kumagawa only hesitated for a moment, probably doing a fair bit of self loathing. THat was what Komaeda would do anyway. But Kumagawa never let it keep him down for long. He ran after them, into the impossible maze that several Ultimate Hopes could not overcome.

 

Komaeda heard several explosions after that.   
  
Zenkichi rushed by explosives, ran past bullet storms, jumped impossible lengths, all while carrying the nagging Enoshima Junko on his back. Every single time he felt like he would give up, she grabbed him by the hair and pulled hard and gave him another order.   
  
Just when he thought the road was going to go on forever, they finally made it to a clearing with a huge door just like the one that originally sealed off the old school building from the outside world. There was a barrier of interlocking lasers in front of it.   
  
Junko jumped off of Zenkichi. The moment she did the willpower that was holding him out collapsed, and he fell on his face in front of her. Junko just walked over his body not really caring enough to avoid stepping on him.   
  
“Looks like I’ll have to learn hacking to disarm this security system to.” She reached forward and started to mess with the keyboards.   
  
A moment later, a hand appeared on the ledge they had just climbed up. Kumagawa dragged himself through sheer force of will. His entire body was covered in a mixture of ash and blood.

 

“Oh, there you are Misogi. You finished .1 seconds later than I anticipated you would finish. What a disappointment you are.”

  
Junko finally finished typing. She had no idea what she was doing a moment ago, but it took her less than a minute to figure out the entire system and how to override the electronic lock. As she did so the door peeled itself open.   
  
Kumagawa.   
Junko.   
Zenkichi.   
  
Looked up and saw the night sky appear through the doorway. There was no moon at all in the sky. Junko ran some quick calculations in her head, it was December 24th, she calculated what the moon should look like at this time of night. The moon should be visible. Especially from this angle since they were still in Hope’s Peak Academy.   
  
There was no moon in the sky. She looked up and saw, wreckage floating in the sky that looked like meteorites. Which meant all that stuff about the moon crashing into the earth was now the most likely scenario, or Medaka had failed to do her save the world thing.   
  
Zenkichi came to this conclusion too. He expected to see the moon in the sky, and Medaka waiting for him on the other side of the gate. His eyes teared up. “N-no, Medaka-chan wouldn’t… She’d save everyone…”

Junko had a much more frank assessment of the reality of the situation. “So… like… the world ended.”

 

『Yup.』  
  
“Medaka-chan’s totally dead.”

 

『Guess I lost the bet.』  
  
All three of them looked at the empty night sky, seeing no moon. There was nothing at all to look at, but all they could do was keep staring.

  
Just then the air in the room they were standing in started to explosively decompress. Junko had no idea why, oh she figured it out. The reason for the dome was to maintain pressure and air quality, all of the air was probably being recycled.   
  
She saw Zenkichi start to hold his breath. Idiot. Holding your breath is the worst thing to do in a vacuum. She walked over and kicked her heel into his stomach hard, forcing him to exhale. She had no idea why she just did that. It would have been much more fun if Medaka was still alive to tell her how Zenkichi’s head exploded and she got his brain matter all over him. However, if Medaka were in this situation she would save everybody here. Junko hated Medaka, and she was jealous of her, she did not ever want to lose to her again. No, that was not the reason either. She just did not want Zenkichi’s brain to stain her new outfit. She settled on that reason.   
  
Junko soon became light headed though, because her brain required so much oxygen and she was not good at holding her breath. She collapsed on top of him.   
  
Kumagawa exhaled, grabbing them both by the collar.   
By the time Junko regained consciousness, she was being dragged along the floor with Zenkichi right next to her.

『I can hold my breath for up to ten minutes.』  
  
“Freak. What the hell did they do to you?”

『Lots of people have tried to drown me before. It’s probably my eyes, they look like a dead fish, so I get mistaken for one.』  
  
“N-no… it’s because you smell.” Junko was still very light headed so that was not her best insult. “You might not even need all fiction by this point. Can anything kill you? How annoying… just die already…”

She was about as grateful as usual for having her life saved. Komaeda stared at the three of them in shock.   
  
“You were gone for so long? Did you make it to the exit?”  
  
Kumagawa saw the hope in Komaeda’s eyes. Nagito did not trust the world. He did not even trust himself. He trusted someone like Kumagawa though. He remembered the empty outside world he saw, where likely no onee was waiting for them.   
  
“It was just a dead end. There was nothing there.”   
  
Kumagawa told a lie, by telling the truth.     
Komaeda smiled in relief, believing him.  
He wanted to believe in someone after all. 


	6. The Moon is Beautiful Tonight, isn't it?

**You’re my Reason to Die / You’re my Reason to kill** **  
** **Daily Life: Chapter 3**

 

Kaede wanted to cry, but there were still two people watching her. She wanted to be alone, but if she was alone she might disappear. She thought she was being bright and cheerful for the sake of others, but maybe Kokichi was right and she was only doing it for herself in the end. She wanted everybody to get along, but maybe she had been forcing it. She wanted everybody to have hope, but maybe she herself just wanted to feel that hope. She wanted to feel like she was safe, secure and in control instead of just admitting they were caged.   
  
She was just in denial, then? She was looking to the others because she did not want to look at herself. She could not see what she was doing to the others because she refused to look at herself. That, too must have been selfish. Perhaps she just wanted to be the center of attention in everybody’s eyes. She was used to crowds applauding for her when she played music. She expected it to be exactly the same when she tried to take leadership, she would stand in the spotlight and inspire everybody with her performance and they would applaud her. Then, was she just playing piano for the attention, too?   
  
Kaede did not know. She had lost track of herself, Kokichi’s words made her question everything. All she knew was she had the strong feeling of wanting to cry, but she could not cry. She still wanted to be strong for others, even now.

 

All she could do was grip her sleep hard to suppress the feeling of herself shaking. She had to be strong, because being weak would be no good to anybody. That was what she thought all this time. That was why she smiled instead of lamenting and being sad, because sadness was just a waste of time, falling apart helped nobody. In that case it was better to keep smiling. Kaede looked up, she had not noticed that Shuichi had gotten close to her. She had forgotten he was even there in her troubles, self absorbed much?

 

“Um, Kaede? I don’t think you need to worry about what Kokichi said.”  
  
Did he know she was worrying? That was no good, because Shuichi was relying on her. If she worried, than he would worry even worse. No, perhaps she was just assuming that, they had met just a day ago it was ridiculous to assume that she was anyone important to Shuichi. She probably just thought she was better than him, because she was bright and confident and he was dark, gloomy and neurotic.   
  
“You weren’t pressuring us, at least I don’t think so.”

 

Kaede barely heard what he had said. She tried to smile but all she could do was grit her teeth as she continued to hold herself. She felt sorry, for showing him a face filled with ugly emotions. She only wanted to show people beautiful things that would make them smile, but currently there was no music playing in her head. It was just discordant noise.

“Yeah… Thanks, Saihara-kun.” She said, clearly distracted. “But I’m exhausted. Let’s just go back to our rooms and rest.”

 

“Right…”   
  
As she said that though, Shuichi did not leave right away on his own like she expected him too. He lingered for a moment as if waiting for her. Perhaps he wanted to walk her back in the moonlight, no - there was no way he was thinking about her. She was just hogging the spotlight again.   
  
Kaito walked up to her, his hand on his hip, purple uniform jacket trailing behind him. “Hey, why did you apologize before? You didn’t do anything wrong, you know.”

 

“Well… when we tried to escape, I felt like we were united behind a common goal. But after I put everyone’s lives at risk, that unity went down.”   
  
Kato raised his fist and shadow boxed the air in front of her in frustration. Kaede might have reacted, if she was not too busy staring into herself. “Shut up! That’s just the stupid end result! It’s not like you wanted it to go that way! Listen up. Don’t apologize for something that’s not your fault! It’ll just make you feel bad!” To Kaede it sounded like genuine heartfelt advice, and it also sounded like it was completely made up on the spot.   
  
“...”   
  
“Everyone just decided to blame you and give up. I’m gonna give ‘em a piece of my mind later.” Kaede wondered if she should be happy that Kaito was standing up for her. Kaito seemed happy at least, to have someone to protect. He scratched his hair so spiky it defied gravity, “Well, anyway, let’s just go to sleep for now. See ya tomorrow.”   
  
She wanted to thank him. She had no problem performing in front of others center stage, but she could not make the words thank you leave her mouth. Perhaps because those were her true feelings and not a performance. She mouthed them as he walked away leaving her alone once more.

  
Shuichi climbed up the ladder first, and Kaede followed after him. She did not want to assume they were walking back together, their destination just happened to be in the same direction.

 

It didn’t feel real at all.   
The time she played piano, the music she shared with others.   
Even getting to know everyone yesterday.   
They seemed far away like they happened in a dream.   
Even though she was certain the two of them were walking together right now in the darkness.   
The way the shadows danced at their feet made it seem more dreamlike.   
When she started walking, he started walking.   
When she stopped, he stopped.   
As if there was an invisible line she could not see dividing them.   
One Shuichi was terrified to cross.   
Shuichi was so slender and feminine, he had a elfenlike appearance.   
Like the soft footsteps of some fae was quietly following her.   
She heard a magical light leitmotifs in her ears, adding an otherworldly feeling   
One of anticipation that matched the building staccato of her heart beat.   
But, she would not allow herself to feel that way. She did not deserve it.   
Not when she could not understand the hearts of others.   
  
The drms were an octagonal building, each of their rooms was clearly marked with a nameplate that had a pixel art rendered drawing of them. Hers and Shuichi’s were on opposite sides of the doorway. As they walked inside they parted ways.   
  
Kaede wondered if Shuichi was looking at her, but she was too scared to look at him. She wanted to run away to her room and bury herself in her pillow. When she walked into the room, there was a bear waiting for her.   
  
“You know you probably don’t have anything worth stealing in here, but you should lock your door when you leave! Only the people with a key can get access to this room!”   
  
She ignored him, walking all the way to the bed and letting herself flop on it. She did not even bother to change out of her clothes.   
  
“Alright! Now it’s time for me to give ya a special hint! If ya steal someone’s key, you can sneak into their room and kill ‘em easily!”   
  
Kaede put her hands over her ears, and curled up in her bed. “Shut up! I don’t wanna heart that!” She loved music so much. She could hear music in most noises. She was always trying to hear things in the best tune possible, but at this moment she did not want to hear everything.S she wanted to shut everything out. She thought going deaf would be okay, if it meant she never had to hear someone talk about murder again.   
  
“Geez, this place is the worst. I just wanna go home.”   
  
Her truest feelings. She was scared of everybody else. She just wanted to get out of here. She wondered why instead of saying that, she kept going on and on about hope. Those feelings were useless to her now though, they would not motivate anyone. She would just look like a crying little girl being held hostage. That was why she did not cry. She just repeated over and over again. She would not become a killer. She would not let anyone else become a killer. Even if she was hated, even if she was despised, she would save all of them. That was the only acceptable result, the good ending. Those thoughts carried her into a heavy sleep, just before her consciousness fell away.   
  
“You thought you were someone special… because you had talent…”   
  
In the end she was a kid who wanted to go home, any other kidnapped kid would feel exactly the same way. These things called Ultimate talent did not make her any braver or stronger, she was just pretending to be.

 

Shuichi sat outside of her room, holding his clenched knuckles just short of knocking on the door. He was so nervous that he had left red welts in his palm. He had no idea how long he had been sitting here, but it felt like he was wasting an eternity failing to commit a simple action. Shuichi wondered what life was like for people whose brains allowed them to do things the moment they wanted to do them and not after an hour of indecisive lag time.   
  
The most useless advice Shuichi had ever heard was that you missed one hundred percent of the shots you did not take. He was fully aware in a logical sense that if he did not take the risk, he would not get anything he wanted in life. It was always on him to make the first step. He knew all of this but he could never bring his body to comply.   
  
The entire time here there was something he wanted to tell Kaede, but he could not get the words out of his mouth. He just sat in silence a few steps behind her like a flickering shadow. She must have thought he was being creepy.   
  
He wondered how many opportunities in life he had missed, not because he did not want to work hard, but because he was afraid to take that step. This anxiety cost him everything and he never gained a single thing from it, he only fretted and fretted about uselessly forever. It was like all of his energy was just him staying afloat on the surface of the water, just treading water, and then waves came to hit him from either side sloshing him back and forth. Through all of that he never once could swim to the place he wanted to be.

 

All he could do was stand here as the result of all of that running away from his choices. He never put himself out there, he never took risks, so he was no one. Worst of all he was stuck as this person, and entirely self aware of the kind of person he could have been. He could have chose to be a better person, he just did not. Every time he had the opportunity to step forward, he wavered instead. Even though he knew what he was supposed to do it was like every fiber of his being resisted him. He wondered why he was so afraid.   
  
Perhaps he was just afraid other people would see though him, and see the person he really was, was not that great. If they thought of him that way though, he had no right to blame them. The one who ruined everything was himself in the end. He was the one who ruined every chance the world gave him.   


  
He just did not think he was worth a chance. He did not think he was worth anything. In the end even his own parents had never thought he was worth keeping around. That was why they shipped him to his uncle. Nobody would stay around you unless you gave them a reason, that was reality. You had to be worth something.

 

He lacked Kaede’s courage to speak in front of others, to let herself get hurt. Shuichi let his hand fall and gave up on trying to knock at her door. He caught a passing glimpse of the caged off sky as he sulked back to his room.   
  
It was no wonder the moon traveled through the night sky, it was probably following the sun that it admired so much. No matter how much the moon admired the sun though, the sun’s light would stay forever out of reach it could only chase its rays.

 

🧸

 

Kaede realized she had overslept when she was only woken up by the morning bell. Another inane skit played over the loudspeakers, but she ignored it. She had wished all of her doubts would disappear with a night’s sleep, but she was not so lucky. So she had no choice but to put on a smile the next morning, even though she still did not feel any better.

  
When she reached the hallway, Shuichi was standing in the middle of it like he was waiting for her. No, that was probably not it, he was probably not even thinking of her. When she tried to step away, Shuichi stepped in front of her.   
  
She folded her hands behind her back, and gave him a smile to make all of the problems in the world go away. “Good morning, Saihara-kun.”   
  
“Good morning…”   
  
“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at the dining hall.”   
  
“I was just on my way there…. Um…” Shuichi took a step closer to her, looking up at her eyes underneath the brim of his hat. Then he ran away, pacing a few steps away. Then, he decided not to run away and walked back to her. To Kaede it looked just like he was pacing back and forth like he was trying to solve some mystery in his head. The only mystery that stumped Shuichi though was the mystery of human interaction. Finally, he spoke up. “Akamatsu-san?”   
  
“Yeah?”   
  
“....”

  
  
Saying her name took too much out of him. He ran away, from running away, from running away, agh why was everything so difficult. Shuichi turned his head back and looked down the hall. “...Ah, it’s nothing. The others are probably waiting for us. We should go.”

  
“Okay, silly.” Kaede said in a sweet voice, as she followed after him through the ruined hallways.   
  
The dining hall consisted of several large lunch tables like it was originally meant to serve a much larger group of students, but was repurposed. The entire school had that same kind of hollow, empty feeling, like they were treading through ruins that were long since abandoned, a small group of survivors of something much larger than them.   
  
The kids were divided into two tables, all of those who were there yesterday gathered around one table, and a second smaller clique of kids who followed the supermodel in the eyepatch were sitting at a second table. Junko called her table the cool table, but it wasn’t very cool.   
  
There was a boy in the middle cooking and serving food for all of them. It was the blonde hunk that Kaede had met two days ago, he had a frying pan in one hand and a spatula in the other and was quickly serving up eggs.   
  
“Please sir, can I have some more?” Kokichi asked, mocking him.   
  
“I already gave you five servings! How much food can you fit in that tiny body of yours! Have some damn cereal or something.”  Zenkichi said, grabbing a box and tossing it to Kokichi. He seemed to be very aggressive about helping other people.   
  
Kokichi poured himself a bowl of cereal, and then picked up the can of colored panta soda he had been drinking from and poured that into the cereal. If Zenkichi had saw that he might have burst a blood vessel.   


Kaito finished wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Jeez, you when did you even learn to cook like this? Didn’t you have more important things you needed to be training for?”

  
“Training? I’m not the main character of a martial arts manga.” Zenkichi said, even though he underwent training all the time. He was just lacking in self awareness. For example he still had no idea what impression he left on Kaito and thought they were getting along just fine, because they were similar enough. “My mom taught me to cook! I’m not as good as her, because she’s amazing at everything!”   
  
Zenkichi smiled with visible pride at his mother. When everybody had their food, he started collecting the dishes of everyone around them.   
  
“Man, come on you don’t have to do this stuff for everyone. People are going to start thinking you’re the school janitor.” Kaito complained as he handed a dish off to Zenkichi.

“What are you talking about? Everyone has to do their best, I’m just doing mine.”   


Kokichi’s tone was entirely different. “You sound like you have a great mom, will be you be my mom from now on?”   
  
“Shut up, you.” Kaito said, swinging in the air, but Kokichi just ducked his head laughing it off.

 

“I’d have to get to know you first before I could consider you family.” Zenkichi gave an entirely sincere response, that baffled Kokichi. He walked away with a pile of dishes. As he waited for them to soak, he did squats to burn off the excess energy from this morning.   
  
That might have been the secret to why Hitoyoshi Zenkichi was such a freak of a unique specimen, he was the rare example of a morning person.   
  
When he saw Kaede, Korekiyo laughed. “Kee hee hee. Now, all of us have arrived. I’m glad. It looks as though there were no victims.” He had eaten all the food on his plate, somehow, but nobody had seen him take his mask off during that time.   
  
“But of course! What reason would humans ever have to harm other humans?” Keebo said, once again the robot being the normal voice of the group.   
  
“By the way…” Kokichi got bored of messing with Kaito because it was far too easy and folded his hands behind his head as he tilted himself towards Kaede. “Are you okay, Akamatsu-chan?”   
  
“Huh? What do you mean?”   
  
“Well, you looked really bummed out after everyone started blaming you yesterday.”

  
Tsumugi spoke up. “Wait… what are you doing all of a sudden?” Her voice was lost helplessly amongst the crowd.   
  
“Seriously, you guys are so mean. Poor girl… She tried her best to encourage everyone, and you sore losers got mad at her anyway.”   
  
“What’s the point of bringing that up again?” Keebo, stood up from the table.   
  
At the not so cool kids table, Komaeda was sitting hunched over surrounded by several opened cans of energy drinks. He looked like the waking dead. His fluffy white hair, and stark white appearance was a painted contrast to Kokichi’s slick and shadowy one. All of Kokichi’s features were pointed especially his smile.   
  


In response to the energetic boy’s performance, with no energy at all Komaeda muttered back in a dull voice. “It’s so obvious what you’re trying to do. If somebody like me figured it out, then all of these geniuses who are the best of their generation have to have you figured out for sure. Yesterday you drove everybody a part with a lie, and today you’re going to unite everybody with another lie. You’re showing everybody how fickle human beings are, when they get together in groups they lose their intelligence and become sheep.” Komaeda was not looking down on the other kids present for wanting to unite together. He was not even looking down on society. Considering that he was below everyone else, he was definitely looking up to them. He was a lamb without a flock, destined to get killed by a lion. He was far worse than a lamb in the middle of the flock. “You don’t really believe people can work together, do you?”  
  
“Eh? N-now it’s my fault? Why are you guys ganging up on me?” Kokichi said, his eyes widened and tears started to form at the edges. He looked like a crying child. Maybe he really was a crying child, he had more right to be than Komaeda. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!! Why are you picking on me? Do you want to fight or something? You guys are terrible! So horrible, so mean!”

 

『Oh, no why are you talented jerks being so mean to him? You’re all so wrapped up in your elitism, that you don’t think about anybody but yourselves! Can’t you see it’s not his fault!』Kumagawa was suddenly crying too, even though he had not been part of the conversation before that. Junko poked at one of his eyes wondering again how he could feel things so easily.   
  
“There’s no way I could fight you. If a faker like me fought against someone with genuine talent, I’d certainly lose.” Komaeda wondered why he was going out of his way to pick on that one kid particular. At the moment he was not thinking anything about letting hope shine. His past self would have said he was challenging Kokichi on purpose, to see Kokichi outwit him and use him as a stepping stone to prove himself the superior liar. His current self had no idea.   
  
He did not feel like watching a miraculous explosion of light as hope shined. He realized now, that he probably intended to burn up in that light, to only exist in that moment and then fade away. There was no way he was planning to live after that. Now that he had decided to live, it was all he could think about. He thought nothing dramatic, beautiful or poetic about it at all, because living was just too tiring.   
  
Komaeda let his head drift forward until it collided with the table. It was uncomfortable, but he was used to sleeping in uncomfortable places. His entire life was uncomfortable really. He just needed to rest his eyes for a few minutes.

 

『Nagito-chan are you okay?』Kumagawa asked, poking his head with a fork. 『Where did your glasses go?』  
  
“They’re probably lost to me like everything else in life worth protecting is bound to be.”

 

『What a deep statement.』Komada felt Kumagawa pulling at his hair, which was a mess of curls, and tangles. 『Oh, I found your glasses right here. They got lost in your hair. What bad luck.』  
  
“Since when have you cared about luck? You’re the type of person to say luck is meaningless.”

 

『Meaningless things are meaningless. Dunno. It’s just a thing I’ve started saying recently.』  
  
Kumagawa grabbed him by the back of the collar and pulled him back until he was sitting up once more. He looked like a mother cat carrying around a kitten. He pulled the glasses from Komaeda’s hair and rested them on his nose. When Kumagawa’s image was out of focus for a few seconds even when he put the glasses on, Kumagawa noticed the look in his eyes and waved a hand in front of his face as if to ask him what’s wrong.   
  
“It’s nothing. I just have three migraines fighting a war and my head is the battlefield.” Komeada’s entire face was slicked with sweat. He had woken up covered in the sweat, even though all last night his chills were keeping him up, shaking his body like a rattling skeleton. The best he could do was swallow these energy drinks down to try to replace the electrolytes in his body. “Did you notice him too?”

 

『Notice what?』  
  
“Oma-kun.”  

 

『Oh, he looks really sad right now. It’s probably because he’s so small, cute and weak. Somebody should give him a hug, and then let them ride around on their shoulders so he can feel tall.』

  
Komaeda glared in disbelief. Kumagawa understood people far better than he ever had, so he wondered why Kumagawa made such an oblivious statement. Komaeda did not understand anybody in this world, but he understood Kumagawa a little bit. The parts of Kumagawa that were like himself, slowly he had been learning to see them and like them when they were present in another person. That was why he knew Kumagawa truly trusted nobody in this world. He should have been the one who was suspicious of Kokichi.

 

“You’re even harder to understand than I am, is that even possible?”

 

『Anything is possible if you believe, haven’t you been listening to Kaito-chan?』  
  
“You spent so much time messing me and singling me out of the crowd but you’re just going to leave Oma-kun alone?”

 

『I spent all that time sabotaging you and betraying you because you’re my precious Nagito-chan, that’s how a minus shows affection.』

 

“But, it’s true! Everyone blamed Kaede without taking any responsibility themselves.” Kaito spoke up, over their small and insignificant conversation.   
  
Rantaro held out his hands before things broke out into another fight. “Hey, come oun now. Everyone was probably just tired.”

  
“Shut it! That’s no excuse.”   
  
“No, it’s okay! It doesn’t bother me!” It bothered her so much, but she wanted to look like the kind of person who was not bothered by those things. “It’s just… I should’ve been more considerate of everyone’s feelings. I was too focused on the tunnel… I’m sorry.”   
  
Kaito backed down now that the chance to defend someone was gone. “Well, if you’re fine with it than so am I.”   
  
“... But you did blame her first, didn’t you?” Keebo said.   
  
“Well, that was a lie. Y’know one of those lies to make us more united-”   
  
“I already explained that.” Komaeda groaned like a zombie. He might as well have been, he was already missing half of his brains and the other half was rotted out. Even if he were infected with a zombie virus though he’d never be able to die fully, he would just hover between life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness, sanity and feral hunger, just like he did with everything else.   
  
Kokichi’s smile twitched as he tried to ignore Komaeda. “Did you know half my lies are actually told with good intentions?”

 

『What a better liar than me. I only tell lies for myself.』Kumagawa said feeling inferior again.   
  
“No, he’s not a better person than you because his intentions are better. It’s because he has talent, that’s why he’s indisputably better.” Komaeda lectured him.   
  
“Let’s just forget about it and discuss something else! Okay? Let’s think about ways to get out of here.” Kaede said rejoining the group. She felt much more like herself when she was around everybody like this. The Kaede she knew when she was alone was no good, she would rather be the dependable one everyone was seeing right now.   
  
The atmosphere of the room settled down and they all started to chat amongst themselves like normal teenagers. Makoto disappeared from his table for awhile, and when he finally came back he was dragging a girl that looked a lot like him behind him.   
  
“Oh, right there was one other guest who had not shown up yet. I forgot about her because she was such an unremarkable specimen.”  Korekiyo commented.   
  
Makoto held his arms out in front of her like he was trying to show her off. “Look who finally came out of her room! My sister!”   
  
“I think people can already tell we’re related. We’re the two most boring people in here.”   
  
“What’s your talent?” Kaede asked innocently.   
  
“I’m the Ultimate Average and Unimportant Student.” Komaru sighed, stealing food from her brother’s plate and just eating that rather than asking for Zenkichi to make a new one.   
  
“C’mon Komaru! Don’t listen to her guys, my sister is really good at making friends. She has like a hundred friends. Her life goal is to make a thousand friends.”   
  
“Don’t make me out to be some anime character, that’s a dumb goal. If you had 1,000 friends you wouldn’t be close to any of them.”   
  
“You gotta make some friends, if you stay in our dorm room this entire time you’ll become a neet. I won’t let my only sister become a NEET. She has to rejoin society.”   
  
“This isn’t society. We’ve been kidnapped. This isn’t even a real school, this entire place looks like the set to Battle Royale.” Komaru chewed her eggs in her mouth. They tasted bland. She usually put bbq sauce and cheese on her eggs, but she deserved bland right now.   
  
When she saw Mukuro sit down, not wanting to bother Komaru Mukuro picked her tray up. Along the way she ended up accidentally bumping into Komaru, making things worse. In a hurry she sat down next to Kumagawa and her sister. The moment she did, Junko started to throw a fuss looking away from the cards she had been playing with to distract herself. “Hey, pug ugly who said you could sit here? This is the cool kid’s table.”

 

『There is nobody remotely cool at this table.』Kumagawa said, not looking at her because he was distracted by Zenkichi doing squats.   
  
Junko snapped at both of them. “Hitoyoshi-kun, stop doing squats. Your abs are so hot and you’re so ripped we could fry one of these eggs on them.”   
  
Zenkichi gave her a slightly weirded out look and then meekly sat at the table.   
  
“At least Medaka-chan trained you well, you’re good at taking orders, and you. You’ve been ignoring me all this time, do you think you can just waltz back after ditching me for Makoto? It’s too bad your last two brain cells committed a double suicide-”

 

『Junko, if you’re mean to Mukuro-chan I’ll rip your face off.』  
  
“Go ahead.” She said, taunting him as her red lips curled into a smile.

 

“It’s not that Junko… it’s just... “ Mukuro grabbed at her skirt, pulling at the fabric with her fingers. “Those two are a real family. I don’t think I have the right to intrude.”

  
“Eh, if they’re real what are we? Fake?”   
  
“You’re the fakest person I know.” Mukuro said, with all honesty. It slipped out, and she covered her mouth with her bare hands afterwards.

  
“She just doesn’t like you. No wonder she doesn’t like you, you’re completely lacking in your younger sister’s charm and grace-”   
  
『Junko your makeup is running.』   
  
“Wait, really?” Junko said, suddenly pausing because priorities.   
  
『Yeah, really.』Kumagawa curled his fingers around the glass of water next to him, and threw the entire glass’s contents in her face without any hesitation. The look of utter seething conempt Junko shot him afterwards, as her eyeliner trailed from her eyes in black looking tears just made Kumagawa smile wider. 『Your face is painted on, so it’s easy to remove.』

  
Junko stormed off in a huff to fix her makeup. She was probably going to be in a huff the rest of the day regardless, so Kumagawa barely worried. He had a devil may care attitude, but he did care intensely about one girl as evil as the devil. That was why he played with her so much.   
  
Mukuro looked timidly down. “That wasn’t necessary-”   


『Everything is meaningless, so nothing is necessary. I just did it because I wanted to.』  
  
“When you randomly lecture me about nihilism you kind of sound like Junko.”

 

『Mukuro-chan, I’m sure Junko is happy about you going through your rebellious phase right now and striking out on your own. She’s just a little bit twisted about it, that’s all.』Kumagawa said, flashing her a grin with all of his teeth. Sometimes Mukuro was a bit jealous of him, because someone like him could accept her sister’s twisted affection so easily. She wanted to ask him about Komaru, but she already depended on him too much. Besides, she was sure Kumagawa had no idea what Komaru thought like, because she was a normal girl. If she wanted to trick everybody she probably could, because none of these eccentrics understood what normal people were like.   
  
When Junko returned, Mukuro saw her gloves were on Junko’s hands. She tilted her head in a way reminiscent of her sister. “Junko, are you still wearing those?”   
  
“You can’t have them back, because they’re mine now.” Junko said defensively. “They look better on me, like everything does. I bet I could make even that sad outfit you’re wearing right now look good.”

 

  
Kumagawa shoved his face into the side of Junko’s which caused Junko to shove back. The friction and tension between the two of them, was enough to distract Junko and get her to leave Mukuro alone. When Komaru glared at her from across the room, Mukuro meekly lowered her head to try to hide herself from all the attention Junko and Kumagawa were attracting as usual.   
  
“Anyway, you missed the meeting so you don’t know we’re hunting the mastermind. She could be any of the students among us.”

 

『The mastermind could be a boy.』  
  
“The mastermind is never a boy in these kinds of games. Even when Kamukura-senpai was the one who planned the game, I had to do all the tough work of being the mastermind, and my pretty face had to draw the crowds.”

 

『What’s wrong with a boy mastermind?』  
  
“Boys are dumb. Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C.” She pointed to Kumagawa, Zenkichi, and Komaeda in sequence.

 

『That’s not fair, Nagito-chan isn’t dumb. He could totally mastermind a killing game if he wanted to, I believe in him.』  
  
“I don’t want to mastermind a killing game! I don’t want to be the villain! Why are you picking the literal worst thing to defend me with?” Komaeda said fussing next to Kumagawa. He at least looked a little more awake than before.   
  
“If all you ever do is look down on others you’re going to lose sight of yourself, Enoshima-senpai.” Zenkichi said.   
  
“Yeah, whatever, great advice you walking fortune cookie.”

 

  
Just to make Junko’s bitterness worse, suddenly from nowhere Monokuma jumped down and landed in the middle of the crowd. Kaede and Komaru reacted first, stumbling back and screaming.   
  
“Yeah, yeah, whatever willhelm scream it up. I came to give you kiddos an important announcement, before you all start breaking up into clicks. You know, the punks, the nerds, the party animals, the freaks, and the jocks.”   
  
“Hey, don’t just suddenly show up. It’s too much stress on my heart.” Tsumugi said, cowering behind Rantaro.   
  
“Well, your announcement?” Rantaro did not seem affected by his appearance, he kept his eternal calm. He was unmovable as the earth.   
  
“It’s easier to stay alive by being an obvious goody two-shoes, right? Being thrust into a killing game doesn’t mean you’ll be able to kill someone easily. So I figured I’d give you guys motivation to kill.”   
  
“Motivation to kill.” Maki said, her red eyes sharpening.   
  
“In short, a motive! That oughta add some mystery to the proceedings! Even if a killer is exposed, they could whip up a sob story. I will now nnounced the first motive. Now then, the special motive I’ve prepared is called the First Blood Perk! WOw! For the first murder that occurs, no class trial will be held! Can you believe it! That means the first one to kill someone will get to graduate, no strings attached.”   
  
“Boo! So what is the real mastermind going to claim the first kill perk and disappear so they can observe everything from the monitor room for the rest of the game? Laaaaaaame. Find a twin sister to kill or don’t even bother.” Junko yelled from the not-so-cool table.   


“I’m sorry that I made the class trial seem more important than it is. I’ve decided not to hold one at all. So just relax, keep calm, and kill.”

  
Makoto was about to speak up and say something, but Komaru grabbed his hand causing him to hesitate.   
  
Just then, Kaede raised her voice. “S-stop messing around… Do you think this is fun for us? Do you really think I’d kill someone just to get out! In your dreams!” She was shouting so loud before she even realized it. Her throat hurt. She had no idea where these words were coming from, or how her voice was able to carry this melody. “We’re not gonna lose to you! We promised each other we’d escape from this place!”

  
“Puhuhu. Spare me your false bravado. You should be focusing on how you should survive, you just gotta kill someone don’t you?”   
  
Kaito and Amami standing next to each other had completely different reactions, as different as night and day.   
  
“Y-you bastard!”   
  
“I see,...” Rantaro said thoughtfully. “The prisoner’s dilemma. How very clever of you, Monokuma.”

  
“Huh? What’s that?”   
  
“We all know it’s better to cooperate rather than betray each other, right? But if you don’t cooperate, you receive some benefit nobody else gets. It’s an incentive to betray the group to give yourself an advantage. With that in the back of all our minds, we’re less likely to cooperate. That’s Monokuma’s plan. To make a non-cooperative game that tanks Kaede’s plan to get us to cooperate.” Rantaro explained it all with a casual shrug.   
  
Komaeda had understood that too, more or less but he was afraid to say anything. He was grateful another Ultimate spoke up in his place. The moment a motive had been dropped, Komaeda’s heart seized in his chest. He was the one to start the killing game last time after all. The only reason he was reminded to keep breathing, was when Zenkichi put a hand over his.   
  
“What?”   
  
“And if a murder were to occur… it’d be even more likely we’d cooperate.” Shuichi added.   
  
“His objective doesn’t matter! I’ through letting him have his way!” Kaito’s fae was streaked with sweat, and had gone all the way red. The feral look in his eyes, told Zenkichi that the spiky haired boy was about to do something impulsive again.  “I’ve had enough!”   
  
Kaito lunged toward Monokuma to grab him. Before he could even get close, Zenkichi moved forward tackling him out of the way. The two of them hit a wall together, landing on top of one another. They struggled against each other for a moment before Kaito shouted again. “The hell are you doing? If this guy dies we save everyone!”   
  
“But who is going to save you?”   
  
Just then, the sound of crushing metal echoed through the hall, and then a final gasp. The exisal had stepped straight on Monokuma, causing him to explode on impact.   
  
“Boo! Kill one of the Monokubs instead.” Junko jeered from the not-so-cool table.   
  
“S-serves him right. He got what he deserved. I uh, totally planned it that way.” Kaito said, as he slowly returned to his feet.   
  
“U-umm? What’s going on?” Tsumugi asked, as the other Monokubs dragged Monokuma’s corpse away. Not that she would know, she’s not the author or anything.   
  
“Hmm… Everything’s a complete mess now. But if there’s no final boss…then that means this killing game is cancelled!” Kokichi said, throwing his arms up into the air in celebration.   
  
Rantaro crossed his arms, looking and acting suspicious again. “I don’t think so. Monokuma’s just a robot. There has to be someone controlling him.”   
  
“Ah-haha, don’t be such a worrywart! Everything’s over now. With the mastermind gone, continuing the killing game is impossible! Which means… we win!”   
  
“W-wait a minute! We don’t know that yet!” Kaede said.   
  
Kokichi’s face suddenly turned fowl, as he opened his mouth to reveal fangs. “Kaede, quit being a buzzkill! Everyone’s still annoyed about what you did yesterday!”   
  
“B-but I didn’t mean it like that.”   
  
“Or is there something you would still have us do, Akamatsu-san?” Korekiyo inquired.   
  
“S-sorry.” Kaede retreated within herself.   
  
“Phew, looks like we’re done here.” Kokichi said, turning around looking absolutely carefree as he walked away.   
  
Shuichi watched Kaede turn around still clutching the fabric of her sleeve. He stared at his own hand as he watched her walk away. The hand that he could use to reach out to her. As he saw Kaede’s hands shaking. The hand he could have used to steady them. In the end though he stayed silent, and did nothing simply watching her go. He would always lean on others for comfort, but he did not want to do a single thing to comfort them. That was the kind of existence he was, no better than a parasite.   
  
🧸   
  
The children wasted the rest of the day. They could think of no way to escape their cage, so they distracted themselves hoping they would forget they were inside a cage to begin with.

The world is made up of cages after all, if you escape one you’ll end up in another.

What?   
The author needs to stop injecting their personal opinion? You guys are no fun.

  
That night, two unlikely  meetings happened at the same time. Mukuro avoided being around Makoto all day, wanting to respect Komaru’s wishes now that she was walking around outside her apartment again. When Monokuma appeared and offered a killing perk, Komaru looked so scared that she might run back to that apartment again.   
  
However, spending the day with her sister was exhausting. Mukuro left early and crashed into her dorm room, locking the door behind her. She had let herself get used to sleeping next to Makoto in the same bed. That was foolish of her. She should be used to sleeping alone, on uncomfortable beds, like the time with Fenrir. If she got weak, or soft, she would lose the only thing she was capable of doing.   


When she fell into the bed sleep did not come to her. She wondered why, her sister said she was brainless so how was she capable of thinking so much? She was supposed to be a girl without emotion, so how was she capable of carrying so many regrets? She was just a murderer. She had accepted that about herself. She knew she could fight for the side of Makoto’s hope, but she would never truly have hope like he did. She would never be anything other than a murderer. Then, why would these feelings not go away?   
  
There was nothing she could change, not with all of the power in the world. Being so strong never made Junko appreciate her. No matter how much she wished for it, she would never be born into a normal family, all of the people she killed would stay dead. It was stupid of her to get mad at an immutable reality. Maybe she was stupid just like Junko said. A stupid girl, who killed for a stupid reason like ‘because my sister told me to.’   
  
Even if Makoto tried to comfort her right now, she would not hear it. She was too stupid. She loved him for his softness, she never wanted him to lose that quality of his. Yet sometimes, she was afraid of that softness too. She was used to harsh things, to being beaten, to being hurt, but she felt like she could cut herself on his softness.   
  
Happiness had no value to a despair sister.   
  
It was pointless to wonder for example, what her life would be like if she had been born to a normal family like Sayaka’s. If she had grown up as Makoto’s middle school classmate, instead of running to Fenrir. Mukuro was too defined by trauma at this point, she would not recognize herself without it. She would be someone else entirely. She only knew herself in misery and despair.   
  
Wishing for that was like wishing to disappear. Perhaps that was why she wished so hard.   


Mukuro’s thoughts were interrupted when she heard the door open. The person who had opened it snuck in as quietly as they could, but Mukuro expected someone to try to kill her in her sleep so nothing could get past he trained senses. Her entire body tensed up as she reached for the kitchen knife she had stolen and kept under her pillow.  
  
When no one was looking she went out of the way to steal a weapon. Perhaps she was still a murderer who was thinking of killing again. When Mukuro saw Komaru standing over her bead, she relaxed.

 

“Komaru-chan, when we bumped into each other at dining hall did you steal my key, so you could break into my room?”   
  
“H-how did you figure out all of that so fast.”   
  
“If I wanted to kill someone, that’s what I would do.” Mukuro said in an even voice.   
  
“S-so that’s how a killer thinks. I didn’t want to kill you. I… I’m not a murderer like you.”   
  
“So you just broke into my room to stand at the foot of my bed and stare creepily at me?”   
  
“Y-yeah, so what?”   
  
“Oh. Okay.”

 

Komaru was shaking already. She did not want to come out of her room, but the idea of leaving her brother alone with someone who might kill him had made her try to at least pretend to be brave. Her brother also kept pestering her about it and he was starting to get really annoying. She remembered how glad she was when he moved to the Hope’s Peak dorms, because sharing the same living space with someone for so long made you acutely aware of all their annoying habits.   
  
He scratched his hair all the time, he never even brushed his hair and went around with that bedhead, he was terrible to talk to manga about because he only ever read about the trendy ones and forgot about them once they stopped being popular. Komaru sometimes watched exciting conversations and complicated relationships shown in the dramas on tv, only for her brother and her to have the most average conversations ever. They talked about the weather, so much. Average sibling powers combine, to the form of, the most boring pair of siblings in the world.   
  
He was her brother though. That was reason enough for her. Komaru wondered what a killer thought like, she had no idea, they were so different in manga and anime. All she could think of was the total antithesis of herself. She was normal, she had no other desire than to live her normal life uninterrupted, so she thought she could live her life without hurting anyone.

The person in front of her had hurt people. That made her different somehow. Abnormal. Instinctually, she wanted to reject her. There was no reason to trust a person like that at all. All she was capable of was dragging her brother into danger, she was a burden.   
  
“If you wanted to kill me, that’s fine.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“You’re scared and want to escape don’t you? If I could sacrifice this worthless life of mine to protect Makoto’s sister, I don’t even need to hesitate.” Mukuro reached under her pillow and pulled out the kitchen knife, offering the handle to Komaru.

 

“I’m not a killer.”  
  
“It’s not your fault. Nobody reacts well to the killing game, there’s no good way to handle this.”   
  
Komaru thought there must have been a good way. There was someone bright and shining like Kaede who was trying to take control and get everybody to work together. She was acting like a hero who could save everyone. From the moment she realized she was captured though, all Komaru could think about was her own escape. Her brother was even an afterthought to that. She wanted to run away. There was no way a normal girl could survive these circumstances, she never should have been involved in the first place. If running away did not work, she wanted to beg for help over and over.   
  
She had no heroic intentions, not a single bone in her body felt brave. She wondered why someone like Mukuro, though it was a good thing to offer her life to save someone like her. “Makoto would hate me.”   
  
“He’d forgive you, because he’s Makoto.”   
  
“Y-you’re trying to make me into a killer.”   
  
“No, I don’t want…” Mukuro’s hands seized on the knife’s hand. Komaru froze up in fear, but all Mukuro did was stab it into her own pillow. “You’re right, I don’t deserve to sacrifice myself for anyone. A villain like me can only die struck down by a hero…”   
  
“Why are you saying something like that?”   
  
“It’s just… when I die, I hope no one mourns me.” Mukuro said, as she brought her knees up to her chest and sat there.   
  


“Don’t… don’t look at me like that. Don’t look like you hate yourself. That’s what normal girls do, that’s what I do.” Komaru stumbled backwards, confused by this entire scene. “I… I don’t understand my brother at all. He’s always been the biggest goodie two shoes on earth, he was the world’s biggest pushover. He had a crush on the same girl all throughout middle school, but he never even bothered to confess because he was too shy. How did he start dating a murderer and a wanted terrorist?”  
  
Mukuro peeked out from where she was holding herself. Her dull eyes looked especially dark in the low light. “I’m the one who confessed to him, actually. If I waited for him to do it, he might have never confessed.”   
  
Komaru suddenly laughed out of nowhere. Then she caught herself, trying to swallow that laugh. “Stop it… I… I don’t get you. I just came here to tell you, I can’t be heroic like my brother is… I’m more selfish than he is. I… I just don’t want to die.”   
  
“You’re not selfish for thinking that.”   
  
“I said stop!” Komaru slammed the door as she stormed out. She had no idea what that had accomplished, or what she had even wanted from that scene. Just that for an abnormal girl, Mukuro seemed normally shy, and normally lacking in self esteem. “Oh, your key…”   
  
“It’s fine you can have it. I trust you.”   
  
“You stop that!”

 

🧸

  
When he saw Kaede run away from the dining hall Shuichi wanted to chase after her, but he stood still. She locked herself in her room for the rest of the day. Shuichi waited outside of it, trying to get his head around to the idea of knocking on her door.   
  
He had no idea what he was going to say. He could not cheer people up like Kaede could. He doubted he could even show her a smile. His gloomy self would probably only give her more reason to be sad, and more things to worry about.   
  
He had no idea how much time passed, but he was used to losing time to his anxiety anyway. No matter how many times he turned it around in his head, he could not bring himself to knock on Kaede’s door. Then suddenly, he heard sobbing from within. A small sob. She probably meant it to be silent. She probably did not even want it to be heard. She had locked herself away to be all alone while she was crying, so she could continue to put on a brave face and smile in front of everybody else.   
  
Before he knew what he was doing, Shuichi rang the doorbell.   
  
Kaede had no idea why, but she had been crying uncontrollably.   
  
“Huh… why?”

They were all going to escape with a smile soon. She really believed in that ending. She needed to act out the part as best she could. She needed to keep smiling.   
For some reason though, an uncontrollable sadness came over her. She had no idea why she was crying, or whose tears the were, because she needed to be the girl who always smiled.   
  
She did not want to be sad, she wanted to keep hoping. Yet no matter how hard she tried the tears would not stop. The moment she had gotten back to her room she had not even made it to the bed. She just sat down and leaned her back against the door frame. Perhaps she was hoping someone would come after her, that Kaito or someone would stick up for her again.   
  
Just when it seemed like the tears would not stop, her intercom rang. She wiped her tears away and opened the door, Shuichi stepped in befre she could even welcome him in.   
  
“Akamatsu-san, are you alright?”   
  
“Oh, Saihara-kun. Um… What do you mean?” Shuichi was the one who was depending on her smile the most. He looked like an unreliable crybaby after all. He was the person she least wanted to see her like this.   
  
She kind of liked it, the way he stared at her with admiration. When she was around him, she felt like it was more than just an act, that she could really be that person that everyone relied on. Her smile felt more real because he was there.   
  
It was almost a betrayal to show him this side of herself. Go away. Go away. She did not want him to see. Even though the eyeliner on the corner of her eyes was smeared she gave him a wide smile. “I’m not sad, if that’s what you’re wondering.” She could not be sad because everyone was depending on her. She could not be sad, because she was the one who stepped up to the role, because she wanted to be important. She had to keep smiling, because if she did not, if this adventure did not end with all of them smiling it would be her fault.   
  
“Akamatsu-san, it’s not your fault.”   
  
“Huh?”   
Kaede had no idea what face to make anymore. She was completely off guard. She thought she was doing a good job of hiding those feelings that would not go away. Maybe Shuichi really was the Ultimate detective.   
  
“The underground passage was a trap. It ws a trap to get us to think we could work together, then crush our hopes.”   
  
“I-I know that, but… I just wanted to escape with everyone. B-but it’s alright now. Everything is over.” There was no reason to be sad. They had to move onto the next thing, they had to try again. Even if everyone gave up on her she would never give up on them. Before Kaede even noticed it, she was frowning.   
  
“Akamatsu-san, I know how you feel. I believe in you.” Kaede suddenly looked back at Shuichi. She saw her own smile reflected back at her. The boy who almost never smiled, was smiling just for her. Not for everybody around him, not to be brave, but just between the two of them. His feelings were so strong he could not help but smile.   
  
“What? You believe in me?”   
  
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”   
  
“Huh?”   
  
“I’ve been thinking about how to tell you all this time.”   
  
“But it’s only been two days. W-we just met.”   
  
“Will you come to the library with me?”   
  
“Oh.” Kaede had thought about something silly just now. She decided to forget about it immediately. She looked at the time on the wall. “It’s night time, we’re not allowed to leave the dorms.”   
  
“We’ll sneak out.”   
  
“I don’t want anyone to get any more suspicious of me.”   
  
“That’s not…” Shuichi hated this feeling. The only reason Kaede was getting singled out was because she was trying so hard to stand out for the sake of everyone. Nobody else was trying as hard as her, so nobody else suffered the way she did. He pulled his hat over his face and turned around. “I’ll meet you in the morning then.”   
  
“Wait. Saihara-kun.”   
  
As he tried to turn around, Shuichi found himself caught by the sleeve. For some reason he felt like his heartbeat was now originating from the one spot Kaede was touching him, it ws much louder than he remembered to.   
  
When she thought it was wrong for her to cry in front of everyone, he smiled at her. It was not just the Kaede that everybody depended, he might want to see, this ordinary girl who just happens to be a Piano Freak who just pretended to be special.   
  
“Can you stay with me until the morning?”   
  
“W-what? Th-there’s no way.”   
  
She might have broken Shuichi.   
  
“No, I mean just talk with me until morning. I promised we were going to talk when we got out of here right? But we didn’t get out.”   
  
“That’s okay. It could be worse.”   
  
“Is that a pessimistic kind of optimism you’re trying out?”   
  
“Yeah, I’m always imagining how things could get worse. For instance, if I were kidnapped and you weren’t there, it would have been far worse.”   
  
Then it was probably better becaus she was here. Kaede read indirectly from Shuichi’s words. Both of them were scared of the bed, so they sat down on the floor back to back facing away from one another. Neither of them really remembered what it was like to have friends, or talk like normal kids, so they stumbled a bit at first.   
  
“Hey, Saihara-kun. What does an Ultimate Detective like you do most of the time?”   
  
“Huh? What do I do?”   
  
“Do you wear a cap, smoke a pipe and use a magnifying glass to investigate crime scenes? Do you say stuff like, “Indeed, most intriguing!” Y’know, that sort of thing?”   
  
“Um, I’m not old enough to smoke a pipe…”   
  
“Hahahaha, I guess tat classic old-fashioned detective look is pretty outdated, huh…”   
  
“Yeah… I don’t do much investigating either…”   
  
“Really? Then what kind of cases do you get? Do you spend most of your time doing nothing?”   
  
Shuichi carried with him the memory of being left on his uncle’s doorstep. He was told if he did not act good, if he did not earn his place there he would be thrown away somewhere else. He remained quiet and meek as he could, he helped out whenever he could. Yet, no matter how hard he tried that place never felt comfortable for him. It just made him work harder and harder. “No, actually my uncle’s detective office is fairly popular, so we receive lots of cases…”   
  
“Infidelity cases intense…”   
  
“Yeah… Honestly, there are times when it gets pretty hard.”   
  
“Are you alright, Saihara-kun?” SHe nudged him with her shoulder, looking back to see his face. “You’re not weirded out by romance or women, right?”   
  
Shuichi answered far too quickly. “Ah.. no?”   
  
Suddenly, Kaede gave him a fierce glare. “Oh! And just because you see it happen a lot, that doesn’t mean cheating is okay!”   
  
“N-never! I would never do something so dishonest!”   
  
She saw him sweat suddenly and smiled. His reactions were always so over the top, that it was cute. She realized she had been staring, and hastily changed the subject. “Oh, yeah. You don’t know much about music, do you, Saihara-kun?”   
  
“I kind of follow the trends?” That’s how you can tell he’s a main character in Dangan Ronpa. “I don’t know anything about classical.”   
  
“I guess that’s true. Normal High School boys don’t listen to classical music. I promised I’d teach you more when we got out of here.”   
  
“Well, we haven’t gotten out of here, but you still have me here right now.”   
  
“Really?”   
  
“Yeah, as much as you need me.”   
  
Kaede completely failed to pick up the implication of his words, as her brain jumped immediately to music. SHe understood music, and making people happy, and that was about it. “But you’ve definitely heard of Chopin, right?”   
  
“Yeah. He’s pretty famous, so I’ve definitely heard of him.”   
  
“Chopin composed many solos, and was even referred to as The Poet of the Piano. That title might mean nothing to you at first, but you’ll get it once you listen to his works. He always performed at concerts.”   
  
“You perform too, right Akamatsu-san?”   
  
“Of course! I personally enjoy Prelude, Op.28, No. 1, or also known as the Raindrop Prelude. Oh, yeah. Speaking of Chopin… I played the three Waltzes, Op. 34 in front of a king before.”   
  
“A king?”   
  
“Yeah, some European King. He had to keep his identity a secret.”   
  
“What? Why did he have to do that?”   
  
“He saw my performance at an international competition on the news, so he came to Japan.”   
  
“Wow…”   
  
“BUt he looked like your average Joe. Nothing like a king out of a fairytale.But he talked like a king! His speeh and mannerisms were totally not this era! ‘It is as if god dwells within your fingers!’ He knelt down when he said that! I was speechless!”   
  
“Did any other famous people come?”   
  
“Yeah, sorta. A representative of Julliard, famous pianists. I was really nervous back then. Like, what were they gonna tell me after. But, in the end, I performed the my usual way and hoped they would enjoy it.”   
  
Shuichi’s eyes were glowing in admiration again. He tried to sneak a look at her face, even when they were sitting back to back like this. “That’s incredible… You must be really amazing if you have fans like that.”   
  
“Hahahahahaha!! No way, Saihara-kun. I’m an ordinary high school girl who just happens to be a Piano Freak.”   
  
“I don’t think such important people would come to see an ordinary pianist.”   
  
“Well, you’re the Ultimate Detective, Saihara-kun. One day you’re gonna get famous people requesting you to solve their cases.”   
  
“That sounds way too exhausting for me. I don’t want to be important, I can barely manage being a nobody, let alone a person, let alone someone important.”   
  
The two of their voices began awkward and apart but slowly came together for a harmony. Shuichi wondered the last time he had talked this long with someone. Now that he thought about it, he could not recall a single time, he had ever talked so much.   
  
“Saihara-kun, why did you bother to come after me like this?”

  
“You’re… always so bright like the sun. I can’t stand to see you looking down. The others just don’t see you the way I do.” Shuichi said, trying to enourage her again. “Y-you’re a lot brighter than me, so that’s how I know…”   
  
“You don’t have to put yourself down, Saihara-kun. The sun might be bright, but I think she’s unreliable. She disappears for half of the day, right? She makes everything center around her too, how self absorbed… but… nobody gives the moon any credit. It’s always so dark, that a lot of people miss it, but it’s always there isn’t it? It’s way more reliable.” Kaede’s voice dropped into a soft whisper. She remembered the feelings of everybody rejecting her, trying to make sense of those tangled strings. No matter how much she plucked them no music would play from them. “Even though you’re more scared than everybody else, you ran after me when you thought I was alone.”   
  
“I… I took way too long.”   
  
“Well then maybe you’re not a knight, but you can be my turtle knight.”   
  
“Turtle? That doesn’t sound cool at all.”   
  
“So it fits you!”

  
“Hey!”   
  
The two of them kept talking like that, when they were around each other they started to forget that it was only the killing game that had brought them together. Just sitting next to her. Just sitting next to him. Just talking with her. Just talking with him. Was enough to make them forget about their worries, while the night past them by. They sat as naturally together as the sun and the moon in the night sky. 


	7. Naegi Makoto Denies Being the Main Character

The bears must have gotten tired of being unfunny as they did not perform a skit to interrupt their breakfast that day. 

That morning at the dining hall nothing happened, except for an announcement that the research labs were now opening for the Ultimate Lucky Student, the Ultimate PIanist, and the Ultimate Inventor. The Ultimate Pianist lab was located on the Academy first floor in front of the classrooms. Kaede did not investigate though as she was conspicuously absent from the dining hall. While the Ultimate Inventor’s lab was in a large building in front of the school near the Shrine of Judgement.  
  
The Ultimate Lucky Student lab was just a sign hanging on a dumpster up front. When Makoto and Komaeda both reached it, they were both equally disappointed. Kirigiri put her hand on Makoto’s shoulder and reassured him that it was probably meant as an insult to Komaeda, and not him, right there when Komaeda was listening.  
  
When Kirigiri woke up that morning though, she woke to the realization that she might wake up every morning like this. Her new reality. One where she is confined to the bird cage in the rebuilt ruins of the school she once traveled to only to see her father again so she could cut ties with him. Now that she thought about it, there were lots of cages in her life. The restraints of her Kirigiri family name, the burden of her father’s abandonment. Sometimes Kirigiri wondered what the point of parents was if all they did was dump their unresolved issues onto their children. She once confided that thought with Makoto, and the fact that she should have felt sad over what happened to her in the past but she lacked even the emotions to mourn them with. She did not feel sad for her father, or her mother, or her grandfather, she just felt tired. She was raised as a detective her entire life, but she did not know if she liked being a detective, she felt nothing at all about it it was just the only thing she knew how to do.  
  
At which point Makoto said she did not sound like she was born lacking in emotions or anything, she just sounded depressed.  
  
At least the symbolic cages that restrained her in her daily life did not have physical bars though, Kirigiri lamented. It was a crushing reminder to walk outside and know every day that she was still in captivity. That they were once again locked in a puzzle box that she had to figure her way out of on her own.  
  
That was why she called a meeting in the bath house. The entire first floor had been rennovated to the point it was unrecognizable, but the bath house was left in place. Originally when the school building was a shelter used by her father, there were also dorm rooms for each of them on the first floor but it seemed that entire wing had been caved in and the dorms moved outside. The basement had also been majorly renovated as apparently it used to be the original site of where Junko planned to hold class trials, but the library was moved from the second floor to the basement. Kirigiri passed Shuichi and Kaede walking towards the library as she made her way to the baths, and gave one lingering look at Shuichi. SHe noticed quickly he was looking at Kaede like she was the only thing in the room, and turned away back to business.  
  
“The original building layout was perfect? Why is the mastermind trying to change things up? Are they trying to be unique even though they’re just a ripoff? Changing the words around a little bit doesn’t negate plagiarism. Oh, maybe she needed room for the dumb Talent Lab gimmick.”  
  
When Kirigiri made it to the baths however, in the dressing room before the baths she noticed there was an uninvited annoyance present, like a fly that had flew its way into the ointment. As she thought of that apt metaphor, a fly flew by her in the air and she swatted at it offhandedly.  
  
Enoshima Junko was standing by herself in the middle of the locker room, ranting to herself as usual. Kumagawa sat next to her, wearing the same smile as always. Zenkichi stood behind them looking like a frustrated babysitter. Komaeda was there too, but Kirigiri did not pay attention to him.

 

Also Junko’s deduction about the talent lab’s was correct, but they’re not a gimmick. They are an important addition to the killing game formula to mix things up. The previous iterations of the series barely showed off the Ultimates Talents, they might as well have locked up a bunch of normal kids if they aren’t going to go all x-men in showing off their unique abilities.

 

“Nobody invited you,” Kirigiri said in a cold voice. She knew if she said something more dramatic than that, she might feed into Enoshima’s ego.

 

“Come oooooon, it was obvious you guys were going to meet in here. The steam from the baths will fog the lenses of security cameras, but the problem is I can’t find any. All the ones that I set up are gone, and the wires for them are completely stripped. I’m not quite sure yet how they’re filming us but I’ll figure it out.”  
  
“What exactly are you doing?”  
  
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to end the killing game. You see these boys, they’re team despair.”

  
Komaeda immediately looked up at her, his pupils shaking behind his glasses. “Do not call any team I’m on team despair, my head will explode.” Komaeda said, before letting his head rest against the back of the wall. “Actually, maybe my head should explode it’s the only thing that will make this migraine go away.”

 

“Hey, Komaeda-senpai, Ultimate Despair remember? You’ve been batting for my team before, dude.” Junko waved her red fingers in front of his face to get his attention.

  
“I only joined you so I could sabotage your plans when a greater hope rose up to defeat you. You’re my mortal enemy. I was doing the team up with your mortal enemy when a greater boss shows up, trope.”

 

“Oh yeah, sure, you were supes clever you really had me going there.”  Junko brought her hand to the side of her face, and tapped her nails on her cheek to give her sarcasm more drama.  
  
“I’m sorry, she just kind of showed up.” Makoto said, apologetic. Mukuro next to him shrugged and said nothing.

 

Zenkichi had a complicated expression on his face like he was thinking of something. “Enoshima-senpai, you can’t just decide the team name without consulting anybody. That’s not being much of a team player.”  
  
“Who ever said you were a part of the team, Hitoyoshi-kun? The trio is Matsuda-kun, Kumagawa-senpai and myself. How do you even fit into the group dynamic? Who needs a happy version of Matsuda-kun? That’s like a boring version of him.”

 

『Zenkichi-chan, say something bitterly sarcastic and self loathing like Yasuke-chan.』

  
“But, I do hate myself. I wasn’t good enough for Medaka-chan in the end.”

 

『No, no, that’s no good! I can’t laugh at it this way! Now I’m just sad.』

  
“What is there to laugh at?!” Zenkichi snapped back at Kumagawa.  
  
Before they could get into a fight though, Junko stood up in between them pushing both of their faces aside with her gloved hands.

  
“See, compared to Yasuke-chan, ya boring! But, I guess you can hang around since the only thing you know how to do is take orders from girls who are like way stronger than you.”  
  
“What kind of image of me do you have as a person!?” Zenkichi staggered back from Junko’s hand on his face, looking horrified.

 

『Junko, you can just say you miss Yasuke-chan and his adorable sad boy face.』  
  
“I don’t miss him. I’m just feeling the despair of his loss.”

 

『Yeah, whatever.』

“Would all of you get out of here?” Kirigiri finally lost her patience, though it was difficult to tell as her voice did not change tone at all.

  
“Come on, don’t you know what this is? When there’s a bigger bad guy in play, the mastermind and the master detective need to set their differences aside and team up.” Junko said, as her brain ran on tropes Kirgiri was sure that Junko viewed herself as some kind of Moriarty to Kirigri’s Sherlock Holmes. It was a bit hypocritical for a girl who belonged to a secret family of detectives, who was also part of a secret worldwide detective organization to claim that her rival was a little too tropey. The truth was though Kirigiri loathed Enoshima Junko. She never trusted easily. She never had friends in her life, and never was allowed to spend normal days with her classmates. The idea that a person pretended to be a classmate, to be a friend, just to get close to her and force her and her classmates to kill each other in sick games was unforgivable.  
  
Perhaps she was just bitter, that she never noticed because the illusion of a normal life, with normal classmates, one she never had was used against her in such a way and because of that she never noticed Enoshima’s lies until it was too late. Detectives were always supposed to favor the truth over lies, but the truth of her life was that there was not much to it. She was a detective and that was it. She had been enjoying a beautiful lie, where her life was filled with classmates, and school days that seemed to be so full compared to the empty days before that.

 

“You mean like the time that you tricked me into taking the fall for your murder scheme, or the time you pretended to be my classmate so you could kill all of our classmates.”  
  
“Hey, that’s so not fair. I was going to kill your daddy dearest too, but this time is different.”  
  
“Yeah, until the next time you get bored, change your mind and decide to murder all of us.”  
  
『Yeah, I give it like a week tops before she runs out of energy.』

  
“Misogi, tell her to stop acting like a person with thoughts and desires independent of my own.”

 

『Junko, see this is why you don’t have any friends.』Kumagawa appeared behind her, and started to push her by the shoulders to steer her away from the conversation.『You really are talented, the unpopularity it took me a lifetime to earn it only took you three days.』  
  
“I could be popular if I wanted to be, I just don’t want to be.”

 

『That’s such a convenient excuse. I could be talented, devilishly handsome, and devilishly lucky if I wanted to be, I just prefer being a loser.』Kumagawa said. He lingered for a moment at the door before looking back to Kirigiri. 『Junko would die before she actually said this out loud, and she might kill me for saying this but you don’t really understand Junko. She actually did love all her classmates as her friends.』

  
“Am I supposed to care? I don’t want that kind of twisted love.”

 

『I guess it’s true, there’s no need for you to understand us.』Kumagawa said as he finished pushing Junko outside the door.  
  
“Besides, I’m Junko’s arch enemy not you.” Komaeda said, only for Junko to start bursting out laughing in the hallway. Komaeda’s pale face reddened and he gripped the side of his face in frustration, pulling at his thin white  hair with robotic fingers. “Hey, how come the people I want to like me are scared of me but you won’t take me seriously as a threat?”  
  
“I don’t need you, I’m going to start my own scooby gang. With black jack and despair!” Junko yelled as she was dragged out of the room, ever the petty one.

 

Kirgiri stopped Zenkichi as he was walking outside the door. “Hitoyoshi-kun, you don’t have to go with them. They’re all jokers anyway.”  
  
“If Medaka-chan were here, she wouldn’t leave those two alone.”

  
“Don’t you have your own values?”

 

“I… don’t know.” He put his hand over his eyes like he was hiding some kind of grief as he left them. Kirigiri did not ask, because she decided it was best not to get involved. The more people that were involved the more messy this would become, and she was barely keeping herself together amidst unresolved emotions.  
  
Makoto spoke up before all three of them could leave. “You don’t have to hang out with them and call them a villain, Kumagawa-kun. I know you want to save everyone here too.”

 

『Oh, but I do have to play the villain. Playing any other role just lacks aesthetic.』  
  
“Why…?”

 

『Just a lesson I learned once. If you can’t become medicine, then become poison, otherwise you’re just plain water.』

 

🧸

 

The moment she shooed out the clowns, Kirigiri tented her hands to look serious. She leaned back against the cubbies where they could store their clothes, and thought to herself. Makoto and Mukuro looked at each other, as they felt a bit awkward whenever Kirigiri went silent for a long time like this. Between the three of them Makoto was the only one with any social skills, and he was still terribly shy.  
  
“Well, it’s obvious why Monokuma is still playing dead. The mastermind wants everybody to lose the common enemy they were uniting against and lose their unity that way. We’ve seen it happening already, everybody is breaking apart into little clicks like we’re in high school.”  
  
“Umm… We are high school students.” Makoto said, raising his hand to talk.  
  
“Well, I guess you’re an ordinary high school student Naegi-kun.”  
  
“Hey, how come I’m the only one! We’re all in the same class together.”

“My guess is that the group unity under Akamatsu is something that stands in the way of the masterminds plans, so they’re looking for a way to sabotage it.”

“That’s why it can’t be Junko. She’s not nearly this passive aggressive or patient. She just would have killed her with spears already on a whim.” Mukuro said, staring at her own arm. If it were not for Kumagawa’s intervention, she might have had holes all over her body on her sister’s whim.  
  
“Well if that’s there plan it already worked. No one’s working together right now, because everyone was such a meanie to Akamatsu.” Makoto said, empathizing with Kaede because that was his thing.  
  
Kirigiri looked up at Makoto. She had always seen another side of the boy. He was the kind of boy who would cry if his own enemy was in pain. It took a lot of strength to be that much. It took incredible strength, to just be a normal human, with normal human emotions. She was not sure how he did it. On the surface he just seemed like a timid normal boy no different than his sister, but she wished one day he would live up to his potential and other people would be able to see him the same way she did. “You know, you could fix that Naegi-kun. You could step up instead of Akamatsu, you believe in everyone don’t you?”  
  
“I mean of course I do. All twenty two of us are friends now right? Well except for Junko. We’re going to get out of here without anybody dying. Well except for Junko. Because there’s no way anyone here would have any reason to kill someone else. Well, except for Junko.”

“Then the next time we’re all together at the dining hall you should speak up-”  
  
“There’s no way.” Makoto shied away. “I mean you know what the difference between Akamatsu and me is, she actually has the talent and confidence to back up all her idealistic statements. If they don’t listen to her why would they listen to the lesser version?”  
  
Kirigiri’s fingers went to her hair. She played with her braids so as to not show her frustration. “Naegi-kun, you of all people don’t believe that. Talent doesn’t make a person better or worse.”  
  
“Well, it’s easy to say that when you have talent and confidence.” Makoto hid his eyes away from Kirigiri. “She’s the hero of this story, or maybe even you’re the hero, but not me. She’s got more than just empty words.” What made Makoto special, what made him unique and made others rely on him was his optimism, his ability to trust in others. He always thought he was like that because he was lacking in talent. Being the only normal friend able to stand along talented people, he was able to feel like he had a place of belonging. It was a blow to see someone repeating his same words back at him.  
  
Mukuro who had been watching Makoto silently for a while now as she had a tendency to do, spoke up suddenly. “Even if you’re not a hero to the story of all twenty two of us here, you’re the hero of my story, Makoto.”  
  
“If I’m the hero of your story then what are you?”  
  
“The villain.”

  
“You can’t be the villain of your own story!”  
  
“B-but, the reason I usually screw up is all my fault. I can’t blame anyone else but me.”  
  
“Look if you’re the villain and I’m the hero we would have to fight, and I never want to do that.”  
  
“That’s okay, if that day comes I know you’ll win for sure, because you’re my hero, Makoto.”  
  
“You’re totally not getting it.” Makoto said, throwing his hands up in frustration. Mukuro ignored his small amount of rage and rested her head on his shoulder.

As she saw the scene Kirigiri wondered if that was what passed for a fight between the two of them. She could not even imagine Makoto ever arguing much in the first place, he was too much of a push over, and he only ever got angry for other people’s sakes not his own. When she saw a worried look on Makoto’s face, as he brought himself to look at her own, she wondered why he could possibly be worrying about her.

“Kiri, there’s something we haven’t told you yet…” As he said that, Kirigiri’s eyes widened. Makoto was the most honest good boy on the planet, she had never seen him capable of telling a lie, or keeping a secret from someone. As he told her the news about Shuichi, she blinked.  
  
“He was a spy and I… never noticed? He got access to so much information because he was always following me around.” Kirigiri said, staring at her own gloved hands as she brought them to her face. The touch of leather on her face did not feel warm at all, it felt like an artificial touch, like there was a barrier between it. “How did I never notice? Is he some kind of master of disguise and deception?”  
  
“Maybe you weren’t suspicious of him because he was your friend.” Makoto offered as an explanation.  
  
“No, that can’t be it.”  
  
“He was performing the exact same kind of job that Shiranui Hansode performing for Medaka, her father hired Shiranui as some kind of ninja or bodyguard that always followed Medaka-chan around.” Mukuro spoke up.  
  
Kirigiri looked at both Makoto and Mukuro through the gaps between her fingers. That filtered image was just about all she could take of the scene in front of her. She wondered when it would be enough. Her grandfather only saw her as a detective. Her father took his grief out for his mother passing, on his little girl. Her classmate was only pretending to be her classmate, her happy school days were just a ruse leveraged against her to cause despair. The young detective that she was mentoring that made her wonder what it would be like, if she were not an only child born into the Kirigiris, if for instance she had a younger brother she might not have been so alone growing up.

“You’re telling me he only followed me around because it was a job? He didn’t even like me to begin with, and now he’s forgotten about me.” She wondered when it would be enough. Her grandfather punished her for her father’s disobedience by raising her completely isolated from the world. Her father punished her for her mother’s death by abandoning her to her callous grandfather. Junko punished her for thinking she could enjoy her time with her classmates like a normal student. Shuichi had punished her for trusting him enough that she never once regarded him with the suspicion she did everybody else.  
  
She knew she was blessed with talent. She was famous the world over. She had seen things most normal girls would never see. Everyone relied on her. She was sure, somebody like Komaeda who figured himself an ameteur detective wished his deductive skills amounted to a talent. People dreamed of living a life as exciting as hers, she really should be grateful for all of those blessings.  
  
Yet, she wondered why she was being punished like this for having talent, over and over again. Did everybody else around her give up this much for the sake of specializing in one talent? If that was the case, then she knew why they all seemed so incomplete as people. Gazing through her trembling fingertips, Kirigiri asked a question she did not want to hear an answer to. “Does anybody even really like me? Are they only going to stick around if they get paid by my father?”  
  
As a detective her only allegiance was to the truth. When she was less than five years old she saw a dead body for the first time, and reached her hand out to touch it. Her grandfather thought nothing of showing such a sight to a child. When she touched it she only noticed how cold it felt, and that her own hands felt just as cold because she had nobody to hold them. At the moment she wanted no part of such a cold truth.

Mukuro and Makoto looked at each other. Kirigiri was Makoto’s best friend, and Mukuro’s only other friend besides Kumagawa and Pekoyama. Mukuro spoke up first. “What Saihara did probably wasn’t half as bad as what I did to the school. If you brought me to your side, then you could bring him there too.”  
  
“He’s probably responsible for the fact we were chosen for this killing game. Do you really think we can forgive a person like that?”  
  
"I mean, he did some good things too. He stabbed Junko. I should high five him for that." As always Makoto wavered back and forth passively, before finding his resolve. “I already decided that he’s not my enemy. He doesn’t have a choice from now on but to be my friend.”   
  
“Just like what you did to Togami-kun.”  
  
“Huh? What?”

"Naeegi-kun,” Kirigiri’s eyes sharpened as she looked at the dull and soft boy in front of her. “If we were to escape from here would you bring him with us? Even if he’s the one who trapped us here in the first place.”  
  
“I would.” Makoto said without hesitation. “We just know he’s working for the mastermind, and considering how Junko treats Mukuro, the mastermind probably doesn’t care about his life one bit. Even if he’s an enemy, or a traitor, we should try to save him, because Shuichi-kun was our friend for all that time.”  
  
“Of course.” Kirigiri knew that Makoto looked at them all with wonder in his eyes, but sometimes she envied him. The life she could have led if she opened up to people that easily, trusted them that easily. If she had not been shown all the horrible things humans were capable of doing to each other, thievery, deception, murder, while following her grandfather by his side at such a young age. “If I were to ask you that question 1,000 times, you’d answer the same every single time. That’s what makes you, you, Naegi-kun.”  
  
Bashfully, Makoto scratched at the back of his neck. “You guys should quit saying that like being me anything special.” He denied it again.  
  
“Our greatest enemy could become our greatest ally if we take that risk, and open ourselves up to him. It’s a gamble, but one of us has good luck at least.” Kirigiri turned around and started to walk away. Her gaze lingered at him over her shoulder for a moment before she looked ahead. The meeting was over and she had nothing more to discuss with them.  
  
“Wait, Kirigiri stop.” Mukuro said, causing her to turn back for a moment. “You forgot something.”  
  
“...?”  
  
“We like you.”  
“We like you.”  
  
The two of them said at the exact same time. Kirigiri merely swiveled her head away, hiding her face as she did. “Don’t stop me to say such unnecessary things.”

 

🧸

 

“Come on Kiiboy where’d you go?” Kazuichi called out to the empty lab in front of him. This morning he had woken up and been told that an Ultimate Talent Lab had opened, and went to investigate expecting it would blow up in his face in some way. Things usually did. His luck was so poor that everytime he was around Komaeda he was usually the one who suffered from whatever accident that disaster waiting to happen caused.  
  
He was pretty sure every teenager his age thought this way, but his life was pretty much the worst. When he managed to bring business to his father’s failing bike shop, his father never once thanked him. When he made a friend in school, of course nobody would actually like him for his wonderful and charming personality. When his long hours doing his father’s work for him finally paid off and his talent was recognized, he thought he would become famous by going to Hope’s Peak. In his class he debuted with dyed hair and a cool new look, and he was not treated as anything more than the class clown. There was a beautiful blonde foreign transfer student waiting to make her first friend, and even though he wanted a friend just as bad she never gave him the time of day.  
  
Nothing ever worked out for him the way it was supposed to. He was glossing over the main issues because he did not want to get too down, he had just tampered his expectations for the lab. He was still somehow a loser even with talent after all. The class joke. However, he quickly forgot about that and his eyes sparkled when he first entered the lab. There was so much machinery lying around, it was like a playground just for him.  
  
He never trusted other people. He was a slow learner but the world taught him that much at least. He was skittish around other people, and only tended to latch onto people that looked harmless. If that Makoto guy had time later, he would probably bother him int trying to be friends. The only time he was truly happy was when he was all by himself working on machines. Perhaps because that was the only time he did not feel like such a loser. He and useless junk had a lot of things in common, but he could rework junk into something amazing if he tinkered with it long enough.

 

The moment he saw open toy chest his mind started to race. He could definitely put a rocket on Keebo this time. He had no idea why he liked turning things into rockets so much it just made sense to him. In space all of your problems were insignificant. One time he put a rocket on one of the bike’s in his father’s shop and his dad beat him, no don’t think about that, you’re supposed to be the easy going guy that’s your only appeal.  
  
No matter how much he searched though he could not find Keebo. It did not occur to him that the robot might be intimidated by him. Soda just assumed everybody thought he was the least intimidating guy on the planet. He even went so far as to sharpen his teeth into fangs, and everybody just laughed it off.

 

“Why, if it ain’t the virgin greasemonkey, lookin’ as stupid as ever!”  
  
Kazuichi immediately jumped as he heard another voice interrupting him playing with his toys. People. Scary. Whatever. “W-what the heck’s that all about? Even low-level insults like that can hurt!”  
  
Especially since a guy like Kumagawa Misogi, the only person he could ever assume was a bigger loser than himself had somehow gotten with a blonde model like Enoshima Junko. (Speaking of Junko, the name was quite scary to him too but for a reason he could not quite remember as of now).

 

Kazuichi sighed. “Look, I know I’m on the bottom of the totem pole you don’t have to rub it in.”  
  
“Did you just say you were a bottom?”

  
“That’s not what I said at all! Do you only hear things in inuendo? Is your brain broken!”  
  
“Umm, obviously I’m a genius so nothing’s broken about me. W-wait, did I do something wrong? Don’t look so closely at me.” The girl who was just chewing him out so boldly a moment ago, immediately backed off the moment he challenged her.  
  
It was a bit weird. Something was a bit off about her. She seemed like the in your face type that never gave a damn about what others thought about her, but the second she got close to someone she backed off like she was afraid.  
  
“You seem testy today. I know you’re pent up, but don’t start drooling over my tits now!”  
  
SEE SHE DID IT AGAIN!  
She went right back to insulting him when she looked almost shy for a second there. This girl was just nothing but confusing to him. In a way that was different from how most people were confusing. “I’m not drooling! You think way too highly of yourself.”  
  
“Huh? There’s no way a fuckin’ potato-face like you could pass on my delicious body!”  
  
What the hell did she want him to stare at her?  
When were people going to start making sense, it would be a little easier on him at least. “It’s not all about big boobs!” If Enoshima Junko or Kumagawa Misogi heard him say that, they would make Soda their eternal enemy. “Just look at how divine Miss Sonia is, for example.”  
  
“Eh? I don’t know who that is.”  
  
“She’s a princess from another country. Unlike you she’s a natural blonde, and she’s got all these ladylike qualities that make her so likeable.”  
  
“Eh? Eh? Like what qualities?”  
  
“Well, she’s you know… pretty… and a girl…”  
  
“So you like her because she’s an attractive girl? Wow, you must have swept her off her feet. Were you the princess’ knight and shining armor? Did she come all the way from a foreign land just to fall in love with a nobody like you?”  
  
“Hey, shut up! At least she’s not a fake like you.”  
  
“W-wah? What part of me is a fake? I’m the real fucking deal, a bonafide genius.”  
  
“I’m talking about your hair, dyejob.”  
  
“Dude… Your hair is fucking pink. It didn’t get that way naturally.”

  
“Umm… No, I was born this punk. Don’t I look dangerous?”  
  
“I mean you look creepy when you’re talking about that Miss Sonia but-”  
  
“Creepy!” Getting called that by the weirdo innuendo obsessed girl was like a bullet to the heart for Kazuichi. He he grabbed his head as if he were recoiling from a fatal betrayal.  
  
“What, you like flat chests? Don’t settle for less when you can grope a big chest!”  
  
“Miss Sonia is divine in that department, too!” Soda shouted, like he was defending her honor. Oh god, he sounded stupid. “I mean, uh... she’s elegant! Yeah, that’s it!”  
  
“Geez… You really are a virgin if you think that girl has anything on me. Well, if you can’t get with me, then I guess you’ll just hafta settle for second place sluts!”  
  
He had no idea what this girl was talking about anymore. He pulled at his hair trying to get it to make sense. “Stop it! If Miss Sonia heard this and misunderstood, I’d curl up and die!” He tried to be optimistic about this whole being locked in a school killing game thing. Maybe Sonia was waiting for him on the outside world. Maybe she truly missed him. Distance would make the heart grow fonder. Okay, even he knew he was kidding himself with that.  
  
“No one wants to hear you squeal, piggie!”  
  
“Grrrhh…” He grinded his sharp teeth together. “It’s too much of a pain to correct you.” Being locked in a school with people who might kill you at any time was one thing, but getting locked in a school with this annoying girl in paticular was somehow worse.  
  
“Hah-hahahaha! Oh, cheer the fuck up!” She reached forward and grabbed him by the lapels of the jacket he was wearing. It was purple and black, and looked more like a ski jacket than his usual full body suit. He had lost his hat somewhere so his wild hair was on fully spiky display too. He had no idea why he had adopted a look even scarier than his usual one, he just woke up this way. “Your clothes are decent so maybe if you didn’t slouch, people wouldn’t notice your ugly face.”  
  
“Are you trying to compliment me or insult me?” She was touching him. Why was she touching him again? People made no sense. If only all the other people locked into this school were robots, but also girl robots who were into him. Except the only other robot here did not really like him, and acted just like a normal person.  
  
“Complemented  you, duh-doy! I know you don’t get ‘em often, so try not to wet yourself! It’s pretty ballsy for a virgin like you to dress so flashy. Your outfit’s all the same brand, yeah?” She said, looking at him with keen interest. Her eyes looked soft, in contrast to the well, everything else about her.

  
She was trying to be nice?  
That was supposed to be her trying to be nice?  
He was supposed to read all that as her being nice?

He was so confused, at like everything ever. Nothing went the way he expected.  
  
“Y-yeah... “ He scratched at his cheek, suddenly feeling awkward from being so close. She let go of him and he took a step back so he could breathe again. I’m… sorta surprised. Not many people notice that.”  
  
“Well, no matter how you dress, you still don’t hold a candle to my amazing body!”

  
“Ugh, why are we even talking about that? How do you warp every conversation to be somehow about your boobs?” Kazuichi said, reaching his limit of exasperation quickly. If this kept going he would overheat and have a meltdown. “You didn’t even tell me what you were doing in here?”

“This is my fucking lab, obviously? I think whatever I’m doing here is, oh yeah, it’s none of your goddamn business.”  
  
“What this is my place? Look at all the machines around, it’s the Ultimate Mechanics workshop!”  
  
“No, it’s the Ultimate Inventor’s workshop.”  
  
Kazuichi had completely forgotten about where Keebo went in the middle of this argument. Arguing with her felt as illogical as arguing with a mirror. Even though they had similar talents, it felt like neither of them would be sharing this space anytime soon.

 

🧸

 

Keebo had finally avoided the maniacal mechanical duo. He thought they were perfectly nice people, but he had a tendency to give everyone the doubt and think the best of them. He had no idea why, perhaps because he just wanted to be friends and that was the least intimidating way to present himself. He was a super cool robot after all. They all probably thought he was too cool to be friends with lowly normal humans. Except for Kokichi who always made fun of him but that was just because he was jealous.

 

They were perfectly nice people anyway, but the had a tendency to come off creepy. How would they feel is someone walked up to them and offered to upgrade them? You can’t just saw off a normal human’s arms and replace them a stronger robotic arm. Actually there was a boy here with a robot hand so that was probably a bad example. He felt put off by what they expected a robot to be like, constantly gathering upgrades and shooting rockets out of his arm like he was megaman.

  
He thought he was a special enough boy already. He was going to be different from everybody else in the whole world no matter what, due to the fact that he was built instead of… well he was not informed on what the human mating ritual was supposed to be but instead of doing whatever they did to make children. He did not want to become even more different. Besides, he disliked fighting, and never wanted to hurt anybody.  
  
The fact that his body was very weak and fell apart easily, and he could only move slow, and had no strength at all had nothing to do with his dislike of fighting it was just a philosophical problem for him.  
  
He thought a few new features would be fun, but until those two learned what the definition of boundaries was he was not going to go near them anytime soon. He was just as much of a person of everybody else, he deserved personal space too.  
  
He tried to sneak quietly through the warehouse located behind the school. However, his entire body was made of metal, so what he intended to be silent footsteps sounded more like this.  
  
Clunk.  
Clunk.  
Clunk.

  
Also, parts of his body were glowing at all times. So he was rather obvious. He really needed someone to install a stealth mode in his body.  
  
A girl who had been in the warehouse at the same time, poked her head out of a pile of boxes assembled around her. She had green hair tied up in pigtails, that made her look more  immature somehow even though she was not even that old, a middle schooler at most.  
  
Let’s just agree any girl dumb enough to wear pigtails is secretly a little baby on the inside, no I’m not using the narration to vaguely refer to my grudges against anyone. A proper narrator would never do that, when the story is the most important thing of all.  
  
“Hey, Roboy. All that noise you’re making woke Monaca from her beauty sleep.”  
  
“You’re in middle school how much beauty sleep could you be getting?”  
  
“You’re a robot. Considering the rate at which artificial intelligence has developed, you can only be what, 2, 3 years old at most?”  
  
“Shuuuuush, nobody can know about my secret age. I’m a teenage robot. If they knew I was so young they’d bully me. How do you even know that anyway?”  
  
“Towa is the cutting edge of robotics, well used to be anyway. Oh wait that’s not Monaca’s talent, Monaca’s talent is being a nice girl who helps everybody else get along. You know one of those people who does nothing but worry about other people because their life’s not that interestng.”  
  
“Wait… what are you doing in here?” He looked and saw several of the boxes had been taken off shelves. She had stolen all of that equipment and just piled those boxes around her in some kind of square primitive structure. “I haven’t seen you in the past day. Have you been here the entire time? You’re up to something aren’t you?”

  
Monaca stood fully up from her pile of boxes. Then she walked over and sat on her throne of boxes. She had been at this for awhile, so the structure was beginning to become quite elaborate. “Are you addressing me? Because your authority is not recognized in fort kickass.”

“What?”  
  
“Oh, no Monaca did a swear. Don’t tell anyone. If the secret gets out that Monaca is not so innocent, she’ll ruin the big plot twist.”  
  
“P-Plot twist? Did I stumble on something dangerous here?”  
  
“Dude you can chill out a little bit. You’re a like 300 pound robot and I’m a middle schooler who goes up to your waist at most.” Monaca exhaled. Whatever act she had been doing, she seemed to drop it for a moment in response to how naturally high strung kiibo was.  
  
“What are you doing then?”  
  
“Obviously, I’m building an evil lair, and for discovering my scheme you’re going to be my first robotic minion. From this fort we’re going to wage war on the whole world!”  
  
“I don’t want to be an evil robot minion! That’s such a stereotype! Get one of the Monokubs if you want one that bad.”  
  
“Gosh, Monaca was just kidding. Learn to take a joke why don’t you, or did they forget to install humor.exe into your hard drive.”  
  
“D-don’t mock me! I have studied the complete history of stand-up comedy!”  
  
“Maybe you should’ve just watched stand-up comedy instead of studying it?”  
  
Oh no, it seems so obvious now? Why didn’t I think of that? Why does the human value of common sense elude me so much?”  
  
“I think you’re fine since it eludes most people here.” Monaca said, as she stood up from her throne of cardboard boxes and immediately pointed at Keebo. “Fine then, if you don’t want to be my servant, then you’ll be my first prisoner.”  
  
“I don’t want to be your prisoner.”  
  
“Hey, come here for a second. Monaca’s lonely and she wants someone to play.”  
  
Keebo looked worried all of a sudden. A little girl said such a thing in front of him, there was no way he could run away. He jumped over the walls of the cardboard fort, clumsily knocking a few boxes down as he could not jump that high. “I’m here, what do you need?”  
  
“Now, you’ll never escape. These walls are made of solid cardboard.”

“Noooo, not solid cardboard! I’m not that strong!” Keebo said, as he suddenly felt like fainting. He had no idea how he could feel so light headed when he was a machine that did not breathe oxygen.

  
“Wow, you’re pretty dramatic. You feel a lot don’t you, even though you’re just a robot.”  
  
At which point Keebo realized she was just playing around. To this girl, world domination, building robot armies, terrorizing others, breaking people’s minds, all of those things were just a childish game. She was just playing at being evil, but she was a pretty good player. For some reason she reminded him of Kokichi, he wanted to leave right then when he noticed the similarity, but he stayed to correct her. “What do you mean just a robot? Robots have feelings too, and I know this because you are hurting mine with your insensitive robophobia.”

  
“Monaca didn’t mean anything by it. It was just an observation that’s all. Monaca doesn’t feel much of anything, even though she’s supposed to be a human being with a human heart. If I were a machine I’d just be broken, but who knows what’s wrong with Monaca.”

“Huh…?” Keebo envied human beings. He envied the fact that they could live happy, normal lives just for being born into them. He was still quite a bit naive though, he did not understand human misery that much. It was just that girl in front of him did not act like any human he had ever met. It was like she was putting on an appearance to try and seem human, just like he was.  
  
Monaca quickly changed the subject though, jumping up on her feet and getting in his face. “So, what’s your deal? Please don’t tell me you have that ‘I just want to be a real boy’ because that’s kind of a cliche.”  
  
“Don’t dismiss my existential dilemma like that! How would you like it if I called your life problems a cliche?”  
  
"Well, maybe get more interesting problems."  
  
"What's wrong with wanting to be like everyone else?"   
  
"So, you want to be boring and stupid." Monaca gave a shrug like 'there's no hope for this one'.  
  
Keebo suddenly felt self conscious like he was disappointing her. He had no idea why he cared so much about what other people thought, he just did. Even this girl he met all of one minute ago he was very self conscious and wanted her to like him.

Then suddenly the girl asked another question out of the blue. Her eyes looked blank, more mechanical than his somehow. “Do you really hate being a robot that much?”

“Huh?”  
  
“I mean isn’t it kind of cool. You’re a mysterious white haired transfer student with pale blue eyes, you can upgrade and get new functions, you’re technically immortal. Unlike humans you’re not bound to be one person, you could have your entire body remodeled.”  
  
“I don’t want to do any of those things!” Keebo wondered for a moment if he had found another gear head looking to upgrade him. This is what he got for seeing the best in people, but oh, humans were so wonderful he could not help but admire them. “How would you like being a fake? Human beings get to be real just because they were born, but no matter how hard I try people are always just going to treat me as a well passing imitation.”  
  
Monaca tilted her head at the finger Keebo was pointing at her. She really did not understand his accusation, because well she thought it was obvious how much of a fake she was. Everybody in her old house knew right away. They all looked at her like she was a thing. “What’s so great about being born? Just because you’re born doesn’t mean anything, it just means two humans have se-.”  
  
Kiibo quickly covered up the side of his head even though he technically did not have ears. He just had a habit of imitating human gestures. “La la la la, I can’t hear you.”  
  
“Monaca thinks you’re much luckier Keebo. The only reason somebody built you is because they wanted you around. They put a lot of hard effort into making sure you turned out the right way. That has meaning. Most of the time humans are born, it’s just a mistake, a fluke, an accident, it has no meaning at all.”  
  
“You don’t really talk like a middle schooler.” Keebo said, suddenly he had no idea what to think about the girl at all. He had never considered the human experience from that level. Even though she was so naturally and obviously a human, she did not seem to be very happy to be alive. Keebo would have given anything to become human, to actually be alive. He could not understand this.  
  
“Oh, Monaca forgot to be cute. If Monaca isn’t a cute character at all times she has no value.”  
  
“W-wait I didn’t say that! You don’t have to be cute.”

 

“Being cute isn’t a choice, it’s a way of life. It’s also an excellent method of mind control.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I said, Monaca is such a ditz teehee! She’s always saying things she didn’t mean to say.”

  
“You said all that on purpose! You’re just messing with me!” Keebo said, letting out a sigh of exhaustion. He was not tired, nor did he have any function for sighing, he was just imitating the human gesture again. He sat down cross legged as he looked at Monaca. “Are you scared?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You’re just a little kid stuck in this killing game.”  
  
“Oh, of course Monaca’s scared. I’m super-duper in despair! She’s just an innocent little girl after all!”  
  
“Ummm… it doesn’t seem like you’re scared.”  
  
“Oh no, you’ve seen through Monaca’s lies. You’re way too clever, you’ve outsmarted the teen genius.”  
  
“I… Umm… Why aren’t you scared?”  
  
“Everybody is so desperate to get out of here because they have people waiting for them on the outside world, right? Nobody in the whole world wants Monaca around, so where does it matter where I am? My big sister doesn’t even want to use me as a pawn anymore.”  
  
“Oh… Um…” Keebo had no idea what to say to that. He crossed his arms thinking seriously, suddenly his antennae wavered back and forth. _Don’t leave that girl alone._ A voice inside of him said. “Do you mind if I stay here a little bit?”

  
Monaca looked at him suspiciously for a moment. Her eyes were completely dead. They were more rotted out than Kumagawa Misogi’s, if his were the eyes of a rotten fish than hers were a pair of scooped out eyes. Only the shadows remained, that you could stare into but never discern anything from them. The only thing that gave her face the appearance of life, was the makeup she was wearing, heavy like a middle school girl trying to impress a big sister and the smile that looked painted on her face. He raised a hand towards her and she flinched for a second, she hated that, learned reflexes were so hard to unlearn.

“N-no, I’m just trying to initiate a human gesture called a high five.”  
  
“No thanks. Monaca’s too cool for you.”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“Monaca doesn’t want anyone around her. She doesn’t like people. There’s nothing good about being a people.”  
  
“Oh…”  
  
“But you’re not a people, you’re a robot! So let’s play some more.”  
  
Keebo decided not to take offense to that remark just this once. He had no lips to speak up, just a segmented face and a mouth he could open and close but regardless he tried to show her a smile, because that girl was trying so hard to smile too. Keebo could respect the effort behind her fake smile at least.  
  
“Sure… Let’s have lots and lots of fun.”


	8. Fukawa Toko Writes with Lots of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm writing Korekiyo's character to be less... well you know if you know the spoilers.

The first sun rays through the window awoke Shuichi with a gentle start. Shadows were supposed to recoil from light but he could not help himself but crave its warmth. As his eyes widened, his detective sensibilities immediately booted up and noticed two things. Which was really too bad as he would have liked to stay in the dreamlike space of being half asleep when everything was foggy sensation just a little bit longer to savor this moment more.  The first few minutes of waking were like a liminal space where anything seemed possible, until you realized you had woken up the same boring person you fell asleep as. However, he noticed, that Kaede was leaning against his shoulder, and that she was also asleep which meant the two of them had been awake all night talking and fell asleep so close together without even realizing it, like they were two partners in the middle of a stakeout.  
  
Shuichi could not in his life recall ever being so close to another human being. In his past life he was sure he had friends, but at the moment only vague silhouettes came to his mind. All he remembered was being distant from others, drawing a clear line between him and them. As long as he was distant enough, he could hide who he was. From himself, and from others. The idea that others would realize who he was filled him with constant anxiety. Somehow, even the thoughts of total strangers weighed more on his own identity and sense of self than whatever he thought.  
  
Impostor syndrome is a pattern of thought in which an individual doubts his or her accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. That’s just a metaphor of course, or is it not a metaphor because Shuichi is literally an impostor? Can an impostor feel self conscious for being an impostor or is that just self aware? No, I’m deciding it’s a metaphor because everything in a story is a metaphor. Either way, Shuichi felt deep within himself the continual urge to prove himself over and over again to the people around him. He saw that he had no place by their side, and yet he desired to be among them, so he tried to make up the difference through labor. As if he could earn a place there if he was useful enough.

  
While he was working himself so hard, he never once felt secure, never once felt satisfied. He was gripped with a constant anxiety that one day he would be exposed. That was why at all times he avoided the eyes of others. The last thing he wanted to see was himself reflected in them.  
  
The fact that he had felt so comfortable next to Kaede to fall asleep surprised him. He thought he even might wake up as someone else, but he was the same boring person after all, all he could think about staring at her leaning against him was how he did not deserve to be there. He wanted to be the one to help Kaede, he wanted to be her support while she tried to help everybody else, but he knew he was too weak to support anybody. He would just crumble. All he could do was rely on Kaede’s strength for the both of them. He really thought with all of his heart Kaede was… a better person than he was. The more he tended to build others up on pedestals, the more he sunk into the mud.

He wondered what Kaede would think if the both woke up in the same room together. Then he wondered what everybody else would think. The crushing weight of all of their judgements was to much for him, so he popped the window open and climbed out of it. He crashed outside and then walked around in the hallway for a few laps before ending right back at her door. Anxiety always made him take circuitous routes like this. He would probably be a lot less tired and gloomy if he could go from point a to point b like everybody else always seemed to be able to, without having to take laps first.

 

The worst part of anxiety was how tired it made you. He spent all of his mental energy worrying over nothing, about things he logically knew was nothing. He had no idea how he even had enough energy left to think at all. On mornings like this when he was tired, he got even more anxious. It was like there was no end to the cycle. He could only get more tired, and more tired, lesser and lesser.

  
He reached forward and rang the doorbell again. Immediately afterwards he regretted it, what if Kaede did not want to see him this early? What if she did not want to see him at all? He heard noises from inside her room as Kaede woke up, and got dressed. When she appeared in the doorway and saw him waiting for her there, she greeted him with a smile like always. He hid his eyes from the glare of her smile underneath his hat. He had no idea if she was in a good mood or bad one. That was because he knew Kaede was such a kind person, that she could even smile at a person like him.  
  
“So, what did you wanna talk about?”

 

Shuichi touched his chin, looking at all the other people that were around. The only one he trusted was Kaede. “...I want to talk in the library. Could you come with me please?”

  
They walked down the brick pathway. Shuichi noticed over the past few days, it had been cleaned up and now only the lawn was overgrown. An exisal in the distance was carefully tending to one of the lawns. When he saw the giant robot faithfully mowing the grass and also functioning as an intimidation factor he must have thought wow the mastermind is an excellent multi tasker. Okay, he probably was not thinking that at all.  
  
On the way there they passed several people. Kaede stopped to talk to each one of them. When she did, Shuichi only silently observed from a few steps away. These were the same people who blamed Kaede every time things went wrong, but Kaede smiled at them all the same and greeted them warmly.  
  
It was like she existed just for other people. That was what Shuichi thought was the right way to live.

Shuichi sighed in relief when they finally made it to the school. Tsumugi talked some nonsense about cosplay buses that’s not even worth wasting valuable narration time on, yeah we get it Tsumugi you’re a one note character who likes anime and is a callout to the anime fans who buy and play this game. Whatever. I’m already over it. Kaede being Kaede she really did feel the need to check up on everybody. That was what he liked about her, but also that made him worry all the more. She could worry about everyone else while he worried about her. It almost worked that way.

  
He thought they were almost home free, but the moment they started to head towards the basement Rantaro appeared in front of them. With his clothes sagging off of him, and his usual brainless expression, he looked very much like the human form of a scarecrow. He lifted his long and spindly arms in a casual shrug. “Hey, there you two. Something wrong?”

  
“No. Nothing’s wrong.”  
  
“Hey, Amami-kun.” Shuichi spoke up raising his eyes slightly. “You said there’s someone behind all this, right? That Monokuma is just a puppet.”  
  
“I did say that. But you know what? It’s just a hunch. I sure wouldn’t complain if that’s how it all turned out, though.” Rantaro seemed far too relaxed, the complete opposite of Shuichi. Only detectives were supposed to figure out that much on hunches.  
  
“And away he goes…” Kaede murmured after him as Rantaro turned to leave. As they descended into the library they brushed by Kirigiri Kyoko, but she did not seem to notice them.  
  
Shuichi looked dark and moody, but as far as the classical image of a detective went it was only skin deep with him. Nobody wanted to imagine the noire hero of a story as a constantly anxious nobody who was completely dependent on others. The real noire hero was a man who could stand on his own and seek out the truth of the world entirely on his own. For some reason, Rantaro who did not seem to care what anybody thought of him, and seemed to be entirely on his own wavelength seemed much more noire than Shuchi ever felt.  
  
When they finally descended the stairs together they were met with an empty library filled with the scent of old musty books.

 

“Okay, before I say anything else, I want you to promise me you’ll keep this secret.”

  
“Okay, got it.”  
  
Shuichi looked relieved and smiled. Kaede was someone at the center of the whole group, she pulled everyone into orbit around her like the sun. He thought that was only natural considering how bright she was, but he was still glad to have her to himself for a moment.

Like a great detective, he began to explain in exacting detail. “This library has books scattered everywhere. Even books lying on top of the bookcases. But, take a look at this bookcase. It’s the only one in the library with no books on top.”  
  
“Oh, that one. Huh, you’re right.”  
  
“Also you can see the floor in front of this bookcase has noticeable markings.”  
  
“You’re right… What is this?”  
  
“I noticed the markings the first time I came here with you while we were searching the school. When I came back to investigate on my own I noticed this.”  
  
He walked over to the bookcase and placed his hands between the gap - as he did the entire floor rumbled and he moved the bookcase.  
  
“The bookcase moves?”  
  
“Look, there’s a door behind it.” He gestured to the black and white door.  
  
“So, this is what you wanted to show me.”  
  
“That’s why I wanted you to come here with me. There’s something unique about this door. Take a closer look.”  
  
Kaede noticed the obvious black and white color symbolism. You know, black and white, chess games, pandas, monokuma, binary opposition, it’s really deep stuff. “Do you think this door is connected to Monokuma?”  
  
“This door has a card reader lock, so I can’t open it.”  
  
“You can’t?”  
  
“But the very fact this door is here makes me consider… a certain possibility. There is a chance one of us here is cooperating with Monokuma.” As Shuichi grabbed his hat, he pulled it over his face causing the shadows underneath his eyes to sharpen.  
  
“Cooperating with Monokuma?” Kaede’s eyes widened in disbelief. The classmates were all her precious friends that she wanted to escape with by now, the idea that one of them could betray her was unfeasible to her. “W-wait a minute! What do you mean by that?”  
  
“It’s only a hypothesis right now, but… consider this.” Shuichi’s hand traveled to cover his mouth. “Why would there be a hidden door there. If it was just for Monokuma’s use he wouldn’t need it. He could have the exisals or monokubs protect us. The only reason to be hidden is if one of us needed to sneak in without anybody else noticing.”  
  
“Maybe, but I can’t believe someone in our group would be working with Monokuma.”  
  
He was fine if Kaede believed that. She should stay the Kaede who believes in everybody, who happily approaches everyone with a smile. He was the shadowy detective who suspected others. “I can’t believe it either. That’s why… to confirm my suspicions I decided to set a little trap inside this card reader. I sprinkled some dust into the card reader to see if it was used. I don’t think a person using a card reader would notice a little dust. If we see dust on the floor we know it was used.” Shuichi suddenly back tracked from his train of thought. “Well… as I mentioned before, this is just a hypothesis. I have no evidence yet. But… if it is true… Then even if Monokuma is gone, this isn’t going to end Akamatsu-san.”  
  
“...”

“Anyway, that’s what I had to tell you. Of course, I don’t expect you to believe me.” Shuichi’s thin lips formed into a smile. His smile was not as bright or encouraging as Kaede’s, but he wanted to show one to her all the same. “I just… wanted to tell you. No matter what.”  
  
“Y-yeah…” At the moment he did not notice the hesitation in her voice. Even if he possibly had, he would not have understood it.  
  
“Well, let’s head back. We shouldn’t stay here too long.”

 

After putting the moving bookcase into place, they cautiously left the library. “Akamatsu-san, please don’t tell anyone what I showed you. I don’t want to cause a panic.”  
  
“I understand…”  
  
Having made their promise, the two of them separated. Each of them now had a promise of their own, a secret of their own. For the both of them it was an odd, newfound feeling, being tied together like that.

 

Yet she could not shake the feeling of being disgusted. What kind of person would turn against all of their friends like that, and agree to such a plan? They were surely the worst kind of person. Nobody would want to read a story with them as the main character. t’s just so hard to believe. But, Shuichi trusted her… that’s why he told her. Then… maybe she should believe.  
  
As she walked back absorbed in her thoughts she heard a snicker. “Morning…! Maaaan, I slept great last night. Y’know, this place is alright when there’s nothing to worry about. Oh! So… how far have you gone with Saihara-chan?” She turned around to see, Kokichi watching her tracing the contours of his smile with a finger.  
  
“Huh? Wh-what are you talking about?” Kaede backed away raising her hands defensively. She was staring to sweat…? For some reason? Why did people keep making comments like that. It was like they could all see something she could not.  
  
“Nishi, nishishishi. What were you imagining just now? I just wanted to know how far you’ve gone exploring the place together that’s all.”  
  
She had not imagined anything. She had not allowed herself to imagine. Her imagination had never been very gdod. “That’s none of your business, Oma.”  
  
“Huh? What’s with that attitude? You’re so mean! I thought you said we were friends, Kaede! But you were lying this whole time! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Kokichi immediately broke out into the water works.  
  
Kaede’s eyes only narrowed. “Yeah, well, you’re lying too.”

“Oh? Wow, Akamatsu-chan you know how to stand your ground don’t you?” The water works were gone in a second and Kokichi was smiling like always, like a switch had been flipped. “Aren’t cinnamon roll types like you supposed to be soft and pure? Don’t start playing the part wrong. But you’re right - I was lying. After all, we’re just strangers to one another. That’s why I don’t really care about what you and Saihara-chan do. Besides, even friends don’t share everything with each other.”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“I’m more nervous around friends who share too much than strangers, really. The moment you think you know someone it’s like you’re asking to get lied too. Nice people like you who seem like an open book are the worst kind of liars. I have a hard time believing someone like you even exists.”  
  
“...” Kaede said nothing, she simply looked off to the side pretending Kokichi was not there.  
  
“Saihara-chan seems to have no problem believing in you though. Isn’t it funny? A detective falls for a lie. It sounds like the punch line to some joke.”  
  
Kaede turned away ignoring his taunting. There was no way she would unravel what Kokichi was trying to tell her, she had never been particularly good at lying. All lies were eventually going to expose. The moment you told one you could feel it unraveling. That always made her too nervous to keep lying. It was a hard act to keep up.  
  
A reality that resembled a twisted story. Kaede saw herself as the protagonist of such a sordid story. Yet, she had no idea what the audience would think if they saw someone like her right now. All she knew was as she walked away, she knew at least one person watching her story was laughing at her.

🐻

 

Shortly after Shuichi and Kaede left the library, Fukawa and Togami entered it. Even if Fukawa and Togami had been present during Shuichi and Kaede’s secret meeting, nothing much would have come of it. The two of them were simply too self absorbed to pay attention to everyone else. Togami only came to the library to get away from the rest of the students in the academy. Fukawa followed him under the pretense of stalking, but really she was there for the exact same reason.  
  
Observing from appearances only the two seemed to both be the kind of people who would hide themselves away in a library together. Togami had a regal appearance and intelligent bearings. He was exactly the kind of intelligent, unapproachable type that would be left to read in silence. Whereas Toko’s long skirt, and braids gave off the impression she was a shy, secluded bookish girl hiding away another side of herself.  
  
On the inside they could not be any more different. Togami was self confident, but only because he looked down on everyone else around him. He only saw people for their use, which is why he avoided them when they were playing all buddy buddy. He had no interest in sympathy. Weak people sought others out only to make themselves feel better about their own wounds.  
  
Toko looked down on everybody else too, but she also looked up to them. It was complicated. She was immediately suspicious of everybody, and doubted their intentions. Good intentions did not exist for her, people only meant her harm. That was why she had no intention of showing them her scar covered body. But she was desperate, she still wanted to be of use to them. At least to one person who she sat right next to. In her head the idea of a prince seeing her wounds and gently caressing them still existed to her. She did not deny that desire but… for her, it was enough just to have the fantasy. She had no real interest in reality, real people were scary, full of hurt, her only comfort lied in fantasy.  
  
However these two who seemed the same, and then different, were on another level the same. Both of them had no interest in the people around them, and that was why they gravitated towards each other. Toko particularly had been caught in Togami’s gravity for a long time, and Togami had learned to tolerate her presence. They both disliked people, and they both liked books.  
  
For them that was enough of a reason to spend time together. I mean, what other reasons are there?  
  
Togami’s favorite time was spent reading in silence, because he did not have to hear Toko’s, or anybody else’s voice interrupt him. If the only way he had ever known Toko was as an author, through reading her books, well he would have respected her talent if nothing else.

 

The Togami were trained to only see people as assets, especially women. When considering them, you had to look at what their attributes would bring to the bloodline. Anybody reading Toko’s books would not suspect at all her major personality defects, her books even though they tended to lean towards romanticism were always written with sincere emotions and detailed knowledge of human nature. Her characters seemed like real people. Sometimes it boggled Togami’s mind that she understood people as fictional characters so well, and was able to portray such complexity and nuance of their actions in her writing but the second she met a living breathing person she acted like… that…

 

If he had to ascribe it to anything, it was probably control. Humans were terrified of losing control. They could act like their best selves, only when they were in complete control of all things around them. Togami had to be in control at all times. Otherwise the life he lived up until this point and the sacrifices he made were for nothing. Toko’s entire life was out of control. She was a mess, frankly. That was why her novels were so purposeful, so plotted, in a fantasy world she could control everything all the moving parts. If Toko had any control over herself at all, she would be the beautiful, suffering heroine of a tragedy. Instead of the ugly, stuttering paranoid mess that she was. However, Togami was glad that she did not have control because if she did he would have to be the beautiful and selfless prince that came dashing in to save her.  
  
He had no interest in playing such a role. Selfless. Self less. Why would he care about himself any less than others? That sounded like an easy way to die, or even worse lose money.  
  
Fukawa Toko was an author, just like me. I would say though she was a lot less twisted than I was. She filled her stories with her genuine emotions, love, sadness, the ones she was afraid to show the world. Everyone who read her books got the same impression, they were written by a girl in love. My love is a little bit too twisted, Toko will settle for the fantasy, for her the emotion of being in love is enough, but for me I want to control the reality as well.  
  
Just being by their side is enough, and my heart beats faster when I see them, she believed in romantic nonsense like that that only existed in fiction. Rather, she chose to believe it, because she thought life was more interesting that way. That was why she had sat for so long silently staring at him, as if being next to somebody she loved and thinking how much she loved them was really enough for her.

  
Eventually though her fantasies started leaking out of her mouth. “How do I love you, let me count the ways.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Your long, golden hair that shines in the sunset.”  
  
“My hair is short. You better not be imagining me riding on a horse, I forbid it.”  
  
“Your soft green eyes.”  
  
“My eyes are blue Toko, I’m literally right in front of you. Literally. I know you’re an author so you take everything figuratively but still…”  
  
“You clear and commanding voice that hides your inner softness. The way you become flustered when you speak your true feelings, so you must conceal them.”  
  
“Do you want to know my true feelings?”  
  
“Yes, more than anything.”  
  
“I truly hate you.”  
  
“M-master! You finally confessed to me! D-don’t worry I know you have to keep on appearances for the sake of the world. These feelings will be just between us, n-nobody else needs to know.I don’t need you to do anything else, for me being by your side is enough.”  
  
He really hated hearing idealistic nonsense like that. It reminded him when his mother would clutch his face and tell him if he grew up faster, his father would return soon. No, he did not need to think of that. The Togami family was just a name, that signified all of the power and assets he would inherit, the only connections he needed were political ones. Any other notion of family was just absurd. “Did you even hear what I just said? Stop hearing whatever you want to hear. I swear I could put up a cardboard cutout of myself and you’d just talk to that damn thing all day.”  
  
“H-how do you know about the cardboard cutout I keep in my room?”  
  
“You’re kidding, right?”  
  
“...”  
  
“Toko…”  
  
“... S-so anyway what are you reading? The Great Gatsby, huh? Doesn’t that seem a little bit ironic to you.”  
  
“I have to read foreign books so I can practice my languages. Besides, why wouldn’t I love a book about how the endless pursuit of wealth is a totally worthwhile life?”  
  
“No way, the Great Gatsby is a love story about the endless pursuit of love and how that’s a totally worthwhile way to live.”  
  
They were both wrong.  
  
Togami pushed his glasses up. “What do you know about love anyway? I thought to be in love you had to have a personality that someone would actually like. How can you know if you love somebody without letting anyone get close to you?”  
  
“That t-true. But there’s really no w-way to know… But the distance between u-us doesn’t change our love…! Because as soon as you realize your feelings, the love is born. That’s h-how love works! There m-might come a day when y-you understand. Maybe. S-someday.”  
  
“I’m sure most stalkers are convinced that they’re in love with their targets. They see themselves as protecting them. Most human relationships though people just want the others around them to think positive things about them, they want to believe they’re someone at least to that person. In other words everybody is just in love with themselves in the end.” Togami had no use for love. Especially if it was going to turn him into a pining idiot like Toko.  
  
“Th-that’s not true. I’ve never once loved myself.”  
  
“That’s because you’re eccentric, batty, unlikable, constantly insecure, unable to maintain your own appearance, have a superiority-inferiority complex, have illogical mood swings, have no self confidence and care too much about what others think-” Togami started listing off her flaws like he kept a mental list of them. Because he did.  
  
“But, at the same time I know I love you, regardless of what you think of me.”

  
“That’s just your own delusions though.”  
  
“What’s wrong with delusions? When reality is so unpleasant.”

  
“You’re unpleasant.”

 

Togami closed his book. He had no answer to that. Just that the things others got to cling to in order to delude themselves, friendship, love, family, never even existed for him in the first place. If he had stopped to pine about them for even a second, he would have fallen apart. Ever since he was a child he had no choice but to face reality unflinchingly. Everything else was a distraction that other people fell to because they were not living the lives they wanted to live and needed to comfort themselves from the fact that they were not one of the chosen few. They had no meaning. Survival had meaning. Power had meaning. Nobody taught him that, nobody bothered to raise him, so he had to learn those things on his own.  
  
Togami knew though no matter how many times he tried to strip her of her delusions, Toko would never give them up. She was a girl in love. That was all she wanted to be. Even when he won the arguments she would just change the subject.

“So, did you really know Amami?” like she was doing right now.  
  
“Mm, I never met him in person but I know of his family. They’re very public and involved in a lot of press and publicity events. Their heir always acts like the face of the family.”  
  
“So, he’s a prince just like Byakuya-sama! Are the two of you going to duel over my heart? Has he already thrown his dueling glove in the ring? What will it be? Jousting? Pistols?”  
  
“At least pick a genre for your fantasies! I can’t even tell what time period they’re taking place in anymore!” Togami snapped at her. “He’s nothing like the prince you imagine, though I’ve never met him in person only heard about him through rumors. They have more contacts with the Kurokamis than they do the Togamis so, we generally agree to stay out of each other’s way.”  
  
“Isn’t that called a oligarchical monopoly?”  
  
“No it’s called good business sense. Anyway, from what I’ve heard of him he’s incredibly composed, and cunning with a sharp eye for business. His real appearance seems to be a bit off that mark…”  
  
“What do you mean by that?”  
  
“Well. He looks like Komaeda for one. He’s also a lot spacier and seems less focused. It’s hard to imagine that the heir of a company can be such an airhead.”  
  
Looks like Komaeda was their collective group shorthand for looking like a weirdo. “Is there anybody else in those new kids that you heard about in the outside world?” Toko asked.

  
“Mm, I’ve been to one of Akamatsu’s concerts before. Her talent was the genuine thing, even beyond what’s expected of me to know of the piano as an heir. However… I went to one concert, and then another a year later and her playing seemed different to me. Also her first name escapes me, but that’s probably because I don’t care enough about her to remember.”

  
“Byakuya-sama only cares about important people like me.”  
  
“You’re unimportant.”  
  
“Byakuya-sama cares about me even though I’m not important… He’s so generous.”  
  
“I don’t care about you either!” Togami reached the limit of his patience. He stood up from the desk and decided to leave her there without saying goodbye. She would follow eventually. If she did not, that was even better. Besides, the conversation was starting to get too normal between the two of them. Togami would rather become the next victim of Toko’s scissors before admitting that for the prodigy and the progeny they were each other’s only taste of normalcy.

  
He went to go return his book to the shelf when he noticed someone had been watching them the entire time. That girl was completely useless. What was the point of having a stalker follow you around if they could not scare off all the other stalkers.

 

“Are you enjoying the show?”  
  
“Yes, quite…” Korekiyo said stepping out of the shadows. He was scribbling into a book titled human observation journal, that he closed suddenly and set to the side. “I enjoy stories as much as the next person, but to me the humans who create them are far more fascinating.”  
  
“Let me make this clear for you, if you’re planning to murder me you won’t succeed.” Togami thought it was best to get down to business. Unlike with Toko he had no time to waste on fooling around with banter. “I survived to become the heir of the Togami, so I won’t fall to anything else.”  
  
“You’re so quick to assume harmful intent of others.”  
  
“Yeah, maybe it’s the creepy mask you’re always wearing, your habit of laughing to yourself, the way you’re dressed like you’re a haunted school student from the early 20th century. Even an idiot like Makoto would find you suspicious.”  
  
“For an outsider like myself, yes, but you’re suspicious of everyone aren’t you? Even those who look as soft as Amami and Akamatsu?”  
  
“What do you want an applause for your basic observation skills?”  
  
“Answering a question with a question is rude you know. Usually the higher classes put a strict emphasis on manners, though I suppose you’re the type who only cares how he’s perceived by his peers.” Korekiyo said, as he clutched the side of his face. “I’m merely practicing my talents as an anthropologist.”  
  
“Why don’t you show me how talented you are by flying to some part of the world so far away I’ll never see you again?”  
  
“Anthropology is not just about studying foreign cultures. It’s a study of humans. Human’s are vastly different, from place to place they vary so much and most of all they have an infinite amount of stories to tell. But people, people are mostly the same.”  
  
“Are they entertaining to you because they’re predictable, or because they’re unpredictable?” Togami was reminded unpleasantly of Junko for a moment.

  
“They’re entertaining either way.”  
  
“Well, I have about zero more time to waste on this nonsense. Enjoy being locked up in here however you want because it gives you subjects to observe, I’m still going to escape.”  
  
“I don’t enjoy being locked in here one bit. If I’m here than I can’t be with my sister. She’s going to be disappointed with me, because I failed her again. Even though I’m the only one she has.”  
  
Togami meant to brush right past him, but the mention of a sister made him stop for a moment. He had several sisters, but he never once thought of seeing them again. There was nobody waiting on the outside for him, but that was a good thing, because he was motivated by himself to leave. He did not need to cling to anyone.  
  
“You know, if you wanted Fukawa to lose interest in you, your outright hostility is never going to work.”

 

“Huh?”  
  
“It just makes you more unattainable, which will make her chase you more. She doesn’t expect or want to ever catch you, it’s just about the chase. People are all the same you see, over and over again, the image of the loved one in their head is more important than the real deal.”  
  
“She doesn’t want to? But that’s all that fool ever talks about-”  
  
“Have you ever heard of Orpheus and Eurydice? Izanagi and Izanami? Synchronic myths, because they appeared in different areas of the world, but are roughly the same story. The moment you turn around and see a person’s true self, they disappear.”  
  
Korekiyo walked away laughing to himself, leaving that thought haunting the air. He left only echoes behind him as he disappeared, like he was only a ghost. Even when he was just standing in front of Togami, his presence only made the room seem emptier.

 

🧸

 

“So, I’m guessing… when the mastermind’s current strategy for starting the killing game doesn’t work they’ll just try another motive out. They seem immature to me, like a killing game virgin.”

 

『Because you’re so mature by comparison.』

  
Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi were sitting on a bench, casually discussing murder and the possible deaths of all of their friends. Well, all of Kumagawa’s friends. You know, like young lovers do. Junko kicked her legs gleefully as she sat.  
  
『I’m used to people trying to kill me at this point. What’s worrying me is what you’re going to do when you finally snap and get bored.』

 

“You’re making me sound like I’m your worst enemy!”

 

『No, my worst enemy is myself but you’re a close second. That’s why nobody could replace you in my heart.』

 

“I’m not going to get bored! Not while you’re around. I’m sure a million things will go wrong even in my perfect plan to keep me entertained.”  

 

『If I’m around.』

 

“Huh?”

 

『Nothing.』Kumagawa Misogi sighed. He looked up at the sky, his eyes looking too tired for their usual routine. 『Really, such rotten luck getting stuck in another situation like this.』

  
“Why are you so grumpy lately? You keep going, ‘what rotten luck, what rotten luck’. It doesn’t really suit a voice as girly as yours to be muttering in a grisly tone. Maybe get a male voice actor if you want to try to be all hardcore?”

 

『My life is just tragedy, after tragedy, to the point where tragedy has lost all meaning and turns into an absurd joke?』  
  
“Yeah, I know. If you keep complaining about an awesome life like that that’s a non stop thrill ride then you’re going to sound spoiled.”

  
Junko noticed something was off. Even if she noticed, and even if she figured out the reasons why that did not mean she could connect to those emotions. Junko was always off on her own little Junko island. She rejected the rules of everybody else’s world except her own, and only her self centered, erratic logic was the one that matter. Kumagawa and Junko were able to sit so close, because his logic was so twisted that it was complimentary to hers. The two of them were a tangle of thorns whenever they were together.  
  
That did not mean that Junko was particularly comforting to be around. The fact she seemed to be making an attempt to pay attention to somebody other than herself was new, though. In the past she had only been an audience watching Kumagawa fall for the spectacle. If he fell in front of her, he was almost certain she would never reach out her hand. She would just laugh, and probably be the one who tripped him.  
  
Kumagawa was hardly bothered by that. Ajimu was supposed to be the one who saved him. When she died he gave up on being saved, and other things. Suddenly, he saw something appear in front of his eyes. Junko was dangling a pair of bracelets. Kumagawa recognized them, one bunny, and one bear, the charms they used to hang on their phones.

“If you’re so worried about luck, how about some good luck charms? I’ll share my good luck with you, if you share your disastrous bad luck with me.”

 

『I don’t think it works that way.』  
  
“Well, of course not. I mean when we sit together it’s not like I can share my good looks with you. If anything, I look even hotter in comparison to you.”  
  
Kumagawa looked at the smile on her face and realized it was one of her rare sincere ones. There were times she insulted him to cause despair, and times she did it to be coy and flirt. It was a subtle nuance, some might even call it a ridiculous one. “Wait… you’re serious?” It was startling, because usually she was such a clown. “You want to do something as lame as wear matching couple’s bracelets? Why? Because it’s despair inducingly lame?”  
  
Junko’s eyes narrowed at him. Caught in the sights of such an expression, Kumagawa wondered if this was the face that people saw moments before they died. Junko dragged his wrist away from him, and slid the bracelet around his hand. He now had a bear hanging around his wrist. Her smile did not change the entire time. It was a smile you could could see even with your eyes closed.  
  
Before Junko could act on such a threatening and yet strangely attractive smile, Mukuro appeared and sat in between them. “Hey, Misogi-chan. That self absorbed girl said something that made sense for once, it does look like something wrong with you. Besides the several other things that are wrong with you usually.” Mukuro spoke in flat tones but this was her trying her best to sound sympathetic.  
  
“Hey, what are you doing interrupting a private talk between me and senpai? If the school knew that we were spending time alone together, imagine the rumors that could spread.” Junko said, playing the part of a lovestruck teenager, entirely as a joke. She would probably get bored of that joke and move onto another on in a few seconds.  
  
“This is a private talk between siblings.” Mukuro said, standing her ground with a cold voice. She was only shaking a little bit. “Maybe one day MIsogi-chan and I will let you into our family.”

  
“Hah, like Misogi’s going to open up any more to you-” Junko said, like it was a competition.

 

『Mukuro-chan, the thing is I don’t even know if I’m sad. I don’t know what to feel.』  
  
A competition that Junko was currently losing. Junko always seemed to be out to posture as the better despair sister, but that did not seem to affect Kumagawa much.

 

Kumagawa covered his face as if trying to remove a mask. No matter how hard he tugged though it would not come off. He needed to keep smiling, because he was in the middle of the killing game. He was reliving his worst nightmare over again. He had chosen to do this, so junko would not be alone here. Every time he tried to keep it together for himself he fell apart, that was why he wanted to try to help that girl at least. He was not of use to anybody in the whole world, he was unwanted, except for one person.  
  
Even if he did not belong anywhere else in the world, he could belong with these two who also did not belong. That was a romantic notion, and despite is constant shouts of meaninglessness he seemed to be quite the romanticist deep within. Perhaps the person he wanted to be was a romanticist, someone who was able to believe in such things, it was just he always fell short of the person he wanted to be.  
  
All he needed to do was keep smiling and he would remain Kumagawa. That was the person he was, the minus who always smiled in the face of his chaotic life. The loser who lost everything but his smile. He needed to continue to be that person, because that was who both Mukuro and Junko needed him to be at the moment.

 

The mask was glued to his face. If he peeled it off his own skin would peel too, revealing nothing but a dried up dead skull underneath. Even if he was just bones he could still smile as long as he had teeth. He was starting to wonder who that person was though. How that person kept going. For what reasons. Because he had done something that was very much against Kumagawa Misogi, he had stopped smiling, and he stopped wanting to live.  
  
『It’s not like I want to be sad… I don’t seek out painful things… but, it’s like no matter what my feelings for Ajimu-san won’t go away.』Kumagawa said, looking back at Mukuro a confused smile on his face. He was not used to this. Every time one of his masks broke, he thought all he needed to do was pick up a new one. He could keep going, even in a life of constant loss because there was no loss that was too great for him. If he felt all of his sadness, all of his anger, and then let it wash away without muddying up the river. But now… even though he felt his sadness it did not go away. The river was turning a dirty, unpleasant, pitch black. 『I know Ajimu-san was selfish, she only thought about herself in the end…  but, I can’t help loving her. Even if it only hurts me.』  
  
He was different from his younger self who clung to her side, hoping she would save him. He was clinging to what he knew, were nothing but painful memories, but if he let go of that pain that would be tantamount of letting go of her. All existence that somebody named Ajimu Najimi existed in this world would be gone.  
  
Even though he was speaking about such sad things, and trying to be honest in front of his only family Kumagawa’s face barely changed. 『Ah… it’s messed up you know. I cry when I want to smile, and I smile when I want to cry.』Kumagawa laughed at his own twisted and turned about feelings.  
  
“I think you’re sad. I can understand feeling that way about a sister at least.” Mukuro said, when Junko was right next to them like she was not even there. Junko stayed oddly silent for once. It was almost out of character, but if something was out of character for Enoshima Junko she would just invent a new character.  

『Am I sad? If I could just cry about Ajimu-san, if I could just feel the despair of losing a loved one like everyone else...』Kumagawa Misogi’s eyes had started to leak water again. It was like he did not even notice it. Rather than crying, it was like cracks appeared and water fell through them falling from his face.  
  
The Kumagawa that she knew, was someone who laughed in the face of such misery. He took tragedy on as a challenge. The Kumagawa who reached out to her in the middle of her despair, was like a shining bright star.  
  
Even if that star fell from the sky though, even if it smouldered out and became dark it was not like she would abandon him. He was the first person to tell her to keep living, and now he looked like he barely believed his own words. Even so, she wanted that precious existence named Kumagawa to keep going on.  
  
If he was sad, she wanted to comfort him. If he was happy, she wanted to laugh with him. Perhaps Kumagawa was useless and bad for the rest of the world, but they would always be good for each other, because they were family.  
  
She missed him a little bit, the shining bright Kumagawa. But that was because, he looked so empty right now without that motivation to keep moving forward. In the end though the one who ultimately decided to trap himself here, this place that was guaranteed to only agitate his wounds wounds from the past and worsen the cracks inside of him was Kumagawa himself. He came here because Junko and Mukuro were here.  
  
“If only you found a normal family like Makoto and Komaru. If they were your siblings, you wouldn’t be making such a sad face right now…”

『Eh? Am I really sad?』He touched his face again, like he was wiping away the entire expression. When he next looked at her he was smiling like normal. 『Are you still worried about Komaru-chan. You just have to let her see how wonderful you are like Makoto-chan and I see.』  
  
The moment the topic moved to someone other than himself he recovered, but Mukuro thought that was exactly the problem. “Misogi-chan. Just. Focus on yourself for once.”

『What’s there to focus on? The first time I lost Ajimu-san, I lost sight of who I was.』Kumagawa lacked the formative experiences of everybody else. 『You don’t exist until someone looks at you, but everybody looked away from me when I was a kid. For the longest time I just wanted to live for the sake of Ajimu-san...』  
  
He was just using her, he knew that. He ended up growing into a twisted version of her. Her cynicism, her aloofness, her ability to smile at everything. He was like a little kid imitating his big sister. The same as Mukuro, a lot of his identity was rooted in what Ajimu was not.  
  
“You still have me, and you have Junko kind of. There are people who like you for your vulgar, petty, wicked, cutthroat, traitorous, twisted, self.”  
  
The despair sister, and the intruder in their relationship who showed up out of nowhere. 『Junko and I… are mutually… something. We understand each other at least. Mutual betrayal, mutual feelings, mutual deception, and we both tried to kill ourselves in front of the other. I wonder though if it's only because... Junko lost everything when she lost her plans to cause despair to the world, and I lost everything just naturally, so the only thing we have left is each other.  That's why we're still fighting.』They were constantly by each other's sides. He wondered if that was a good enough reason to fall in love. He wondered if there were any good reasons to fall in love. 

Kumagawa Misogi leaned back at his seat looking at the sky above him, only to see a cage appear on the horizon. Part of him wished the top of the cage would fall apart, and crush absolutely everybody on the inside leaving no survivors. He was the kind of person who contemplated terrible things like that with a smile.  
  
『It’s all meaningless anyway. I can’t live for the sake for Junko’s sake.』If he used her like that, Junko would get bored of him. He would be no different from the other people who she could coerce to worship her so easily with just a tug of the thread  
  
He wished he could feel some greater despair, because he could turn that into something entertaining for Junko at least. This melancholy was no good for anybody. Because he was in front of his family, the habitual liar spoke the truth.  
  
“It’s all so tiring, such a pain to think about.” He had been repeating those phrases a lot lately too, as well as 'such rotten luck'. It was not his most inventive, funny or memorable catch phrase. His true feelings... He was used to telling lies to cope. His entire life was coping. That meant his entire life was lying. He was staring to wonder, who was this performance for again... that was why... "This is why I hate lies so much."  
  
"That's not true." Enoshima Junko finally disagreed with him, but it was in a voice so small that nobody else heard it on the bench. For the first time she realized, even though Mukuro had already told her when she left alone with Makoto it finally sunk in. There was a distance between her, and her natural born twin sister. They could not go back to the way they had been before, where they both lived for the sake of each other, and shared the same despair. Perhaps they never even despaired the same way to begin with. It never quite sunk in for her, probably because before this point she never cared to think about it.   
  
There was a distance she could not cross. She might just lose these people in a boring way. If she lost them, her world would never change. She clung to the silly bracelet she had put on her wrist, hoping it would become a chain like she desired it to. Of course even those chains, she was far better at breaking than she was making them. 


	9. Akamatsu Kaede is a Star

**You Are My Reason to Die / You Are My Reason to Kill**

**Daily Life: Chapter 6**

Kaede lay on her bed with her hands held out towards the ceiling. She bent her fingers, and moved them as if playing on invisible piano keys only she could see. The bell already rang this morning, but she did not want to go out of bed just yet.  
  
A part of her longed for the days when it was just her and her piano. Things were so much simpler back then. All she needed to do was reach out and the happy ending would be right there. Her days were filled with music and she was much happier.  
  
Nowadays, all she heard were the discordant noises of children arguing with each other. Even when Kaede reached her hands out to others, they slipped away through her fingertips. She wanted to save everyone. She thought she wanted to save everyone. That was what a good person would do after all. That was what the hero of this story would do, but if she stood in front of them and rallied them all again it would just be a repeat of last time. Those discordant and ugly noises would be directed at her again.  
  
When it was just her and her piano, she forgot about the outside world. She thought having a talent was all she needed to be happy. Maybe she was spoiled sweet on that happiness. The person she wanted to be for the sake of others, someone who could save everybody, she wondered if she was really that person in the end.  
  
Now, to save everyone she was sneaking behind everyone’s back with Shuichi. When did things get so complicated? This could have been a story of everybody facing despair together, and escaping after they combined their talents to overcome it. She was starting to lose sight of what her role was. Ever since she had woken up in this school, she wondered again and again why her? She was the one brought here, but it felt like she was not good enough to do what she knew she needed to do.  
  
She was just a piano freak in the end. She wanted to go back to her piano. If she played the music loud enough, maybe it would drown out the sounds of everything else. That was probably why she had such a difficult time handling the current situation, though. She had given up everything for the sake of piano. She thought all she needed to do was have a talent to be special, to stand in front of others.  
  
After giving up everything just to shine for a moment as the Ultimate Pianist, this was how her life was going to end. She would end it at this school, having gained nothing. It was like if in the middle of a beautiful piano solo, she suddenly stopped and slammed her fingers down hard on the keys ending on the ugliest, stretched out note. No, not nothing. Even if she regretted everything about this school, she could not say she regretted finding Shuichi here.  
  
Suddenly she heard the doorbell ring. It seemed like every day now he was outside that door waiting for her, just like a puppy. She buried her doubts deep within herself and smiled as she walked to the door, because those doubts were not the person Akamatsu Kaede was supposed to be. She was falling far short of the bright image the others all expected from her now.  
  
“Oh, Saihara-kun? Perfect timing…”  
  
She opened the door, only for a bear to appear in the doorway.  
  
“Saihara-kun, I wanted to ask you something.”  
  
“Too bad! It’s me!” one of the Monokubs announced, jumping in through her door.

  
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”  
  
“Hmph. It hurts my heart to be screamed at at a young girl. But it hurts so-”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“Hey, let me finish my joke at least. My screentime is being severely reduced already. Ahh, I figured I’d let you know that some of the research labs are open. YOu must have missed the announcement because you were at breakfast yesterday, what were you doing sneaking away to ditch class with a boy?”  
  
“You mean the Ultimate Research Labs? Those classrooms tailored to our 16 talents.”  
  
“Yep, yep. Now, go to the Ultimate Pianist’s Lab and compose a murderous melody.”  
  
“A murderous melody? What are you even talking about?” Kaede said in a huff, already dealing with the disappointment of not seeing Shuichi at the door. She slammed the door in the bear’s face with all of her might. “Geez… That was super annoying.”  
  
When she heard the bell right again, her limited patience had already run out. “God! How annoying!” She stomped her way back to the door and threw it open suddenly. “Geez, enough already! You’re bothering me!”  
  
Shuichi who was waiting for her on the other side of the door looked like he wanted to melt right than. One of his biggest fears seemed to be bothering other people with his presence, and he had opened up enough to actually go out of his way to try to spend time with Kaede every day. Even if the two of them were plotting against the mastermind together as a secondary reason for all that time spent together. Now it looked like his worst fears were confirmed beause of a small misunderstanding. She saw his face start to sweat. “Ah, I’m sorry! Should I come back later?”  
  
“Oh, Saihara-kun! Sorry, just ignore what I said. I wanted to talk to you too, Saihara-kun.” Kaede thought about returning to the library right away, but if they were seen going to straight to the library multiple days in a row it would be suspicious. That was why, and the only reason why, she suddenly blurted out. “L-let’s spend the day together!”

“Huh?”  
  
“I mean we’re the only ones who know about the mastermind, but we don’t want to make other people suspicious. They won’t think we’re plotting something if we just spend all our time together.” Kaede said, quickly making excuses as her face got hotter. She had no idea if she was trying to persuade Shuichi or herself.

“Uh… Okay.” Shuichi did not look like he needed to the convinced that much. Kaede left the door and Shuichi tailed behind her. As they walked, she started to hope he would walk by her side instead of always being a few footsteps away from her.  
  
Kaede said hi to everyone they rossed on the path again today. “Morning Ikusaba!”  
  
“Oh, it’s you… and Shuichi-kun too, huh? You guys are always together.” Mukuro said bluntly.  
  
“Whaaat? We’re not always together.” Kaede said as she reached up to rub at her head, closing one eye as she did. Most would assume that Kaede was worried that she and Shuichi had been mistaken for a couple, but in truth she was worried whether or not Mukuro thought the two of them were conspiring together.  
  
“Well, not ‘always’ but I feel like whenever I see one of you, the other’s nearby.”

  
“I-is that right…?”  Shuichi said. Unlike Kaede, he guessed the assumption that Mukuro was making. That they were sneaking away together to do other things besides plot against the mastermind.  
  
“Well, it’s not a bad thing. You can’t protect yourself when you’re alone.”  
  
“Huh?” Kaede gasped in shock.  
  
“I thought something would happen at night… when it’s easiest to get someone alone…But everyone’s safe so far and nothing has happened. ”  
  
As she listened to her murmur, Kaede thought this girl really did sound like the Ultimate Soldier. “Of course! No one would do that!”

“Right. You want to believe in everyone still. Even though some people aren’t worth believing in, like my sister. Well, that’s fine, I think there’s nothing wrong with lofty ideals like that. Just remember if you fall short of that ideal and lose what you meant to protect, you can still keep going.” Mukuro then said something that did not sound like the Ultimate Soldier at all. However, she was not thinking about Kaede much except the way that her attitude resembled Makoto, and how that boy got easily discouraged a lot. The words she wanted to say to her brother too. She blabbed them out in front of a girl she barely knew, because she was terrible at talking. “Uhhh, sorry I said too much.”  
  
“Umm, thank you. You don’t look like the optimistic type.”

“I’m not, not really. To be optimistic you have to be good for something for starters,” Mukuro shrunk and shrunk further away from Kaede and became less like her terrifying talent.  
  
Kaede remembered a part of what she said. “Wait, you have a sister here? Like Naegi-kun?”  
  
“Oh. That’s right, she doesn’t like when we’re seen together and people assume we’re related so she probably didn’t tell anyone. I’m Enoshima’s twin sister.”  
  
“You mean the super pretty fashion model with the bad attitude? You two don’t look alike at all.”  
  
Kaede said immediately, which caused Mukuro’s mood to sink. Among the eleven students who did not know her present at the school Junko was just a model with a big mouth right now.  
  
“Not all twins are identical you know. It’s for the best really, I’m me and she’s her. Even if we were identical twins we’d never be the same person.”  
  
“Y-yeah…” Kaede seemed oddly silent for a moment as she gripped her own arm and stared at the floor. Shuichi looked over her shoulder, wondering what had gotten into her. Perhaps she just felt bad for comparing Mukuro to her sister, Kaede was the type of person who was terrified of hurting another person’s feelings. As quickly as she had fallen silent she recovered. “W-well, Saihara-kun and I are off to spend the day together, doing things teenagers do when they’re alone together and nothing at all that would arouse suspicion.”

  
As Shuichi was suddenly pulled away from Kaede he realized what a terrible liar she was. If Kokichi had seen that he would have never stopped laughing. They ditched breakfast together once again, but Kaede stopped for a moment to tell Shuichi how cute she thought it was Zenkichi was making breakfast for everybody again. She had no idea why Shuichi suddenly fumed and said he could make breakfast just as good as Zenkichi could.

  
Kaito tried to help Zenkichi out this time around but it looked like the food he made was burnt. Helping was a bit too generous he looked like he was competing with the boy instead.

“Alright! Let’s go in!”  
  
She announced happily as she reached out to the door with a black and white coloring like the keys on a piano. THe Ultimate Pianist lab was a room with long windows that let the sun in. Underneath the walls were lined with shelves containing cds, records, and sheets of classical music. Those same sheets were spilled on the floor. There were several spotlights hanging from the ceiling. What immediately caught her eye though was a black grand piano in the center of the room. She could not help but shout, even with Shuichi standing behind her.  
  
“A grand piano! Baby!”  
  
Smiling she ran toward it and lifted the cover. Beneath it, a clean row of black and white keys smiled back at her. She had not touched a piano in a couple of days, but it felt like she had not played in forever.  
  
“I really am the piano freak…hehehehe...” She laughed under her breath, entirely forgetting there was somebody there with her. Only when Shuichi approached her from behind and touched one of the keys did she notice he was there. “Oh, right Saihara-kun. Be careful I’m going to put the cover back on, you could crush your fingers…”  
  
She replaced the cover on the piano, and touched the bench to order Shuichi to sit next to her. The two of them together took up almost the entire piano bench. Shuichi did not say much, he seemed content just to watch her expression and see her utter delight to be surrounded by music once more.  
  
“You really like Piano, huh?”  
  
“I used to think I would be okay with dying if I gave my life to being good at the piano.”  
  
“U-uh, that’s kind of extreme.”

“I’m just kidding.” Kaede said, flashing him a quick smile. “Sorry, gosh I was making this all about me again. I wonder what your talent room is going to look like Saihara-kun.”

  
“I probably don’t even have a talent room. A dumpster would be too good for me.”  
  
“Awe, come on Saihara-kun. You know I’d fight anybody who tries to bully you to protect you, so if you’re bullying yourself that means I gotta fight you! Don’t make me fight you!”  
  
“Umm...that doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Shuichi really did not understand what it was like to have optimism on the brain.

“Hey, Saihara-kun.... Why did you start getting involved in detective work? Did your Uncle ask you to help him?”  
  
Shuichi reached up, touching his chin again. His finger were so frail and delicate, more beautiful than even a piano player’s fingers. They made his face look even more fragile. “Ah, not really. It just kind of happened. It was also kind of a thanks for taking care of me.”  
  
“He took care of you?”  
  
“I suppose I never mentioned this before… I’m living with my uncle Jin  right now, and his daughter. But she’s more like a step-sister to me then a distant relative.”  
  
“Oh, sorry… I didn’t mean to pry.”  
  
“Ah, no, there’s not a sad story behind it or anything. There’s a lot of stories like this in the world. My parents went overseas for business.”  
  
“I see. What are they doing overseas?”  
  
“One’s an actor and one’s a screenwriter.”  
  
“A-an actor!? And a screenwriter!? Whaaat!? Th-that’s so cool!”  
  
“Well, for me, they’re just a mom and dad who have a… hands-off approach to parenting. They had a good reason for leaving me behind, and I was able to be useful to my Uncle so it’s not an interesting story or anything.”Shuichi turned his head giving her a bitter smile.

  
Kaede changed the topic again. “Oh, we got off-topic! There’s something I wanted to ask you, Saihara-kun… What was your first case?”  
  
“First case…?”  
  
“The first case you personally oversaw. First times are usually a big deal for people, right? Like a first kiss…”  
  
“First kiss…?”  
  
“First love…”  
  
“First love…?”  
  
“I remember when I was still a virgin before I had my first time…”  
  
“Your first time what?”

 

“My first piano recital of course! It’s embarrassing thinking about how I used to be a piano virgin.” Kaede was completely oblivious, while Shuichi gasped for air like he was a dying fish that had just been forcefully dragged out of water.  
  
“Yeah… I suppose I do remember the first time I oversaw a case. It’s actually not a case that came through my uncle’s office. I accepted it on my own.”  
  
“Huh? What do you mean?”  
  
“A classmate who knew I was helping at the detective’s office asked me to find her pet.” He saw the wide eyed epression Kaede gave him, she was like such an open book with all of her emotions he did not need to be a detective to read her. “...You look like you weren’t expecting that.”  
  
“That obvious, huh? I guess you don’t need to be the Ultimate Detective to deduce that.”  
  
“Well, detectives occasionally get requests to find missing pets too. My uncle’s office doesn’t have a big staff, so he usually just recommends an ace pet detective.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound like a real thing. Are you sure you’re not just making this up?”  
  
“I’m not! Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. I couldn’t say no, so I accepted the case… but I didn’t expect I’d have to find an alligator.”  
  
“An alligator? Not a dog, not a cat… but a freaking alligator!?”  
  
“Ah, well, it was a miniature alligator. One that you can keep as a pet.”  
  
“Okay, but that’s still pretty intense.”  
  
“I researched alligator behavior and spent a long time preparing tools to capture it… I had to climb around mountains and swim up rivers… It ws a lot of work. Compared to that, the first fight I came across during an infidelity case was nothing.”  
  
“Geez, that sounds rough… So did you manage to find the alligator?”  
  
“Yes, of course.”  
  
“That’s a relief! Your classmate must’ve been happy too, right?”  
  
“Ah, I suppose… She, um… gave me some chocolate for Valentine’s Day…”

Kaede’s eyes immediately looked angry as she glared at him. “Chocolate!?”  
  
“I… I’m pretty sure it was just as friends, though. It’s not like I took the case because I wanted to show off for her, I don’t even have any skills to show off in the first place.”

  
“No, that’s not it.” Shuichi felt silly, for jumping to the conclusion Kaede might be jealous. “I don’t think that’s worth all the trouble you had to go through!” Kaede was a kind person after all, who was always being so considerate.  
  
So there was no way she considered him that way. “Heh, you might b right… But I thin it was rewarding enough.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“The knowledge it took to solve the case became the foundation for my detective work. And… I was so happy to be of use to someone.” Shuichi laughed bashfully. Kaede noticed Shuichi’s utilitarian view of the world. He was desperate always to be of use. He was the exact opposite of a lone detective, because he needed someone around him at all times to validate his work. Somebody might judge him overly dependent on others, but Kaede could only see his eagerness. Others might see those qualities as a weakness, but Kaede wanted to protect those weaknesses of his, to have him stay exactly the same as he was.  
  
“I’d say being a detective suits you, aihara-kun, but I think it’s more than that… I think you were destined to be a detective.”  
  
“...What makes you say that?”  
  
“When you told me how you follow up with your clients… It never once occurred to me that detectives could show that kind of compassion. Compassion makes people trust you. If you offer them your hand, they’ll reach for it… The world needs more detectives like you. So… I hope you’ll stay a detective forever.”  
  
“...” As Shuichi saw her talk about taking someone’s hand, his eyes lingered on her hand so close to his on the piano bench. His fingers flexed. So many times all he needed to do was reach out and take her hand as she ran away from the pressure of trying to lead them all, but he had not been able to close that distance between them once. He gripped the bench harder unable to move his hand in the end.

  
Shuichi’s silence made her wonder if she was being too forceful again. She did not want to walk all over him, hope was supposed to be soft and gentle and she was very much not that. “Oh, but that’s just my opinion. In the ned, it’s your decisions, Saihara-kun!”  
  
“Yeah, of course… But thank you, Akamatsu-san.”  
  
“Wh-why are you thanking me? I just gave my opinion, that’s all.” It was impossible for her to accept that she was anything special. She knew down to her core she was just a normal girl. Just one who was obsessed with piano and knew nothing else.

“Because… that’s the first time someone has ever said that to me. I’ll never forget this moment. I’ll be able to believe in myself and be proud of being a detective.” In that moment as he played with his hat, Shuichi looked like a starving child who had just been given food. She wondered what happened to him, to make him look like he had been waiting his entire life to hear those words.

The words that meant so much to him. She wished somebody other than her, somebody capable of doing more than just saying pretty words had been the one to say them to him. Saihara deserved that much at least.  
  
“Hey, even though we’re in the music room… why are we talking about me?”  
  
Saihara asked her.  
Because she didn’t want to talk about herself.

“D-don’t you want to play piano?”  
  
If she put her fingers on the keys, she would forget everything that was true.  
But she did not want to forget this moment.  
She did not want to forget that Saihara was here with her.  
Even if the outside world seemed so far away at this point that it was like a dream, she knew this moment in the piano room shared between the two of them was absolutely real.  
  
“I don’t want to play piano, because I don’t deserve to. Not until we make it to the outside world again.” Suddenly, Kaede toppled over and landed on Shuichi’s lap. She wanted to get close enough to feel his heartbeat, to confirm that it was real.

Shuichi stiffened like a scarecrow. He lost his brains and could not think of a single thing at all. All there was was Kaede suddenly laying on top of him, the two of them on the cramped piano bench, the way that Kaede’s hair which was usually so straight now fell wildly in golden tresses around her. She looked like she was one of those singers that draped their bodies all over the piano while somebody else played accompaniment. There was no way Kaede would pose in such an alluring way for him though, his eyes refused to believe the reality. It had to be a lie.  
  
“Akamatsu-san, w-what are you doing?”  
  
“Saihara-kun, would you save me?”

“M-me?”  
  
“If you were the only one I could ask… would you save me?”  
  
“H-how could I…”  
  
“Let’s say, in the middle of the night we had to sneak out and run away from all of this, but it was only the two of us that could go. Would you grab my hand and take me away?”  
  
Shuicih looked into Kaede’s eyes then. There were stars reflected in her eyes. A brief dazzling light that she had stared up at. A beauty that she had been taken in by. Bright lights like that never lasted forever. Yet, people could not help staring at them. Her eyes were looking at the stars because she wished for something desperately. That was why she looked to Shuichi, who was the night sky compared to her. Someone so completely different from her, she thought he could accomplish what she could not.  
  
He wanted more than anything to grant her that wish, but if it was him granting that wish he would certainly disappoint her. That was why he looked away. “You don’t believe that, we’re all going to escape from here. That’s what the real Akamatsu-san would believe.”  
  
“Y-yeah, you’re right. You would know Saihara-kun.”  
  
“Because I’m always watching you.” Shuichi did not need the stars, or the night sky, as long as he had Kaede to look to he would keep entrusting all of his wishes to her. That was why he did not want her to run away or  disappear.  


🧸

 

Mukuro sat in the grass. In the distance she saw Kaede and Shuichi walking along. They stopped in front of Kaito, and talked with him for a little bit before going to circle the school grounds. In the distance, an Exisal as well as Zenkichi was helping to cut the overgrown grass. Apparently, Zenkichi had been bullied by the Monokubs into joining the school beautification committee. That boy needed to learn to say no, otherwise Mukuro feared leaving him around her sister.  
  
The entire school felt like it was under construction.Mukuro felt a familiarity like the skeleton of the old Hope’s Peak had been left behind hee, but it was quickly being covered up in another coat of paint.  It felt sad, like all of their efforts to save Hope’s Peak the first school that allowed her to feel like she was something other than Junko’s sister, had gone completely to waste.  
  
There was a time she believed her sister’s desires were absolute, and the world would always conform to them, like pre programmed routes in an rpg. She did not want to fall into that line of thinking again. Suddenly she noticed that Kirigiri was standing next to her. Kirigiri’s sharp detective eyes were watching Shuichi and Kaede from afar.

“It’s okay if you miss him.” Mukuro said without thinking.  
  
“We weren’t even friends in the first place. Besides I’m sure, Naegi-kun will save him if it comes down to that.” Kirigiri did not believe detectives could save people. All the could do was point a finger at the criminal.

Mukuro knew, Junko had designed the killing games to make the person who solved the crime feel like a murderer because the blackened always had to get punished so everyone else could survive. Solving the mystery can only lead you to despair, that was the lame thing her sister said to explain it. Still, she said. "Even if all the time Shuichi-kun spent with you was fake, if you want to pretend it was real there's nothing wrong with that."   
  
"I'm sure, Naegi-kun would be capable of believing in something like that..." Kirigiri turned to walk away, and Mukuro immediately lept forward from where she had been sitting to tackle the other girl to the ground. It did not occur to her to simply ask the girl to stay, she was no good at talking.  
  
“Wh-what is this Ikusaba?” Kirigiri said, that slight shaking in her voice was the closest she could ever get to flustering.  
  
Mukuro looked down at her. “You looked like you wanted to say something. You shouldn’t just run away.”  
  
Kirigiri was close enough to see the freckles on Ikusaba’s face. Her black hair fell down from her face, even on both sides. She had not cut it for quite awhile, she would probably need to soon. She really looked nothing like her sister. Mukuro moved first crawling off of her and leaning back against a tree. “Besides, I don’t have much to do besides physical training when Makoto is with his sister.”  
  
“Naegi-kun’s lover and sister are competing over him, lucky him.”  
  
Kirigiri looked at the tree whose bark had been peeled off partially from the number of times Mukuro kicked it. Even when that girl looked calm she was capable of quite some violence. If inhuman outliers like Medaka and Hinata were not here then Mukuro was probably the strongest person in the game. No wonder she was isolating herself.  
  
“His lover… hehehehe.” Kirigiri had never seen Mukuro do two things, laugh, and blush so much her freckled cheeks turned red. Perhaps that was why Kirigiri was able to accept her as an ally, because she showed her such human moments like this.  
  
In fact the two of them sitting there, gossiping like this. An outsider might mistake this for a normal scene. That was unacceptable, after all she was supposed to be the legendary heir of the Kirigiri family, and Ikusaba was supposed to be the dangerous member of Fenrir.  
  
Kirigiri sat up next to her, and asked her question. “What is it like, having a sibling?”  
  
“Well, they spend every waking moment getting on your nerves and trying to insist that they’re the superior twin, even though if they really thought they were better they wouldn’t need to brag about it every five seconds so really they just come off insecure. They always make bad decisions, and then they go out of their way to drag you into their bad decisions. They make themselves seem like the most important one, but then they shove all the work onto you. Even if the two of you call yourselves the despair sisters, she’ll still act like it was just her all along and I was just a servant because she wants to ego trip about being Ultimate Despair.”  
  
“..." Kirigiri waited until Mukuro paused to take a breath from her rant. Every time she talked about her sister, it seemed like she had been holding those complaints in for a long time. “Not a despair sister, I mean in general like you and Kumagawa-kun for instance.”  
  
Mukuro loved her family more than anything. Everything she did ultimately, good or evil, she did in the name of family. The only reason she was able to keep living was because of that family. Even when she betrayed Junko and fought against her, she was doing it for Junko’s sake in her own twisted way.  
  
That was what made her different than Kirigiri. Kyoko took absolute pride in her family name. She became a detective because it was in her bloodline. She was able to get cases all around the world and recognition because she had that name. However, Kirigiri had never once done anything for the sake of family.

“Well, it’s like a relationship where both of you are clueless because neither of you is a parent. Yet, you’re closer than you could ever be than with a parent so you feel the need to take care of them. Even when you don’t know what to do.”  
  
“Sounds like a mess.”  
  
“I guess it is. Not everything is neat, tidy and logical you know. I know there’s a wrong way to be a sibling, because Junko exists but I’m not sure there’s a right way.”  
  
“Well, Naegi-kun and his sister might be a model for what a ‘normal’ sibling bond is supposed to be.”  
  
“I think they’re closer than either of them let on. What’s normal for them, is actually completely alien for most of us.” Mukuro said, mourning a normal life she would never have, because her sister was Enoshima Junko. Her bare hands tightened into a fist. Kirigiri saw the Fenrir tattoo on the other side of her hand.

“You should just tell Komaru that. She’s going to keep hating you, if you don’t explain your circumstances at all to her. The less she knows about you, the easier it is for her to see you as something abnormal.” Kirigiri explained. She was sure she was just being logical, but part of her wanted to see Mukuro accepted.  
  
They were both emotionally cold girls in gloves after all, cut off from everybody else around them. Except Mukuro had taken her gloves off. “When did you stop wearing your gloves?” Kirigiri asked the moment she realized.  
  
“Oh, I gave them to Junko when we separated before all this. I thought they might help her grow up.”

To Kirigiri, Mukuro grew up a lot since the first time they met. She was no longer the pale unapproachable girl that seemed disinterested in the whole world. She was not the whimpering dog that had come begging at her feet either confessing all of her crimes against the school. She should be happy, one of the greatest criminals was now sitting next to her like a friend. A detective and a criminal could be friends like this, nobody needed to get punished, nobody needed to die.  
  
Kirigiri wondered though if Mukuro was capable of such a change, then why did she feel like the same person? She had grown so cold she might freeze in place. She might as well be labeled a cold case by this point.

“If you can think about the future, that’s good.” Kirigiri said, in a serious voice as usual. “It’s only when you become afraid of the future that the world truly has ended.”  
  
“You don’t always have to sound so smart, you know.” Mukuro teased her.  
  
“I’m not trying to show off, I’m not your sister. I just am that smart.”

Mukuro seriously did want to grow up. She wanted to become a wonderful person worthy of being Makoto’s bride. Even if she did not think either of those things were possible for her. She had resolved at least, that she was not going to stay tied to her sister forever. Things could not be like their childhood. She tried to think of a future, because she wanted to delay her inevitable death for atonement as long as possible.  
  
“We should hang out, when we all get out of here.”  
  
“Hang out?”  
  
“You know when two or three people in a friend group spend time together. Oh, there’s no hanging involved.”  
  
“I know what hanging out is, I was just doing Hinata-kun’s thing where you repeat it back in the form of a question because I didn’t know what else to say.”

“Well, do you want to?”  
  
Kirigiri looked down at her gloved hands. She wondered if the day would ever come that she would be able to take them off the way Mukuro did. If she could not even conceive of that future then she might run out of hope. “...Yes, I would like that. I don’t think I’d be very fun though.”  
  
“You’re super fun! You’re really smart and you have a dry sense of humor. You play off of Makoto super well, with our wisdom mixed with his naivete. The only one who decided that you don’t have a place with others is you.”  
  
Mukuro said, eagerly getting in her face. Kirigiri wondered if Makoto was rubbing off on her, or if this is what Mukuro had wanted to be all along, that she desired to be someone with friends and Junko’s toxic influence had poisoned and nearly killed off that part of herself.

“Y-you’re close.”  
  
“That’s why, you don’t have to do everything on your own this time! I know things look bad, but even if we’re trapped here at least all three of us are trapped here together.”

When did she decide she was alone? She could not remember. It was like everybody in her life decided for her that she would be alone when they abandoned her. Her grandfather barely allowed her to keep any friends that he did not approve of. When she was in high school she had just gotten used to the idea of handling everything alone.  
  
That was why she had always looked at Makoto like he was amazing. Everything he did he always did it for the sake of others. Even if he was a pushover, spineless, and a bit of a crybaby. Kirigiri wanted to live the way that he did. She just did not think it was possible. Detectives could not save people. Never, not once in her life had she reached out to save a single person. Her hands were not covered in gloves to hide her scars, it was so she could hide away her hands from others. Prevent herself from having to touch anyone.

She decided all on her own there was no place for her. That Mukuro was hurting more than her and needed Makoto’s strength to support her. That she was only getting in the way. “Yeah. The three of us.”  
  
Detectives were supposed to investigate on their own. Her fantasy about being the lone noire detective, facing off against a world gone mad with despair was crumbling right in front of her.  
  
“You know you could smile.” Mukuro said, showing Kirigiri that awkward smile of her own. “We’re making plans for the future so we might as well laugh before the devil laughs at us.” Mukuro repeated something her foolish younger brother had said once.  
  
“I can smile.” Kirigiri said, her face as flat as normal. “It’s not like I don’t have any emotions at all. I’ll smile when we get out of here. There’s no reason to smile just yet.”  
  
As she said that, Mukuro pushed against Kirigiri with her shoulder to josh her around. She felt the need to, when dealing with Kirigiri’s overly serious nature. Though Kirigiri did not smile in that moment, her lilac hair became a mess around Mukuro, and she ended up puffing her cheeks out in a pout for how easy it was for Mukuro to push her around.  
  
Eventually they fell backwards. Mukuro laughed. Kirigiri did not, but she wished she could. If she stayed around them, she might learn to laugh like that one day the same way Mukuro who was always silent had found such a powerful voice.

 

🧸

 

When Mukuro left to go check on Zenkichi to make sure he did not work himself to death, Kirigiri looked back and eyed the tree they had been sitting together in the shadow of. Her vision sharpened and she spoke up with pronounced annoyance.  
  
“You should stop eavesdropping on your sister. Especially when Ikusaba-san wants nothing to do with you.”  
  
“That’s not a friendly way to greet your classmate.” Enoshima Junko said, appearing from behind the tree like she was a snake curling herself around it. “She’s my sister not yours, you know. I can play with her as much as I want. We’ve been playing together since we were kids you know.”  
  
When she was younger there was a playground near her house. The few times she was not traveling far away from home with her grandfather, she passed by it. She was always at her grandfather’s side when it happened. However, if she tried to get too close to it, her grandfather would tug her away like he was keeping her on a leash. The sounds of playing children were just noise to her, nothing she would ever be a part of.  
  
Then one week later, a man hung himself on the swingset. Only then was she allowed to go near the playground, because a murder mystery had happened on it so close to her home. All the other children watched from far away, protected from their parents from seeing the body. Kyoko looked at a dead body and thought nothing at all of it. She could not remember when she had gotten so used to being surrounded by death, because it was just her normal life for her at that point.  
  
“We were never classmates.” Kirigiri always held back her emotions, but she barely disguised her bitterness.  
  
“Oh, are you jelly? There’s no need to be jelly. I know I’m prettier, more popular, more likable than you-”  
  
“Of course I am.”  
  
“Eh? Come on, you’re throwing the tempo of the banter off. We’re supposed to say how much we hate each other, but you know in a witty and fun way that plays off of each other’s personalities.”  
  
“You have a sister who loves you so much, and you make her miserable when she's around you but don't let her have he freedom either. I wish I had a sister."   
  
"Oh, yeah now that you mention it I kind of suck." 

"You could have had a normal life. You weren't raised in some weird detective cult, and you choose to be like this."   
  
“Man I must seem like totally spoiled to you."  
  
"Quit agreeing with me!" Kirigiri was out of breath. She felt like she had been holding that rant inside of her for a lifetime. She really envied Makoto, she thought his normal life was the most amazing thing of all because it was nothing like her own. Her experiences were so far from his that a normal life, being around people who cared about you, it was completely alien to her. No wonder she could not accept the idea of anybody caring about her. How was somebody who was raised as a detective first, and a human being second supposed to act? She had no idea anymore. Perhaps she never even knew.

Kirigiri clung to logic even now, and to her Enoshima Junko was the embodiment of absurdity and chaos. She was everything that refused to make sense about her life. Like no matter how many times she thought about it, she still did not know why her father left her that day. If only she could sort everything into neat reason, maybe she could feel better about it. Some things just kept aching forever, the more you thought about it the worse it hurt. Kirigiri did not want to believe that. Every mystery should have a culprit. Every lock should have a key. Every black lie should have a white truth. If there were no clues that led to the solving of the mystery, then it was just all empty. 

Junko took her whole rant in with a blank face. Kirigiri seemed absolutely convinced the world had meaning. She bought the lines of Hope’s Peak Academy more than Makoto did. “Well, okay that explains why you’re jelling at me, but it doesn’t explain your weirdness about Komaeda. I mean the dude declared himself my mortal enemy and I can’t even give a damn enough to hate him.”  
  
“He tried to destroy the academy same as you. The academy where my father was headmaster. After my father made excuse after excuse for him to stay.”  
  
“So, my sister did the same and you don’t hate her.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Well, whatever I’m sure it’ll be more fun when you figure it out on your own. I’m tired of pointing everybody to the revelations they’re supposed to have anyway.”  
  
"..."   
  
“What? Are you seriously going to hold a grudge because I’m responsible for everything that went wrong this school year? Oh, you know the time that Naegi-kun tripped on a rock and we lost the sports festival because of it? That was me too. I put the rock there.”  
  
“Don't try to do the 'we have more in common than you think' speech because you don't have anything in common with any single human being on the planet. You don't even know how to talk like a person, you just spout cliches."  
  
Junko was being ignored, which was the worst thing possible for her. She was not even the main villain anymore, so Kirigiri thought it was not worth her time dealing with somebody when the mastermind was still there. If she was not the mastermind, Enoshima Junko was nobody, just a petty little bat.  
  
Enoshima Junko stopped leaning on the tree and sat down next to her. The next time she spoke, the usual energy from her voice was gone and she spoke in a dull monotone. “You’re right. You know what, me insulting my sister every second. That was me trying to be better, because at least this time I’m not trying to kill her or anything. Me trying my absolute hardest and I’m still just a shitty sister who can only cause her nothing but pain, and I’m only going to get worse from here. That’s not even despair inducing, I’m just disappointed in myself.”

Kirigiri turned slowly around in shock. She almost wanted Junko to go back to speaking in her normal annoying way.  
  
“Trying really sucks, you know. It’s like you realize the limit of your existence. When you don’t try you think to yourself, well I could be nice to Mukuro if I wanted, I could be a good sister if I wanted but where’s the fun in that? But actually, this is really me, I’m really this shallow.”  
  
Kirigiri bit down on her lip hard.  
  
“There’s no style to it at all. I’m just a bad person.”

"..."   
  
"That's why I know one day I'll lose them, and I don't even feel despair about it. I just feel sad." 

If she were not wearing gloves, she would be clenching her fists tightly enough to draw blood.

“Quit it.” Kirigiri said finally in a low voice. She wanted the absurd back. She was suddenly scared of now hornal and empty Enoshima Junko sounded when she talked. “Quit sounding like that, you can't sound sad... only a person can be sad. You can't suddenly decide you're a person after all this time."   
  
"Being the hero is a limiting role. You might get bored of it. Don't you want to be a person?"  
  
"You don't know anything about being a person."

She wanted to be a detective again. She wanted to be a one note detective character who was always hard boiled, if it meant Enoshima Junko would stop sounding like this. She wanted to go back to playing detective and mastermind with that girl like they were just playing a child's game between them. Kirigiri stood up immediately and stormed off, stomping her boots as she went.

Kumagawa who had been following Junko after she disappeared from him worrying what she might do when she was being babysat, finally caught up with her.

“Well, I guess Kirigiri’s not going to work with me no matter what.” Junko said casually as she shrugged at Kumagawa. "Life was so much easier when I just manipulated everybody into doing things for me. Why did everybody start pretending to be human at the same time?"   
  
He watched her theatrics with eyes that were like still water. She could barely cause a ripple in him right now, when he was in this kind of mood. Kumagawa put a hand on her shoulder. She relaxed slightly leaning into him. Even so the push of his touch pulled her towards him.『It’s almost like you wanted to be friends with her.』He understood that, from all of her ranting.   
  
“You got me, secretly all along I wanted to live a normal school life and I longed for hope more than anybody else. That’s why I tried to blow everything up. That makes logical sense. Even my brain's not as messed up as Komaeda-senpai's to think that makes sense." 

『You should make a normal friend. Like somebody who doesn’t worship the ground you walk on, or get dragged into your scheming. If you had that you might realize how to act around people.』  
  
“I can act just fine. I’m a born performer.”

『I mean not in a fakey fake way. If you want to watch yourself, you have to have someone looking at you too.』Kumagawa said, leaning over her so she could see his head upside down. When his face was at that angle he looked like a corpse somebody had suspended from the ceiling. 『You and Kirigiri would probably get along, if you weren’t such a Junko about everything. You're both empty after all. You're both playing roles before you are people, it's just she's the good guy and you're the bad guy. That's probably what scared her, that emptiness...』  
  
“How do I stop being myself? Well gee if that isn’t literally my entire life dilemma summarized by an idiot.” She reached up, playfully trying to poke out his eyes with her two red pointed nails. "It didn't work when I had Matsuda go scraaaape, scraaaaape on my brain to remove all the icky traces of me and replace me with that happy go lucky idiot Ryoko, I don't think it's that easy. Nobody wants to see me as a person anyway, boo hoo. I'm actually a really sad model who just wants to be seen as a real girl, you know? I'm really pitable. That's why I'd fall for any loser I can be myself around." 

『What rotten luck you have. You’re stuck with me.』Kumagawa's voice lowered. It was hard to keep up his playfulness. "How miserable. Saying 'at least we're miserable together' just sounds like a lie."   
  
“Don’t go anywhere.” She reached up and tugged  on his head to pull him down next to her in the grass. It might have sounded like an earnest plea, if Junko was at all capable of being honest. He was right, 'I'd fall anywhere with you, even hell' was a romantic sentiment but it was hard to breathe ash and cinder, and falling made her head dizzy and gave her vertigo. Knowing all of that, even so she wanted to hold on for a little while longer. Even if falling only made her nauseous, she would be filled up with her real feelings. In that sense she was okay with being dragged down.   
  
As they continued to talk about meaningless things, in the distance another blonde girl and dark haired boy were together at the same time. After spending almost the entire day together they had gotten advice from Kaito on where to watch the stars when night fell.  
  
They sat together on a bench, looking up at the sky trying to see the stars, glittering fragments on hope in between the bars on the cage. Kaede’s mouth fell wide open with wonder. “Momota was right, you can somehow see the stars even under this dome. ”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Thank you for coming with me, by the way. I know it was selfish to hog you for the entire day.”  
  
“Uh-th-thank you for asking me to come with you?” Shuichi sweated. He felt like he was bothering her too much by saying yes, even though she was the one who had asked him to spend time with her and had dragged him along all day. It was probably impossible for him to comprehend someone else wanting him around.  
  
“I thought it would be something fun to do together! This reminds me of the countless pianists that dedicated their pieces to the moonlight and the night sky. Nocturnes are amazing and some of the melodies are my personal favorites…” As she got over enthusiastic about her explanation, it was like she forgot Shuichi was sitting right next to her.  
  
All he did was watch her the entire time, with a nervous smile on his face. For him it was enough to see her that happy. Kaede’s words were a music to him far better than she could ever produce on any piano.  
  
“I’M SORRY I’M DOING IT AGAIN! I didn’t even notice you’re bored. STUPID PIANO FREAK! I’m sorry!” Kaede suddenly slammed her hand down into her heads hiding it away.  
  
“Akamatsu-san, don’t… It’s okay!!” He waved his hands around, trying to prevent her from crashing. “Your eyes always shine so bright when you talk about piano and your love for it. I don’t need to look at the sky, the stars are right there in your eyes. I love seeing you smile, so please, talk about it whenever you want. I’m just… happy when you’re happy.”  
  
It’s enough for me to be by your side.  
My happiness is your happiness.  
It was a notion straight out of fiction.  
A sentiment often shared between two fictional characters.  
He almost wished it could be true, when he was with her.  
  
“Oh. Okay. How… Did really just say something like that? That’s almost out of character Saihara-kun.”  
  
“Ah… Sorry, I don't know where that came from! I said something super embarrassing! Y-you uh, you really like piano, huh?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s my whole life.”  
  
"What's a nocturne?"  
  
"Well, it's music inspired by the night. Like, how I want to compose a song right now just sitting under the night sky with you. I want that feeling to last forever in music." 

If Kaede was the main character, she thought she would be far too one note. Not even a good note, something bitter and unpleasant like a flat f sharp. That was why she was trying her best for absolutely everyone around her. Even then it felt like she was never enough.  
  
“I wish I could love something that much, enough to dedicate all of myself to it.” Saihara Shuichi said. They were both blushing and looking away now. Neither of them wanted to approach something as real as romance. The feelings were too real for a situation like this one where the setting was a twisted story. Glancing at her side, he still found himself trying to count the stars in her eyes.  
  
It was his guiding light for now when he had nothing else. If that light ever faded he did not know what he would do. 


	10. I'm Your Killer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kumagawa's speech is a reference to accelerator. One day I'm going to write a crossover where the two of them meet because they have a lot in common.

**You Are My Reason to Live / You Are My Reason to Die  
****Daily Life: Chapter Seven**  
  
『Why did you ask me to meet late at night Zenkichi-chan?』  
  
Kumagawa asked, as he followed the other boy staring at his back. It was a familiar sight, Kumagawa felt he had spent his entire life staring at it.

In the room the two of them had just left, Junko was sleeping stretched out on the bed her hair a mess around her and her eyes covered in a sleeping mask. She had not noticed Kumagawa’s absence because her entire body was wrapped around a gigantic stuffed bear which she had fallen asleep holding instead of Kumagawa. In her sleep she muttered the narration to a rather elaborate dream sequence.

“Then the rampaging Monokuma is sliced in half, splitting him into his good and evil halfs once more. It turns out the bear was hollow all along, and a boy with black hair steps out. He’s the human form of a the mascot character, who will be super marketable because he’s a bishounen. His name is Bear River. He walks up to the heroine and takes her hands in his. ‘Thou art the one who hast delivered me from the cruel boredom of this world.’ His fingers intertwine with hers. “Thou art my, lovely goddess of despair!’ Upupupu…” Junko giggled madly into her pillow drill spilling out from the corner of her mouth in her sleep.

  
“Dude, is she always like this?”

 

『Yeah, instead of sleep talking she just kind of sleep narrates. I think some part of her brain is just always running and it’s impossible to turn off.』

  
“No, I mean with the bears.”

 

『Yeah. There’s no reason she just likes them. Her liking of bears is completely meaningless, much like this world.』

  
“I mean bears can be meaningful to her, because she likes them ya know.”

 

『Yeah, whatevs. How much more screen time are we going to waste on me philosophizing at you? There’s no real need to have a reason to do things. People who can’t act without believing things like ‘hope is harmony’ and ‘despair is total chaos’ are trash. There’s no such thing as hope or despair, there’s nothing at all- Hey, I’m talking. 』  
  
“Dude.”

『Hey, at least have the decency to argue your point! Come on, say something out of left field. Say you love me!』  
  
“Dude I didn’t call you out here to yell philosophy at each other!”

『Oh, then why did you want to meet with me? Did you decide you were going to kill me?』  
  
Kumagawa’s whole face contorted, his cheeks cracked, and from his broken face emerged a flawless white smile. The darkness he was standing in only made his smile shine brighter by contrast.

『Finally, I’ve been waiting so long Zenkichi-chan.』  
  
“Can it.” Was Zenkichi’s immediate response as he grabbed Kumagawa by the face and pushed him away gripping his whole face. He had no patience at all for Kumagawa’s games, nor did he intend to play along. He also did not want to get caught breaking the rules that everybody else was adhering to by sneaking out in the middle of the night. He was so over his delinquency phase in middle school, now he knew if he became a real delinquent his mother would be disappointed in him. “I know this might be impossible to comprehend but I might actually just want to talk to you. With no pretense or reason to fight or anything. I’m worried about you man.”

『Eh??? What? But we hate each other.』

“Dude come on, I know what you’re doing. Don’t antagonize me to hide your pain. You’re not acting like you normally do.”

『What’s normal? Laughing with a mouth of blood is pretty much normal for me.』As he said that, Kumagawa bit down hard on his tongue. If he did it hard enough he could cut his tongue in half and cause it to swell up, allowing him to choke and die in a quick and pathetic way. He stopped just short of that though, tearing up part of his tongue and the flesh of his inner cheek so his mouth started to fill with blood. Just to demonstrate, he laughed in front of Zenkichi, tasting iron as the wet liquid swirled around in his mouth and fell from the corners of his lips. Kumagawa wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his black overcoat, but all that did was smear blood further on his cheeks. 『This is my normal life, and you’re not a part of it, because I hate you.』

Kumagawa hated Zenkichi. The burden of raising Kumagawa had been too much for his parents, and because of that they blamed him, hurt him. Zenkichii’s mother was abandoned by her husband, it must have been hard for her to raise a child all alone but she never once blamed Zenkichi for this or made it his problem. Before meeting her Kumagawa’s myopic view of the world had been there were no such thing as good parents. Parents would always pass on their unresolved issues onto their children and the chain of misery would remain unbroken. Zenkichi’s mother proved it was actually possible to overcome your circumstances and put your child first. His parents could have been strong. He just wasn’t a good enough reason for them in the end.  
  
Kumagawa and Zenkichi met Medaka on the same day. Kumagawa told her not to worry about whether or not she was born, because life was meaningless. It was advice he gave from the bottom of his heart. Zenkichi told her that the reason she was born was to help other people. Zenkichi and Medaka became lifelong friends. Kumagawa spent the next ten years living completely alone until middle school.  
  
When Zenkichi met Ajimu Najimi, she trained him to become a main character. When Medaka fought against Ajimu Najimi, she was able to stop her from her suicide and made a promise that she would always save her no matter how many times she tried to kill herself. When Kumagawa met Ajimu Najimi, he became so wrapped around her finger to the point where he would do anything to please her, he even bullied and fought against Zenkichi and Medaka his middle school underclassmen multiple times. When he wanted to save her, he ripped off the face of the person he loved. The only end result was being beaten over and over again by Kurokami Medaka until his skull was split.

Zenkichi was so kind and understanding, he was able to forgive even his enemies. He was so good at moving others that he could bring them over to his side, and turn them into allies who would never betray him. For Kumagawa enemies and friends were no different to him, because both were equally as likely to hurt him. He expected even his loved ones would hurt him one day. When things went wrong, they would turn on him and blame him. He forgave them, because he loved them.  
  
Kumagawa never gave up. Even living the worst life possible, he wanted to keep moving forward. He wanted to be someone who could reach past his pain and help others. It would have been better for everybody if he gave up, he only ever made things worse when he kept trying. When Kumagawa refused to give up because he wanted to save the girl he loved, he dragged all of his friends through fifty two repetitions of a death game. When Zenkichi refused to give up, he heroically overcame. When he reached his hand out to others, he was able to pull them into the light. All Kumagawa could do was pull others into the muck and poison, until they were sinking like he was.  
  
Zenkichi spoke to the truth in people’s hearts in order to move them. All Kumagawa could do was tell people lies in order to string them along.  Shiranui once said this, “As long as Zenkichi exists there’s no need to have you around.”  
  
The first time they fought, Zenkichi said that. “Do you understand now, Kumagawa-senpai? It’s not about accepting or not. From the start the likes of you wasn’t even in my sight.”

His rivalry with Zenkichi was completely one sided. There was no reason at all for Zenkichi to acknowledge him. No matter how many times they fought Zenkichi would be in the right. Zenkichi owed Kumagawa no kindness. After all if Kumagawa’s problem was that the people in his life had not been strong enough to protect him as a child and hurt him instead, then Kumagawa did the exact same thing they did when he reveled in his own misery and pain and decided to hurt Zenkichi and Medaka who did nothing to him. When he thought about it that way, Kumagawa felt like a little child, crying and screaming as he held onto Zenkichi’s leg demanding that the boy pay attention to him.

The villain has no friends. The hero defeats them with the power of friendship, because they know the love of their true companions. When the villain falls, everybody cheers. That was the way this story goes.

  
“It’s okay to be sad about Anshin’in-san, you know.”

 

『You got me, I’m really sad. On the inside I’m just a crying child. Give me a hug Zenkichi-chan, I’ve been waiting so long to be embraced.』

 

“You’re just going to try to piss me off no matter what I say, aren’t you?” Zenkichi failed to smile at Kumagawa’s joke. He did not laugh. “You’re so stubborn you know that. Your entire identity is the world’s biggest victim and yet, you won’t even admit you’re a victim. That you deserve better, that people can treat you better, because that would mean admitting that you’ve lost to the world. Even if you get nothing at all out of living this way.”

  
Zenkichi was a hero who passed by a river, and saw a boy drowning in the water. He would jump in to rescue him without a second thought, to him that was the absolute right thing to do. Kumagawa was the drowning boy, if someone tried to rescue him he would just sink further into the water. He never even tried to swim to the surface in the first place.  
  
The amount that Kumagawa had gone through was simply too much for his mind to comprehend. If he felt any of that pain the way normal people did, he would never be able to move again. The only reason he survived this long was because each time his face fell apart, he quickly reassembled the pieces. He pushed all of those feelings away, and denied that he had ever been hurt in order to move forward. He pretended to be, a person who could suffer with a smile on his face, because that was the person he needed to be to survive. If the feelings he pushed away ever flooded back to him it would be over for him, Kumagawa Misogi would be washed away by the water.  
  
“If someone tries to fight you, fight back. If you’re sad, cry. If you’re angry, then shout. It’s okay for you to do those things, it’s normal.” Zenkichi said, grabbing Kumagawa by the collar and dragging him face to face. Kumagawa never wanted anyone to look directly at his face, he was an expert at concealing it.

 

Kumagawa touched his face. He imagined if he was wearing a mask right now, it would be completely featureless and black, except for the white smile carved into it. When he removed the mask, his face underneath the mask would be exactly the same. Even if they were meant in irony or jest, even if he was just pretending to be vile, at the end of the day he was only the sum total of all of his actions. If he looked all around him he would see nothing but the people he had broken, he only took, and took, and took away from others, the sum total of his existence was negative. “I told you already, this is my normal.”

 

“Why do you want to be such a villain?”

『Power.』  
  
“Huh?”

 

『The villain is the one who controls everything, isn’t it? A story doesn’t begin until the villain attacks. The villain is the one who gets to set the scenario, all everybody else can do is respond.』Kumagawa threw his hands at his sides and shrugged carelessly. 『I’m not kind like Nagito-chan, I don’t want to be a villain because I think it would be best for everybody, I just do what’s best for me in the end.』

 

All his life he wanted power. The power to control himself. The power to control what happened around him. Even when he got strong though, nothing changed. Even if he managed to win a physical fight, it was still a loss for him.  
  
“If that’s the case then why do you try so hard to save Junko? Why do you think it was your responsibility to save Anshin’in-san? What kind of villain thinks like that.”

 

『Did Yasuke-chan tell you about Ryoko-chan?』  
  
“Um… A little bit.”

 

『Ryoko-chan was really Junko all along. She was the same person who killed the entire student council with glee, but you know one time she was so scared because she did not know anything about the world, and she could not control anything, that she clung to me and cried.』Kumagawa remembered it well, because he could still feel the phantom sensation of her fingers gingerly wrapped around his neck as she hung on him. It was like her ghost was still wrapped around him.  
  
Someone had acknowledged him.  
Not as the weakest, not as a damaged child.  
That one girl had done it.  
She confided her fears in him just like he was a normal classmate.  
Even though she would soon forget everything about him.  
The way she smiled at him.  
Every comfort he offered would be pointless, because she would forget she ever cried.  
Even though it would hurt him the next time he met.  
He resolved at that moment.

 

『I know I’m human trash. Even the thought of me saving someone is completely ridiculous. I’m so goddamn naive my skin is crawling with disgust.』  
  
If he saved someone else, he might be saved as well.  
The words seemed pretty, but in actuality they were ugly and self-serving. Calculating the worst of someone’s life against your own is not what a decent person does. Someone like that could never be saved. Even when Ikusaba Mukuro clung onto his leg and begged him to save her sister because it was not fair for her sister to be born and never once get to enjoy life, all he did was think of himself.  
  
He knew all of that. He was painfully aware of it, but - 『Ryoko-chan had nothing to do with it, you know. She wasn’t even real, just a figment of Junko’s imagination, but her feelings were. No matter how rotten I may be. Even if I’m a helpless piece of human trash, and it’s ridiculous for me to even mention helping another person. There’s no fucking reason it would have been okay to not help her when she was so scared.』  
  
Even if it was pointless, or meaningless, or beyond his means.  
He wanted to save them.  
He decided it arbitrarily on the spot, he wanted to because of his own selfish reasoning, he wanted to save other people like himself. He wanted to reach past the point of no return. He wanted to save those that did not deserve to be saved.

  
He knew Ajimu Najimi was scared of dying. He knew she was scared of being alone.  
He knew Emukae Mukae hated herself for all the people that she hurt.  
He knew Ryoko really did have nothing to do with it.  
The corpses of those three girls were lying at his feet.  
He could not forgive himself for failing to save them. He could not forgive them, for choosing to abandon him. He could not forgive, he could not be forgiven. The feelings lie unresolved in his chest. He could only keep hurting. He did not want to stitch those wounds up. He wanted to keep hurting. If he let go of this pain that would be like letting go of them. If he tried to let go, then that would mean admitting he really had lost them. Finally. The end.  
  
『I’m sure, if you were the one that transferred into Hope’s Peak. You would have saved all of them.』  
  
“Kumagawa-senpai, that’s not…”

 

Zenkichi never finished what he was saying. They were standing behind the dorms, and just then two more people found out about their conversation.

  
“Hey, what are you doing back here? We all agreed we’d stay in our dorms at night.” Kaito said. He had been asleep in a long shirt and a pair of boxers, and without his hairgel his hair fell flattened over his face, but he had worn his uniform coat over his shoulders even in the middle of the night. He pushed past Zenkichi getting in between them and immediately went gunning for Kumagawa.

 

『Don’t worry I have a really good reason. I’m awake right now because I’m planning to murder Zenkichi-chan.』  
  
“What…? Why would you ever think of killing anybody? You two are friends aren’t you?”

 

『Well it’s obvious isn’t it? I’m the mastermind.』  
  
“Huh…? No, that’s impossible…”

 

『Nothing’s impossible remember! Kaito-chan, you have such commendable spirit. To tell you the truth, I hold you in awe. You’re going to face the mastermind head on, just like a hero.』  
  
“Kumagawa-senpai what are you doing?” Zenkichi reached out to grab him, but he was too late. He only grasped at empty air.

 

Kumagawa closed the space between him and Kaito, and grabbed Kaito’s hands shaking in fear and confusion, placing them around his neck. 『I hope you can see the joy in my eyes. With just a slight tightening of your fingers, you can give me what I desire most. My only fear is that you’ll hesitate. But you won’t… you’re going to save everyone aren’t you? The enemy is right in front of you, I’m the mastermind. 』  
  
“Wha…?” Kaito still thought the mastermind was Monokuma.  
  
『If you don’t I’ll kill you, and then use the first blood perk to escape. Either way someone will die. At least this way you can save everyone.』  
  
“Stop it, Kumagawa-senpai.”

『Please, end it for me. Wake me from this rusting world of a dream… 』  
  
“Momota-chan! Are you stupid? He’s so obviously lying to you! Don’t fall for it!” Kokichi’s voice screamed out from behind. Kaito let go and stumbled backwards, staring in confusion at what was in front of him. All he could see was a blurry shadow, his eyes failed to recognize the human form of Kumagawa.  
  
Kumagawa suddenly turned around.『Sorry to shock you, it was just acting. He really is like you Zenkichi-chan, I thought he was just pretending.』  
  
“Why do you always choose violent methods like that?” Zenkichi asked, still shaking. “Th-those methods are... “ it did not matter if Kumagawa saved people or not. Even if he saved everybody it would not matter. He would still be suffering. Zenkichi recognized that in that moment. Even if he put it into words that Kumagawa would not listen.  
  
『It’s all the world has taught me.』Kumagawa shrugged.

  
“Who do you think you are?” Kokichi asked.  
  
Kumagawa did not answer his question. Instead he bent down and suddenly got right in Kokichi’s face, stealing his breath away for a moment. He touched Kokichi’s shoulder. 『You’re trembling...』He let go then and stood up fully. Just the act of straightening out his slouch, made his back crack in several places.

 

“What are you doing? If you want to face off against a liar, you should tell a lie.”

 

『I don’t need to, because you’ve already realized it haven’t you?』Kumagawa shrugged, and walked away.

  
Kumagawa did not care if Kokichi lied to him or told him the truth. That was because Kokichi used lies to control others. There was no one in this world who could control Kumagawa. Not even Enoshima. Certainly not himself. He would never be controlled. That was what defined him. That was how he knew he was still Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
Even if they were both liars, they were like thesis and antithesis. And Kumaawa had noticed Kokichi trembling in his presence before Kokichi even realized what his own body was doing. Kumagawa smiled and whispered so low it would stay between the two of them. 『Don’t worry, I won’t play with your toy. I won’t play with you at all. You’re not in my league.』  
  
Then he left just like that. No reason behind all the drama he had just caused. Besides the fact that he believed life itself was dramatic. Their meeting concluded with a lot of words said, and a lot of feelings felt, but it amounted to nothing in the end. Kumagawa would wake up the next morning smiling like none of it happened, and like he was a quiet, docile, depressed person incapable of such erratic and destructive behavior.

 

🧸

  
That morning Kaede woke up again in a terrible mood. She felt like she was dressed up in her finest opera ware, with a feathered mask and everything, sitting in front of the piano playing it with a knife held at her back. She had no idea if everybody else saw the knife, or if it was just her. Either way, the audience yelled at her to keep playing her part. She had to play it too. She had to keep playing beautiful music for everybody else, while she felt a knife slowly digging into her back. Even then all she could think about was whether or not her performance was making everyone smile.

 

When Shuichi was not waiting in front of her door that morning, she almost missed him. Then she thought it was selfish of her to think that way. It was not like Shuichi existed to orbit around her. Even if when he was by her side, she felt a little bit less lonely. She walked to the dining room in a bit of a fog.  
  
When she heard a troubled sigh in front of her, she looked up. If there was somebody in trouble she could forget about her own problems for a moment.  
  
Tsumugi sighed. If only Kaede was a better judge of character, she would have seen that Tsumugi’s problems were uninteresting and did not matter.  
  
“What’s wrong?”  
  
You know, other than being a one dimensional character with no real contribution to the plot.

 

“Look at this. My nails are all messed up… It probably happened when we came here. And now I can’t take good care of them.”  
  
“Your nails?”  
  
“I understand… You’re surprised that plain old me cares about my nails, right?”

  
“Well, not really… But when you say nails, you mean nail art, right? I’ve never done it before.” Kaede never wore much makeup besides eyeliner and her eyelashes. Shuichi was a boy, but his features were a lot prettier than hers would ever be. She was curvy in all the wrong places, and her face was plain. She did not feel like dressing herself up. She was pretty sure if she did not have talent, nobody would even look at her.

“Oh, I see. Nails would just plan get in the way when playing piano, huh?” Tsumugi  suddenly reached forward and grabbed onto Kaede’s fingers. “You have such soft delicate hands, Akamatsu. You’d expect somebody who practiced as long as you did to have welts and marks all over your hand, you must have gotten lucky.”  
  
“Y...yeah. I know! I can give you this nail brush if you want!”  
  
“Huh? Are you sure? But, I can’t just take it for free.”

“Don’t worry about it.”  
  
“No, no. For things like this, we need an equivalent exchange!”  
  
“Equivalent exchange?”  
  
“Oh, I got it! How about I do your nails later!”  
  
“Really? Yay, please do!” Kaede said, suddenly getting excited. Anything to distract herself from the pinprick of a knife in her back. Anything to distract herself from the feeling that the end of the performance was rapidly approaching, and if this musical ended in tragedy it would be all her fault.  
  
“Got it, thanks a bunch.”  
  
“Yay, see you later.”  
  
It was her first time having her nails painted by another girl. She had never even let herself get close enough to another person to do that. It must have been rather empty and two dimensional.

  
Behind Kaede, Kumagawa, Junko and Komaeda were watching the scene play out.  
  
“She should have asked me to paint her nails. My nails are way better. Tell me my nails are better, Misogi!”

 

『Junko, you don’t even like compliments. Whether I compliment you or don’t compliment you, you’re just going to be as apathetic as ever.』  
  
“Meanie! Don’t you know the only reason I’m constantly complimenting myself is because secretly on the inside I have low self esteem!”

 

『There’s no way you’d have such a sympathetic reason for anything!』  
  
“Tell me I’m pretty!”

 

『Junko, your nails are fake. You don’t even care about them you just wear them for the sake of aesthetic.』

  
“Hey, aesthetics are important for a villain. My trademark nails are neatly filed to a smooth edge and then painted. Even if you could only see my hand, you’d still know it’s me; they’ve become synonymous with Enoshima!” She put a lot of thought into that retort, but she was really just proving his point. “They’re an important part of my identity.”

 

『That’s only because you’re as fake as your nails are.』Kumagawa said with an exhausted sigh.  
  
Next to him Komaeda was playing with the tangles of his hair. “Where does she get off calling herself plain? She’s someone with a legitimate talent. A person recognized by Hope’s Peak could never be plain. If she’s plain then what does that make me in comparison?”

 

『Nagito-chan, you’ve got like a ton of money, you’ve survived like two plane crashes, and you’ve traveled all around the world. If you insist that you’re somebody that nobody else could sympathize with then how could you be plain?』

 

“No, the reason that the Ultimates can’t sympathize with me is because they’re so much better than me in every aspect that I’m replaceable fodder compared to them. It’s different, see.”

 

『Nagito-chaaaaan. Don’t forget I’m lower than you. If you’re plain then I’m just invisible!』

  
When he was in between the two of them, trying to keep both of them mellow he felt like he was the ball in the world’s most intense game of ping pong.

 

Despite all of Kaede’s worrying, everyone in the dining hall was in a good mood. Zenkichi sat at the center of it, making breakfast for everyone again. This time he made heart shaped pancakes. He told everyone the secret ingredient was love, and felt no embarrassment whatsoever.

  
“Maaan, for a moment I had no idea what was gonna happen. I’m glad it turned out like this!” Kokichi said, like he did not have a care in the world.  
  
“That’s right.” Kaito agreed with Kokichi for once.  
  
The only person who was making a similar face as Kaede was Rantaro. Usually he had an aura that was untouched by everything around him, the smooth features of his face were fettered. “...”

 

“Why the long face?”

  
“Oh no. It’s nothing…” Rantaro said crossing his arms. “I figure no one would listen to some guy who can’t even remember his own talent, right?”  
  
“What do you mean?” Kaede asked.  
  
“Really, it’s nothing. This is quite the happy ending.” Just like that he went back to being carefree. He closed his eyes like he was a sleepy cat. Kaede felt like she had caught sight of something she was not supposed to see.

  
“But… is this really how this ends?”  
  
Kaede said that line with zero self awareness for the fact that if her life was a visual novel, she had just chosen the dialogue path that would obviously trigger and event. When she blurted it out loud without thinking, everyone stared at her.

 

“I mean, it just seems too easy. I don’t think it’ll end like this.”  
  
Korekiyo pulled his hat down. “Oh, do you wish the killing games to continue?”  
  
“That’s not true!”  
  
“Hey, Kaede… I don’t know what you’re so worried about. But monokuma is dead now. There’s no way the games can continue, right?”  
  
Kokichi said with a not-so-innocent tilt of his head. I have control over everything, but even I don’t presume to know what’s going on in Kokichi’s head. If I were to guess though, I would say he was much more self aware about what kind of event that line would trigger. He said it knowing full well what would happen next.  
  
If this world were entirely scripted, then Kokichi would happily play his part with gusto.  
  
“And that’s my cue to appear, Kuma!” Monokuma said, apeparing from the ground.  
  
“...What?” Kokichi said in surprise.  
  
“H-he’s still alive?” Kaito went blue in the face, his feat of heroism in destroying Monokuma rendered useless in front of him.  
  
“No, no, are you guys blind or something, Kuma? I ain’t Monokuma, kuma. After dying in a tragic car accent, I’ve made my death become nothing through the power of all fiction! Call me Monokumagawa, kuma!”

  
“No way, daddy! You wouldn’t be such a cheap character as to enact the death is cheap trope! You’re not some little boy playing at being immortal because he doesn’t want to grow up.” One of the monokubs yelled.  
  
At which point Monokuma went back to being himself.  
  
Junko glanced over at Kumagawa. “Hey, how come you don’t end every sentence with Kuma? That’s such a cool speaking gimmick idea why didn’t I think of that?”

 

『I already have a speaking gimmick! I talk in brackets!』

  
“It’s not like I can hear the brackets.”

 

『If I ended every sentence with Kuma you’d get bored of it before I even finished this sen-』  
  
“Nevermind, that’s like the worst idea ever I’m already bored of it.”

 

“Wh-what do you mean… the killing game… is gonna continu?” Kokichi said, his eyes watering with a raincloud over his head. Then he flipped a switch and it was like there was rainbows behind him. “I mean, that sounds a lot less boring… so I guess it’s okay!”

 

“So that’s how it’s going to be… If we want to end this… We have to take down Monokuma and the person behind him.” Rantaro said pointedly.  
  
“Is that so? You seem to know everything. Is that what character you are Mr. Know-It-All-Guy? Is that just going to be your entire personality, knowing too much? Then, did you also assume this next exciting development?” Monokuma spread his arms wide like he was thinking on a stage. “Ahem! Now then, I’m pleased to announce an additional motive!”  
  
“An additional motive?” Kaede mirrored.  
  
“A time limit is now in effect! If a murder does not occur by nighttime, two days from now… then every student participating in this killin game will die! Mauled to shreds by countless Monokumas from the rumored Monokuma-making machine. So unless you wanna end up as pink smears, you might wanna take this game seriously! Ahhhhh-hahahaha! You can all die working together or you can survive on your own, tough call!”

  
Th mood was shattered. Everybody reacted with mixed shock and horror. Except for Enoshima Junko the one lone outlier, apathetic as usual. “Wow, you can’t get us to kill each other unless you put a gun to our heads? That’s so basic I’m going to dissolve right now from disinterest.”  
  
“I-I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna die yet!” Kokichi said, crying in a way that was befitting of his childlike appearance.  
  
Die?  
  
Kaede thought.  
  
Is everyone going to die? Is that the only choice?  
  
She was starting to hate whoever wrote this story. She loathed being the main character, in a story with only sad choices like this.  
  
“W-we can’t panic about something like this. I’ll do something about it.” Kaito said, raising a fist in the air.  
  
“Do you have a course of action in mind?” Keebo asked naively.  
  
“Shut up! I’m gonna start thinking about one right now!” Kaito lashed back at him.  
  
Maki just sighed, looking indifferent to life and death. “...Figures. I didn’t expect anything from you in the first place.”

  
“I’m gonna survive! I’m gonna make it no matter what!” Kokichi said as he wiped off the tears from his face. In any other genre than a death game, it would have been quite the inspiring performance, quite the heroic delcaration.

  
“N-no matter what? Wait you can’t do that though, if you make a mistake then you’ll-” Kaede said, feeling concerned for Kokichi’s desperation.  
  
Until it all turned out to be a lie. “Then you’ll accept the blame?”  
  
“Huh?” Kaede’s face went blank.  
  
“Will you accept the blame if I die? I have people who’ll be sad if I die, y’know.” Kokichi smiled as he said this. “If you want to have the benefits of a main character, you have to accept the drawbacks too. It means the plot is going to be centered around your faults, if we fail then it’s your failure as the hero to defeat the villain. Don’t you know anything about stories, you music geek?”  
  
“U-um… Well-”  
  
“Nishishishi! I’m lying. Nobody would be sad if I die. This world is like a story, who would say something as stupid as that? I’ve never seen a more obvious lie. But I dunno about everybody else. Anyway… I’m gonna take off now.”  
  
“Take off? Where are you going Kokichi?” Rantaro asked while Kaede was still tongue tied.  
  
“Oh, I don’t knoooow. Maybe I’ll go back to my room and just think things over. Alone.” Kokichi looked up as if he expected Komaeda to interrupt him, but Komaeda was off in his own little world. He looked almost disappointed for a moment.  
  
As people started to file out, Kaede called after them. “H-hold on everyone… We haven’t decided on our plan yet!”  Just like when she felt like she recovered a bit of herself, Maki cut through her like a cold knife.  
  
“..You can decide that on your own.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Your half-assed speeches won’t work on us anymore. You know that right? So just come up with a plan for yourself.”  
  
“Wait… Maki, wait!”

  
“Tch… Fine then, all of you just do whatever you want!” Kaito yelled after her, feeling defensive of Kaede.  
  
Rantaro looked entirely outside of the moment. He talked mostly to himself. “This is exactly what Monokuma wants us to do. So what else is part of his plan? Is my memory part of it too? If it is then… Can I even trust myself?”  
  
Shuichi who had been too timid to face the crowd, even when every insult against Kaede was like a dagger in him finally spoke up. “Amami-kun, what’s wrong?”  
  
“What’s wrong, he says.” Rantaro mirrored. “Hey, I have a question. This might sound a ltitle weird but… Does the term Ultimate Hunt ring a bell for anyone?”

  
“Ultimate hunt? What is that I’ve never heard of it.” Kaede said, reaching out after him.  
  
“Nevermind, forget it. Everyone’s a little bit anxious about not remembering how they got here, right? Well, in my case not only am I dealing with that, I also can’t remember my talent. So I guess I’m aksing you to bear with me if I say things that don’t make sense sometimes. I think I’m working with a different script than everybody else.”  
  
Without looking back, Rantaro just waved his hand and left. When Kaede reached after him, he slipped from her fingers again. In the end she could not stop a single person from leaving the dining hall.  
  
Not a single thing went right for her. She just wanted a story where she escaped with everyone. A story where she was the hero. Why is everything going wrong?  
  
She knew the answer.

It’s Monokuma’s fault.  
The one who’s controlling him and planned the entire killing game. It’s all their fault!  
  
Really what kind of no good character is she? She’s just refusing to take responsibility, by blaming it all on the author. I know I keep saying this is a story and I’m in control of everything but uh… in reality there are no authors you know? I’m a really deep and innovative author for saying that.  
  
The rules of fiction and the rules of reality work differently! Give me all of the medals! All of them!

Actually you would be surprised how many people get tripped up by this. Even when realism is a genre in fiction, realism isn’t meant to mirror reality perfectly. The point of realism is to just create the illusion of reality, to best capture what people think is reality while still in the bounds of fiction.

 

Oh, right, I can’t just sit here being COOL and META all day. I still have a story to tell. My point is do not act like Kaede is just some blameless puppet under my control. Then you really will fall for the illusion that I control everything. You should read her more closely and doubt her every action.  
  
Because I really don’t think heroes exist in this world, and I don’t think villains exist either. This might be the most boring answer, but it’s entirely possible that Kaede’s just a normal girl.  
  
Only the two of them were left. “Hey, Shuichi-kun… What should we do right now?” Part of her was happy that Shuichi had not left her alone, but part of her was sad as well because she did not want to fall apart right in front of him. She wanted to be as beautiful as the Kaede he saw.  
  
“...We need to move.”  
  
“Huh? Move?”  
  
She thought of her fantasy again, Shuichi taking her by the hand and running away with just the two of them. She knew that was wishful thinking though, she could never leave everybody behind. That was not her.  
  
Shuichi slowly approached her as if wary of his surroundings and said in a hushed voice. “This morning, before I came to the dining hall, I noticed dust from the card reader on the floor.”  
  
“You mean i the library?”  
  
“Yes…”  
  
“Shuichi, can I help you in any way?”  
  
“Of course, Akamatsu-san. BUt we should go, we can’t be talking out in the opening like this.”  
  
Just when she felt like taking his hand and running away, Kaito suddenly appeared in between the two of them a clueless look on his face. He looked like he was interjecting himself in the scene.  
  
“What’s up with you guys? What’re you whispering about?”  
  
“W-we’re not flirting! We just gotta check up on something.”  
  
“Is it a secret?” Kaito asked, scratching his spiky hair.  
  
“All I can say is. I haven’t given up. I’ll show you guys that we can escape from this place.” Kaede held both of her hands in the air. “You can count on it!”  
  
“I see… Well if that’s how it is, then I’ll believe in you.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
Kaede said with a smile.  
That was right, it was not in character for her to give up.  
She always believed that her wishes can come true if she just worked hard enough. She wanted to keep being that person right until the end.  
  
Kaede and Shuichi disappeared together into the hallway. Once again Kaede failed to rally everyone. She failed to be there for everyone. When she reached out, no one took her hand. She only had a shy little boy by her side. She had no idea the feeling was mutual, and he also only had her. He only believed in her.

 

🧸

 

Perspectives are important in stories you know.  
For example this is called third person omniscient. Even though technically I’m cheating a bit on the whole omniscient part. You just have to take my word for it, that I know what’s happening in the hearts of my characters even better than they know their own hearts.  
  
I even know what’s best for them, to make them the most entertaining versions of themselves! That’s why death games are so fun, you would never see this side of these characters unless you pushed them to their absolute limits.

In the last scene told mostly from Kaede’s perspective, Junko, Kumagawa and Komaeda seemed to just drop out of it, but that was because Kaede barely knew who they were. To her Junko is just a fashion model with a bad mouth, and Kumagawa and Komaeda do not even register to her.  
  
The truth was as soon as the new motive was announced, Komaeda slipped away from everybody else. He thought he got away, but Kumagawa noticed him and ran after him. Junko went after Kumagawa.  
  
But she hated running, sweating, and she was running in heels so she arrived on the scene last.  
Zenkichi was there too. He got there first.  
He was the hero after all.  
  
Komaeda and Kumagawa were two like two joker cards.  
Anybody who saw them would assume they were a set.  
However, one you made that assumption you already failed to understand them. If Komaeda was colored black and white, then Kumagawa would be colored white and black. Even if they were exactly the same they would find a way to be different. That was in their nature.  
  
That was why even though they were closer than everybody else, they were also farther apart than everybody else too. Even if they wanted the same thing they could never be united. Even if they loved each other they could never be friends. Even if they were on the same team, one would eventually betray the other.

 

If Komaeda felt pure white hope, Kumagawa would feel pitch black despair. If Kumagawa felt pitch black hope Komaeda would feel pure white despair. The moment one of them pushed, the other would pull. The moment one of them ebbed, the other would flow.  
  
If they did not, both of them would cease to exist. Well not really, but they probably felt something dramatic like that. Two sides of the same coin might sound like a pair of people who can understand each other, but if you think about it one side of the coin will never touch the other. They might as well be on different planes. They’ll always be alone from the other, even when the two of them are together. If they try to reach out to the other side the world will flip upside down.  
  
That was why, when both of them heard the same news. When both of them heard the motive for the killing game, kill within a time limit. They both remembered the same thing at the same time. That on the island killing game, that had been the exact same first motive to start the killing game.

  
However they reacted in different ways.  

 

Komaeda wanted to live. Not just to see Hinata again outside of this killing game. It was because ever since he was born, he felt like his entire life was dictated by a pendulum that swung back and forth between good and bad. It was because he thought that pendulum belonged to a grandmaster clock that slowly ticked away the time he had left. That one day that pendulum would stop swinging and land on the side of death.  
  
He was in this game because Hinata strangled him. In a way he had gotten what he wanted. His life slowly vanished in the hand of his loved one. If he had died right there, in a twisted way he would have died in his lover’s embrace. That was what he had always wanted. The only reason he was in this death game in the first place, was because Hinata actually cared enough about his life to betray the whole world to give him a small chance at living.  
  
He wasn’t touched.  
He thought that was stupid. He was angry that that decision got made for him, by somebody who claimed he loved him. Komaeda realized how many decisions he had taken away from him before that, the more he thought about it. He had so few choices already, and a brain that was rotting away to make those choices with and even so, Hinata stole that from him.  
  
His last thoughts as he blanked out of consciousness was that realization. He wanted to scream while he was being suffocated. Not just at that moment, that was like what his entire life had been like. He wanted to scream for help, and over again, but it was impossible because he was suffocating the whole time. Even if he did scream he was convinced nobody would hear him. Like the time he was kidnapped in plain sight by a serial murderer and nobody tried to stop it. Or the time that he was held for ransom, and nobody even noticed he was gone.  
  
He had been living like he was dying his entire life. That was why he wanted to live. Even if his whole body was being poisoned, he wanted to live. Every single one of his cells as they rotted away screamed out for him to live. He wanted to live because… He didn’t want to be born just to suffer. He would choose to live, even if nobody else was going to give him a choice. He would take it for himself.

 

However, the moment he thought about that he flipped. It was like his brain, his eyes, his stomach, they all went rolling around filling him with an intense vertigo. The room was not moving around though, Komaeda was just doing this to himself. He was trying to hit the brakes on his own head.

 

If he took the choice to live for himself he knew exactly what that would mean. It meant somebody else would die. Somebody else would be the one to start the killing game. If he was not the first sacrifice, then that meant somebody would become the sacrifice in his place. He was untrustworthy, he was manipulative, he could justify almost anything to himself for the sake of hope.

  
Just like last time, he would start to smile without realizing it. He would laugh to himself to stop himself from going mad. Then he would set it up so somebody else became the sacrifice in his place.  
  
He told himself he was the one who was going to die, but he was probably lying. He was so good at lying he could even lie to himself. Hinata called him a liar so many times and Hinata was more sane than he was. Hinata was always watching him. When he said that he was planning on being the murder victim, he probably just told that lie to himself so he would not feel like he was a murderer.  
  
Now that he thought about it he wanted to live. That meant if his luck saved his life, and killed someone else, all the times that had happened it was probably because he on some level wanted for it to happen. He wished for such a thing deep down.  
  
It was no wonder he could barely understand himself at the best of times. He was just looking away from what a terrible person he was. He had two options, to try to control how the killing game would start and somebody would die. He could also try to stay out of it, but that meant when somebody died inevitably he would have done nothing at all to save them. His options were only terrible, because he was a terrible person.  
  
He doubted he would ever take the option where he did nothing, though. Even if he knew it was best for him not to get involved. He would take the option where he did something. Not because he wanted to save anybody. He just wanted to be important. Even if everybody hated him, he probably wanted to be hated too, because that was better than just being some loser nobody pays attention to.  
  
Komaeda found himself unable to breathe suddenly. If he lived, he would be a murderer. If he died, then he would not be able to live anymore. He tried to breathe but his lungs seized up and refused to listen to him. Breathing was so painful. Living was so painful. He hiccuped and gasped for air. He squeaked and made desperate noises. He could not even suffer beautifully. His pain was so ugly.

  
Really all of that was just me flexing my writing skills though, his complicated Komaeda nonsense could be summed up in one sentence.

 

_I don’t want to be the one to start to killing game._

『 _I don’t want to be the first one to die in the killing game._ 』  
  
When Zenkichi saw Komaeda start to seize up and wheeze he hesitated. He had no idea how to handle Komaeda’s illness after all. Even his mother was a doctor he was not. He became afraid to touch the boy, because Komaeda looked so fragile in front of him. The boy’s pale skin in the low light of the hallway he had run down, looked like it was made of glass.

 

『 _I can’t escape the killing game. I didn’t survive anything at all. After fifty two rounds I’m going to die in the 53rd._ 』  
  
That was why Kumagawa pushed past him and made it to Komaeda’s side. When he saw Komaeda wheezing, looking like he was on the brink of collapse, Kumagawa held out an arm and caught him. He put his hand around Komaeda’s mouth like a muzzle to stop him from breathing.

 

『 _There’s no end to this. There’s no point in enduring. It’s just going to happen over and over again until I break. Anything I would never want to lose will be lost. It is given that everything that is worth wanting will be lost the moment I obtain it. There’s nothing worth pursuing at the cost of prolonging a life of suffering._ 』

  
Even if Kumagawa was the one holding Komaeda up right now, he did not feel strong at all. He was just ignoring his weakness in favor of Komaeda’s. He was just pretending to care about Komaeda so he did not have to care about his own problems.

He was probably just looking down at Komaeda right at this moment. He wanted to convince himself he was a good person. He wanted to convince himself that his was a life worth living. That was why he took pity on Komaeda. He was so happy whenever he was around Komaeda, because he found somebody more pitiable than he was.

 

『 _This isn’t living. It’s just failing to die._ 』

  
He felt Komaeda’s body tremble against him as he held him close. He was only holding on so tight though because he was someone who wished to be held. Fifty two killing games and he was all alone the entire time.  
  
That’s how it always was though. There were no such things as heroes. This world was not shonen jump. Nobody would ever come to save him. If he embraced Junko. If their bodies overlapped. That did not make the pain go away.

  
His life was endless repetition. On that island he fell in love with Junko, Junko forgot about him, and he fell in love with her all over again. That was their entire relationship. It was swinging back and forth together between extremes without ever gaining any ground.  
  
The definition of insanity was trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That was him. He was hurt over and over again and he never learned. It just kept repeating, until it lost all meaning. Everything dulled until pain was the only thing he could feel. He forgot who he was and pain was the only thing that reminded him. He forgot what words were supposed to meaning. They just became words words words words words words.

  
Junko and Zenkichi were both trying to say something to him, but the words had been scratched out. His brain did not even register them. His body might not even be his real body. If only he could escape from it. If only he could escape from this moment. If only he could deny the reality in front of him. The only way he could stop feeling pain is if he never had a body to begin with. The only way the hurting would ever stop was if he stopped being Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
He did not want to die. He just wanted an ending. A neat and tidy ending. Shonen series that dragged on for too long, eventually lost their popularity, and always took a dive in quality.  
  
Then he felt Komaeda tremble against him, he felt Komaeda’s cold corpselike skin and remembered who he was. Komaeda almost never felt anything straightforwardly. If he was shaking like this he must have really been scared. He felt something wet touch his skin. Nagito would never cry at a time like this.

『Nagito-chan...』  
  
“I don’t want to die. N-no, maybe I want this. Maybe I want to start the killing game. That’s the only thing lowly scum like me can hope for-”

『Nagito-chan, you won’t die.』Kumagawa said, with a serene smile on his face. If Kumagawa looked in the mirror at that moment he would be surprised by how gentle his smile was. Komaeda felt his heartbeat slowing down as if hypnotized by such a face. It was the face of kindness, he had been waiting his entire life to see. All along, he wished other people would look at him with such soft eyes.  
  
Then Kumagawa grabbed Komaeda by the mouth, hard enough to rip at his cheeks just a little bit and slammed him hard against the back of the wall.  
  
『God, how annoying can one person be? Just shut up already. If only pissing people off were a talent, you'd be Ultimate Nagito-chan. 』  
  
“Kumagawa, what the hell are you doing!” Zenkichi shouted.  
  
『This is the only language that idiot knows! Kindness is wasted on someone like him. If you want him to understand, you have to treat him like the no good useless trash he is.』Kumagawa dragged the side of Komaeda’s face against the wall and then pushed it hard on the ground.

『Nagito-chan, this is what you’ve always wanted isn’t it? You get to lick the boots of your betters. Come on, do it!』

“...”

『God, Nagito-chan you’re so boring and predictable. You’re always like, I don’t want to die, and then I want to die after all. I don’t see why people say you’re hard to understand! If you do one thing now, you’re going to do the opposite later.』

“N-no… I really want to live this time.”

『Don’t worry, Nagito-chan. You’ll live! I promise!』  
  
“Kumagawa-kun… why are you doing this?”

『I’m helping you live! Nagito-chan! I wouldn’t want you to think I’m a liar after all. See this pain is the proof that you’re alive. 』  
  
“Stop. It hurts.”

『Life won’t stop even when you beg it. That’s just the way things are! Oh, why are you looking at me like that? Did you really forget what we are? Did you think I was your friend? You’re so stuuuuupid Nagito-chan. Even when you’re smart you’re dumb. Even though you’re smarter than everybody you never use that brain of yours for anything good, because it’s too broken to be useful.』  
  
Kumagawa Misogi smiled. There was no malice at all in that grin, no ill will.

『I’m your killer, Nagito-chan. That’s why you won’t die. I’m the only one who can kill you.』

He finally let go of Nagito’s hair and let him fall on the ground entirely. He turned away and left him there. Kumagawa’s face did not look at all like he had just hurt one of his best friend’s. It did not even register on his face.  
  
『You won’t die in the first round, because it’d be boring wouldn’t it? It’s more fun for me to keep you alive.』  
  
He stuff his hands into his pockets and walked away. Only then did Enoshima ‘Just Ran the whole way here in heels and spends my entire life eating and acting like a neet so I have no endurance’ Junko catch up with him completely out of breath.  
  
Zenkichi caught up with him at the same time. The moment he was out of sight from Komaeda, Zenkichi grabbed Kumagawa and slammed him against the wall. “What the hell was that?”

『Nagito-chan needs a narrative. If you leave him alone with his thoughts he’ll convince himself he’s the villain. I’d rather Nagito-chan think I’m the villain, than have him think he’s the villain again.』  
  
“That…”

『Nagito-chan never wants to hurt anybody you know. He’s gentle and kind. He wants everybody to get a happy ending. He’s just like Makoto-chan. It’s not fair that he always ends up being the villain.』  
  
“That’s still not the right way of doing things! Why do you always do this!” Zenkichi yelled in his face.  
  
There did not need to be a villain.  
Even if he said so, Kumagawa would not listen to him. His trembling fingers let go, and he went to check if Komaeda was okay.  
Of course I agree with Kumagawa.  
It’s better if he’s the villain don’t you think? He’s the villain to my story after all.  
If only Kumagawa had never thought to save Enoshima Junko. If only he never changed her.  
Then this story never needed to have happened.  
  
Kumagawa scratched the back of his head looking at Junko. 『Sorry, that was kind of embarrassing wasn’t it?』

Junko took a step forward, deliberately putting her heel on his toe so he could not run away from her again. She knew Kumagawa deserved someone who could tell him kind words. Someone who could accept him with open arms. She could accept him, but she could not do any of that. The only words she could think of to say were.  
  
“At least you weren’t boring," She said with an awkward smile on her face.   
  
Kumagawa and Junko were left alone together.   
They were the only ones who ever understood the other. No, maybe each of them only really wanted to be understood by one other person.   
They needed each other in the most romantic sense of the word. They deserved each other in the most cynical sense of the word.   
If they continued living together, it was only because they were each other's punishment. 


	11. Who Killed Cock Robin?

When Kaede pushed open the great double doors to the library, she saw there were two people already waiting in their meeting spot. She imagined that the library was a place only her and Shuichi knew the secret of. It was like a secret garden shared between the two of them, but instead of leaves they were surrounded by the pages of old books. She thought the doorway was something Shuichi only trusted her with, because he believed in her.  
  
The real reason Toko and Togami were in the library at that exact time had nothing to do with the secret door hidden behind one of the bookshelves. They were just both anti-social people who had gone to the library to avoid everyone else at the same time. Togami sat on the only chair in the room with his legs elegantly crossed, whereas Toko was just lying on the floor her braids trailing behind her.

 

“Ummm, hello!” Kaede said awkwardly as she put on a smile. “Do you two mind leaving us alone in the library for a few minutes?” Kaede had to be the one who did all the talking between the two of them because the moment Togami gave them a sharp glare Shuichi started hiding behind her.  
  
“How strange. I just hallucinated that this commoner girl and her pet goth were talking to me.” Togami said as his eyes traveled back down to the book he was reading.  
  
“Commoner!?” Kaede was under the same mistaken notion as Makoto that as long as she greeted someone with a smile and listened to all of their words patiently, eventually they would become friends. She thought she was so good at performing that she could become friends with anybody. She was a bit naive when it came to friendship, it never occurred to her that some people were just jerks.  
  
“Well, you’re always saying that you’re a normal girl who just likes piano…” Shuichi said nervously behind her. “Maybe we should just come back later. I don’t want to bother anyone.”  
  
“Sometimes you have to bother people to get results, Saihara-kun!” Kaede said, and he did not know exactly what she meant until Kaede walked up and started to poke at Byakuya’s face again and again.  
  
“Enough with the poking already!” Shuichi said. At this point he realized Kaede just had no sense of personal space at all. She was a friendly girl, but there were times where she was a little bit too friendly. Especially with other people. Not that he was jealous.  
  
Togami finally raised his eyes again. “I know you. You’re the soft-hearted one who was playing at being leader. If you were really serious you would have recruited the best candidate possible to lead us all.”  
  
“And that is…?” Kaede asked.  
  
“Me, obviously!” Togami replied indignant.  
  
“If you wanted to be leader, then how come you’re avoiding everybody? You don’t even come to breakfast.”  
  
“Well, I don’t want to be killed.”  
  
“Nobody is going to die.” Kaede said, her expression growing more fierce. Shuichi watched her face from the side. Something had changed in her eyes since Monokuma announced the second motive. Her determination scared him a little bit. “It can’t happen,I’ll make sure of it.”  
  
“Don’t bother saying it couldn’t happen. You can’t deny the possibility. That’s why you’re seized up with fear right now. Am I wrong? So, I’m simply acting in accordance with what I think is best for me. People I can’t control are worthless to me.”  

  
“Then what about her?” Kaede said pointing to Toko who was still on the floor, eyes focused on her book.

  
“Ugh.” Togami made an unpleasant expression, and gave no further explanation beyond the dead look in his eyes when he thought of Toko.

  
“So you’re not going to work with anybody, unless you’re the one in charge? There’s no reason for us to turn against each other, it’s all the mastermind’s fault. If we all work together, we can all escape together.”  
  
“Except for those giant robots. I’m going to regret not investing in robotics like the Kurokamis did.” Togami agve an exhaustive sigh. “Keep telling yourself that. I’ll be over here in the real world. Working together, fighting a common enemy… like it or not, it’s not that simple. You can try repeating the lie to yourself all you want but that won’t change reality.”  
  
Kaede’s face wrinkled at the word lie. Is that all her ideals were to this person? Lies? What was wrong with striving for the best ending possible? She just wanted to be someone they could all rely on. “Then, if you’re only going to work alone how are you going to escape?”  
  
“Anyone who truly does want to escape… will just have to follow the rules. In which case the only option is to deceive those around you, and win the game.”

  
“You can’t treat this like a game! B-becoming a murderer is something really serious. Only a horrible person would think of something like that.”  


Togami’s expression was utterly clueless of the shock on Kaede’s face. He had no idea why he had incited such an emotion. He wondered what it must be like to live with your head in the clouds. When he was brought before all of his siblings, it would not have done him any good at all to deny the reality in front of him. “But, it is a game. It’s a game of life or death, which can have only one winner. That’s all there is to it.”  
  
“N-no we have to stop it before it even starts!”  
  
“But.. why would I want to stop playing? It’s so much fun…” Togami brought the book up to his chin to cover his face and conceal his smile.  
  
Kaede immediately tried to make a move but before she could Shuichi held her back. If it had not been for Shuichi’s caution she might have started a fight otherwise. Togami watched her with his cool eyes, looking pleased that his provocation had worked exactly as expected. “At first glance you and that soft hearted little Naegi look identical, but you’re actually quite different aren’t you?”

 

“You’re just like Kokichi…” Kaede quickly shot back.  
  
“I can’t believe it… Comparing the likes of me to some ill-mannered, loud mouthed, sniveling lost child, who looks like a joke grew arms and legs. You’re quite mean, aren’t you? At least you’re not soft at all.” Togami saw nothing at all in to the laughing little clown that was always pestering the others that was like his noble visage.

  
At this Fukawa Toko finally sat up. “Byakuya-sama, is that super popular girl who everybody loves bullying you?”  
  
“There’s no such thing as popularity here. Get your mind out of your teen high school dramas.”  
  
“Eh? B-but, we are teens, and we’re trapped in a high school! It’s also pretty dramatic, you were just saying so.”  
  
“Everything I say is dramatic! If it involves me it’s important, natch.”  
  
Fukawa looked back at Shuichi and Kaede. They looked at Fukawa and Togami like they were a couple of bullies, but the was no way that could be true because Fukawa had been bullied her entire life, and Togami never even bothered with other people. They actually had to be liked by others to be the untouchable popular couple. Not that she had not fantasized before about the two of them being the prince and princess of an incredibly prestigious private school. “What do you two want to be alone in the library for anyway? You probably just want a space to make out. I don’t want to see you have your gross 3D relationships right in front of my precious books!”  
  
“Toko, did you just say 3D relationships? I might have to kill you just for that remark.”

 

“Master, I would happily die for your sake. My only request is that I die in your arms, and I be the last female name to ever leave your lips! Come on, take me already and then claim the first killing perk to leave this academy.”  
  
“Nope. I would hate to do something that made you happy.” Togami stood up right then. He was not leaving the room because she had asked him to, he decided he had just gotten bored of this conversation. “Why are you looking at me like I’m some monster? I just want to live the same as anyone else. If you want me to rely on you, then you have to prove that you’re what’s best for the group. Show me you can do something, anything, other than just spout pretty words. Otherwise you’re just forcing your selfish wish to play hero on others.”  
  
“I… I want everyone to live, too. I’d do anything to stop the killing game. So… if we both want to live why are we fighting?”

 

Her open ended statement only produced a scowl from Togami. He adjusted his glasses so the glare would prevent her from seeing his eyes. “Is that all you can say? It’s unfortunate you would waste your breath on such empty gibberish.”

  
He walked past her leaving her in the dust. Toko quickly followed after him, skirting behind him like a shadow. “Are you all disappointed Byakuya-sama? Because that girl isn’t like your best friend, Naegi-kun? You wouldn’t be interested in a girl version of Naegi-kun anyway, because what’s between you and him is something that can only be shared between men.”  
  
“Toko, it’s incredible that you keep insisting on using your mouth for such useless things like continuing to breathe.”  
  
“B-but master if I don’t breathe I’ll pass out again! When that happens will you carry me in your arms?”  
  
“Fine, continue breathing if you must.”  
  
“If they don’t want a romantic hide like we do, then why are they meeting in the library?”  
  
“Anywhere is a romantic hideaway to you, because no matter where I hide to get away from you, you always follow! Perhaps there’s a secret passageway hidden behind one of the book cases.”  
  
“Good work Nancy Drew! Let’s meet up at old mystery creek!” Toko said, she was hardly one to joke around except when it came to books. “A secret passageway hidden behind a bookshelf! That’s the oldest cliche in the book! No author worth their salt would do something that lame!”  
  
As you can see, my taste in books is quite different than Fukawa Toko’s. While the fact that she is a talented author might have given her the advantage if her life was to suddenly become a fictional story, it would not work if Fukawa thought she was entirely in the wrong genre. Even in the middle of a killing game she was convinced her life was a romance.

  
“Jeez, talking to him was like talking to a brick wall.” Kaede said, pulling at her sleeve to relieve her tension.  
  
Shuichi lifted his hat just a bit to watch them go. That entire time he had felt useless. Someone was berating Kaede right in front of his eyes and he did not do anything about it. He was starting to think nobody else saw her the way that he did. “Yet he talked to that weird author girl just fine. It’s like those two are on the same mixed up wavelengths.”  
  
“Well I know one thing for sure, blondie seems convinced that he’s the most important person here but those two would never be main characters.” Kaede said in a huff.

 

Shuichi finally let go of her, realizing he had been holding on for a bit too long. Awkwardly, he cleared his throat and looked away. Kaede did not even seem to notice. She was totally blind to the tension that Shuichi was feeling in the air. Which made Shuichi feel like dying even worse. She had not even noticed when Toko accused them of meeting behind closed doors just to make out out of sight from everyone. Kaede really was something else it was like she existed in her own little world, she never seemed to worry about the things Shuichi did.  
  
“Alright, I’ll explain everything.” he said touching his chin. As Shuichi said that he swung around the bookcase to reveal the hidden door. “First, take a look at the card reader.”

  
“Ah! The dust is gone.”  
  
“That’s right. I checked it right after nighttime started yesterday, and the dust was there. But this morning, it was gone.”  
  
“So that means… someone entered this door during nighttime?” Now she thought staying up so late with Shuichi to look at the stars last night was foolish. It was probably selfish of her to spend time with him and put him ahead of the group.  
  
“That got me thinking. This may sound far-fetched, but… Perhaps Monokuma’s revival is related to the door somehow.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“Remember what the Monokubs said?”  
  
“Um… So there’s a machine that can make those spare Monokumas?”  
  
“That would explain why we saw Monokuma alive and well in the morning  At nighttime, someone went through the door and activated the machine. And then there’s what Monokuma told us.”

 

 _Every student forced to participate in this killing game will die._  
  
“The way he phrased it seemed peculiar. Why not just say everyone will die? He went out of his way to specify that students “forced to participate” will die.”  
  
“Huh? But why?”  
  
“My deduction is that one of us volunteered to participate and wasn’t forced. THat would mean they would avoid execution without breaking any rules. Perhaps that’s why Monokuma said it that way.”  
  
“And that person is the on in our group who’s cooperating with Monokuma?” Kaede thought, any person who would cooperate with Monokuma really was scum. Sweat ran down her forehead as her stress increased. That kind of person really could not be saved.  
  
“I don’t Monokuma is that strict with rules, but if he’s trying to protect someone that would imply they’re doing more with Monokuma.”  
  
“Huh?  
  
“I believe that if one of us can create spare Monokumas...They are the mastermind of this killing game.“  
  
“So, the person who’s responsible for all our suffering… is one of us?”  
  
What a novel idea. The characters are responsible for their own suffering. Someone should put it in a novel.  
  
“Of course, this is just what I’ve deduced but it is entirely possible. That’s why I didn’t want to talk about this in front of everyone. If we told them now, they might all try to find the mastermind and it might lead to murder. That’s why… I could only tell you, Akamastu-san.”  
  
She was the only one. The truth of this game was you had no idea what anybody around you was capable of. Shuichi thought that Kaede’s way of trusting everyone was ideal, that was the way he should live. However, he kept silent the entire time Togami spoke because Togami’s words were much more logical. That was why it could only be Kaede, he knew all she wanted was to save others. She did not even think once of saving herself.  
  
The mastermind…  
The one controlling Monokuma.  
The one responsible for all of their suffering.  
She could never forgive them.  
Anyone who cooperated with the mastermind could never be forgiven.  
She finally realized it, the villain of her story.  
As she did, it was like the strings that were pulling her every which way with so much indecision and doubt had finally loosened. Before those strings were only making sour and sharp noises in her ear. They were finally starting to sound like music again. If she could hear music the world was staring to make sense again.  
  
“So… what do you plan to do now, Saihara-kun? We’re gonna find this mastermind, right?”  
  
“I’m… thinking of taking the risk, just before the time expires.” When he was around her he wanted to be bold. When he was around her, he thought that maybe someone like him could save others too.  “I believe the mastermind will come here just before time is up, and I can expose them.”  
  
“Wait, how do you know they’ll come here right before time is up?”  
  
“I’m extrapolating from something Monokuma told us earlier.” _Mauled to shred by countless Monokumas in the Monokuma making machine._ “To produce a large number of Monokumas, the mastermind would have to come here. They would have to get into the hidden room to activate the machine. Of course, none of this is certain there’s a chance the mastermind won’t show. Like I said… it’s a risk. But I’m willing to take it. It’s better than just sitting around, waiting to die.”  
  
“Yeah…” She did not want anyone to die. If anybody did have to die, she would rather it be her. If Shuichi took that risk alone, he might die alone. The idea of dying alone sounded so lonely. “I’ll take that risk with you!”  
  
“Ah, but… Akamatsu-san. This is just my deduction, it’s possible that I’m wrong…” Shuichi hesitated for a moment backing away from his deduction. Despite Kaede’s eagerness, he did not want to risk her. He almost considered throwing the whole plan away. Kaede wanted to save everyone, but Shuichi started to selfishly worry about protecting only her.

  
“Yeah, I know. But I’ve made up my mind. You told me about this, so that must mean you trust me, right Saihara-kun? Then I’ll trust you too.” The smile she gave him was so simple and sweet. He really envied her way of feeling things. If he could only feel so strongly about anything. All he had were a thousand little weak doubts that never left him alone.  
  
Shuichi blushed and averted his eyes. He gave no response to her question. He forgot about protecting just Kaede. She would never want him to put her above all the others.  
  


“...I mean, I don’t have a good idea of my own so obviously I’ll help you with yours. Okay then, let’s expose the mastermind together, Saihara-kun.”

  
“Thank you, Akamatsu-san. You… have a way of encouraging me.” Shuichi turned his head back, returning her smile with a small smile of his own.

 

 _I want to be… the kind of person you would like._  


Kaede did not notice Shuichi’s smile, or his soft sentiment. She crossed her arms again, face looking heavy with the burden she was putting on herself. “I can’t believe our enemy is within our group, hiding in plain sight.”  
  
“...Y-yeah. It’s hard to believe someone would pretend to be someone else like that.”  
  
“Now that we know this, I should stop saying everyone needs to work together… Ugh, I can’t believe I have to admit that Jerk Togami was right!” As she said that, Kaede began to energetically shadow box the air.  
  
“Wait, please don’t fight him…”  
  
“But, whoever the mastermind is, we’ll expose them and help everyone else escape! And when this is all behind us, we’re gonna stay good friends! That’s a promise okay!”  
  
Shuichi blushed, turning himself away from her and trying to cover his face with his hat. She was so easy to believe in. That just for a moment he pictured the two of them together in the outside world. If they were together even after the game. Then this would be… the real thing. “...R-right…” He stuttered, her fluster totally unnoticed by her.  
  
He still was not the person he wanted to be yet.  
So he hid his face from her.  
_I want to be… the kind of person who could be your friend._  


🧸

 

“I imagine Saihara-kun has concluded that the mastermind is going to use the secret door hidden behind the bookshelf in the library right before the deadline hits, but he’s wrong.”  
  
Kirigiri Kyoko stood in front of the cubbies in the bathing room. Makoto and Mukuro were both sitting next to each other on the same bench in front of her. She was the only one with brain cells in the trio, so she felt a little bit like she was the teacher lecturing the two of them.  
  
Makoto must have had the same sentiment because he immediately raised his hand. “Wait, how do you know there’s a secret door hidden behind the bookshelf in the library?”

“You don’t need to raise your hand Naegi-kun…” Kirigiri said. That boy was sometimes too polite, like he was afraid to step on others toes. “Because it’s obvious? That’s like the first place you put a secret passage in every detective novel ever. It’s a pretty old-fashioned technique, but even the classics can be surprisingly useful sometimes.”  
  
“Then how do you know the mastermind’s not going to use that secret passage?” Makoto felt useful being the one who asked the dumb questions so Kirigiri could look smart in her explanation.  
  
“Because it’s way too obvious. It’s just like the secret exit that we were supposed to find. If they make the door black and white they might as well hang a sign that said ‘Monokuma is here’ on it. There’s probably a secret passageway somewhere else that leads to the exact same location.”

 

“Then why put up a secret passageway in the first place where someone can find it? If there’s a hidden one that leads to the same place?”  
  
“Because the first one is a trap. It’s meant to grab our attention.” Kirigiri flicked her hair behind her shoulders to add emphasis to her statement. “I’m in the business of solving murders not predicting them, but the first murder is probably going to take place in the library.”  
  
Mukuro shivered. “Yes, please don’t predict things. You’ll sound like my sister.”  
  
“Ikusaba-san, that is the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”  
  
“I’m so sorry…”

 

“The secret escape route was meant to break our hopes of escape. They probably left that door in as an intentional hint to make somebody in the game think ‘if we know about this door we could find the mastermind when they try to use it’ and then when that plan fails the hope of cornering the mastermind breaks too.”

  
Kirigiri had thought all of this out investigating on her own so far. It was usually hard to put her thoughts into words, as most people did not think the same way she did. Her cold, objective, and unfeeling way of thinking. She thought she must sound like some kind of machine explaining all of these facts and talking about life or death stakes without feeling anything at all. Also, Makoto was an idiot so she was a little worried he might not be following along.  
  
When she looked up and saw how warmly Makoto looked at her, she thought she was undeserving of such a look. Then she looked again doing a double take finally noticing what they were wearing.

  
“Why are you both in robes?”

They both looked shyly at each other and then back to her.  
  
Makoto scratched his cheek and started to speak up.  “W-well, we thought this meeting would look more secret if it looked like we were going to take a bath.”  
  
“There’s only one bath, o-oh.” Kirigiri looked away. Her flustered expression added some color to her otherwise pale face. “Has Komaru been keeping you two apart that much?”  
  
“Ever since the second motive got announced Komaru locked herself in our dorm again. I’m really worried she’s going to become a neet now.”  
  
“It’s a problem when your younger sister becomes a no-good neet. It feels like you’ve failed in raising them as an older sibling.” Mukuro said, nodding and thinking of her sister who when she was not plotting to destroy the world basically wasted her time watching anime and old movies all day.  


Makoto smiled suddenly, changing the subject. “I’m really happy you’re trusting us with all of this, Kiri! I was worried you’d run off without us again.”  
  
He always said things like that so easily. In another world they might be a mystery solving duo. In this one she felt distant from him. “I don’t work alone because I want to be unfriendly. It’s because, you’re different than I am Naegi-kun.”

 

“Huh…?”  
  
“You know how in detective novels, if a detective gets on a train then a murder mystery is guaranteed to happen on that train? My life was like that. You always look so hurt when people get hurt right in front of you, like you feel their pain worse than they do. I didn’t want you to get used to the sight of corpses like I did.”  
  
“You’re into dead bodies?” Makoto of course, said something dumb. An empathy idiot was one half empathy and one half idiot.  
  
“No, I’m no “into” dead bodies. What I’m “into” is solving mysteries. That means, seeing the worst in people and what they’re capable of. I want you to stay the same you… I want you to keep seeing the best in others.”  
  
Mukuro spoke up right then. “You see the best in others too, Kirigiri! You gave me a chance when nobody else would have. You’re not giving yourself enough credit.”  
  
“I just thought it didn’t matter if I used you. Because someone like you can already hear the footsteps of the god of death. You’re used to the sight of corpses too.” Kirigiri answered her coldly. That had been her reasoning at first anyway. When Mukuro touched her hand she realized how wrong she was, but she did not want to think about how her feelings had changed. She did not like thinking about confusing things, she only liked when there was a clear solution.

 

“That sounds so cool. You can hear the footsteps of the reaper…” Makoto gasped as he watched the two of them with awe.  
  
“You’re the closest one to Junko, that’s why I have to ask. Mukuro, would Junko take the threat to kill all of us if a murder does not happen seriously?”  
  
“There’s no way she would. It’s a total bluff. Basically everything my sister says is lacking in substance. She’s completely full of hot air, and not just her boobs.” Mukuro said quickly, not missing on the chance to complain about her sister behind her back. She felt like a monster for how easy she was able to recall the details of this plan. There was no a way normal human could live on after doing such terrible things. She was just unfeeling.  “The first killing game with the student council was considered a failure because they killed each other all at once. If it ended that quickly her fun would end too soon. If the time limit really hit without a single murder taking place, my sister would probably kill someone and then frame someone else to move the game along.”  
  
“B-but that’s against the rules!” Makoto said.  
  
“The rules only matter until I get bored of them! They’re only there for my entertainment, and if nothing happens I’ll be disappointing our viewers. Think about the ratings! That’s the annoying excuse my sister would give.”

 

“Please don’t do an impression of her again, that is so disturbing…”  
  
“Well, she is my twin sister. We’re bound to sound alike.”  
  
“This is what you get for dating the sister of your worst enemy.” Kirigiri agreed.  
  
Makoto felt like the girls were teaming up against him. “You don’t know that for sure, maybe you were adopted.”  
  
“Actually, my sister once spent a week trying to convince me I was adopted and couldn’t possibly be her twin. She even forged a birth certificate for my original name and paid actors to show up on the doorstep and claim me as my birth parents. We were seven at the time.”

 

Every time he learned about another incident from Mukuro’s childhood he somehow always felt worse. His expectations were so low for Junko, and she always managed to push them further down. Makoto really needed to listen to Kumagawa more.  
  


“Anyway, if Junko were doing this and she were to target anybody in the first round it would be me or you.” Mukuro said, looking at Kirigiri. “If you want I can protect you. You need to keep living, much more than I do…”  
  
“No, it’s fine.” Kirigiri noticed how little Mukuro was concerned from her own life. She had no idea how to tell a person how to live. She would need to figure out how to live beyond being a detective herself first. “We need to split up for my plan anyway. We’re going to watch for whoever splits apart from the main group before the time limit ends, because they’re the ones who are going to be looking for the second secret passage way. We tail them and we find it.”  
  
“The three of us together?” Makoto said, with a smile of delight on his face.  
  
Kirigiri smiled softly back at him. “Yes, we can finally all work together.” She trusted Makoto more than he would ever know, and more than she could ever tell him. But to him this was the first time she ever invited him along on one of her cases. Every time before that, when she was leaving the school Makoto would always chase after her. He gave her big puppy dog eyes like he was expecting her to bring him along, but was too shy to ask. In the end all he managed to do was say goodbye, and offer to keep track of her homework until she came back.  
  
That was how the first year of their school life came and went. She always went ahead, and Makoto waited for her to return. It was the first time she ever had a place to come back to.  
  
There was still concern in Mukuro’s eyes. “If we get stuck with the mastermind alone, one of you two might die. Maybe I’m the only one who should tail others-”  
  
“I’m not planning on dying. But there’s always a chance of it, and a death without meaning is… unappealing.”

  
Mukuro looked down at her own hands. At the Fenrir symbol carved onto the back of one of her hands. The reason she no longer hid it away, was because she wanted everyone to know she was a murderer. That was just another way of atoning. “Death…is meaningless.” It was always unappealing. Always empty. Just like those hands of hers only good for killing.

 

🧸

 

“Jeez, Hitoyoshi-kun I can’t believe you’re late. After we so graciously let you hang out with the cool crowd.” Enoshima Junko said impatiently tapping the toe of her boot on the floor.

  
“You two are the last two people anybody would ever call the cool crowd.” Zenkichi said, covered in sweat in the doorway. He had just run Komaeda all the way to his room, and then run around to check if there were any medical supplies available. Zenkichi knew a little bit of first aid because he had a paralyzing fear that one day Medaka would get attacked and lose an awful amount of blood. He also used to have similar nightmares about Medaka getting assassinated with a gun, or knife, which is why he learned to disassemble guns and kept magazines stuffed into his shirt at all times.  
  
Medaka was not even here right now, but Zenkichi had yet to accept that idea. It was easier to live his life exactly the same way as he did before like she was here. Zenkichi sometimes wondered how Matsuda felt, when he had to accept things would never be the same between Junko and him again. His separation was a lot more permanent though, and also more murdery.  
  
“Hellooooo, prettyboy! What’s wrong did you break your brain trying to think? Not your strongest muscle, huh?” Junko said waving her hand in front of his face.  
  
“My strongest muscle is my heart,” Zenkichi retorted. He thought it sounded cool in his head at least.

 

He looked around the room for a place to sit down. There were stuffed animals everywhere, Zenkichi was a little confused on how she had gotten her hands on all of them. A few of them had been stabbed with screws and their stuffed guts were spilling on the floor, definite proof that Kumagawa had been here. Otherwise it just looked like a normal teen girl’s room. Zenkichi would not be fooled though, because for Junko her teenage girl interests were just an aesthetic. He went to go sit on a giant panda bear with a fat stomach, because there was nowhere else to sit.  
  
Only when he finally settled down did he notice Junko was only half as annoying as she usually was. She was missing her comedy partner. The one she was basically attached at the hip too, at this point. Not that Zenkichi had any room to judge considering his relationship with Medaka. Not that he minded either, if Kumagawa spent all of his time distract her that kept Medaka’s potential greatest (and most annoying) enemy out of her hair. “Hey, where’s Kumagawa-senpai?”

 

“You mean the loser, he’s underneath the bed bumming out the boogieman.”

 

『I don’t deserve to lie on the bed and sulk like a normal person.』  
  
Junko kicked the bed frame. “You’re such a louse. You’re going to miss me revealing my plan to  out master the mastermind! That’s when I’m guaranteed to look my coolest.”

 

『Well you know I figured if I’m going to embody all of the worst human flaws I should give laziness a try, and just… meh.』  
  
“God, you can’t even get depressed like a normal person can you? You were all exciting and violent like five minutes ago and now you’re just laying there like a corpse. Come on, admire me more!”

 

『I think I can admire you much better from down here. This is the only angle I can look up to you at.』  
  
“Hitoyoshi-kun, drag him out from under there.”  
  
“You’re not the boss of me you know.”  
  
“Hitoyoshi-kun! Pretty pretty please! With lots of sprinkles on top!”  
  
“Yeah like I’m gonna fall for….”  
  
“I’ll cry if you don’t.”  
  
“Fine, jeez.” Zenkichi just picked part of the bed up, and rolled Kumagawa out from under it.

 

In a moment Kumagawa was sitting on Junko’s lap, with her arms wrapped around his chest. She fussed with him for a moment trying to get him to sit up straight. Kumagawa barely resisted her. He looked a little bit like a worn out, stitched up, old toy in her lap.  
  
『I’m no good...』  
  
“Yeah, you aren’t. You should feel bad. Since you’re a bad person.” Zenkichi said, glaring at Kumagawa’s listless form. “Komaeda feels pretty bad too right now you know why? Because somebody punched him in the face.”  
  
“You’re not really helping, Hitoyoshi-kun. Unless you’re trying to taste some sweet despair, then you’re being very helpful.”  
  
“I’m not trying to help.” It was hard for Zenkichi, being the only one between the three of them who had a heart.

 

『Zenkichi-chan is right. I’m amazing and I should feel better about myself! Thanks for encouraging me so much, best frenemy!』  
  
“Stop making shit up, that’s not a thing. We are not frenemies.”

 

『My best frenemy since we were two years old. My childhood destined rival. I’ve waited my entire life to meet up with you again, after we encountered each other on that fateful day.』  
  
“We don’t have that kind of relationship!”  
  
Kumagawa brightened up. When someone told him to feel sad, he would always smile. THat was what it was like running on ninety percent spite. Junko clearly her throat and both boys immediately turned their attentions to her. She was commanding like that, she sucked up attention like a black hole.  
  
“Well anyway this is the part where I figure everything out and then you two admire me for how brilliant I am-” When Zenkichi raised his hand, Junko threw a stuffed animal at him to shut him up. “Being trapped in the same place has been an absolute nightmare. Who wants to wake up and see the same thing every day? And have to talk to the exact same people? Only the worst person imaginable would do such a thing.”

 

『You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself Junko. The fact that another mastermind stole your plans means that you might qualify for the second worst person here!』Kumagawa said with his usual twisted sense of optimism. 『And if that happens that means I’m only third worst! I’m slowly crawling my way up from the bottom!』  
  
“You’ll always be the worst in my heart.” Zenkichi said.  
  
Kumagawa gasped. 『I’ll always be in your heart? My best frenemy?』

 

“This place is so lame. Nothing even happens here until a murder occurs.”

 

『It hasn’t even been a week yet. There are worse things about being taken prisoner than it’s boring!』  
  
“Yeah, they also stole my intellectual property and ripped it off in the form of the Monokubs.”

 

『I refuse to let you use the Monokubs as your character motivation! It’s not going to happen I won’t let it! Find a new motivation! In fact, please rewrite your entire character right now!』  
  
“Misogi, why can’t exciting things just happen all the time? Like one after another with no breathing room? Why do we gotta deal with these long stretches of boring between the murders?”  


『It’s called pacing, Junko.』  
  
“So anyway, that’s why more or less I decided we’re going to take out the mastermind in the first round. Flawless victory. We won’t even let it get to the part where we just rant at each other about hope and despair, even though that’s my favorite part…”

 

『The sooner this story ends the better. I’m tired of being a character in this story already. 』  
  
“So the problem is Saihara-kun and Kirigiri-san totes have their own plans. But I’m me so… Saihara-kun will probably set up a camera trap exactly across from the moving bookshelf that leads to the Monokuma making machine in order to capture them on film. Kirigiri will go looking for a second secret passageway and probably try to tail one of the eleven new brats hoping they’re the mastermind-”

 

『Wait, there’s a secret passageway behind a bookcase?』  
  
“Duh, there’s a secret passageway behind a bookcase. If you’re making a murder mystery killing game you gotta pay tribute to the classics!”

 

『Well, Junko we don’t think like you do. You have to explain things to us, not just assume we know everything that you know.』  
  
“Fine, fine. So we have to work around the other two plans in play, with the possible second secret passageway and the first one. Once we navigate around both of those, we’ll be able to kill the mastermind in the first round.”  
  
“Kill the mastermind?” Zenkichi repeated. He knew Junko was a terrible person, but it did not quite sink in yet that she thought absolutely nothing of life and death. Medaka was always surrounding herself with dangerous people like that, but Junko was on an entirely different level.  
“Why would we kill them? It’s not fair. We let you live.”  
  
Junko adjusted her glasses. She had put them on in the middle of the explanation to make herself into a more serious personality. “Like this world could survive without me predicting and analyzing trends to make fashion my bitch. The world would be way less fabulous if I was in it.”

 

“Yeah, I totally care about that.”  
  
“Well that explains why you’re wearing such a stupid outfit. Hey, in the boy band are you the cool one? The pouty one? There’s no way you’re the bad boy. You’re probably just the cute one.”  
  
“Shut up, I didn’t even pick that outfit.”  
  
Junko suddenly got serious. Her eyes were ice cold. Zenkichi noticed the difference so much it was like his heart suddenly dropped into his stomach and he could feel it getting dissolved by acid. That girl had a terrifying aura, the same as Medaka. “Hitoyoshi-kun. The mastermind killed Medaka-chan. You’re never going to see her again, and it’s all the mastermind’s fault. Do you really want such a person to live?”  
  
“...”  
  
“They killed Anshin’in-san as well. The reason your best friend Shiranui suffered so much, was because the mastermind slaughtered her village.”

 

“...Fine, I’ll go with your plan.”

  
“Looks like you have fangs after all, Medaka’s dog.” Junko said, with a condescending smirk. It was always enjoyable, pushing people past their limits. That was how you discovered never before seen sides of them. “It’s simple. Hitoyoshi-kun, we’re going to destroy Monokuma before the time limit hits and force the mastermind to make new ones. The threat to kill us all is a bluff anyway, the game would be boring if everybody dies in the first round. You convince Momota-kun that you’re staging a rebellion and get him on your side, and then take on Monokuma. You’re the distraction!”

 

“And then what?”

 

“The mastermind is going to wait behind the door, and kill someone and frame them so the time limit never becomes an issue. We catch them doing that and we kill them simple as that.”

 

『I’m going to pretend to be the first murder victim to lure them out. It’s a role I was born to play. I basically walk through life with a giant target on my back anyway.』  
  
“Is that all? I guess killing people is easy after all.” Zenkichi said, bitterness laced in his voice. He walked out of the room staring at his own hands. It was possible those hands would never hold Medaka’s again. “I’m going to go check if Komaeda is falling asleep alright.”  
  
The moment he left the room, Junko let Kumagawa fall off her lap, and then started to pace back and forth. She turned around on her heel, throwing her arms behind her back as she did.

Kumagawa stood up and walked to the bed. This time as he sat on the bed, white sheets falling around him, draping him, the drapery and his own gloomy complexion making him look like he was halfway between here and the land of the dead. He drew up his knees to his chest and continued to watch Junko. She was the only thing reflected in his eyes. She was his only tether. The bracelet around his wrist felt like a heavy chain. Sometimes it felt like one a prisoner might wear.

『Junko, that wasn’t your real plan was it?』  
  
“Of course. You never speak your real plan out loud. That’s guaranteeing it will fail. Also, in a nontropey sense there are cameras. Why do you think you’re not allowed to touch me?”

『I thought you just didn’t want my hands to stain your perfect body. Bla bla bla if I was born in ancient greece Misogi, they would have carved me into marble and worshipped me like a goddess!』  
  
“Well that too, but it’s like totally embarrassing. I kinda wanna die at the thought of having an R-18 scene being broadcast for everyone to see.” 

『We haven’t found any cameras anywhere...Why would anybody want to be watching us? Maybe we're more boring than we think we are.』  
  
“There have to be cameras! There’s no way the mastermind could miss out on ratings gold like this! This is a story that demands to be told! ” 

『So, what are you just going to whisper it to me, or write it down, or…. I assume you’re going to need me to do something, because you’re no good on your own-』  
  
“Sssssh, Misogi you have to wait for it.”

『Wait for what?』  
  
“The fade to black!”


	12. I Want to Kill You

The world is made up of connections. It’s all tied together by red string. Sometimes the string is red and wet, drip, drip, dripping as the connection is soaked in blood. Sometimes the string was like yarn, light, bouncy and fluffy as it was made of feelings. Sometimes the string was like wool, wrapping around you as just being near that person made you feel warm. Sometimes, people tied the string around their own fingers, to fool themselves into thinking they were in love.  
  
Everyone desires to connect. The world is so overrun with connections it might as well be a ball of red string. Since she was young, she could see those criss crossing red strings between people. She could also see that not a single of those connections truly led to her.  
  
Amidst a sea of blue faced, featureless, unremarkable people she was a lone island. A small girl in pigtails holding a stuffed bear in her arms rather than a person, because it was the only thing she liked.

 _A world where everyone is tied together. And yet, why am I unattached?_  
  
It was not like she had anything happen to her, to make her unable to connect. In fact it was the opposite, nothing bad in life ever happened to her. Nothing particularly good ever happened either. There was nothing she liked about living. There was nothing behind her smile, nothing behind her two cute eyes, her face concealed nothingness, her entire body moved around excitedly to hide how hollow it was. Her life was just the culmination of that nothingness.

She raised her head and blinked. There was another boy alone among the crowd walking away from her. His hair was pure white, his body was covered with scratches and scars. He dragged along a rabbit behind him, just like him the rabbit was crooked looking, and had been stitched up in several places.  
  
The girl reached out to him wordlessly.  
_Will I be able to connect with you?_  
  
Unlike her who had nothing ever happen to her, that boy had everything happen to him. He lost everything. He looked like an idiot. He was walked on. He was kicked. He was sad. He was bitter. He was tired of it all. He was hurt. He was weak. He was never right. He was hurt in every possible way, or at least that was what it felt like to him, his childish mind over simplifying things. Everything was taken from him and there was nothing left. That was how he saw it.  
  
But to her, he was everything.  
She wanted them, the painful, self-harming, contradictory feelings that he was filled up with.  
Humans were made up of contradictory lies that they wrote up all themselves. That was why that boy boiling over with contradiction seemed more human to her than anybody else.  
She wanted his everything.  
_I want to be tied to you, but I want to take._

All her life she had been trying to force herself to feel those things, pulling on the strings not caring at all if she broke them, frayed them, or wrapped them around someone’s neck.

Sometimes she even wished that she had been born what most called a sociopath. That those feelings were impossible for her to feel, and all of her efforts were in vain. That would at least be an interesting tragedy. But she knew her feelings were real. She knew from the way her heart could wrench in pain, from the way she could make herself miserable, in self-loathing and self-pity she found herself again. The way the strings coiled so tightly around her heart like it might burst, it meant those feelings were unmistakably real. That was why she knew what she felt for Matsuda was real, when her heart felt like it wanted to explode.  
  
Still those were just her own feelings. Everyone else seemed capable of sharing, even the smallest throbbing pains with each other. She wanted to take that from them all to herself. She wanted to rip the rabbit out of the white haired boy’s hand, so he would not run away from her anymore. She wanted to make him cry right in front of her.  
  
Perhaps that was all they were in the end, behind all the masks they had learned to put on throughout their lives. The girl holding onto the stuffed bear. The boy dragging the stuffed rabbit behind him. They remained those children because they never learned to be people, they only learned how to deceive others and pretend.

『Junko, where are you? Did you get bored again?』  
  
Some far off place. Some island, but his voice dragged her back.  
Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi, that was who they were. They were alone in her room together. Even if her mind drifted off like it had been doing more and more lately, the second she was lucid again she understood everything. It was like the time she was Ryoko, even though she forgot about everything when she regained control of her body she could deduce everything that had happened in the blank spaces of her memory.

Where were they again? Oh that was right Junko had just finished telling Kumagawa her plan during the fade to black.  
  
“I don’t always get bored. Don’t treat me like I’m predictable.”

『You are predictable! You’re more predictable than anyone else.』  
  
“I’m also cooler than anyone else.”

『That’s it. The only reason people can’t predict you is they refuse to because they don’t see you as a person and buy into your hype.』  
  
It was just the two of them alone together in her room. Kumagawa Misogi seemed to be wrapping himself in an extra layer of misery lately. He was sitting on the far corner of her bed. His shoulders were concave and they looked to be holding up so much they were on the point of collapse. His whole body was like that, his knees were drawn up and his head was down. He looked like he was trying to contort himself into some miserable shape. His thin body, his awkwardly long and out of proportion limbs, his bony curves, he looked like a child trying to hold onto himself because he knew nobody else would embrace him.  
  
Junko just watched him. She was only sitting on the other side of the bed observing him, but for some reason the distance felt much greater than that. She bit onto her lower lip and her expression turned sour.  
  
“Yeah, well- predict this!”

She struck out with her hand suddenly reaching for his face, only to be caught by the wrist. He held her there by the wrist, but even that forceful connection felt as intimate as holding hands.  
  
She was just being bratty. That was how it always was, her mind worked better than anyone else, she thought she knew better than everyone, but when things did not go her way the only way she knew how to handle it was throw tantrums.

『Junko, you didn’t even listen to my plan yet.』  
  
“You have a plan? But you’re dumb?”

『That’s just the mask I wear. I’ve tricked everybody into thinking that I’m dumb.』  
  
“You know, in truth maybe you are what you pretend to be.”

『Don’t suddenly insult me with such deep thematic statements like that!』

“You’ve deceived everybody else, but the person you were deceiving the most all along is yourself.”

『It’s way too early to have these kinds of revelations! My brain can’t handle it!』Kumagawa overreacted again just to play around. Then his features went entirely blank like he had been switched off.『I have a plan too. So simple even a fool couldn’t mess it up. All you need to do is kill me!』  
  
“What?”  
  
Those were the words Junko never expected to hear. Because to her, Kumagawa had been the one person who never gave into despair no matter how much she tried to drag him down. No matter how many times he was pushed down he kept going  _I never want to lose to any tragedy,_ even if his whole life was tragedy,  even when he was sinking deep into the swamp itself. That kind of feeling reverberated into her soul, made her feel unexpected things.  
  
He was the one person who never gave in to her. She fell for that, because she was terrible. All of his strings were broken so pulling on them never gave the right result.

『That was the bet wasn’t it? If Medaka-chan is dead then you get to kill me.』  
  
“Are you really going to decide something like that on a bet?”

『Of course, that’s how we’ve always done things. You and I both understand, that it’s no fun if there’s nothing on the line. That’s why we’re the only ones who can play with each other.』  
  
“What if I don’t want to play with a loser like you?”

『If you kill me, then take the killing perk and escape from here. That way...  it’ll have meaning at least.』The one who constantly cried out against the world’s meaninglessness, the one who said over and over again that there was no goal to life, that there was no purpose to being alive secretly craved meaning the most. He wondered over and over again, if there was some reason to all of his suffering, would that make it hurt a little less?

If for instance, the person hurting him was someone who hurt him out of love.  
Kumagawa stared into Junko’s eyes. His eyes were filled with so much emotion she could drown in it. He wrenched her hand away from her and pulled it towards his neck, gingerly placing her fingers at the hollow curve between his neck and his collarbone. She was pulled forward and well and fell almost on top of him closing the distance between them.

『Junko, don’t you want to kill me anymore?』  
  
He said those words with the exact same tone of “Don’t you love me anymore?”

『Junko, I love your always sharp nails. I love your bloodied lips. I love your hair when it’s down. I love your weirdo laugh. I love every second of talking with you, even when we’re just arguing. I love your mind, it dances. I love your big boobs. 』  
  
Her head had fallen close to his, overlapping, and that was why he was able to whisper those words into her ears like a sweet seduction. As long as he kept breathing, she knew from his lips he would keep pouring out, words of love for her.

『More than anything else, I love your smile. I want to see you smile when your face is covered in my blood.』

The manic expression on his face was merely a reflection of her own. She was numb, and desperately wanted to feel anything other than that. She was beautiful, but she wanted to be ugly and tarnished. She shook with desire, but was unable to do anything. Paralyzed, stagnant, frozen over, that was who she really was, that was the truth that she was resisting all this time.  
  
Even if right now the two of them after all this time had found some kind of balance between each other, it could quickly become codependence. If they clung to each other because they thought they could not live without one another they would just be clinging to happiness and the status queue like everyone else. If they both made it out of here alive, they could just become bored of each other’s presence in the future. After surviving together for so long they might just break up over a petty argument. She might not even miss him too much when he’s gone, she might not even feel anything from it. If that was all a possibility, then it might be better to destroy it all right here rather than way for it to fade away slowly.  
  
Her hand tightened around his neck. She drags her red nails down his throat making lines in his skin, drawing a single pink drop of blood.  
  
“I want to kill you. I want to kill you. I want to kill you. I want to kill you. I want to kill you.”  
  
What was more important to her? Her love for him, or the way she desired to use him? Her eyes flashed indecisively, maddeningly back and forth as she tried to decide whether this was love or obsession. She remembered the feeling of her own hands pink with Matsuda’s blood. She remembered the empty sounds of the room, all she could hear was his blood dripping from her hands and onto the floor. It sounded like rain to her. She was crying for the first time in so long without forcing herself to cry. She heard the sound of someone laughing. It took her a moment to realize it was her own laughter.

It felt so bad. It felt so bad. It felt so bad. It felt so bad. It felt so good. It felt so good. It felt so good. The way his eyes were glazed over in love and then soon became consumed by pain. The feeling of loving someone so much that it caused you pain. She found an emotion stronger than the love shared between lovers, and it was the hate they could share as well. She left incurable wounds on him, and on herself.

Even after Matsuda came back from the dead, he came back wrong, he was still broken. The boy in front of her had died so many times, he was so broken, but he refused to break. He would always try to keep crawling back even from death. That made her mind wonder what would it be like when he was finally pushed past the point of no return.  
  
She just liked what she could not control. She was like a child ignoring all the other toys for the one she could not have. She wanted to break him and bring him to her heel. Kumagawa’s smile was beautiful, even now with her hand tight around his throat, a world where he could not smile would be one lacking any beauty at all.  
  
It would be so easy to break him right between her fingers.  
  
Her fingers loosened on his neck. She grabbed his shirt and twisted and pulled the collar back, ripping the fabric easily. Her hand went to his chest, skin touching skin easily so she could feel his warmth. His living beating heart that she wanted to take from him for her own, all she needed to do was smash his rib cage. If if she peeled away his flesh, pried his ribs apart slowly, and then wrapped her hand around his heart while blood poured out there would be no barriers between them anymore. She had already wrapped her legs around his hips. She sat on top of him. Every shiver of his body produced one in her own merely by reflex. She felt every way he fidgeted underneath her. Even though his face was still smiling like ever, there were physical reactions of his body he could not control so easily as he could the muscles on his face.  
  
Daggers of anticipation stabbed into her spine. The idea of him underneath her. She placed a hand flat on his stomach. She traced the contours of his body with a slow and methodical touch. She could have all of him. He would give it to her. Because he loved her. If he loved all of her, every single last flaw, then there would never be any pain between them, nothing would hurt, no boring emotions, no awkwardness, only ecstasy and pleasure. They could both smile even though all they ever felt was despair. She could ride out her highest peak on top of him and almost escape herself, and then crash back, falling on top of him, and realizing they were just two awkward people in awkward bodies that were trying to overlap.  
  
“I want to kill you, I want to rip your skin with my claws, I want to kiss you and bite your lips till they bleed, I want to embrace you so hard that your back breaks.”

How familiar a sight.  
She was sure they had done this before.  
How many times she was staring to lose track.  
One time he had told her though, that she could try to kill him as much as she wanted.  
He would stop her.  
Even now as he just sat under her and did nothing, she felt something twist inside of her.  
It was like the feeling of a screw turning around in her insides. Her feelings for Kumagawa as twisted as they were, they were still there.   
  
“I want to kill you… but I don’t want to be that person anymore.”  
  
Her voice sounded empty as she made that admission. If she wanted scenes to stop repeating in front of her eyes she needed to change the ending. She let go of him and quickly crawled off of him, retreating to the far edge of the bed.  
  
Kumagawa sat up finally and looked up at her, tracing the silhouette of her back with his eyes. He felt like he had made a mistake. Usually it was Junko who hurt him. He wondered if it was even possible for him to hurt her. No, that was stupid. She looked lonely all of a sudden.

『Jun...ko?』His voice cracked, as he rubbed the marks on his neck that were starting to feel like rope burns.  
  
“Don’t… do… that…” She hissed. She did not do being vulernable. Because that required getting hurt, which she had never done before either. Only when she hurt herself, and that was when she was in complete control for the purposes of feeling despair. But death was no longer despair for her, death was the end of all feelings. Living was boring, but death was even more boring. Kumagawa helped her realize that, so it was unfair of him to throw all of that away on his selfish whims.

He had been controlling her. Junko could control everybody effortlessly, but even when she wanted others to triumph over her and win she could just not get it right. Say some part of her really did want Matsuda to destroy her plan to throw her into despair, and succeed against her. She would feel the despair of her carefully laid plans of more than a decade of slowly knowing him and cultivating him for despair, all go to waste.  
  
The way Matsuda planned on defeating her was controlling her. He erased her memories, and took away her from herself, until her body was nothing more than an empty shell running around and forgetting things. Perhaps part of her wanted that, she dreamed of escaping with Matsuda to the United States and living out the rest of her life as Ryoko.  
  
That would not be her, but Matsuda loving a replacement for her over her would be its own special kind of despair. If her relationship with Matsuda, was her moving two pieces on a game board together, slowly, slowly, with each move until they were perfectly in position she wanted someone to come and flip the board and ruin her perfectly planned game.  
  
Or perhaps she just wanted to stop being able to her beloved childhood friend as nothing more than a game piece in the first place. She wanted someone to prove to her that he was not a toy in her hands, that he was a person outside of her that could move all on his own. She wanted to stop seeing something like childhood love as a game on a board, because then it would be undeniably real.

She looked at back at Kumagawa. His distinct shape. He was a person entirely separate from her. He was someone she could not control, and sometimes he even controlled her.  
Someone might call them two halves of the same whole, but that was wrong. They would always be two separate people. If she saw him as half of herself, that was just her delusional entitlement to own him.  
  
_Souls don’t split in half._ _  
_ _You’re not half of me._ _  
_ _But still..._

All of the parts she had been born without, he had lost throughout his life. They both had missing pieces. He reached across the gap between them, to her slumped shoulders. SHe was guarded and trying to hide her face, but he pulled her gaze back to him.

 

『Junko, I don’t get it...』

  
She shrugged off her hand, and flopped down on the bed in front of him. She reached forward and popped the buttons of her shirt to give her more room to breathe, as her chest heaved.  
  
“You were always so fearless in the past, so shameless. Now you look so scared and ashamed. You made up a huge lie to fool yourself. One bigger than I am right now… You always try to hide who you really are. Now it’s out. It’s been out for awhile. Not too long to go and… you’ll realize yourself. Just… live a little bit longer and you’ll see.”

 

『What if it’s not? What if there's no deeper meaning? What if I really am this sad and pathetic? All the time?』  
  
“Are you questioning me?”

 

『It’s just surprising is all, to hear you talk about somebody besides yourself.』  
  
“If I changed… and became a bit more like everyone else, would you lose interest in me?”

 

『I love you… not Enoshima Junko, not Otonashi Ryoko, it was always just you.』

  
Junko turned her head to see he had laid down next to her, in the opposite direction. Their feet were facing the opposite ways, but their heads were lined up.

 

『Are you going to kill me?』

 

Laying there exhausted she mumbled those lost sounding words.  
  
“Even if I wanted to do it, I couldn’t right now.”

 

『Why not?』  
  
“When I see you… always take on more than you can chew… wiping out… getting all messed up… It kinda… hurts me…” She did not want to get rid of that connection. That connection she had worked so hard for. That was where her feelings were right now.  
  
Kumagawa ‘s eyes looked utterly lost. It was like some screw in his head was coming loose, his eyes rolled around unable to look at any one thing as if t were all fake to him. She felt like she was slowly watching his face fall apart in front of her. First the face plate would break in half, then she would see the mechanics that lied underneath. Nuts and bolts would fall out. His eye would fall to the side and break apart into glass pieces. The gears would whir uselessly now that could not manipulate his face any longer. His face would collapse, as all the working parts flew away piece by piece.

  
“Junko, I… love you… but I don’t know whose feelings these are anymore.”  
Desire. Love. Hurt. Comfort. Interest. Obsession. Mutual Love. Codependence.  
His eyes were wavering back and forth with indecision. Just like Komaeda, he might drive himself mad soon, flipping back and forth between those two extremes without rest.  
  
“Can you hold me for a little bit?”

  
Instead of responding to that, she changed the subject entirely on her whim.

 

She still wanted to hold onto him. When she was near him, her heart raced. She wanted to feel the blood pumping through her frozen over veins, before they collapsed from disuse. If Kumagawa’s star was fading out, then she wanted to hold it close to her chest and warm him up. Even if in the end he was still going to burn himself out, and all that would be left were ashes that fell out of her hands and slipped from her fingertips.

 

『Is that an order?』  
  
“Do whatever you want. Like I care.”

『Yeah, I’ll keep doing what I want.』

  
Kumagawa reached out and wrapped his arm around her. She curled up around him. Just this once, she wished that time would pass agonizingly slow between them, that seconds would feel like long boring hours.

Those two lost children hugging the bunny and the bear stayed lost, but they found each other.

 

🧸

 

Kirigiri saw Shuichi and Kaede walk by her again. At first she ignored them and let them get a few steps ahead of her. She found herself tightening her hands into a fist, and biting the inside of her lip even though she had no idea why. It was like her body was expressing the emotions that her face refused to make, and her mind refused to acknowledge.  
  
She turned around finally, and tried to call out. “Saihara-kun, can I talk to you about something?” By the time she moved though Shuichi had already gone. His back was far away and he was happily still trailing behind Kaede.  
  
Shuichi was with Kaede. Mukuro was protecting Naegi. She felt like whatever place she had in this world was quickly shrinking away. Reaching out for it, or calling out made her feel foolish. It did not matter how many times she had called out after her father when he walked away from her, he never came back. She was the one who had to find him in the end.

 

Instead of Shuichi she was face to face with Enoshima Junko. Junok was closer than she wanted her to be. Junko reached forward and grabbed at one of her cheeks, forcefully angling her face up.  
  
“What an interesting face you’re making there, Kirigiri-san. Who knew a girl like you could be cute after all.”

Kirigiri was tired of this already. She slapped Junko’s hand away forcefully with a gloved hand. “Why we don’t just keep you and Komaeda-senpai chained up somewhere for the entire game so you don’t cause any trouble is beyond me.”

 

Junko folded her hands behind her head, imitating Kokichi’s carefree smile perfectly. That was how Kirigiri saw it anyway, that girl had no idea how to act so she just imitated others. “It was just a joke, lighten up Kirigiri-san.”  
  
“The second somebody lets their guard down around you and lightens up it’s already over. That’s how it’s always been, every single time.” In the case of Matsuda, in the case of Mukuro, every single time the culprit was always Enoshima Junko. To her, Junko was just a serial criminal who had gotten away with her crimes.  
  
“It’s like you said though I was just playing the villain. I’m fake. So it’s not like I really hated you or anything.”  
  
“Oh, well that changes everything.”  
  
“Does it?”  
  
“No, not at all.”  
  
“Awe, boo. You’re no fun, Kirigiri-san. Even when I was pretending to get along with everybody, we didn’t get along at all. You wouldn’t have had any friends if it weren’t for Naegi-kun sticking up for you.”  
  
To Kirigiri, talking with Junko was like being served up on a dinner plate. She could already see Junko holding a knife and a fork in her hand, and then sharpening her knife against the edges of her form. She could hear the sound of metal scraping against metal. Junko was already licking her lips waiting to dig in.  
  
Everything about that girl was pretty artifice. The Enoshima Junko she knew as a classmate never existed at all, and no part of her was real.  
  
“You’re just a psychopath, leave me alone.”  
  
“No fair, Kirigiri-san. You’re being insulting to actual psychopaths by comparing them to me. They can’t feel things, at least they have that excuse.”  
  
Enoshima Junko only cared about despair. The mastermind waiting at the end of every puzzle. The despair of finding out the truth. That was all she could ever be.  


 

“I know why you’re bothering me. You had a fight with your boyfriend, and now you’re trying to take it out on me. You just want to figure out other people so you don’t have to figure yourself out. Isn’t that a little bit too typical for the likes of you? I thought you had more style that that.”

  
Just an upset and bratty teenager lashing out. The old Junko at least cared about aesthetic, she played the villain right. This new one was just indecisive, and always changing her mind. Kirigiri wanted a black and white villain.  
  
Because she did not think about how they might in fact have something in common. She did not want to think about the suggestion that they might both be playing roles. They merely assigned themselves opposite roles.  
  
Junko was the mastermind, and Kirigiri the hero detective who would eventually solve the mystery and take her down. She did not want to think about how neither girl seemed to have any idea of who they were outside of those roles.  
  
If being detective was just a role for her, it meant she had no sense of good and evil. She only cared about justice because she was told to care about it. She only did the right thing because she was obligated to do so. If she solved the crime and the criminal was more sympathetic than the victim, she could care less about making that sort of judgement. All that really mattered was the puzzle in front of her was solved neatly in her mind.  
  
If she solved the crime and completely destroyed the criminal, even if the criminal was a good person she would barely blink an eye. She had no sympathy for perpetrators or victims. She just saw the case in front of her and solved it like she was obligated to. She paid lip service to the idea of justice without ever being troubled about what was right or what was wrong.

  
She just did not think about the things that tripped everybody else up. Shuichi struggled a lot more than her, and doubted himself more, but it was human to struggle, to doubt, then what did that make her? Her only self was pure. She was a detective before she was alive.  
  
It was not until she met Makoto, the first person to ever become curious about herself that she wondered what her real self even thought. If she agreed or disagreed with her family values. If she ever doubted what she had been taught by her grandfather.

  
If it was just roles for the both of them, then Junko’s current flailing about, her struggling, her indecisiveness, that was her attempt at forming a self. A self outside of playing the villain. Kirigiri wanted to deny that. She wanted to deny it, because she was not sure she ever really had  real self. She wanted them both to comfortably slip back into their roles, she wanted to deny that anything had ever changed.  
  
That was impossible though, because the moment you met someone, you started to change.

🧸

“Sorry for bothering you so early in the morning, I just wanted to talk to you.” Shuichi said, fiddling with his hat as he gave her an apologetic stare.  
  
“I wanted to talk to you, too Saihara-kun…” Kaede said, as they walked around the school without any destination in mind yet. It was a strange feeling, like just walking together was fun. If she was not careful they might forget what they were doing and continue to dance around each other in circles.  “I was wondering if we needed anything for the plan.”  
  
As usual, Kaede greeted everyone they passed by, whereas Shuichi avoided eye contact. Kaede even noticed Kirigiri about to call out to them and almost stopped him, before she turned away from them.  
  
“Hey, how do you feel about Kirigiri-san?”  
  
“I  hope I don’t annoy her? She’s the real deal, a real Ultimate Detective. With her here, nobody really even needs me around. I guess that’s kind of a relief too, if nobody relies on me then I won’t screw anything up.”    
  
“That’s not true! Even if she were the best detective in the whole world and you were the second best. Even if no matter how hard you worked you would never be as good as she was and able to surpass her innate talent-”  
  
“Uh? Is this supposed to be encouraging?”  
  
“Even if you were only her spare detective, or her fault replacement.”  
  
“Yeah, it feels like you’re just kind of pushing me around right now. I think you push people around without realizing it-”  
  
“I would still need you, Saihara-kun.” Kaede said, staring straight into his eyes. When she looked at him like that, he felt like he could not hide any part of himself.  
  
“O-oh…” Shuichi looked down at his feet. He was usually afraid of meeting people’s gazes because of the distrust and dislike that were so obvious in their eyes. For Kaede it was the opposite reason. He could see her genuine affection in her eyes, and it was too much for him. Maybe it was not people looking down on him he could not handle, it was just he could not handle anything at all, he hated being looked at. Hurriedly he changed the subject. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I might know how to keep watch on the library.”  
  
“Weren’t we planning on hiding inside the library and watching from there?”  
  
“If we did that we risk the mastermind running into us. It’s safer to watch from further away. We also need hard evidence to convince everyone of the mastermind’s identity. So that’s why… I thought it might be a good idea to set up cameras.”  
  
“Cameras?”  
  
“I found some cameras and security sensors in the warehouse. With some modification we can combine the two… and have cameras that will detect movement and take pictures. If we set up a few in the library we can capture proof of the mastermind and we don’t have to be in the library for this to work, so we were less likely to get caught.”  
  
Shuichi was so smart, Kaede thought. Unlike her who just said what she felt at the moment, he put a lot of thought into everything and only spoke up when he was completely sure of himself. His words were a lot less pretty than hers, but because of that they felt more real. “Th-that’s a really good idea. But do you know how to modify a camera?”  
  
“Ah, well… I don’t know how… That’s why I wanted to ask Miu. The Ultimate Inventor could help us.”  
  
“Oh, yeah. That’s true.”  
  
“But, she’s… pretty intimidating, so I’m having trouble talking to her by myself.“  
  
“Well, it’s a good thing we can ask her together.”  
  
“She should be in her lab by now. Ever since that thing opened she spends every waking moment there and avoids everybody else.”

  
As they walked by Kaito, Kaede stopped to say hi as always. “Heya, good morning. Where are you two off to?”  
  
“Well, ah…”  
  
“Is it that thing from yesterday you’re keeping secret?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Well, I won’t stick my nose in it! I decided t believe in you guys. But don’t do anything too rash, okay? After all, you said we were all going to get out of here together. After I heard you say that I had no choice but to put all my money behind you and Shuichi.”  
  
“Yeah, everything will be fine.” Kaede said, when Kaito believed in her it was almost like she could believe in herself again for a few moments. “And if I try to do something crazy, Saihara-kun will stop me.”  
  
“Ah, yeah… of course. Because I’m always watching you.”  
  
“Haha, you guys make a good duo.”

Kaede found herself smiling at that and she had no idea why. It was the first time in awhile she was able to smile without thinking that she needed to smile to show someone she was being strong.  
  
She hummed the whole rest of the way to Miu’s lab without even realizing it. When they got there however, her mood dropped at the sight of Miu, like somebody had slammed on a minor chord disrupting the music in her head suddenly.

The lab itself looked like a junk yard. The two mechanically inclined bolt for brains who inhabited it had been fighting over it for more than a few days causing this mess. Their only truce was a long piece of white tape that divided the lab in half, one half indicated in chalk was Kazuichi’s side, and the other half was Miu’s side.  
  
“What is this the brady bunch? Dividing the room in half was the only way you two could get along?” Kaede spoke her thoughts out loud as she looked in disappointment at both Miu and Kazuichi.  
  
“Well, if it isn’t flat-chested Kaede. What do you and your pathetic tits want?”  
  
Kazuichi yelled from his side of the lab. “Don’t listen to her, Akamatsu! Unlike her, your curves and boobs are really great! Unlike her, you’re a real blonde, everything about her is fake.”  
  
“You trying to say something ultra virgin!”  
  
“When did my virginity get upgraded!? I’m sticking up for Akamatsu because she’s a nice girl, unlike you.”  
  
“Ummm…. Dude, I know you’re trying to defend me but what you’re saying is just creepy in a different way from how Miu is.” Kaede said. Besides if there was anyone who she wanted to defend her it would be Shuichi. Well, that probably was not going to happen. She was usually the one who stuck up for him. Dealing with Miu was hard enough but now both of them at the same time. She would probably have to tune out a lot of what they said so she could keep being nice. “Um… I have a small favor to ask of you, Iruma. Right, Saihara-kun?”  
  
“Y-yeah. Actually, there’s something that we want you to make. We found cameras and security sensors in the storage room. Do you think you could make cameras that detect movement and take pictures? As in, it would automatically take a picture if the motion sensor detected it or something?”  
  
“The hell you gonna use that for?”  
  
“Why are you asking her? I’d be happy to help you! It’s an honor to help such a nice girl.”  
  
“Dude, stop calling me a nice girl.”  
  
“W-well you’re nicer than Miu.”  
  
“Yeah, pretty much everybody on earth is.” Kaede said in a low sarcastic voice, before snapping back to her normal upbeat self. “T-tell her what we’re going to use it for, Saihara-kun.” She was so bad at coming up with lies. If she ever did lie she probably would not be able to keep it up long.

  
“Ah, to keep Monokuma under surveillance. We might learn important information.”  
  
“Y-yeah, exactly that. Please, Miu… We need your help to get everyone out of here.”

  
“Ah, okay, I get it now.” Miu said with a soft smile. Before she dragged a thumb across her neck and pointed it down suddenly. “My answer is no!”  
  
“She probably couldn’t even do it anyway. She’s not a real mechanic like me. I’m better when it comes to upgrading all she does is make nonsense inventions all day.” For that remark suddenly Kazuichi had to dodge a wrench that was thrown at his head. “What the hell! That could have seriously killed me! A-are you plotting to murder me in this game, I’m watching you!”  
  
Kaede could see why they were getting along so badly trying to share the same space. They were both trying to put on bad attitudes to scare the other, but they were also both so transparently flimsy about it. But between the two of them, Kaede was treating Kazuichi like a joke and taking Miu more seriously. That was probably going to be a hit on Kazuichi’s self esteem.  
  
“What?” Kaede asked Miu.

  
“You plebs got a lotta nerve asking me a favor? Are you guys just pretending to be human? Is that why you don’t understand basic human courtesy? I’ll forgive you just this once. Now get out of here before I expose you, hahahahaha!”  
  
WIthout thinking, Kaede’s body moved on its own. The taunting of others, their disbelief, their doubt, the way they all looked at her like there was no way she could possibly save a single person, all that did was motivate her further. She was going to push harder no matter how others pushed her back.  
  
She got on her knees, and placed her hands on the floor. Even bowing her head looking from below, Kaede’s gaze was a lot stronger than Miu’s. Her eyes were so bright she looked like she could burn through everything. “Please, Miu!”  
  
“Heeeeee!” Miu made a noise like a deflating balloon. Ultimately, she was just like Kazuichi. She was a coward too. Everything she said kept everybody else at a distance. That was why they moment they got close like this, she started to back away. She had no idea how to deal with someone in a genuine manner. Kaede’s straightforwardness, it was too much for her.  
  
“I really want to get out of here with everyone! And to do that, I need your help! So… please! I’m begging you!”  
  
Even if it made her desperate. Even if she looked ugly right now she no longer cared. Because there was a person by her side, who was afraid of everyone he encountered, who always struggled with his own emotions and feelings, and yet he was trying to be brave for her sake. Even though no one else believed in him, and he did not believe in himself, he had approached her and told her he believed in her.  
  
She wanted to try being the person Shuichi saw her as. Even if that was just fake, she could try her hardest to make it a reality. They only had two more days left after all. Then the curtain would fall and none of this would matter. If this was her last performance, she may as well make it her swan song and make her dying note a beautiful one. Mozart died writing his own beautiful requiem.  
  
“K-Kaede!”  
  
Shuichi used her first name by mistake he was so shocked.  
  
“Saihara…?”  
  
WHen her eyes looked to the side, suddenly he was right next to her. Not a few steps behind her, not watching timidly from afar, he threw himself onto the ground next to her.  
  
“I’m begging you, too. We could really use your help, Iruma-san. Please.”

  
“Wh-what the hell…? Quit owing to me…” Miu just felt awkward. That was how she really felt. She could not even come up with any perverted jokes, this was just awkward.  
  
Kazuichi from his side of the lab groaned behind them. “What are you guys devil worshippers or something? Don’t bow down to her.”  
  
“No, I won’t stop.I’m gonna stay like this until you say you’ll do it, Miu!” Akamatsu Kaede was as always, aggressively nice. She had no problem killing with kindness. “I’ll do it, no matter how long it takes!”  
  
“Wh-who the hell uses bowing as a threat?” Miu took a single step back and her back hit the wall. There was no way she was going to get any further away from them. Her precious space was not going to be maintained. It was hard enough already having to share it with some crude boy. “F-fine, I’ll do it… Okay?”  
  
“What! Really?”  
  
Kaede grasped Miu’s hand.  
  
“Heeeee!”  
  
Kaede was just being kind again, but she did not seem to pick up at all how much being touched was terrifying Miu in this moment. She was just not sensitive to those kind of things, because she never experienced it herself the fear of getting close.  
  
“Thank you, I owe you! Even after we escape, I’ll owe you, forever, and ever, and ever!”  
  
“I-I’m not doing this for you guys. I’m just doing it to prove I’m way better than that guy over there! That way I can have this research lab all to myself. S-so… can I have my hand back now? Cuz this is startin’ to creep me out…”

 

“Oh! Sorry, I was just so happy. But… are your hands always this clammy.”  
  
“Heeee! A-anyway bring me the security sensors and cameras before I change my mind. “ As Shuichi and Kaede walked away, Miu put her hands over her head and knelt down like she was a turtle retreating into her shell trying to make herself look as small as possible.  
  
Kazuichi stepped over the white line on the floor without even thinking about it. He stood over her with his hands on his side. He was confused, but he lived his life in a perpetual state of confusion. “What was that all about? You almost looked like a human being there for a second?”

 

“I just don’t do people, okay?”  
  
“Huh? We’ve been sharing this lab and arguing with each other all day. You looked fine back then.”  
  
“You just don’t even register as a human being to me! You’re a grease-monkey at best.”  
  
“That’s all I can aspire to be! Can’t I climb up the ranks and become a human?”

“Nope. You’ve completely failed at humanity. Just like you’re going to be a virgin for life.”  
  
“How the hell could you possibly even know that?”  
  
“Maybe I invented a machine that allowed me to look into the future.”  
  
“Why would you use it for a stupid reason like that? Anyway quit insulting me, I didn’t even do anything to you. If you keep this up-”  
  
“What are you going to do? Are you going to cry?”  
  
“Yes! I’ll do exactly that! I’m going to cry so much! Because that’s exactly what tough guys like me do when the going gets tough, they cry! I’m a dangerous rebellious student believe me!” Kazuichi besides being a mechanic had an amazing talent, the more he talked the worst he made it for himself. Miu had been in the lab with him for two days though, she had seen that he went out of his way to use a file to sharpen his teeth for the purpose of aesthetic. He was all bark and no bite.  
  
Miu finally removed her hands from her head, and looked at him with a quiet expression that was completely unsuited for her character. “I wasn’t insulting you.”  
  
“You weren’t?”  
  
“Who wants to be human anyway. I’d much rather be a robot.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess… that would be cool. I don’t get what that keebo guy is complaining about, or why he wants to be human so bad.” Kazuichi said. He sat down on the ground right next to her, waiting for Miu to come out of her shell. “If I was a robot I could attach rockets to myself. I tried to do that as a human, but I just gaze myself a concussion.”  
  
“Wow, you’re really dumb aren’t you?”  
  
“That’s not my fault, it’s the concussion!”

Outside of the lab, Kaede ran her hands through her hair straightening it out in relief. “Thank god… I’m glad we managed to convince her.”  
  
“Let’s go to the warehouse to get the cameras and sensors right away.”

As the two of them walked away Kaede noticed Shuichi was walking behind her. Just then, they passed by Kumagawa Misogi and Enoshima Junko. Kaede had no idea who they really were but she noticed how closely they were walking side by side, even though they were different as night and day.  
  
As the narrator who knows everything I can tell you this. Wherever Kumagawa falls, he will drag Junko with him and vice versa, even if they’re being dragged down into hell they will fall together.  
  
Kaede stopped for a moment all of a sudden, letting Shuichi walk a few paces ahead of her. He turned around confused, looking back to her. Kaede was holding her hand on her chest thinking. She was certainly the main character of this story but what did that make Shuichi? Her support? Her friend? She had not thought about it at all, or rather she was oblivious to her own feelings.  
  
She said she was a bad liar, because she was only really good at one type of lie. The kind of lies that she told herself. Everything would work out for the best. This was the right thing to do.

You don’t have any other choice. You have to believe in yourself. She repeated those lies to herself over and over again.

They were like a refrain the echoed and echoed in her head. As long as she believed them she could keep smiling. She did not even think about what would happen if she failed. The fact that she never second guessed herself, that was a lie too.

For a moment though she wondered if she came clean in front of Shuichi, and told him she had no idea what she was doing anymore if he would accept her. If she was not the Kaede she had been in front of him all along, but somebody else entirely would he still look at her the same way?

She wanted Shuichi to walk by her side. She wanted to tell him when he was scared that she was scared to. She wanted him to try to comfort her when she was sad. She wanted him to stand up for her when people started to blame her for everything that went wrong. If she wanted to run away, she wanted to be caught in his arms.  
  
If she fell from being the ideal Kaede that he saw her as, she wanted him to catch her anyway. She wanted to fall and be caught.  
  
If they were dancing partners, and Kaede needed to be tossed into the air, or dipped down low, she knew Shuichi would always hold onto her. That was how much she trusted him. She thought she trusted him.  She would wear a grand fluttery dress and an opera mask, he would wear a suit that showed off how tight his body was. Even as thin as he was he would tower over her, and she could rest her head against his chest when they were slow dancing and find it to be unexpectedly steady. She could listen to the rhythm of his breathing like her own personal metronome. It would be nice if they could dance together instead of dancing around each other.  
  
However, in the end all she could bring herself to do was stare quietly at him fantasizing about those things.Fantasies were just another type of lie you told yourself. She decided to keep performing, her light, fluffy and sweet song. Even if all she could do was fake it until they made it out of here. _I want to be tied to you, but I want to keep smiling._    
  
“I-Is something wrong, Akamatsu-san?”

“N-nothing. I was just thinking, I don’t know where the storage is.”  
  
“I’ll lead the way then.”  
  
As she trailed a few steps behind him lost in thought, she covered up her mouth with her hand. She giggled, and whispered in a way that was not meant for anyone to here, not even herself. “Hehehehe…. He called me Kaede.”


	13. No One is Looking at You

The world is made of connections tied together, that’s why it’s like a big red ball of yarn. The world might be hell for humans, but it’s a paradise for cats.  
  
As an author I’ve done as much information collecting around the periphery of these people as I can before placing them in my story. And what did I find?  
  
Before even entering the game they were all hopelessly tangled up.  
Even if they had never entered the killing game, they probably would have just continued living their miserable, boring lives. They’re probably never going to stop being so complicated, but they can definitely get worse. That still counts as a change.  
  
This game is just a variety of people and incidents intertwined in a complex and twisted game of cat’s cradle.  
And to continue that metaphor there are two fingers in particular which are tangled up.  
Saihara Shuichi and Akamatsu Kaede. Kaede made herself important, and Shuichi passively was dragged behind her despite believing himself to be a nobody.  
  
Then there are the likes of Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi  who seem to enjoy tampering with these strings maliciously, so who’s to say whether the tangles can be unwound at all?  
  
The strings are far more interconnected than you can ever possibly fathom. Helping someone can mean hurting someone else. It might mean something will happen that can never be taken back.  
  
You get it, right?  
You know that life is just walking on a tightrope of those strings held in place by only your own fragile sense of balance.  
And so do Saihara Shuichi and Akamatsu Kaede and many other people involved with them.  
The strings in their game are tied not around their fingers, but around their necks.  
And the game of cat’s cradle will come to an end soon enough.  
That’s their plan anyway, to end it all in the first round.

 

I’m not going to say “This is getting interesting now.” I’m not Enoshima Junko. It’s sad that we’ve heard from her Alter Ego, and her foil in Ajimu, and her childhood friend but she’s never going to make it to the end of this story to narrate it herself. At least not if I have anything to do with it.

 

Keade had already reached out to grasp a string. As she walked next to Shuichi, she felt its weight in her hands, considering whether or not to yank on it or not. She might come off as a simple empathy idiot, but she thought about these things far more than anybody else would ever realize. The effects her actions would have on everybody else around her, because of the myriad of connections she had made.

It was not a matter of whether others would be able to laugh or cry. It was a question of whether or not they would be able to do anything in the end. Or if they were just helpless characters in this story written by someone else.

She was thinking about that, staring at her fingers. Her fingers were thin and long like a piano players, while they looked flawless on the surface upon closer inspection she had the faintest traces of pink scars around her knuckles. The only makeup she wore besides on her eyelashes, was a thin layer to cover these scars up. If asked about them she would get self conscious and say that a piano player’s hands were supposed to be beautiful, but she nearly ruined her own hands with her obsessive hard work.  
  
As she inspected her hands suddenly she walked straight into a boy’s chest. Kaede was so headstrong, she wound up knocking him over my mistake.  
  
“Ahhh! Sorry, Amami-kun!”  
  
“Good morning.” The boy had the same relaxed face on as always. Kaede wondered what it might take for a person like him to get serious. “It’s no big deal.I don’t really care about being knocked down, since I don’t really value myself too much.”  
  
“Morning, hey- don’t say stuff like that. You’re going to make me sad.”  
  
“It’s not sad or happy, it’s just nothing. I just don’t think I’m important. If I was someone important I probably would have remembered by now.” Even though it seemed like he was saying self deprecating things, out of Rantaaro’s mouth it was just frank honesty. Ranataro’s nature was just completely mellow. If Shuichi felt too much, it was almost alarming how little he seemed to feel in comparison.  
  
“  
Good morning, Rantar… Ah, actually may I ask you a question?” Shuichi reached to touch his chin.  
  
Ranataro merely threw his hands up in the air again. “Hm? What’s up? Being questioned by the Ultimate Detective is making me kind of nervous.”  
  
“No, well, it’s not… It’s nothing bad.”  
  
“Haha, I know, I’m just teasing. What’s up, Saihara?”

 

“... I wanted to know what you meant by the Ultimate Hunt.”  
  
“Oh, yeah! I wanted to know about that too.”  
  
“I told you it’s nothing. Just forget about it.” Rantaro said, as he tapped his skull. He must have been looking for an echo, to indicate that it was hollow, empty. Rantaro was so skinny, his clothes practically hung off of him, and his hair was a nest of tangles. She always thought he had an earthy appearance to him, but in that moment he looked like a skeleton half buried in the dirt. His eyes were as empty as the eyeholes of his skull.

 

“But…”

 

“Look, Like I told you before, I was just a little confused. Not being able to remember my own talent is… stressing me out. Really, I would appreciate it if you didn’t ask me anymore.”  
  
Rantaro seemed to be burying something far underneath. If Shuichi buried them in water whose surface was easily disturbed into ripples and waves, them Rantaro buried it under the still and heavy earth.  
  
“I understand. Sorry if it seemed like I was interrogating you.”  
  
“No, no… I’m sorry I’m not that much help.” Rantaro said. The flicker of emotion in his face was gone, and he returned to his blank expression.  
  
Kaede felt bad, Rantaro probably had a hard time understanding himself with part of his memories missing. If only she understood him a little better he might feel less alone. Rantaro practically ran away from them after that, leaving the two of them in the dust. “Hey, Saihara-kun do you think Amami-kun is really confused?”  
  
“I don’t know, but… he certainly doesn’t want to talk about it. We shouldn’t ask him any more questions.”  
  
“Yeah, we should focus on finding the mastermind-OH NO. I forgot about something.” Kaede said as she grabbed Shuichi by the arm and dragged him along without asking whether he wanted to come or not.

  
They took a detour from their trip to the storage room, and found themselves in the game room. It was remodeled from the A/V Room in the old school building.  There were several arcade machines, an improvised bar, and Tsumugi standing in the center of the room looking no different from a plain doll.

  
“Let’s go, Tsumugi!”

  
Tsumugi tilted her head to the side, clutching her cheek. “Huh? Huuuuh? Why are you so excited?”  
  
“Hahahah, sorry! I’m just so excited. I’ve never had my nails done before!”

Shuichi had already sat down on one of the fold out chairs in front of the bar. His nails were already painted black and well manicured. He knew a lot about painting nails, but he decided to let Kaede have fun. He wanted just watching her smile to be enough for him.  
  
Tsumugi’s fingers curled in her hair. “I-it makes me feel just plain pressured when you look forward to it so much…” Such a weak girl was no match for the force of a violent optimist. “I’m not that good at doing nails, so don’t get your hopes up too much, okay?”  
  
“Okay!” Kaede cheered excitedly, but her hopes were already sky high.  
  
Tsumugi took a step back. Genuine emotions were too much for me, I mean too much for her. “Why are your eyes sparkling so much!?”  
  
Tsumugi asked her to extend a hand, and began painting her nails.  
  
“Okay, how’s that?”  
  
“Oh, my god so cute! How did you get it like that?”  
  
“I just put a pink gradient on them.”  
  
“That’s all? GOd, I don’t even recognize my own fingernails anymore! They’re so cute!”  
  
“With a gradient like this, you can make even plain nails- No, they’re short, but they’re shaped nicely. This shouldn’t get in the way of playing piano.”  
  
“Yeah, this should be fine! I never knew you could get your nails done when they’re short.”  
  
“Umm… come to think of it… Even if you are a pianist, you could just put on fake nails when you’re not on piano.” Tsumugi knew a lot about applying fake nails. In fact, her dull face lit up for a moment. Before Tsumugi could really get excited genuinely for once, Rantaro who had wandered away from Kaede earlier wandered back in.  
  
“Hey… what are you two up to?”  
  
“Hey, Amami-kun, look! Tsumugi did my nails for me!” Kaede said, waving them in the air before they were even dry.  
  
“Whaaaa? Don’t show them off like they’re something flashy!” Tsumugi hated to stand out after all.  
  
“But they’re super cute.”  
  
“They’re not… that amazing. Something like this is just plain basic.” If she thought Kaede was really cool, she would have painted her nails red.  
  
“Oooh, painting your nails, huh? You know, I can do that too.” Rantar said.  
  
“Huh? You can? But… you’re a boy?”  
  
As Kaede said that, sitting at the bar Shuichi blew on his own black nails. He had added an extra layer of gloss to make the black stand out even more.

 

“Hmmmhm… Could it be you’ve done it for a girlfriend? Or girlfriends? You normie, you!” Tsumugi started to feel territorial. She really hated normal people. Or perhaps she just hated people, and much preferred fictional characters.  
  
“Haha, no, no girlfriend or anything.” Her emotions did not reach Rantaro at all. “What gave you that impression?” His good looks for one. The allure of the mysterious. He basically looked like a hot version of Komaeda.  
  
“Yeah,  I guess you wouldn’t have one. You seem like you’re one of those types.”  
  
“One of those types?” Kaede said, still oblivious to all things romance. When you liked everyone it was hard to see one single person as special, it felt selfish to her.  
  
“A gradient is nice…But with short nails like yours I recommend a French slant.”

  
“French slant? Is that some kinda cooking technique?”  
  
“Haha, no, it’s a kind of design. It’ll be faster to just show you. May, I?”  
  
“You’ll do it for me. Then yes please!” Kaede was just too easily excitable to know any better, really. She lacked any real experience with people, outside of that dreamworld that exclusively optimists seemed to exist in.

  
Which is why she was taken by surprise when for the first time, another boy reached out and took her hand. “Alright then.” Rantaro said his voice calm as ever. Always being calm was really just another synonym for being boring.

  
In Kaede’s fantasy land however, he probably looked like a prince taking the hand of a lady and  then gently curling his fingers around it to hold it in splace.  
  
She had never been that close to another person before. Not really, so she could feel every tickle of his fingers as she failed to stand still and fidgeted and she herself returned with a fluttering of her heart. “Oh…!”  
  
Even though she said ‘yes please, now that Rantaro was actually holding her hand...  
  
“Whoa, easy there… You gotta stay still. Alright.”  
  
It was only natural for her to fidget after all. Humans hate to observe one another from up close. Even someone like Kaede prefers to remain hidden, she just hides in beyond a smile. What was she really seeing by getting so close to Rantaro? The shaved side of one of his head. His uneven, asymmetrical appearance, the way one of his ears was pierced around the entire edge. They were all the hallmarks of a shallow charmer.  
  
Trust me when I say this, Rantaro is one of those characters where his character design is far more interesting than his actual personality.  
  
“O-okay.”  
  
“...” I stared on in silence. One of my eyebrows twitching, grinding my teeth. I was unable to hide such an emotion, even though it was only natural for a plain character like me to get pushed to the background. Rantaro has style at least even if he is completely lacking in substance. You know how in x-files how they keep building, and building, and building the mystery? It’s built up so much that no answer could ever possibly satisfy you. That’s Rantaro. He only knows how to act vague and mysterious, whatever personality he is hiding behind such a mask is guaranteed in the end to be disappointing. If that’s the case, they should just keep building the mystery forever. Because the story ends when it’s over. Done. People care more about the illusion of the mystery, because a truth will always fall short of a lie.

 

Lies are just so extravagant, don’t you think?  
  
“Hey… Amami-kun. Th-that tickles.”  
  
“I’m almost done.”  
  
“A..hahaha...p-please hurry!”  
  
“...” Rantaro’s seafoam green eyes looked over Kaede. Even if he noticed her cheeks blooming pink, like the flowery feelings that were dancing on petals in her heart he did not seem to register it. Kaede herself had been tracing Rantaro’s features with her eyes. The distinct collarbone that was visible because his shirt was practically hanging off of him, the rope of his necklace which clung to the slender line of his neck. She was just overwhelmed by the feeling of one hand taking another. Before this, her hands had only danced on Piano Keys. Now her fingers were dancing so lightly to Rantaro’s touch. He looked like a rough around the edges person, but the way he caressed her hand was so gentle.  
  
When two people were in sync it was called a duet. She wondered if it was possible to get this close to another person. If she was this close all the time, her heart might stop. She might never hear music again, because she was used to playing music in her ears to drown everybody else out.  Or… something else might happen. Music might sound better with you, she thought in a fanciful way.

 

“Are you okay? You look like your spotlight got stolen.” Shuichi said, looking up from his own nails.

 

“What about you? Didn’t think your place at Kaede’s side could be taken so easily did you?” That was just me being petty, I admit.

 

He was a pale shadow. The dark makeup he wore only served to highlight how lacking in color he was. He thought he was not part of such a bright scene in front of him. The sun and the earth, rantaro seemed to glow in Kaede’s warmth much better. Even as he tried to play it off, he could only stare at them with wanting eyes. Mouths are liars, but eyes always tell the truth. Even if he hid away, that pale, ghastly face, his raven locks of hair, his vampire-like complexion he could not hide where his eyes were always looking and the pink princess that was at the center of those eyes.  
  
Oh, my apologies. You see I have this terrible habit of using purple prose when I’m annoyed. Instead of answering Shuichi’s question, I sat next to him in a fold out chair and leaned my shoulder against him. Shuichi was too much of a pushover to mind Tsumugi’s presence.  
  
“Done! The idea is, you paint your nails diagonally in two colors like this.”  
  
“Ooooh! This is super cute, too! My nails look really fancy with this two-toned design!”  
  
“Painting them diagonally makes them look long and pretty. Now, I don’t have any with me right now, but some rhinestones would look perfect?”  
  
“Rhinestones?”  
  
“Yeah, they’re fake gemstones for your nails.”  
  
“Hmm… You’re really good at this Rantaro. Maybe you’re actually the Ultimate Nail Artist.”  
  
“Nah, it’s nothing special. I… Used to do this all the time.”  
  
“For a girlfriend, maybe?”  
  
“I already told you it’s nothing like that. Just for family. Nothing romantic. But anyway… Tsumugi’s staring daggers at us did I do something?”  
  
The plain girl’s plain envy was finally noticed, and she did such a good job of hiding it too. “Hm, hmhm, what a showoff… Damn normies! Go backflip onto a land mine and explode!”

  
Kaede clapped her hands onto the side of her face. “Oh, Saihara-kun I totally forgot about you.”

  
“Haha, that’s okay I’m a forgettable guy.” Shuichi said, adjusting his hat again. “Besides, it was enough for me watching you be able to smile again. I’m happy if you’re happy.” He said that, but his eyes lingered on her hands. The hands that he had failed to take so many times, and the hand Rantaro took so easily.

 

🧸

 

When they finally made it to the warehouse behind the school Kaede saw a maze of shelves before her. Her first instinct was to raise her voice and shout for an echo. “This place is huge! I hope we can find all the things we’re looking for.”  
  
“Ah, don’t worry. I know where the cameras and sensors are. I’ll go get them. You can wait here.”  
  
“Are you sure?” It was a silly thing to ask. It was not like Shuichi needed her for everything. People were just exaggerating when they said the two of them were always together. Shuichi had walked to the back of the warehouse, while she was staring at her own hands lost in her thoughts.  
  
She could have looked around the room but none of it mattered, because she would not be seeing any of it again. She was escaping this place soon. She walked over to a crate of balls. “Are these… iron balls? They look like they’re for shot put…” She picked up one to see if it was heavy as it looked.

 

“You could crush someone’s skull with that.”  
  
A voice spoke up, causing Kaede to drop it and jump backwards. Suddenly there was another little girl with them. Oh, it was the middle schooler, Monaca Towa. For some reason she was wearing a cardboard box with the word ‘robot’ sharpied on its chest.

 

“W...why would you think that?”  
  
“Oh, right that’s not a very cute thing for Monaca to think. It doesn’t fit Monaca’s cute image. She’s a superficial girl after all, that way she can be like her big sis.”  
  
“Um…”

Before Monaca continued confusing her, a much more normal person showed up thankfully. That normal person happened to be Keebo, the silver haired robot. He approached Monaca from behind putting a hand on her shoulder. Monaca was disgusted at the idea of any human getting close enough to touch her but who cared about a robot hand really, she got close to machines all the time.  
  
“Just ignore her, she likes to play pretend a lot. She’s almost never serious.”  
  
“Yes! Ignore Monaca! She’s used to being ignored anyway!”  
  
“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that.” Keebo was also wearing a cardboard box, but on his chest the word ‘human’ was scribbled out in kanji with sharpie marker.

  
“Were you guys doing something before we came in here?” Kaede asked.  
  
“Yeah, we were playing pretend. Everybody keeps trying to upgrade me but they don’t get how weird it is the idea of having someone tinker around with your body like that… like how would you like if I just cut off your arm and replaced it with a different arm?” Keebo ranted. Apparently, there was a lot he wanted to get off his chest. He was so mild mannered that his voice got lost amongst the eccentric crowd. “So Monaca said we should just pretend to upgrade me. She calls this cosplay, a human activity where people pretend to be the fictional characters they secretly desire to be. My name is Human, favorite activities are getting sweaty, and having a job. Sometimes I contemplate the futility of organic life and it’s end.”  
  
It was like, the worst cosplay ever. Not that I’m an elitist about these sorts of things.  
  
“Monaca, is a robot like Kiibo. Specifically she’s one of those dumb bear robots because that’s the only thing Monaca’s big sister seems to care about. Maybe then big sister would pay attention to her. Just kidding, that was a joke. Monaca’s really a robot that combines with other robots to feel taller.”  
  
As she said that, suddenly Keebo picked her up and put her on his shoulders. If it was anybody other than the tiny middle schooler, he would not have had the strength to do it. “There we go, combining powers activate!”  
  
“Wow, this is the perfect height for Monaca to look down on everybody else.”  
  
“Can we switch after this? I want to see what it feels like to be taller too.”  
  
“No way, you’re way too heavy!”

 

“I… if you keep talking about my weight I’m going to get self conscious. It’s not like I can go on a diet or anything. If only I was constructed of more lightweight polymers…”

Kaede had decided to leave those two alone. It looked like they were having. She went back to the crate to find where she had dropped the shot put ball. She needed to put it back so nobody tripped on it.  
  
Monaca seemed to notice her reaching for it. “You can just leave it on the floor. If somebody tripped on it, and died that would be super funny.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Besides, I don’t think you could throw it at anybody anyway. People like you are far too weak to do anything on their own. That’s why they rely on numbers.”  
  
“I’m just putting it back, jeez.” Kaede said, but just as she finally got the heavy ball back up in her hands. Shuichi caught her, with a serious expression on her face.  
  
“...Akamatsu-san? What are you doing?”  
  
“Oh, Saihara-kun. Done already?”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve got the cameras. I think three should be enough.”  
  
“Disposable cameras? Will these works?”  
  
“That’s all they had, but they work just fine. There’s also photo developing solution here, so we don’t have to worry about that.”  
  
“Well, if you’re fine with them.”  
  
“Also, here’s a security sensor. When this sensor picks up movement, it triggers this receiver to make a sound. We should get three of these as well.”  
  
“As huge as this warehouse is, I didn’t expect it to have security sensors in stock. Oh, do you want me to carry the cameras? I can put them in my backpack. I only have my music sheets, and spare vest so there’s lots of room inside.”  
  
As she took the three disposable cameras from Shuichi, she suddenly stopped. She wondered if the cameras really would work. Even if they took pictures of the mastermind and persuaded everyone. She had no idea what would happen after that. The mastermind could just smirk and order the Exisals to attack everyone. The mastermind was probably that kind of person, that just smirked and pretended everything went to plan, like they were some kind of god manipulating things behind the scene. There was no reasoning with such a person.  
She wondered what it was like to be strong. The strong person that the others had all believed her to be. Just for one she wanted to feel like she was really that person, instead of just pretending for their sake.

  
Can we really protect everyone with this plan?  
Will we really be able to escape this plan?  
She felt like her story was already written, and all she could hopelessly struggle against it.

“Akamatsu-san? Is something wrong? We need to go, before Iruma changes her mind.”  
  
“Oh, sorry!” She shoved the things she was holding into her backpack and ran after him. Without even noticing it, the strings had tightened around her neck. She was just another weight dangling on criss crossing threads as well. As she piled more and more on herself, she only made her burdens grow heavier. She thought she was standing on stage, but really she was just dangling from the curtains. If she was not careful, the string she was swaying back and forth on could snap at any time.

 

🧸

 

Speaking of the number thirteen, and bad luck,  Nagito Komaeda had finally left his room again after recovering in the nurse’s office with Zenkichi. Zenkichi offered to hold his hand by his bedside, but the thought of that made his heart want to stop.  
  
HIs heart may have just stopped long ago. Perhaps he was a body, merely playing out the motions of being alive. He was such a failure, perhaps he had even failed at dying. He was too self important to die so he had to continue on living. His thoughts were a mess like that, as usual.  
  
In contrast to the messy Komaeda, the clean and clear eyed Kirigiri looked him down with a sharp stare. Komaeda did not know where to go, but he thought anywhere was better than being next to Kumagawa for now. So he consulted with somebody who hated him.  
  
Of course he did not think he was an important enough person to be hated by Kirigiri. She was a detective who helped enforce the order of law all around the world, she had better things to do then worry about one of the faceless crowd.  
  
Of course, he thought it was only natural for people of talent to look down on him. They had every right to hate him because he was a parasite who got into their academy through no effort of his own. He was her inferior in every way. He had gone up and asked her what he should do, like there was a role for someone like him to play.  
  
“Isn’t it obvious? Just don’t do anything.” That was exactly the answer that Komaeda expected to hear from Kirigiri, but for some reason it made him a little sad hearing it.

 

“I have to do something, nothing will change at all we don’t challenge the mastermind… No, maybe I’m being a little too conceited. A guy like me can’t do the same things you guys are capable of.”  
  
“It’s not a matter of being Ultimate Lucky Student or anything, it’s just you. I don’t want your help specifically.’  
  
“Really… this is really terrible… I’ve offered to help so many times but there’s a good reason you’re turning me down isn’t it? It’s all my fault! I’m so ashamed of being unreliable.”  
  
“Yes, you are unreliable.”  
  
“Huh? Y-you know, you’re not supposed to agree with someone when they’re deprecating themselves. It’s considered impolite.”  
  
“Komaeda-senpai, I thought you were serious. I don’t have time for your usual fishing for compliments, or circular arguments. I’m actually trying to take down the mastermind.”  
  
“I’m not fishing, there’s no point in fishing when nobody could think anything good of you. These are just my feelings about myself. And I’m not trying to argue with others, those circular arguments are really just against myself.”

  
“Amazing how many other people always get caught up in it, then….”  
  
“Huh?” Komaeda flinched for a moment. He had little idea how to deal with genuine hostility directed towards him. He was used to being hated by crowds, and looked down upon in general, or just plain ignored. Hating someone to a personal level required being close to them. For example, Kazuichi acting freaked out around him never really bothered him because Kazuichi did not really know him that close. Komaeda also thought he had a right to be scared, because Kazuichi got caught up in Komaeda’s bad luck a lot, he even got hit by a truck once. Kirigiri’s harsh glares directed towards him though, cut through his pale skin like it was just paper. “I’m serious about fighting the mastermind too.”

  
“Are you?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Just like you were serious about the school bombing.”  
  
“I… That’s not the intended result I wanted, or well I did want that but I would have never wanted Ultimate Students to take the fall for my mistake.”  
  
“Do you understand what I’m saying? How does someone bomb a school on accident? You have to be doing this on purpose on some level. Because you know what Ultimate Luck students are supposed to do during exam time? Sit there and do nothing. That’s all you had to do. If you had done nothing, everything would have been a lot better for everybody.”

  
“I… are you mad at me because I started he killing game last time? I… if everything had gone right, I was planning to die. I really thought I was sacrificing myself to give someone a chance to escape that island.”  
  
“Yeah, I doubt that. You don’t seem like the type that’s capable of sacrificing himself. If you died after all you’d have to let your precious importance go. You wouldn’t be able to mess everything up for everyone else anymore. Only if you could be more important in death then you were in life.” Kirigiri covered her face with her gloves. As if she herself was shocked by what she said just then. She recomposed herself, not making eye contact with Komaeda. “If what you told me is right, don’t you get what your role is in this game? She only put you here in the game to mess with Kamukura. Just… stay alive for him.”

  
She turned away from him. He really must have been talented, provoking such emotions out of an emotionless girl. Even she seemed to realize she had gone too far. Komaeda could not bring himself to be mad at her. Nothing Kirigiri said was all that different from what he usually said about himself.  
  
He knew he was useless, and not a part of these scenes. He knew nobody was looking at him.  
Yet being told it to his face was different. Knowing and understanding were different.  
It hurt ever so slightly.  
More than pain, he felt numb. He wondered how many times he had been told similiar things.  
His senses were so beaten back and forth by this point they were just numbing him.  
He did not want that. He wanted to live. Living was not simply surviving shutting out all pain.  
There was some pain too difficult to process though and he had no choice but to shut it out.  
  
Because it would appear in the cracks of his vision. The feelings of despair, he spent his entire life trying to bury under hope. It was like he had spent his whole life standing atop a hill with a shovel. In order to keep living he had to bury things. Even if a corpse was right there at his feet, he would just bury it. Then one day he looked up and realized the more he buried, the more piled up. There was no way he would ever catch up, he would just live his life continually burying.  
  
Oddly enough as she walked away and turned the corner Kirigiri was thinking about the same thing. Of course I am no omniscient narrator, I’m just a liar and a cheater. All I have is the footage of their reactions as they walked away from each other. So the imagery I describe to you is just a metaphor. Then again, most imagery is a metaphor. People tend to hallucinate and dream in symbolism, the human brain is such a creative writer.

 

The moment Kirigiri turned the corner she clutched herself. It was not like she enjoyed being cruel. The kind of person she wanted to be was like Makoto, someone who saw the hope in anybody. Her cool voice, her cutting tongue, that was just to keep a distance between herself and others. That time though she had gone out of her way to cut him.  
  
When she looked up she saw papers fluttering down, falling like snow. They were the meticulous plans she had written out. You see, both Komaeda and Kirigiri were aware at the same time of the interconnectedness of this situation. They knew even with the best of intentions, one string pulled could bring either disastrous despair or miraculous hope, and the more strings you pulled on the more unintended consequences there would be.

  
Yet, Kirigiri’s mind desired the perfect result. Just as ever mystery should end with the culprit exposed and all the evidence tallied, this should end with the mastermind exposed. Kaede believed that the happy ending was as simple as practicing piano to achieve her dreams. Kirigiri was just the same, she believed if she worked the case hard enough she should find the truth.  
  
If she failed to find the truth, that was a failure on her part as a detective. The villain set up the scenario, and the detective solved it. It was the detective’s job to resolve everything and find the happy ending. Therefore she believed with a perfectionists touch if she was smarter than the mastermind, if she controlled absolutely everything, she could save everyone. She was no good at believing in others or relying on them like Makoto was. All she had was that mind of hers. She was not as good of a person as Makoto was, and that was why she needed to use her mind to her fullest extent to make up for the deficiencies she had.  
  
She was also aware what a precarious tight rope she was walking on with these strings. The papers that were raining down upon her quickly turned red. Starting with a few droplets of blood, that spread out to cover the whole paper. When Kirigiri took a step forward she stepped on something soft. Immediately she recoiled and stared at her boot. She had stepped on a Monokuma doll, at least she thought so.  
  
There was not one but an entire pile of them. They all surrounded her, like she was standing on a pile of stuffed corpses. Some of them had their eyes torn out, some of them were loosing stuffing out of stitching, some had their heads turned off, some disemboweled for their stuffing.  
  
She tried to stand completely still, but she saw some movement in the pile of Monokumas. Enoshima Junko was hiding there. Her eyes trailed around to the other side of the pile, and she saw Ikusaba Mukuro her body covered in holes. Makoto was next to her body, his entire body looked like it had been crushed.  
  
That was right, she called herself an investigator but she never realized Junko’s true intentions. Her school was destroyed under her watchful eye. In fact, Komaeda knew far more than her about the dark side of Hope’s Peak Academy. Even though she had talent and he did not, he noticed what she failed to notice. A box opened in front of her and her father’s skeleton tumbled out. She was supposed to be the detective who always solved the mystery, but she did not even notice who Junko truly was until it was far too late.

 

That was why this time she had to be in control of everything for sure. Even if that meant pushing Komaeda away, another embodiment of chaos to her eyes. No, she was probably being unfair. She knew… on some level it was personal to her. She could not articulate why yet though, because for something to be personal it required having much of a person to begin with.  
  
She blinked her eyes and the images she was seeing disappeared, or at least her face calmed down and she no longer looked like she was seeing a nightmare in the middle of the day.  
  
Koamaeda was not able to come out from under that pressure so easily though. Under pressure, he only cracked, and broke further. When he turned away from Kirigiri, he made it a few staggering steps before his mind started racing. He was thinking the same thing.  
  
There were a tremendous amount of intercrossing strings. He did not believe everybody would cooperate like Kaede wanted them to, so they had to be manipulated to the right ending. However, Kirigiri was right in every sense of the word when she said he was the last one who should be trying that. It required a perfect handling of everybody around them, and Komaeda was the most imperfect person around. He was walking unintended consequences.  
  
Even if he did not deliberately mess with the proceedings, his luck would. If his luck did not, then he would do it willfully thinking he had to intervene or his luck would. He knew he was not the person to do this, but Komaeda could also not rely on anybody else. He wished he could. He wished so desperately people would listen to him, and he could just encourage them from the sidelines. However he would have to be able to articulate what he wanted from them first, and he could never quite do that.  
  
He took a step forward and saw himself standing no longer in the overgrown grass but in sand. When he took a step forward he had stepped on a human hand that was buried in the sand. That was right he had never walked off of that island.  
  
The killing game was where he belonged. He was a shinigami after all. He belonged in a place made up of death, surrounded by it. He deserved to stand in a pile of corpses, to see student portraits with their faces crossed off in red xes, he deserved to see funeral portraits, the bloodied spear in the sand a few steps away from them. The only place a shinigami like him could be relevant was in a killing game, before then he had been absolutely no one.

 

The person he was now. The defining moment of his life had taken place on that island. It was where he made his first friend. It was where he started living rather than surviving. Everything before that, was just a blur, a life where all he did was accumulate regret.

 

Unbelievable, rather than choosing the bonds of family with his parents, or memories of his best friends, he’s decided to make the focal point of his entire life the event in which a group of strangers met and killed each other on an island.  
It’s laughable but not funny.  
At the very least, I don’t have the right to laugh at it.

 

Komaeda looked up and saw ropes hanging down over him. Even though he never got executed in the round he did remember, because his brain processes memories differently he had the faintest memory of his own execution from another round. It went like this, he stood up on a tight rope, and there were several nooses. Above him all of the nooses were having their ropes cut by Monokuma, and beneath him the net was on fire. His only logical way out, was to grab for one of the ropes and hope it would be lucky. However, not a single rope was tied down in the first place.  
  
His only option out was to tie himself to a noose, and even then none of those were real options. That was exactly what this situation was, there was genuinely nothing he could do, and if he tried to hang himself for the sake of doing something he would make it worse. All of his life he had been waiting for it, his luck to run out.  
  
No, that was silly. He never could do anything in the first place. Just as Kirigiri said, none of his efforts amounted to much. He was simply taking away the agency of others and making them suffer the consequences of his deluded self importance and need to be involved. If he genuinely wanted the best for others, he would have done nothing and not interfered to begin with.  
  
Komaeda looked up from his circus-like delusion and saw suddenly there was a clown standing in front of him. He shook his head for a moment, and saw it was not a clown but rather the small boy in the checkered scarf and mischievous smile.  
  
He had probably stopped in the middle of where Komaeda was to check on him. Komaeda had been clutching himself and sweating up a storm. He must have made Kokichi concerned. Really, the least he could do was leave everyone in peace and lose his mind more quietly.  
  
“Why are you making such a terrible face?”  
  
“I’m sorry, my face has just always been like that. Even my mother never really liked it much.”  
  
“I’m not saying it’s ugly, just different. And, no I meant why are you looking like that.” Kokichi dragged his hands over his face and suddenly did a perfect mock expression of the face Koaeda made when he was embracing himself to stop himself from falling apart. “If you’re losing your mind, you should at least throw in an evil laugh! Oh, and you should thrash around like you’re going all Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and break a few things while you’re at it.”

“I don’t think that matters. Nobody is looking at me after all.” That was the problem, there was nothing he could do for others right now. “I might as well just disappear in silence.”  
  
“Man, that’s lame!” Kokichi said immediately. He looked like the complete opposite of Komaeda, who was tall, lanky, and looked of death. Kokichi was young, he had a round cute face, and he was vibrant with youth. At that instant, Kokichi stepped hard on Komaeda’s foot bringing him down to his level. Komaeda saw Kokichi’s face up close, he traced the contours of his smile as if unlocking some secret. “Are you trying to take a break from your thoughts? Because your brain is too weak? That’s lame.”

Kokichi spread out his five fingers and yelled in Komaeda’s face like he was making an announcement. It was a bit of sensory nightmare for Komaeda, who hated loud noises. “No one is looking at you!  You don’t matter!”  
  
Komaeda just blinked. He waited for his ears to stop ringing. Kokichi seemed to accept those words with a gleeful smile.  
  
“...”  
  
“Why are you so ashamed then? If no one’s looking at you then that’s a good thing. You can do something that nobody else can do from your position, because everybody else will have eyes on them.”

Komaeda was wrong for writing him off as an imp. He spoke as sweetly as the devil. For once, Komaeda had no idea what would happen next, but at the same time he was not that afraid either. Kokichi suddenly grabbed him by the hand and pulled him back up to his feet. Suddenly the world was spinning, no, Komaeda was just spinning. Even though Kokichi barely lifted his chest, he had managed to spin them both around in a dance.  
  
“If nobody’s watching, then that’s the perfect time to dance, or pull pranks!”  
  
“I… I don’t know how to dance.”  
  
Kamukura was probably the Ultimate Ballroom dancer. Maybe if Hinata was feeling nice he would let Komaeda stand on his toes.  
  
“I don’t know how to dance either! So I’ll teach you how to dance incorrectly!”  
  
Spinning, spnning, and more spinning. His life was like this, just out of control spinning. Even if he were to die like an insect in the first round of this game, this world would keep spinning with or without him. Yet, Kokichi was laughing from the bottom of his heart even dragging Komaeda’s uselss body around.  
  
Suddenly, Komaeda found himself laughing to. Kokichi stepped on his toe and they both spun out of control and hit the ground. That was probably a result of his bad luck, but Kokichi did not blame him. Wiping out seemed to be as fun for Kokichi as dancing had been.  
  
Komaeda turned his head back to see Kokichi’s black, oily hair falling all over his face. Even if he was just fake laughing and forcing a smile right now, Komaeda had to respect the effort he was putting in to show him a smile.  
  
“You… Why did you try to cheer me up? I’ve done nothing but pick fights with you so far, probably justifying myself with some kind of nonsense that our clashing will make you stronger.”  
  
“Do I need a reason?”  
  
“Yes. Most people have reasons for doing things, however twisted they may be. Speaking from experience, even if nobody else can understand you, you still have a reason.”  
  
“People who can't act without a reason... are just liars. So they make it up. If I tell kind lies half the time, and cruel lies the other half of the time then you won’t be able to predict me will you? If I’m just as likely to help or hurt you then nobody will know what to expect. This time I made you smile, so next time I’ll make you cry.”  
  
Komaeda sat up, looking at the fallen Kokichi. The area of the school they had wandered off to, was overgrown with flowers. He seemed lost in the moment, like he had some kind of familiarity with playing in flowers. Scents could trigger powerful memories. The wires were crossed so bad in Komaeda's brain that every time he smelled gun powder, he recalled a happy, color filled memory.   
  
“Is nobody looking at you, either?”  
  
Kokichi responded with a smile.  
“Yes, but I prefer it that way.”  
He brought a finger to his lips. As if the smile he was showing was a secret shared only between them.  
Kokichi was fully aware, that there was a string tied to that finger too. 


	14. Memento Mori

“What are you doing Kumagawa?”

 

『Photosynthesizing.』  
  
The second day after the time limit motivation had been declared, and Kumagawa Misogi was not trying to show off or anything. Instead he lay in the overgrown grass outside, like he had already accepted the certain doom that his involvement was inevitably going to bring.

 

“Why are you photosynthesizing?” Even if Kumagawa had given up on himself, the naive as always Naegi Makoto had not given up on him. He poked at Kumagawa’s round cheeks.

 

『Because I want to become a plant.』  
  
“I don’t think you’d make a very good plant, Kumagawa-senpai.”

 

『Your right, I’m more like a weed. I choke out everybody else with my roots, to support my own ugly life. It’s pointless though because there’s no way a flower could ever bloom from me.』  
  
“I thought idiots like us weren’t supposed to be poetic, you’re making me look bad.” Makoto said as he sat down on the grass, cross legged next to him. The onslaught of poking on Kumagawa’s cheeks was not going to stop anytime soon. “Besides, Daisies are weeds and they can make flowers. Your metaphor doesn’t even make sense.”

 

『Yes, it’s senseless just like this world...』

 

Makoto’s only response was to pick up some grass clippings and sprinkle them on Kumagawa’s face. “You know, a lot of people have said a lot of different things about you, and I guess some people think you’re a confusing guy but to me you’ve just always been my Senpai.” Kumagawa was judged by Munakata to be just as bad as Junko, and he definitely was full of despair, but Makoto never stopped seeing that underneath all that despair there was a kid there just like him. “I guess you are acting different lately. You used to always look like you were trying to show off for everyone around you, but now you just kind of cling to Junko’s side.”

 

『Junko’s the only one...』

 

“Huh?”

 

『Makoto-chan. Pretty much everybody in my whole life has brutalized me in some way, it’s like my entire personality is defined as being a victim.』Kumagawa raised his hand, there was a hole driven right through the center of his palm from when Makoto stabbed him with a pen. It was like by nature, Kumagawa always drew out the worst in people.『The hated and despised minus. The only person who’s ever wanted me around was her.』

 

He could make someone kind like Makoto violent. As if chaos was just his nature. Makoto refused to accept that though, the more likely explanation was that Kumagawa was just scapegoated by others again and again. People blamed his presence for the bad things that happened around others. Kumagawa thought the only way he could help others, was by playing the role of villain if that eased their burden. Makoto thought his methods were wrong. Wrong methodology led to wrong results. That did not mean, Kumagawa himself was wrong.

 

“You know, you might be despicable, irresponsible, violent, and fickle, you might make a lot of bad decisions, but once you get to know you you’re a kind and gentle guy. If you weren’t so kind, you would probably suffer a lot less. So don’t write yourself off so easily, you don’t see yourself the way that I do.”

 

『Write myself… if only I could do that. A story craves an ending.』

  
“Quit doing that, even if it sounds all flowery and poetic you’re in pain. You sound like you’re dying.”

 

『It’s not like I wanna die. I just don’t care anymore, whether I live or die.』

 

Anesthetized due to pain. Kumagawa’s expression looked sleepy more than anything else. Analgesia was the term for those who had no ability to recognize pain. Though at first the disease seemed like a blessing, as pain is the warning center of the body failing to recognize a small cut and heal it can cause a person to bleed to death from an otherwise treatable wound.

 

For Kumagawa though, in early life what he went through could only be described as despair. Rather than losing the ability to feel physical pain, it was like the circuits in his mind had been overwhelmed and rewired. He started to get confused, between happiness and sadness, between hope and despair. His emotions only ever came in extreme unbearable spikes, their flow was completely senseless like river water. He could be completely calm like the water’s surface one moment, and then surge up into a flood the next.  
  
He felt both at one, or maybe he felt neither. That was why he could sympathize, with Ajimu Najimi who was indifferent to everything, with Enoshima Junko who had gone numb and tried to force herself to feel those same extreme emotions, with Komaeda Nagito who went insane swaying back and forth between hope and despair on a hanged man’s noose.  
  
The loss of Ajimu had been more than he could handle. Perhaps because when he first met her, he started to care about whether he lived or died, he started to desire to live a normal lives. In his mind all of those ideas were tied to Ajimu. Now with Ajimu gone, it was like a hole had opened up, one that he could not cope with in his usual ways. His mercurial sense of self, all it did was drain out of the hole like liquid. He was constantly spilling forth, losing more and more of himself.

 

He was sad his sister had died. Now he was in the killing game his worst memory, and the only way to proceed was to lose more people. He could not be sure prolonging his own life was worth losing those people anymore. Without Ajimu he was no longer sure of his place in things.  
  
He could not be confident, reckless, and always trying to show off like he was in the past. He could not say _this time I’ll win_ because he did not believe it anymore. Ajimu was the first person who believed he could win. No… she probably never believed in him in the first place.

 

『Ajimu-san was really selfish you know. She told me the world is cruel, but beautiful and that one day I’d learn to see that beauty, but how am I supposed to find a world without Ajimu-san in it beautiful?』

 

“And how is Junko any better? You think maybe miss despair queen is the worst person to hang around when you’re all depressed like this?”

 

『I tried to kill myself you know. I thought I had this strong will to live, but I think I might just have lacked the guts to die. Success is harder than failure for many things in this world, right? If I failed at suicide did that mean I succeeded at living? Well, anyway when that happened Junko dragged me back from the edge. But living just because Junko wants me to isn’t living.』

 

“Do you… think you deserve someone like Junko? That say, if you and I were to fall in love you’d probably drag me into despair so you might as well end up with the despar queen? Dude you’ve always had weird taste in women but you should figure out what you want...”

 

『I… I don’t belong in this story, or anyone’s story.』  
  
Kumagawa saw the world through one fundamental, unbreakable rule. Nobody would ever want a guy like him around. Because he was born an unwanted child, he would forever remain one and there was nothing he could do to change this. He could only deal with it. He could only tell lies and make them want him.  
  
“That can’t be true because, even if we fight, even if we get angry, even if I started to hate you, I’d never once regret meeting you. We cried together like classmates didn’t we? We laughed and told each other jokes? Do those memories go away and get tarnished, just because bad things might happen around you?”

It was like meanings existed to get dirtied, and Kumagawa only saw himself in mud. Yet, Makoto refused to see him that way.

 

『You might regret saying that later. You might contradict those words.』

 

“Well, if I do I’m sure you’d be the one to grab my hand and drag me back. That’s why you can’t die or disappear on me, because I’m counting on you.”  
  
『Putting your faith in a person like me. That’s just reckless hope.』

  
“Haha, that’s me I guess. I’m not Mr. Ultimate Hope, I’m just a reckless idiot. I just figured, because you said you don’t trust anybody in this world, because all people have shown you violence… then the only way to teach you how to trust others is to show you trust, right?”

 

The logic of an idiot, but Makoto was so sincere it made you almost want to believe in him.  
  
“I think we have more in common than you realize. That’s why, I could never bring myself to hate you.”

 

『The villain is supposed to make that speech, not the hero.』

  
“Knock that crap off already.” Makoto said, as he pushed Kumagawa’s face in the grass to tease him. He was just trying to grant his wish to become more like a plant. From a distance they could almost be mistaken as a pair of normal boys playing with each other. That was probably, ‘that thing’ that Makoto saw. The same way Komaeda identified from the start that Hinata was a bystander from the crowd just like he was, Makoto saw that Kumagawa was a normal boy too one that still wanted to be friends with these extraordinary people, that wanted to empathize with them.

🧸

 

“Jeez, everybody’s really gloomy today.” Makoto said, messing up his hair with his hands to express his frustration.  
  
Kirigiri watched him from the side, his face as still as ever. “Well, we could all die tomorrow. Not everyone has their head screwed on wrong like you do.”  
  
“I just think there’s no way we could all die when we’re working together like this! What’s wrong with thinking that way!” Makoto said, even making a show of throwing his fists up in the air.

  
“You’ve changed a little bit. The old you would have insisted there was no way we would kill each other, or tried to make speeches like Kaede.”

 

“Well, I still believe that but I think it’s better to understand everything before making a big move like that. Not everybody thinks the same way I do, and I’m kind of dumb so that’s why I’m always relying on you Kiri…” Makoto said. The two of them were hanging out in the abandoned classroom. The same place they had met. If this really was the old school building they were in.  
  
“Despite your outfit… you look like you’ve grown up.”  
  
“What do you mean despite my outfit? My outfit looks cool!” Makoto grabbed his t shirt and pulled it out, he was the type of person who thought wearing a sweatshirt under his school uniform was the height of fashion. Which is why he took to the custom uniform he had been given, a garish red t shirt with ‘hero’ printed on it over and over. “I’ll grow up when I can do something for myself for once, I can’t even get my sister to come out of her room.”  
  
“Your sister isn’t as much of an idiot as you are. So she’s harder to persuade that’s all.”

  
Makoto felt all of Kirigiri’s cool praise like this doubled as an insult, but she probably did not mean it. Now that they were reflecting on the time that had passed since they both sat together in this old classroom though, Makoto suddenly let his head rest on the desk. “You know, it’s been a long time since the two of us were able to talk just like this. Is it weird that even though we’re in the middle of a death game, I’m happy about that?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s definitely weird.” Kirigiri shifted uncomfortably. “I just thought it would be awkward to talk alone, is all.”  
  
“I didn’t think anything was ever awkward for you. You always do things so properly.”  
  
“I suppose I did things properly. It’s proper to wait for the boy to confess. It’s proper not to make a move. It’s proper to not to let yourself get controlled by your feelings. It’s proper to wait until you’re older, and not make mistakes when you’re younger. It’s proper to not argue with your father. I thought I was doing things the proper way, but maybe I wasn’t so high minded. Maybe… I was just afraid of getting hurt.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Well, if I was working a case and saw a dead body, my feelings of sadness for the loss of that person’s life would get in the way so I filed them away. Really though, maybe working all those cases I was just a kid who was scared what would happen, I mean if I messed up I would die, right? So I just… tried to stop feeling scared.”  
  
Kirigiri always wore leather gloves on her hands, rather than look at them. The scars were from a time that she had made a mistake when she was younger. She hid away that pain like she hid all other pain, and never learned from it. She used the flowery language of a detective, that she had to be unbiased, that she only had to be an ally of justice, to distance herself from others.

 

“My father was normal, untalented. If he had chosen me, and taken me to run away with him from my grandfather I think I might have lived a normal life. I think… some part of me wanted you, my first normal friend, to choose me in the way my father didn’t.”

 

“You’re talking about yourself like something’s wrong with you but… I like the person you are, Kiri. I like the person you turned out to be.”  
  
“Of course you do, because you’re Naegi-kun. You like everyone.” Kirigiri tightened her fingers around each other, touching leather to leather and still not feeling the real touch of her hands. The hands that she wanted someone to take at one point. “You know, Naegi-kun what you’re insecure about your normalcy doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You’re not fixed to one thing. You can be anything you want. A detective like me can’t save anybody, the only time I’m useful is when it’s already too late.”  
  
“No, you’re wrong Kiri… I’ve always thought if there was someone who deserved to be called a hero in this world it was you.”

  
“Does that make you my heroine?”  
  
“Why do I keep getting called that…” Makoto said, scratching at his bedhead of spiky hair.

 

“Do you know the words Memento Mori?”  
  
“Please have mercy on the idiot. I don’t really get poetic words, or metaphors, or theme-y stuff. Actually can we go back to talking about feelings?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Awe.”  
  
“Memento Mori, it just means remember that one day you will die. Every human lives aware of their own death. As a detective I’ve always been more aware than most people, like death was walking by my side holding my hand. It makes the pursuits of life seem empty in comparison…”  
  
As she said that, Kirigiri’s leather-covered fingers curled around her cheek. For a moment it was like Kirigiri’s pale face was only halfway there, and the other half was a rotted away and already picked clean pale white skull. Her cheek sagged as she pulled on it with her fingers, making that side of her face still covered in skin look all the more hollow.

 

Her lilac hair was nothing more than a flower which her skull had been laid to rest on. Each individual strand of hair a single petal. Even if a body was laid to rest on a bed of flowers though it did not change the fact that it was a corpse. Even if the coffin smelled pleasantly of flowers, and was beautiful colors, it was still a coffin in the end. Just a place to keep a pile of bones.  
  
Vanitas, a symbolic style of art in which bones were painted among the beautiful pleasures of life. Meant to show the emptiness of life. That was the only way to describe the expression on Kirigiri’s face, her hollowed out eyes, as she spoke. His best friend, her lilac hair, and lilac eyes looked ephemeral to him.

Makoto wished Kumagawa was here. The old Kumagawa would laugh in Kirigiri’s face and say death makes life ultimately pointless, and that’s why it’s so damn fun. Makoto did not know if he could pull off a line like that, or looking cool. “Then, just don’t die I guess, and you don’t have to worry about what’s meaningless or not. Things will work out in the end.”  
  
Makoto believed ultimately, like some fixed law of the universe, that no matter what you had to keep going and always believe in hope. He was really no different from Komaeda, their experiences were just different.  
  
Kirigiri was disillusioned with being a detective. She had forgotten, why she had even wanted to become one in the first place. She wondered if it was all she knew how to do, and that was the only reason why. Ever since she had cried in front of Mukuro that day, the questions she asked herself would not stop falling much like her tears.

 

“...”  
  
“Well anyway we can’t go on contemplating emptiness forever! If we really were all about to die tomorrow, what would you want to do?”  
  
Makoto asked her. In the end he was no good at advising others, all he could do was approach them and be a good listener. That was why he never saw himself as anything special.  
  
He stayed quiet and listened. As he did, a familiar pair passed them in the hallway. After Kaede’s alliance broke up, the kids started to form little cliques. Most famous though was Shuichi and Kaede who everybody in the school seemed to be gossiping about now. Makoto wondered how this happened, but he guessed that teenagers woud always be teenagers talented or not.

 

“Anyway… I think this will do it. We just have to wait for Iruma to finish.” Shuichi said, walking ahead of her with his eyes on the floor.  
  
As he did this Kaede stopped for a moment and crossed her arms. Inevitably, Shuichi stopped walking when he noticed her pause. He was always pulled in by her gravity. It was probably impossible for him to escape her orbit by this point.  
  
“Akamatsu-san, what’s wrong?” Shuichi replayed the words he just said in his head. Then a second time. He was pretty sure there was nothing he said that could make her upset. If there was something wrong though, it was probably his fault. Even though logically it was ridiculous to think someone would hate him just because he said one thing wrong, he could not help but think of the bonds between himself and others as that flimsy. He could only cling to others after all.

 

If Kaede realized who he really was. If he was just taking advantage of her kindness. Then he would no longer deserve to stay by her side. That was why he was never able to bring himself to reach out and take her hands. Bonds were fragile things in his mind, he could not imagine the loss of a bond that close. The pain of having a hand torn away from your own was probably too much for him, who was the most fragile person of all.  
  
He liked it better if Kaede was in the night sky. If she was a celestial object. He could gaze at her from afar. He could be guided by her light. He could even feel a little bit of her warmth. That was all he needed to continue, Kaede should shine bright for everybody. Only a thief would think to hold a star right between their hands, keeping its light between their fingertips, and near their chest. If he did that his hand would only get burned.  
  
Kaede spoke up, stopping the for falling dominoes in Shuichi’s head that she had tipped without even realizing it. “Nothing. I was just thinking about how amazing you are for coming up with this plan, Saihara-kun.”  
  
For a detective, Shuichi jumped to conclusions fast. It was like he thought it was natural everybody would think the absolute worst of himself. His mouth fell open, but no words came out as he had no idea what to say. He could not conceive of the idea that anybody had positive feelings for him whatsoever. His anxiety made his mind consider every possible situation over and over again, and every way it could go wrong. He never thought it could go right if he was involved.

 

He never thought he could be right for anybody.  
  
“...What?”  
  
All he could manage was that one word of disbelief, before he clamped his mouth shut tight and felt his face start to go red.  
  
“Honestly… when I first met you, I didn’t think you would be that reliable…”  
  
He knew it. She really was just being nice to him that time she let him follow her around the first day. Kaede encouraged people just to be kind. Even if she did not personally like them like she did Kokichi.  
  
“But look at me now, relying on you like you’re Sherlock Holmes or something…”

  
She, she, she…  
Relying on him?  
No, that’s wrong.  
He was relying on her.  
Even if they were always next to each other there was no way they could be together.

“Ah… yeah…’ He muttered in disbelief. When he lanced up, he saw Kaede’s face was red too as she smiled at him. It was confusing, because he knew there was no reason for her to embarrassed.  
  
Their feelings were not the same right now.  
These feelings belonged to him and him alone.  
For a moment though he could think of nothing but Kaede’s pink blushing face. It filled his mind so much, he completely forgot about his anxieties, and he forgot how to think. In other words he was just a stupid boy.  
  
Kirigiri watching this whole scene sighed. She saw her own past self in Shuichi’s current troubles. She wondered how it was possible for a detective to miss something that was so obvious to everyone else around the school.  
  
“When I was around Saihara-kun… I wondered… if this was what having a brother would be like. Even if he doesn’t remember me, that feeling won’t go away or be reasoned with. I want to… protect the happiness those two are feeling right now.”

 

“That’s why older siblings are born first. They have to protect their younger siblings. Haha, see I’ve defeated Kumagawa’s nihilism. If I tell him he was born first to protect his younger sibling then he’ll stop saying that people are born for no reason in such a gloomy voice.” Makoto tilted his head outside the door to look at the two passing by in the hallway.“Besides, those two need all the help they can get they’re both so shy.”  
  
“We’re in a killing game, try to remember.”

  
“Hey, Junko and Kumagawa-senpai got together in a killing game.”  
  
“Yes, that’s who you should be using as a good example of romance.”  
  
“Stop being sarcastic! It’s so hard to tell you always say it in the exact same tone of voice!”

  
“If this were a book, hearing my tone of voice would not be a problem since all dialogue would be written.”  
  
“Oh, don’t you start with the meta stuff too!”

 

Naegi Makoto smiled at his best friend as he finally picked his head up from his desk. It was a smile that could save anyone. He would show that smile to anybody who needed to see it, not because he wanted to save that particular person but because he wanted to save everyone. For a moment though, Kirigiri found herself wishing that that smile would only belong to her. He was right they had not talked in a long time. She should have talked with him, more and more. They were friends after all there was no reason to keep secrets from each other.

In the end though keeping secrets was all she knew how to do. She wondered what it would be like if she was like Shuichi, someone who could rely on others like he did.

 

🧸

 

Just as Makoto casually talked about protecting his younger sibling, unknown to him his sibling was in danger. Komaru had been pacing the inside of her and Makoto’s shared dorm room. Being stuck in the same room all day made her restless, but at the same time she knew if she went outside she would be the easiest to be killed.  
  
It was shocking how fast she got used to that idea of living inside of a killing game. She wondered if the world ended would she just go on living like normal? Her normalcy stats must have been off the charts in that case. It was the only stat she was advanced in.  
  
She had stopped pacing because she saw the doorknob start to turn on its own. Her brother always rang the bell and announced himself. He had tried several times to convince her to go out the past few days, but as long as the second motive was in effect she would never. She knew the first person to be killed in a slasher movie was a boring person with no personality just like her.  
  
The door opened itself on its own. Komaru very bravely, let out a yelp and staggered backwards tripping over her own feet, and falling behind. When she looked up and saw it was just some middle school girl with green hair that looked about half her size, she felt especially courageous.  
  
“You’re really pathetic you know that.”  
  
Monaca said in a straightforward voice. Until she realized she had been saying directly what she was thinking for once, and she had dropped her cutesy speech pattern.  
  
“Monaca thinks you’re really pathetic you know that? Tee hee hee?”  
  
“Don’t add a tee hee hee, that doesn’t make it any less insulting!” Komaru bantered back, though she had no idea how she could come up with such a snappy reply in the moment.

Komaru had never heard of the concept of doppelgangers. A copy of yourself that seeks out the original to kill them. Nor was she really self aware enough to think about the fact that people tended to dislike someone, the closer they were in perosnality.  
  
“Your brother is lame too, but at least he’s walking around outside.”  
  
“...? Huh? Why are you looking at me like that?”  
  
“You’re not going to defend your brother? I just called him lame?”  
  
“But Makoto’s definitely lame.”  
  
“Well, you’re even lamer than your pipsqueak, spineless, goody two shoes, overrated brother. If he’s just some kid, then you’re even worse than a kid.”  
  
“Wow. That might be the worst thing someone’s ever said to me. Middle schoolers really cut down to the bone, huh? It’s not like I can fight back either what am I supposed to do, make a middle schooler cry for hurting my feelings? At this point I just have to take the insult.”  
  
Komaru said. She was a little bit too normal for these circumstances. That was why she could not tell what kind of person Monaca was, she just took her for some kid. She noticed an odd expression in that girl’s eyes. Eyes she had never seen before.  
  
“Your eyes… they look so dead.”  
  
“So Monaca has been told.” Monaca said, her voice flat as she did not bother to fake any emotions. “You’re just using your normalcy as an excuse not to do anything. You’re just pretending to be a helpless girl.”  
  
“No, I think I’m genuinely helpless. I’m getting freaked out by a middle schooler here.”  
  
“Monaca really hates people like you. Good people who never had anything happen to them. You know what, you’re hiding out here because you think you’re going to be killed. Because you’re no better than a background character. But… maybe that’s not really what you think at all.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Aren’t you more afraid, that you might become a murderer? You’re not a good person like you’re brother, and you’re not a bad person either. It’s normal for someone to only think about themselves at times like this. It’s normal for people to want to survive.”  
  
“No, I’m not!” Her own joking attempts at not taking this situation seriously, her pleas for normalcy, they all faded away in an instant as Komaru’s face gave way to the terror she had been feeling. Those were the feelings of someone who had been locking themselves in the same room from for days straight. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening...”  
  
“That was way too easy. Someone like you isn’t even worth using Big Sis’s time to break.”

 “I can’t do anything. I can’t do anything. I can’t do anything. Nobody expects me to do anything. Nobody expects me to do anything.”  
  
“To think you were scared of big sis’s dog like Mukuro… It’s easy to believe you’re not capable of being a murderer if you paint her as the bad guy, I guess. Whatever… This is… Yeah, this isn’t fun as big sis makes it look. It’s probably because Monaca lacks style…”

It was like a child playing a game, imitating her big sister. Except she did not care if her toys ended up broken or not. In fact she was so distant from other people, that she had no way to intuit how they felt on her own. Those parts in her had never developed, because she was an ignored child after all. The only way she really knew what others were really like, was when she tested their boundaries like this. All of her behavior’s were childish in origin, no matter how much like Big Sister she wanted to make herself seem, even her cruelty was that of a child.

Which is why suddenly out of nowhere, Kumagawa grabbed her by the back of her collar and lifted her in the air. 『If you’re rude to others, it’ll reflect poorly on me as your senpai.』

“I don’t even remember who you are anymore. Where did you even come from?”

『The answer to that question is very simple, Komaru-chan. I have been called the wind, by my lower classmen who admired me. The wind is the wind, because it cannot be captured.』  
  
“I never called you that, or ever admired you!”  
  
Kumagawa’s smile faded and he looked genuinely sad for a moment, as he put Komaru down outside of the doorway. He kicked at the ground, pouting for a moment.『Well, even if you don’t remember me, I’ll always be your senpai.』  
  
“Monaca wonders what she did to deserve a shitty senpai like you. Oh right, Monaca guesses her biggest crime was just being born.”

『No way. You being born wasn’t a crime, Monaca-chan. Because, you were born for no reason at all!』  
  
When Kumagawa made that optimistic pessimistic declaration, Monaca just slammed the door in his face. As if to say she was bored now, and she was taking her ball and going home. If that was the case she really was starting to take after Junko in a bad way. Not her all consuming love of despair, or her charismatic personality that demanded total worship, but rather her childish pettiness.  
  
Kumagawa looked at Komaru still on the floor muttering to herself and clutching her head. She looked like she was trying to roll into the smallest ball possible. He had no idea what to do, not really, but Makoto had spent the entire morning try to cheer him up even if he failed.

Even if he was the perfect minus, and full of despair, even if he defined himself as the Ultimate Loser, Makoto never once treated him like he was abnormal.

Kumagawa sat cross legged on the floor, simply watching Komaru. His expression was his usual blank smile, and even more empty looking eyes.  
  
“It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault.”

『Yeah. It’s not your fault.』  
  
“I’m just a parasite clinging to my brother.”

『If you’re a parasite that’s fine. Whoever said that parasites don’t deserve love too.』  
  
“I just want to run away. That’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

『Then, just run away. Oh, I guess there’s a cage in the way so you can’t run that far. You’re going to have to run in circles then.』  
  
“Would you quit it! I’m trying to think negatively about myself!”

『...』

  
“Could you stop watching me and smiling at me like that, it’s creepy? Are you sure you’re not possessed or something?”

『I’m not really possessed I swear. There’s nothing special about me. I’m just a loser. If we were to fight, you’d definitely win against me.』

“Why would I care about something like that? I don’t even like shonen manga!”

『Then, what kind of manga do you like? When I’m upset, I think about things like it’s in a manga, because manga have rules, and then things make a little more sense.』  
  
“Th-that’d just be telling myself a lie then.”

『Well, you’re a parasite who likes to run away, you might as well add being a liar to the list.』  
  
“Be more sensitive in how you talk to me! I’m just a girl you know!” Komaru said, finally breaking out of the coccoon she had been spinning for herself so she could grab a pillow and throw it directly at Kumagawa’s head.  
  
He just fell backwards like he had taken a critical hit. He really was weak. For some reason despite the fact that he looked like he was the living embodiment of trouble.  
No, like he had lived a life of trouble.  
So much trouble he had no time to philosophize about it.  
So much trouble that pessimist did not even begin to describe it.   
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say he was just tired.  
So thoroughly tired of it all, like a dead man.

He did more than simply take up space uselessly. It was like he was negatively subtracting from all those around him. Even though Komaru got all that sense from the slender boy in front of her, she also got the sense that he would never hurt her. She had never once been in a fight in her life but it sounded like she was not lying when he said she could beat him up. That was why, in front of a stranger who she did not care about, and whose thoughts did not matter to her she finally came apart.

“I don’t know what to do… It’s all wrong… Everything I do would be wrong so I should just do nothing!” She saw no way for herself to proceed. There was no place for her in this story.

『You’re not wrong. That’s how I feel, at any rate.』  
Gloomily.  
He wore gloominess like a fitted black suit. He carried himself like he was dressing in advance for his own funeral.

『You’re not wrong to feel scared, or weak, or even selfish. There’s no right way to react to this. Ahhh, I’m sorry, if I were my old self I would probably have done something much cooler.』

“I don’t think any version of you could be cool.”  
  
She had no idea why she was being so insulting to a total stranger. Something about him had just drawn it out of her. He was like a walking punchline. He was just begging someone to play his straight man.

『In those girly manga you like, what types of people are the main characters?』  
  
“Well. It’s usually a normal girl who suddenly gets admitted to a private school for rich girls for some reason, or a normal girl who gets thrown into a world of supernatural hotties. Then there are ones where normal girls have a mysterious transfer student who turns out to be a rich hottie who’s obsessed with her despite the fact that she has no real personality traits to attract him.”

『Shoujo manga sound amazing. What have I been doing blinding myself with shonen all this time?』  
  
“Well boys grow up slower than girls, so it takes them a while to graduate from shonen jump into more realistic stories of life and love. Like, one of my favorites is when a girl gets a bomb stuck in her and she can’t fall in love or else she’ll explode.”

『You’re right that’s very realistic. Well you know in manga, it’s always the normal girl who is the main character, right?』  
  
“That’s just manga, though.”

『What about this current situation? A bunch of kids get locked up in a high school. Doesn’t that sound exactly like a manga premise? Maybe this isn’t so seinen, maybe it’s shoujo and this will turn out to be a love story all along!』  
  
“A twisted love story that's kind of murdery.”

『That’s the best kind! Come on, tell me more about what manga you like. I can’t say I’m a fan of manga if I don’t know anything about Shoujo manga. 』  
  
“Well, the third volume of there’s a bomb inside me was really emotionally moving. The main character’s best friend gave a speech to the main character that made them want to continue on living…”

Komaru talked,  
And talked,  
And talked,  
And talked.  
She had not had human contact besides her brother in almost a week. Even the random thoughts in her head came spilling out at once, and Kumagawa simply stood there watching with a smile.  
  
“Aren’t… you bored by now?”

『You’re talking and smiling about something you love how could I be bored?』  
  
“But, my interests aren’t that special. They’re all like pathologically normal. It’s like all that I care about is maintaining a normal life...”  
  
As if both her and her brother had some kind of insanity that made them do everything as normal as possible.

『You know, I knew this guy once Kaiki-kun… He was the kind of guy who’d say stuff like that to sound cool. He tended to dismiss things like stability or a quiet life - he never expected life or relationships to stay as they were. Maybehe just hated feeling like he was settling down. And I was stupid enough to think his attitude was cool - but if that’s cool, then I’m glad you’re uncool.』  
  
“...?”

『Do you know why normal characters are the main characters of all those shoujo manga?』  
  
“Because they’re meant to be boring featureless self inserts?”

『It’s because normal people are more powerful than anything else! Do you know what rich hottie who could have anything in the world doesn’t have? A normal life!』  
  
“What?”

『Komaru-chan you have something here pretty much nobody else has, not even your brother. You have the power of common sense! We’re all weirdos who don’t know any better!』  
  
“Even Mukuro… Am I stronger than someone who can kill others?”

『Yep! People like Mukuro-chan who seem strong on the surface are actually quite weak. She probably thinks she’s protecting you by keeping her distance but the truth is she's more scared of you than you are of her, like a wild animal, you might need to protect her in the end.』

“Isn’t she your sister?”

『I’m saying that because she’s my sister. I’m aware of her weaknesses and faults as a person, and that’s why I love her.』  
  
Mukuro.  
Was a person.  
With an eccentric brother who talked about her weaknesses openly.  
No, she knew her brother was indecisive, meek, way too shy, would never tell a girl his feelings about her unless she confessed first, spineless, and still thought a no good guy like him could always get in other people’s business and try to help them.  
She knew all of those things and she loved her brother.

Kumagawa, such a strange person could really have such a normal relationship between him and a murderer?

She felt like after staring at it forever and almost giving up, a puzzle in her mind was about to be solved.  
  
“You’re weird… but you’re fun to talk to.”

『Do you want to see the manga I like?』  
  
“Oh yeah! Nobody but my brother ever talks to me about manga, and that girl who writes books keeps hissing at me whenever I bring it up.”

『Isn’t Toko-chan cute when she’s being yandere?』  
  
“She forgot about the dere part!”

『I don't think so. Toko loves love more than anything else, in my book she's deredere. Oh, but my manga is in the school building you’d have to leave your room.』  
  
“Well come on already!” Komaru said, opening up the door. A normal girl gets trapped in a school with a bunch of weirdos who are all geniuses at the top of their field, and is somehow still a relevant character, that was like something straight out of a manga.  
  
As  they walked past Makoto, his eyes widened in surprise. “Komaru, you’re finally out of your room? Wait, Kumagawa-senpai what are you doing with my sister?”

They made it to the game room where Kumagawa kept a stack of his manga. All the way back when he first met Yasuke, he had been crashing in the old school building because he was technically homeless at the time.  
  
Toko happened to be in the room at the same time. She hissed just as Komaru said she would, causing the other girl to hide her face behind a manga volume.

『Toko-chan, be my friend!』  
  
Kumagawa said, not an ounce of venom present in his voice.  
  
“I know you secretly think I’m an ugly and impure woman. To think a brainless manga reader of all people would be looking down on me.”

『....』  
  
“You’re supposed to object to the ugly and impure part! Come on, if you really want to be my friend you should tell me I’m being too harsh on myself and that if I removed my glasses I’d be a beautiful woman all along.”

『If you removed your glasses you’d be blind. What’s wrong with being ugly and impure? That's who you are, Toko-chan. That's the person I want to be my friend.』

‘Whatever. Manga-for-brains, your brain’s just rotten because stupid lines like that work in manga. You probably think a girl will be obsessed with you if you say one nice thing to them. If only you had money, you could buy actual books and not once a week garbage that people read and throw out.”  
  
Kumagawa did not respond to her insults as usual. His smile froze for a moment and he began to look into her eyes. Toko’s glasses were not enough of a barrier. His eyes were like cool, clean water, and the sincerity he started talking with started to make her feel dirty. If she reflected in those eyes she would see how ugly she eally was, her fantasy would be broken.

『People read shonen jump once a week and most of the time throw it out, yeah that’s right. When I was younger and digging through the trash for food, I found magazines in them. Even if I couldn’t read the kanji I would look at the pictures and imagine a world so much better than the ugly one I was living in. Isn’t it the same for you and your books?』  
  
“We’re not the same.”

『Because I read manga?』  
  
“No, obviously not. I’m not that shallow, god.”

『Really, you could have fooled me? I thought your shallowness, the fact that you hate everyone but also really want them to like you, and the way you look down on everyone despite the fact that you’re not so great yourself were your other wonderful minus traits.』  
  
“There’s a princess inside of me… Th-there’s a beautiful tragic maiden waiting to come out. I just know there is, but there’s nothing inside of you.”  
  
Toko said, she held her two fingers at his throat like they were an invisible pair of scissors. Then, she realized how close they were getting to genuine feelings and realized she much preferred talking about books. She took a step back and then walked away. She continued to grumble to herself, but Kumagawa did not hear it.

Komaru peeked her head outside of the shonen manga she had been hiding under. “I really don’t get her deal.”

『Just talk to her. Weirdos are people too. Just like me.』  
  
“I still kind of think you’re a ghost. But like a friendly ghost like Casper. Huh? What’s with that face? You look lost.”

『Oh, I just remembered how happy reading manga used to make me. I had totally forgotten that even a person as unfortunate as me, has happy memories like that. Right where they weren’t supposed to be. Right in front of me. Like a manga volume I was reading but missed the point.』  
  
He had happy memories but that did not fix the sad ones.  
There were people he loved now but that did not make up for the lack of love in his life.  
In fact it just made it harder for him to see that love.  
Like love wasn’t supposed to be right in front of him. Like he wasn’t supposed to see it.

You could hear the lack of enthusiasm in his voice.  
He looked apathetic to everything, like pain and pleasure were the same for him. It seemed like if instead of storming off, Toko had stabbed him, and ripped his guts out with her scissors cutting through them like red string his attitude would be exactly the same.  
No, it wasn’t just apathy.  
He looked like he was living with an incurable sickness, that refused to kill him.   
If he tried to laugh right now he would probably just cough up blood.  
He wanted to laugh until he died from asphyxiation, because he was too busy laughing he forgot to breathe,  but even then all that laughing would not make him one bit happier.  
  
He who laughs last, laughs best.   
Fortune favors a home filled with laughter.   
Demons laugh when we plan for the future.  
All of those meant the same thing in his mind, that he who laughs first just cries in the end.   
  
What the hell is my point you ask?  
There was no point at all.  
Kumagawa didn’t see any point.  
He didn’t know if the real him.  
Was he the one who failed to save Ajimu.  
Was he the one who tried to help others. What Makoto saw him as.  
Or it was the pathetic, sad child he was acting like right now.    
The one who kept asking over and over again, "Why is it me? Why do I always have to lose?"   
And so Kumagawa Misogi said, his voice lacking in any mirth.  
  
『I can’t even laugh about that.』


	15. Last Day on Earth

_Last nighttime ever, huh?_ _  
_ _No, it won’t be our last nighttime. Just our last night in this horrible place._ _  
_ _Tomorrow night… I’m getting out of this place with everyone else._

_Yeah… we promised we would all be friends when we got out._

 

She wanted to dream, but Kaede could not push the thoughts away that it would all be over soon. She stayed awake all night. Even in her dreams there was no escape. She tried to see the outside world, but all she pictured was blackness. It was like the door on her bird cage had rusted shut.

  
The curtain was about to fall down on her, but she had to keep performing the same as ever. She needed to smile until the end. She needed to pretend there was no ending. That was the only way to overcome the twisted story they were all written into.  
  
Kaede sick of not sleeping sat up when the bell rang. She slapped the sides of her cheeks hard, trying to bring life back into them. She might die by the end of the night, but she needed to be the rosy cheeked, Kaede full of life until then. There was no use in acting like she was already dead.  
  
A requiem was a song composed for repose of the souls of the dead. She was going to tune out all of that music, she would not hear the organ, or the funeral bells. “Alright! First, I need to go to Saihara-kun’s room! We’re gonna catch that mastermind together!” She performed even though there was no one around to hear her.

 

She got out of her bed and pulled another vest over her uniform. When she made it to Shuichi’s room, she rang the bell once and worried when there was no answer.

  
“Huh? No response… I wonder if something’s the manner.”  
  
She rang five more times.  
This was not how things were supposed to go, but for some reason she could not stop the image of Shuichi alone in his room, the victim of the first murder drawing the name of his killer out in blood with his last bit of energy. A twist like that…  
No.  
That would be too sad.  
Waking up today and never seeing Shuichi again, because he had been killed in the night.  
  
“...”

Kaede wondered what it would be like to be as carefree as she appeared. The Kaede who genuienly believed in others with unshakable optimism that she was supposed to be.

 

Suddenly, the door opened. Shuichi’s uniform was half unbuttoned and his hat hung off the side of his head. It looked like he had been in a hurry to get dressed. “Ah, Akamatsu-san. Good morning.” Even so he greeted her with the same small smile. The shy one he showed only to her.  
  
“Geez! Finally, you came out! You had me nervous for a second!”

 

“Ah, sorry! I was just… getting dressed.” When he finished buttoning his shirt all the way up, Kaede unconsciously let out a sigh of disappointment.

  
“Are you ready, then? We have to get the cameras from Iruma, remember.”  
  
It sounded like a straightforward plan, but the moment that the two of them walked outside, they were both confronted by Korekiyo of all people. He tipped his hand back in the air to greet them. “Hello, my dearest friends. Have you decided how you want to spend your last day on earth? Almost every culture that’s existed long enough to leave behind mythology, and writing has speculated on how it would end. Humans are arrogant in quite interesting ways, no? Assuming the world will always perish with them.”  
  
Korekiyo had this habit of continuing to talk even when the others around him were not listening, like he was an observer and commentator of events rather than a participator. Also, Kaede was slightly surprised that Korekiyo already considered her a dear friend. He seemed more distant than that. “Wh-what!? You shouldn’t be giving up so easily!”  
  
“Kehehehe! True, true. I’m not ready to return to my sister’s side quite yet that’s why I want to keep observing you all for as long as I can. You two get along so well. I was hoping you could help the others in the dining hall.”  
  
“Huh? What are you talking about?”  
  
“They’re fighting on the last day. Well, I suppose that’s an interesting way to spend your last moments too.”  
  
“F-fighting?” Kaede had gone behind everybody’s backs with this plan to stop the fighting. She thought if she stopped trying to lead everybody they would stop falling apart. Immediately her sense of responsibility to be the one everyone looked to again flared up. “Saihara-kun, can you go get the stuff from Iruma? I have to see what’s happening.”  
  
“...Okay. I’ll go get the cameras. Let’s meet up later at the classroom by the stairs to the basement.”  
  
“Got it. Kiyo, you come with me.”

  
“So that’s what you’ve chosen, I see…you’ll play your part until the end.”  
  
“Come on man! We don’t have time for the smirking anime villain routine.” Kaede grabbed Korekiyo by his bandaged hand and dragged him forward, rushing to the dining hall. Korekiyo broke his stoicism for once looking slightly troubled to be this close to another person, he immediately clammed up.  
  
“What’s going on here?” Kaede said, the moment she kicked the doors open.  
  
Despite the fact that there were four students, Kaito, Komaeda, Zenkichi and Rantaro three of them staring daggers at each other, Rantaro looked as relaxed as ever.  
  
“Oh, Akamatsu. Perfect timing. I… really don’t know what to do. Komaeda started talking crazy…”

  
The members of class 79 were unfamiliar with his antics after all. Komaeda was sitting on the lunch table, his black hoodie looking like the cloak of a reaper. He and Rantaro were a study in contrasts. Rantaro looked as composed, his expression quiet, his entire body was still and immovable. You could put a knife in his back in this moment and he looked like he would barely react, just shrug it off as he always did. His exact opposite Komaeda, no matter how quiet Komaeda wished to be, his appearance always looked loud, he was always shifting never able to remain still, and he was volatile reacting to everything.  
  
Komaeda readjusted his glasses. His white hair had grown long enough he was wearing it in a pony to the side. “All I was doing was making a suggestion. So that more people can survive… Even if it’s just one more.”  
  
“So that more people can survive? What do you mean by that?”  
  
“Don’t you get it? If time runs out like this, we’ll all get annihilated. The only way to avoid that is to play along with this killing game.”  
  
“What? Now, hold on a minute!”

“Kill me.”  
  
“Komaeda! What are you saying!?”  
  
“You don’t get it either? I’m saying that I’ll give you guys my life. Killing me might buy time. If your hope is strong enough to save everyone, I want to test that resolve, see how far you’re willing to go. Is your hope strong enough to kill?”

 

“N-no way! We promised we’d all get out of here together!”  
  
“Yes. that’s the ending I’m hoping for too. If we could all work together to bring about the ending that everyone desires, that would be for the best. I don’t ever get it… why when everybody wants the same thing is no one happy.” Komaeda said, gripping the side of his face as he looked to Zenkichi, Kaito and Rantaro all who were giving him horrified expressions he did not understand. “But, we’ve just been waiting for the deadline without doing anything to change it. Hey, when is hope going to come? I’ve been waiting forever for it. It’s almost like there’s no time left, don’t you think?”

  
“N-no, that’s not hope…”  
  
“This is the best solution. Whoever murders me gets to leave without a trial. Everyone else survives the time limit. After that, the person who gets to escape can go for help and rescue everyone else. What will you do, if the most hopeful ending requires someone to die?”  
  
“...” Kaede considered sharing Shuichi’s plan to get Komaeda to change his mind. She was the one who told everybody they could count on her, but to Komaeda she must seem like a liar who had done nothing over the past three days.  
  
That her words were just words. That her positivity was not enough. Anybody could read her optimistic lines off of a script. No matter how she forced her smiles her feelings would not go away.  
  
“Komaeda. There’s no need for that.”  
Rantaro said.  
The carefree, relaxed boy who most often looked like a sleeping cat had his face suddenly darken.

 

“Oh?”  
  
“There’s no need for that, because I’m going to end this game.” He smiled, showing all of his teeth. The sleeping cat revealed his fangs. Sharp enough to tear someone’s throat out. Maybe he had been this kind of person all along. “I’ve already decided.”  
  
“You’re… going to end this game.”  
  
“It’s not about outfoxing everyone in this killing game, it’s about ending the game itself. That’s the real goal.”  
  
“Can you… even accomplish such a feat?” Korekiyo asked, intrigued.  
  
“I wouldn’t be saying this if I didn’t think I could.”

Komaeda’s eyes looked too clouded with unfamiliar emotion a moment ago, but the instant Rantaro stepped up his eyes sharpened again. It was like a single beam of light breaking through the clouds. It almost looked unsuited, for a corpse like him to have such bright and watchful eyes. “And, how will you end it? You understand that the time limit expires tonight, yes?”

  
“Haha, sorry, can’t tell you. Actually, if I could, I wouldn’t be having so much trouble.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Komaeda asked.  
  
“Just what I said… I’m going to end this game. So don’t any of you go and do anything unnecessary, alright?” Rantaro said, the features of his calm, handsome face twisting into something ugly. He looked like he was restraining the inherent threat of his statemnt with every fiber of his being. His face was a fog of emotions, that nobody in the room quite understood, and maybe even Rantaro himself did not understand.  
  
Rantaro achieved the impossible, pulling a face creepier than Komaeda. Even Komaeda paused, pulling his hood back over his head. “Being able to say something with such confidence, ‘I’ll end this’ and ‘I’ll save everyone’ I really envy you. Those words would sound ugly coming out of my mouth. I have a ways to go, before I can take on a demanding part like the main character.” Komaeda readjusted his glasses again. “Do what you want. Whether you guys live or die is up to you. There’s nothing I could do to help things…”  
  
“The hell is with you man!” Kaito snapped finally, having been quiet for too long. “You keep going on about hope, hope, but it doesn’t sound like you believe in doing the impossible at all? Do you even believe in anything?”

 

Before Komaeda could walk away, Zenkichi grabbed him by the hood and started to drag him away. “Oh, Hitoyoshi-kun. Why are you suddenly so excited? There’s no way you could want to hang out with trash like me so-”

 

“Geez, that Komaeda…That guy’s even weirder than me. I hope I helped him calm down a little.”  
  
Kaede felt like Komaeda put on that entire scene as a challenge to her. Yet, she had not been able to say a single thing to him. Komaeda looked so desperate to believe in some kind of hope, all she needed to do was reaffirm him but she could not even do that. Rantaro had to speak up for her, like he was saving her.  
  
“Anyway, Amami-kun… Were you serious when you said you knew a way to end this game?”

 

After making such a determined face, Rantaro crossed his arms and looked out somewhere into outer space. “Not sure…” He said in a sleepy voice.

Kaede was starting to wonder if Rantaro was some sort of dashing, misunderstood knight, or if he was just a sloth. “What?”  
  
“Well, even if I did have an idea, I couldn’t tell you. Can’t risk anyone interfering.”  
  
Korekiyo nodded his head. “Well then, I’m looking forward to observing your success or failure. If you weren’t just making all of that up right now just to defuse Komaeda.”  
  
“It’s nice to have an audience, haha. Well, I’ll do my best to live up to your expectations, hm? I guess… I have to do my best. I can’t just pretend for once.”  
  
Rantaro left.  
What he had said left Kaede feeling even more alone.  
There was nothing she could do for Rantaro, or Komaeda either.  
There was no point in worrying over that when she had such a short time left on stage.  
She just needed to do what she could.  
Or else… she would not be able to protect everyone.

Filled with those thoughts she made her way to the classroom to meet up with Shuichi. She was delayed however by her particular bad habit. On the way she noticed Tsumugi standing almost completely still, staring forward like a life sized doll.  
  
“Morning…”  
  
“Good Morning, Kaede.” Tsumugi leaned in to get in her face in half a second. “Hey, so earlier, I saw Saihara.”  
  
“Huh? Wh-what?”  
  
“Ummm, I saw Saihara come out of Miu’s research lab!”  
  
“O-oh, you don’t say.”  
  
“I wonder what he was doing in there so early in the morning. I don’t think that anything happened, but in a life-or-death situation like this… You’d expect people to mistakenly develop feeling for each other, right?”  
  
“Mistakenly?”  
  
“Well, you know. It’s like that action movie cliche, the guy and the girl spend the whole movie together in a bunch of exciting situations and then they kiss in the end. That kind of story. They mistake all of the experiences they’ve been through together for a feeling of love, but they probably never would have even liked each other if the plot didn’t force them together.”  
  
“Um, I don’t think so…”

  
“What? Do you think Miu and Souda are a more interesting couple? They’ve basically spent this entire time locked up in that lab together. Oooh, maybe a love triangle situation will emerge.”  
  
“N-no, I just don’t think Saihara-kun… would… like her...” She had no idea why she had jumped to that conclusion, or why she had balled her hands into fists just at the thought of it.  
  
“Yeah, you’re right… now’s not the time for that. The time limit’s up tonight anyway. It’s strange, I don’t really feel anything about it at all. Ah… how should I spend the last day of my life?” If Tsumugi was the mastermind she obviously meant that entire sentence in jest. The joke is on her though, as it’s likely the last day of her life will be just as empty as every day that passed before it.  
  
Those words echoed in Kaede as she opened up the door to the classroom, as if she was filled with the same emptiness. She spoke louder than she meant to, trying to drown out the noise. “Sorry I’m late, Saihara-kun!”

 

“Ah, it’s alright. I just got here too.”  
  
“Saihara-kun!”

  
“What?”  
  
“If this was your last day on earth… would you feel bad about spending it with someone like me?”  
  
The question came out of nowhere and Shuichi was not prepared for it. It was like Kaede had completely improvised in the moment. She regretted asking something so stupid, immediately after she said it. Tsumugi must have just put a stupid idea in her head. She had stolen away Saihara though, and kept him by her side all this time, just because he believed in her.

  
If she was the kind girl she was supposed to be, she would have told him he picked the wrong person to believe in. She could feel the ropes pulling tighter and tighter around each of their necks.  
  
The red string of fate. No matter how twisted and tangled it became, it never broke. What if she was just strangling him with that red string? Everybody else started to assume they were something, because she had been dragging him around all this time. She must have pulled on the wrong string, she must have hit an ugly note. Wrong, wrong, it was going to go wrong.

 

“Akatamatsu-san, why would you ask that?” Came Shuichi’s level-headed response.

 

“Isn’t there something you want to do? This could be our last time left. I don’t want to… drag you down with me.”

 

“I… can’t think of anything, sorry.”

  
Kaede had been so worried to the point of wanting to throw everything away a moment ago, and Shuichi gave her that kind of lame response. She glared at him. Even though he had no way to read her mind, or understand her mounting worries, he still made her feel stupid for worrying so much.

  
“When I’m next to you, you’re all I can think about. I don’t know if I’d have any other regrets, but I’d definitely regret it if I left you alone right now. So, can I just stay by you until the end?”  
  
“...”  
  
“S-sorry, I’m unreliable so I’m not as good as making promises as you are but, if you asked me to… I’d make a promise like that.”  
  
He really did say stupid things. She really did feel stupid right now. It was all going to be over soon, and yet she was holding onto to this one string. She wanted to be everybody’s hope, but this one, unreliable, nervous boy, was becoming her hope.  
  
If she did die. If she failed. If she disappointed everyone. Then maybe this boy would still mourn her. It really was stupid, thinking about this when she had more important things to do. She wiped at her eye. She had no time to be listening to sad songs right now.  
  
“A-ah! Akamatsu-san did I say something wrong? D-don’t cry I’ll apologize! It’s all my fault. You’re not supposed to cry right now we still have to save everyone. Umm, o-okay you can cry if you want. I’ll just be here. Waiting. Until you’re done. Oh, you want to cry on me that’s fine. Umm… Y-you’re leaning against me… now you’re  touching me should I do something? I’m just gonna… not touch you… and not make anything worse until you’re all cried out.”  
  
Shuichi’s stammering voice continued on in the background like a narration reminding her of where she was.  
  
She lived her life for the sake of piano. She thought piano was everything to her. She was only happy when she was playing piano. She only knew herself when she was playing piano. That the only reason she could continue to smile, was because she was blessed by talent.

 

However, she had been thinking in the back of her mind the entire day that she might die. Yet, she never thought about never playing piano again. She was too busy worrying about the boy in front of her. The idea of never seeing him again filled her with dread.  Slowly but surely, piano, was replaced with Shuichi. Shuichi. Shuichi. Shuichi. Shuichi. She repeated obsessively, the same way she once obsessively practiced piano. Piano kept her heart strong. But, Shuichi kept her heart strong now.

 

The idea that he might regret meeting her… is what made her feel so weak. She did not want their story to end. Not if it would hurt Shuichi. Maybe Komaeda was right and she had just been spouting idealistic words before. She was only trying to play the role of the leader because she thought that was what was needed of her. But in that moment she started wishing with all of her heart, that nobody would have to die, that they would all be saved, for a fairy tale ending like that. Most of all she wished the boy who she was leaning against right now, would be saved.

 

The idea that this might be her last day with everyone, made her sad. A sadness she had been repressing this entire time, hiding behind a smile. The idea that Shuichi wanted to spend his last day with her, made her stupidly happy in a way she did not want to think about. Her mind was a mess of emotions she did not understand. She just dumped them all on the boy in front of her. She needed to get rid of them, so she could proceed. After this one moment to herself, feeling these feelings, she would go back to being what everyone needed her to be. She made that silent promise to herself in her heart.

  
Unaware of her own feelings. Akamatsu did not see as she showed Shuichi that weak side of herself, instead of the brave one she had wanted to show him, that each of their strings were slowly becoming wrapped around each other, tying them up together.

 

🧸

 

“Whatcha doing?”

 

『Playing cats cradle. Kaiki-kun used to play it with me. Do you want to play?』  
  
“Only got one hand, duh.”

 

『Oh that’s right. I forget. You’re so artificial and cold it’s hard to tell which parts of you are plastic.』

 

“Hey, Misogi this could be the end of the world you know. What if that was the last thing you ever said to me? Don’t you want your dying words to be a declaration of love for me, before you drown in despair?”

 

『You contemplate the end of the world far too often.』

  
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s starting to get boring thinking of that.”

 

『There are better reasons to stop wanting to end the world than you just got bored of trying… maybe you had a change of heart.』  
  
“That requires actually having a heart Misogi, keep up.”

 

『I don’t want to keep up with your batshit thought process. I’m already getting motion sickness from always trying to follow my own. Besides, if things go wrong the worst that could happen is you die, we don’t know anything about the outside world.』  
  
“Well, if I die that’s obviously the end of the world. There’s no world more important than my own.”

 

『Yeah, yeah...』  
  
“It’ll be the end of your world too!”

 

『So she says. I’m sure I’ll feel all of the despair. I’ll feel a more despairful despair. I’ll feel perfect despar upon losing you. In fact you should just drop dead already so I can feel the despair of losing you.』  
  
“Telling someone to drop dead like that, you sure are scary.”

 

Junko had woken up that morning with a headache. Instead of going right away to enact their plan, they lingered like this. Junko rested her head on Kumagawa’s lap. It was a habit ever since her headaches started getting worse and worse, for him to brush her hair while she was helpless in his laugh like this.  
  
『...』

 

“Aren’t I right? I mean, just when I finally decided to live and you’re the one who pushed me over and over again to consider living, you act like you don’t care. It’s cruel. It’s so cruel. Senpai, do you realize that?”

 

『Yes.』Kumagawa said, stroking her hair all the same. They could be this close and still whisper the nastiest things in each other’s ears, they enjoyed cutting each other to pieces with a smile. 『I’m fully aware of that. I’m boring you right now. I’m only thinking about myself. I’m so familiar with my sinfulness and nonsensical bent that I could sink into the depths of hell alone right now.』  
  
“Why would you want to go to hell alone? That’s no fun.”

 

『To continue the metaphor, even if we went to hell together that would still be hell. Saying otherwise is just nonsensical romanticism. Only someone as stupid as me would say that with a smile on their face and think it sounds cool.』  
  
“You sure are self-hating. You’re just going to keep punishing yourself over and over because of what happened to Ajimu-san until the end? Even though it’s a total waste of my time right now?””

 

『I’m a masochist』He admitted. Kumagawa put the game of cat’s cradle down. He let the strings fall away from his hands and become a mess.『And an extremely nasty one, at that. But it’s my way, my credo, and my style. I have no intention of budging.』  
  
“Yeah, I don’t think so. You really are worthless. You’re nothing but trouble. Every time I need you the most, you’ll fail me for sure. You won’t go the way I want you too. When I love you, you hate me, and when I hate you, you love me.” Junko sounded a bit lonely saying that.

After all, Kumagawa had been suffering alone.  
He would not share his sadness with her.  
Now that she thought about it.  
It had always been like that.  
He wanted to save her.  
That was how their relationship began.  
Her eyes narrowed.  
As if trying to make out an image even her eyes could no see.  
Trying to read the inscrutable.  
Trying to see what was no longer there.  
A distant, meaningless gaze.  
She always wore a mask.  
When her real emotions came out.  
She had no experience in dealing with them.  
No experience being a genuine person.  
Didn’t even try to before this.  
So you could tell.  
And understand.

As if.  
You were able to feel another person's feelings for them.   
You were genuinely able to connect with them.   
An illusion.  
  
“But that’s…”

  
She said.  
It was, for instance-  
Obsession.   
Always thinking about them.   
Words of desire.   
Taking the breath from his lips.   
Always wanting to be together.   
Trying to force the broken pieces together.  
Incompatibility.   
Unable to feel indifferent.  
A nightmare you wake up laughing from.  
The mirror warping and breaking apart.  
Unable to recognize yourself.  
In the broken pieces of a mirror.   
Desiring a counterpart. Facing a counterpart.  
The desire of a screw stabbing into you.  
The desire of spears from every angle.  
The ecstasy of falling apart.  
Living in a state of falling apart. .  
A vital component-stealing.  
Heart-pounding.   
Mind screwing.   
Despair inducing.  
Smile.  
  
“What's so despair inducing about you. That's the despair I love.”

The words he wanted to hear. The always smiling, energetic, and sometimes sad.  
Girl who said she liked him.

But he wasn’t happy.  
Was it because Ajimu-san was not saying those words?

He still felt swept up in the mood. He put a hand on the ground and leaned his head over her.  
He was taken in by that smile. Hypnotized. Unable to look away from her lips.  
The two of them had been together all this time but they barely touched each other.  
She was miles away.  
She was on an island.  
Therefore, she was lonely.  
This feeling of wanting to be together.  
Of wanting to cram each other’s broken pearts to make a whole.  
Wanting to have some vital piece stolen from them.  
Wanting to have their heart grabbed.  
If he reached into her chest and crushed her heart in his fingers, her heart might beat again.  
He leaned forward to cross the distance.  
He stared at her lips, remembering how cold it always felt to kiss them.  
How pale and lifeless those lips looked.  
It felt like, a goodbye kiss.

When suddenly, Junko shoved an apple into his mouth.

『Huh?』  
  
Did he get the signal wrong?  
Junko’s brain fired off way too main signals, and he was a broken receiver.

“I’m going to cheer you up!”

She already decided that for him.

“If today’s going to be my last day on earth, then I want to go out with a smile. That’s what Kumagawa-senpai would say.”

『Are you writing my lines for me already? Soon you won’t even need me around..』  
  
“Maybe I can hire a more handsome looking actor.”

『H-hey, my character appeal is that I’m unconventionally attractive. Don’t go throwing me away for some random hottie, that’s way too shallow.』  
  
“Maybe I don’t even need another actor. My voice actress is so talented she can play every single part at once.”

『That’s way too much stress for her! Oh, Junko we’re getting off topic.』  
  
“Oh, I almost forgot what I was going to say. Misogi, let’s make a promise. If we share the fruit of fate together then no matter what happens we’ll get punished together.”

『Huh?』  
  
“You know, the story of the first man and woman? Who ate the fruit together?”

『So what, do you want to be the snake in that story?』  
  
For that, Junko sat up and bit him on the neck. Really though, she was just proving his point.  
  
“This might be the last time we get to talk like this. So we should make a promise.”

『You’re really worried about that?』  
  
“Jeez you sit around drowning in self pity, and you think it’s impossible for anyone to be worried about you. If you disappear imagine how boring this game would get for me!? Think of somebody besides yourself for once!”

『Methinks she should listen to her own advice.』  
  
“Let’s promise to share the fruit. If we’re each other’s punishment then we’ll always be together..”

Junko said, pushing her mouth against the apple and forcing it in his face again. There was no contact at all with the apple right there between them, and yet it felt like she was forcing a kiss. Kumagawa sighed. His eyes drifted off as if bored.  
He let the red apple fall away. Roll on the ground. Get dirty.

『Don’t you have a bad track record with promises like this?』  
  
“I kept my promise to Matsuda-kun, I remembered him until the end. There was just an unexpected twist where he ended up all squishy.”

『Because you squashed him.』Kumagawa’s eyes were low on her, as she sat up in his lap to face him. It was an Enoshima Junko he never expected to see, she almost looked desperate.

『Making a promise like that, isn’t that just asking for one of us to contradict it later?』

“Then, it’ll be fun when we break it. A minus shows affection by betrayal, remember? It’ll be something interesting for us both to see.”

『We’ll have fun, huh?』Kumagawa was not smiling. Junko got the sense, he was showing her his true expression. 『I think saying, ‘we’re each other’s punishment’ is just self satisfaction. I don’t need a promise I just need those words.』

  
“I want to kill you.”

『I want to save you.』

  
“Misogi… why do you want to save me so badly? You don’t even think about saving yourself right now.”

『Mukuro-chan and Yasuke-chan both wanted you to be saved so badly. I don’t want Yasuke-chan’s dream to be an unhappy one that could never come true. I don’t want him to believe there was no chance for a happy ending.』  
  
“What does any of that have to do with you though?”

『You’re so selfish.』  
  
“Yeah, try learning from my example.” Her expression puzzled. “Maybe, I don’t need to be saved…”

『...』

“If anyone should do it, I should be the one saving myself. If doing something only hurts you, you should just get bored and quit. And I’m saying this as someone who likes seeing you get hurt.”

『Then I guess I’m not needed even here.』

“Ugh! You are so impossible!” Junko finally sat up backing away from him. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and forced him down. He stared into her eyes. Confused. Unsteady. His entire world suddenly knocked off its balance. “Fine, you can go to hell for all I care! Chase after Ajimu-san if you want in the afterlife! Keep looking at me like all you want to do is run away, you crybaby devil! But no matter what, even if it’s from hell, I’m going to drag you back.”  
  
Once I have my claws in you.  
I’ll tear and rip. That was the feeling he got.  
For a moment he almost believed she could control life and death.  
The control freak that she was.  
I’m not giving up on you, so you’re not allowed to give up.  
Her grip on him was so strong.  
Like she did not know what to do. Besides force it.  
Junko knew everything, but not how to fix this. She only knew how to break.  
She was angry at him for being broken. She was angry at herself, for breaking things, over, and over and over, up until this point, because it was all she had ever done. Boring, repetitive behavior. Junko pushed him over to the side as if shrugging him off and stood up on her own.

“It’s the last day, I can’t believe I’m wasting my time on stuff like this.” She said with a hand on her hip. “Come on, it’s the mastermind’s last day on earth. Let’s go end it with style.”  
  
『Huh? Did I make her mad?』He stood up after her. Despite the genuine anger behind her words his face barely changed at all. 『It’s no good to fight, I guess I should apologize afterwards.』

  
Their last day on earth. Their last conversation together.  
It was a total waste of time.  
Pointless.  
Forgettable.  
Nonsense.

🧸

 

“Hitoyoshi-kun where are you taking me?”  
  
“Somewhere where we’ll be alone.”  
  
“Alone with me. What terrible luck you must have.”  
  
Zenkichi groaned. Which Komaeda thought was a fair response. Most people when they got tired of him, just rejected him entirely. THe were behind the school. Near a door that nobody had the key to unlock just yet. Komaeda guessed it would unlock in the next round.  
  
Unlock a new area to give the children more tools and new locations to murder each other with. Now that he thought about it, the killing game game design was rather predictable and boring. If he were to ever design such a thing he would want to make a more clear progression to feel like the main characters had achieved something.

  
He would make them chase the illusion of hope. Wait, why was he thinking about this like he was the bad guy? Damnit, Komaeda no.  
  
“Were you serious back there about wanting to die?”

  
“No, it was just a joke.”

 

“What’s funny about that?”

  
“The idea that someone as self important as me thinking he could sacrifice himself for anyone, and to have it have any meaning. I’m sure someone out there is laughing at it. Maybe Kumagawa is laughing at me.”  
  
“Dude, you got me all worried!” Zenkichi whined, like a puppy. The hurt expression on his face almost made Komaeda feel bad. He was usually bad at reading other people’s faces, but Zenkichi was such an open book Komaeda would have to be blind not to see it.  
  
There was someone so genuinely worried about his life, and Komaeda still pulled a stunt like that. Ever since Kirigiri had accused him of such, he had been watching himself more closely. Doubting himself, and therefore doubting everything. In response to the accusation of being self absorbed, he just thought about himself even more.

  
For the longest time the only person he ever had was himself. He just did not think about it, the fact that there were others around him. He took it as a given that they would one day leave. They would be driven away by his bad luck, or he would drive them away, or worse he was not just acting like a bad person to make them hate him, but rather they would realize how hatable he truly was on the inside as well.

  
Now that he thought about it he had known Zenkichi for a long time. Zenkichi did not become some love of his life, he did not change every time he lost him and then met him again like Hinata did. He was a dependable guy. He always thought of others. The exact opposite of Komaeda in nature then.

  
“There’s no way I could offer up my life to die, because you see… Kumagawa is my killer after all.” Komaeda said, looking directly at Zenkichi’s eyes for once. He almost never looked into the eyes of others. Part of it was because he lacked the part of his brain that told him when to and when not to make eye contact that everybody else had. Part of him thought it was pointless because he would miss those signals anyway. Part of him… just did not want to see himself as others saw him. That was why he decided to look now, as a sign of how serious he was being.  
  
Komaeda was smart, but he fell for Kumagawa’s lies. He could see through Kokichi’s but not Kumagawa’s. Even though Kokichi was talented, and Kumagawa was without talent. It was just another paradox. Or maybe… Komaeda really did want to believe in Kumagawa.  
  
It was like a promise between them. Komaeda had never promised anything before. Komaeda actually hated lying, as much as he hated disappointing others. That was why he thought he was being straightforward. If he never promised anything, he could avoid that loss as well. So, this was like his first childhood promise. A pinky swear, with the boy on the other side of the mirror. That Kumagawa would be his killer.  
  
There was no way Zenkichi could comprehend such a thing. He looked scared for a moment, but that was fine too. Komaeda knew he was scary. If he was less of a selfish person, he would have scared Zenkichi off a long time ago.  
  
“You know Hitoyoshi-kun, this could be your last day alive. You’re not spending it with Medaka-chan, your hope. Aren’t you disappointed, that I’m here right next to you instead of her?” Komaeda was clearly trying to taunt him. He taunted the boy who had pulled him aside from everyone ust to ask if he was okay. The boy who had genuine worry painted all over his face.

 

Zenkichi just went quiet for a moment. Komaeda thought it was good that he had hurt him. Then he regretted hurting him. Then he thought it was better for him to hurt people, because they would realize who he truly was sooner rather than when it was too late. Then, Zenkichi replied thoughtfully. “You’re right, for the longest time all I wanted was to be by Medaka-chan’s side. So, to have her gone right now it’s like this isn’t even real to me. I don’t know what to do… I don’t know what to do if I’ve lost her, but… that doesn’t mean I want to lose you either.” Zenkichi’s sincerity, was probably a weapon that could poison any liar far worse than any assassin’s tool. “Besides, you’re missing someone really important right now too. Don’t belittle your own feelings and make them less important than mine.”  
  
That was right.  
He wanted to yell at Hinata-kun. He wanted to call him stupid. However, in order to do that he needed to see him again. He wanted to fight like they always did, and then make up in a half hearted way.  
  
“You see too much in me. You’re just being kind. You can hurt others with kindness too, you know.”  
  
“Komaeda-senpai, do you remember the last time we talked like this just before the killing game started? I told you, that you weren’t a murderer. I was trying to be kind you’re right, but I think to you I must have just been denying who you really were. It’s like I was rejecting that person, right?” Zenkichi must have thought a lot about it. He was always thinking more than others gave him credit for. “Well, it’s not like I can tell you who you really are or not, but it looks like to me you’re getting tired of being the person you were. And insisting you weren’t that person didn’t really help so… Whatever. You are trash. You do bad things.”  
  
“Ummm….I’m not sure how this is any better…”  
  
“But you’re my trash!”

 

“Uh….”

 

“You’re all lost! Kumagawa’s all lost! Junko’s all lost too! Then, the first step is looking at yourself as you are right? Then…you just need to find yourself… and from there… you can take a step forward.”  
  
“Thanks for the inspirational speech I guess…”  
  
“Oh shut up you love inspirational speeches. Why do you always have to sass me!”  Zenkichi said, shaking Komaeda. He really must have been frustrated. He should know better than to shake a sick person though. “You’ve done bad stuff, but I think you deserve a chance okay? Please don’t say stuff like ‘I’ll give my life to you’ even if it’s a joke.”  
  
“A chance?”  
  
“Because… you’re a lucky guy right? So you should get, lots of chance.”  
  
Zenkichi was trying. Komaeda wanted to laugh. Light hearted laughter between friends at the end of the world. There was no way Komaeda could think himself deserving of such an ending.

  
“You’re not Hinata-kun, and I’m not Medaka-chan. So we’re stuck here on our last day’s on earth with each other.”  
  
“We’re stuck with friends.” Zenkichi said. His smile as radiant as ever. It reminded him of Kumagawa’s smile for some reason. Komaeda wished, Kumagawa would smile like that at him again. Zenkichi suddenly heard a beep. He had a timer around his belt. He dug in his pockets and pulled out several sheets of paper. “Oh shit, I’m late. I gotta go yell these things Junko told me to yell at Kaito. Ugh, did she have to script this entire thing out down to the minute I’m so bad at memorization.”

 

He yelled as he started to run away.  
Zenkichi was bad at memorization but he was good at taking orders though.  
Komaeda turned around to see Kokichi watching him.  
He started to wonder if the little boy was one of those monsters in japanese horror films, he just always seemed to turn up watching. Maybe they were connected in a way.  
No. How laughable. He was not connected to anyone.  
  
“Hm, what’s up? You look super scared, Komaeda-chan.”  
  
“Scared? There’s no reason for someone like me to be scared. That requires putting unnecessary value on my own life.”  
  
“You’re always hanging out with Hitoyoshi-chan and Kumagawa-chan. They’re the scaaaariest people here!”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You know it’s like one of those riddles, one of them always lies, and one of them always tells the truth. I forget how the rest goes. They should just have it go one of them always lies, and the other one also always lies. That’s way more fun.”  
  
“You always lie, too.”  
  
“That’s why you should be scared of me! Well, something’s finally happened to break up all the boring tedium anyway.”  
  
“Boring?” He only repeated that because he was struck by a momentary resemblance to Enoshima Junko.  
  
“Besides, don’t you know! The time limit ends at 10 pm. Tonight! It’s just around the corner! This could be our last day on earth!” So Komaeda had been told, and so everyone seemed to be thinking. “If people feel like they need to take action to survive… who are you to stop them, Koameda-chan? But, by the same token, who am I to stop you from stopping them? So… go stop them! I believe in you!”  
  
“That’s definitely a lie.”  
  
Komaeda said, as the pendulum swinging back and forth in his heart finally landed on a decision. He felt an odd amount of stillness. He was sure he might regret it or contradict himself later, but he made up his mind for now.  
  
“Because no one would ever believe in me.”


	16. No More Dreaming

“I’m sorry about that…”  
  
When Kaede finished wiping her eyes she slapped her cheeks hard and went back to smiling as normal. She barely wore any makeup around her eyes, so there was little evidence she had cried in the first place. She had to be bright enough to dry all her tears.  
  
If SHuichi had cried though, Kaede thought, he would probably look like a member of the living dead right now with all the makeup he wore underneath his eyes. That thought helped her smile.  
  
“You don’t need to be sorry.”  
  
“But, I’m not acting like myself-”  
  
“You’re always smiling but that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to ever think negatively at all. The fact that you try to smile, and think positive even when you doubt yourself is what makes you so strong.” Unlike me, Shuichi wanted to say. “You don’t have to keep smiling, just stay yourself. Stay the Kaede I believe in.”

  
Shuichi’s words were so sincere there was no way they could be a lie. Yet, Kaede had a hard time believing them. The truth can be harder to believe than some lies. The truth has little value, that’s why I’m fine with fiction.  
  
“We have more important things to worry about than me anyway…” Kaede mumbled, avoiding directly answering his words. She raised her hands up again to psyche herself up. “So, why are we in this classroom again?”

  
Kaede was still a bit of an airhead. When they were together, Shuchi hogged most of the three brain cells between them. “This is the perfect place to keep watch after we set up the cameras. Because we can see anyone who goes down to the basement. With the door open a little…Look you can see the staircase, right?”  
  
“Oh, yeah, you’re right! We can keep a lookout for anyone who goes down to the basement!”  
  
“There’s one more reason I chose this specific classroom.” Shuichi walked over to the vent on the wall.  
  
“A vent?” Kaede said, performing her role in their two man routine admirably.  
  
“It’s connected to the library in the basement. You’ll recognize the smell immediately.”  
  
“The smell?” Kaede immediately leaned in close down where Shuichi was without thinking at all. “Oh! It smells like musty old books!” My personal favorite scent.

 

“It’s probably a vent to control the humidity in the library.”  
  
“But a vent in a classroom? That’s an odd design choice for a school.”  
  
Everything about the school was odd. The classroom she was in was overgrown with vines, and there were teddy bears piloting giant robots. But the vent in the classroom, that you complain about.  
  
“The vent is the other reason I chose this specific classroom to keep watch. This vent is just big enough for someone to be able to fit, so we should watch this carefully too.”  
  
“I don’t think I could fit through there… Well, maybe I could but it’d be tough.” She straightened up once more poking at Shuichi’s hip. “If a skinny goth twink like you tried though, it’d be easy. I guess I’ll have to keep my eyes on you.”

 

Shuichi was so tall and thin at his waist, that he looked like a strong breeze could snap him in half. His irregular proportions just made him seem even more like a withdrawn recluse. Still he blinked, “I’m a what now?” Kaede had this terrible habit of making Shuichi suddenly unable to think right when he was around her. “Anyway, it’s time. We should set up the cameras now.  
  
They followed the stairs down past the media room and into the library. Kaede looked up and saw a large duct leading into the room, it clunked awkwardly as a sign air was circulating. As Shuichi heard those same noises he thought, _ah, those are the sounds my brain makes all the time._

 

Standing in the center of the room surrounded by books on all sides Kaede looked to Shuicihi again. “So, where did you want to put the cameras?”  
  
“Let’s aim the receiver at the moving bookcase. If we place the security sensor on the bookcase itself, then when it opens… the receiver will let us know.”  
  
“And if we place the camera to face the moving bookcase?”  
  
“Yes, the amera should capture the exact moment the mastermind moves the bookcase. Then, we’ll aim the two remaining cameras at the front and rear entrances.”

  
Kaede followed Shuichi’s eyes to the place high above the bookcases that he planned on hiding the cameras. To the side there was a sliding ladder meant for retrieving books on high shelves. She positioned the ladder below the vent and climbed up.  The moment she reached the top, she hesitated throwing both of her hands at her sides. She turned her head back to Shuichi, staring at her with dull eyes from the floor. “Whoa… Now that I’m up here, this is pretty high. It’s kinda scary.”  
  
“Do you wanna switch?”  
  
“Nah, I’m fine. By the way, can you see my, um… delicates?”

“Ah, sorry…” Shuichi pulled his hat further over his eyes. His pale face finally gained some color.  
  
“Sorry, huh? So you did see them.” W-well, whatever. He can’t unsee them. She tried not to dwell on that thought. Whenever she was around Shuichi, she wasted timing thinking about the stupidest things instead of what needed to be done. She reached up and removed the grate from the vent.  
  
Shuichi heard more clanging from inside the vent. “Did you break something Kaede?”  
  
“Um, no… I didn’t break it.” She saw the look on his face. He probably thought she was a klutz. Maybe she was playing up the ditzy girl side of her a little too hard.

  
“So how does it look could a person fit in there?”  
  
“Maybe like… a starving orphan could. Just in case, I’ll stack more books around the vent so no one can get through.”

  
With that, she began to arrange the books around the vent. Shuichi was not keeping his eyes on her, afraid that he might see something awkward again. For a detective he must have been familiar with the concept of detective novels. For example, there is one ploy called a misdirection. Draw the audience’s attention to something on purpose and slip something quietly under their noses. For example, Kaede’s pink panties. Imagine if I suddenly spent a long time ranting about panties from nowhere.  
  
She wore her favorite undergarments. A basic and popular pink color with modern lace. Kaede was someone who seemed to naturally stand out from the crowd, always be attracted to the center of things, but she insisted she was a normal, dull girl who only happened to like piano. This contrast in her character was most represented in her panties. Such a vibrant, pink, cheerful girl wore plain underwear that any girl her age would wear.  
  
In fact let’s not stop there. We could analyze every single character right now, from the color of their panties. Kumagawa originally wore white boxers, but he switched to  black. This was obviously a sign of the color dualism of his character pure white and pitch black. Kumagawa’s black and white internalized thinking and his inability to forgive himself because of it, despite always seeing nuance in other people is the reason for his downfall.

  
Enoshima Junko wears black panties with red lace. Despite showing off such traditionally sexy underwear, Junko herself is rather proper and uptight. Sexuality is just another level of performance to her. It’s an outer layer in which she can be judged. It’s a way she exhibits control for how she is seen. Everything, everything, everything, is a bid for agency, to seize control. Genuine acts of intimacy are different than, because those imply a loss of control, ceding agency to someone else, or sharing it willingly.  
  
There might be no such thing as a ‘true self’ or ‘true colors’ but everybody in the world, hides what color panties they are wearing. Unless, they go without wearing any underwear at all. Now that I think about it this metaphor for is kind of stupid.  
  
In fact.  
  
How long did Shuichi sit there thinking about them?  
Perhaps, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and my theory of panties connect somehow.  
Or, perhaps panties have some sort of magical quality that extend time. Something important in the narrative probably happened, while we wasted all this time thinking about panties.  
  
A misdirection. If there was a beautiful vase of flowers, everyone would be distracted by those flowers and not notice the vase the flowers were in was filled with blood instead of water. Flowers are often used to cover up the scents of corpses after all.  
  
Kaede was like a beautiful flower to Shuichi. In a world that had shown him nothing but ugly things, he finally had made beautiful memories of their time together in such an ugly situation.  
  
When Kaede finally climbed back down, she startled him by suddenly speaking up. She had no idea why he had suddenly fallen quiet and started staring into space like that. “THis will work… This will definitely work!”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Yeah, it definitely will! This plan is perfectly composed like Chopin’s ballads. I actually really like complicated contraptions like Rude Goldberg machines and stuff. So I’m positive this will work! The setup is perfect.”  
  
“Y-you really think so?”  
  
“Of course! We’ll definitely catch the mastermind, and then we’ll all escape. SO let’s hurry up and set up the cameras.”  
  
“Yes, so I think it would be a good idea to set up the cameras between the books, so that-”  
  
“Oh, hold on. I had an idea while I was on top of the bookcase. What if we place a camera up there? I’m sure the mastermind won’t notice it. So, I organized all of them when you were staring into space.”

  
While Shuichi was spaced out, she had straightened out the books on the shelf and organized them in order. It must have taken her awhile to do that. She must have been a really fussy organizer too.

 

Shuichi was suddenly eager to make up for lost time. The two of them together, placed the sensors, and cameras to cover both of the exits and the swinging bookshelf.  
  
“This plan will probably work. No, not just probably. It will deifnitely work. It has to work.” Kaede’s cheeks were as round, and her face as soft as ever but her eyes look hardened.

Shuichi was too scared to look into her eyes to notice. “Alright then, the final step… Turn the sensors on. There’s a ten second delay as it starts up, so we have to leave quick.”  
  
“Got it. It’d be a waste of film if it took our pictures.”

 

In a hurry both of them exited the library. Shuichi hesitated touching his chin as they both stood near the classroom. “There’s still some time left… Do you want to go see anybody?” Just a moment ago, Kaede asked him the same thing. Kaede was friendly to everybody though, he did not want to assume.  
  
“No, I’d rather focus on the plan. Besides, I’m sure everyone else is safe. Plus, once we get out of here I’ll have all the time in the world to see them.”  
  
“That’s true. Well, let’s go to the classroom.”  Shuichi pulled his hat to the side and swiveled around, trying to make his worries disappear too. The Kaede who had cried with him a moment ago seemed like an entirely different person, and the Kaede he knew was standing in front of them. He did not think anything special of such a scene. Even when kaede had cried, he did not reach out to comfort her, or say anything to reassure her. To him, it was like she cried in front of an unfriendly stranger.

  
He did not need to be anyone special. He did not need to share special moments with her. All he asked was to be by her side. That was what he thought, but even so he could not walk right next to her, and followed behind her same as always as they walked back to the classroom.  
  
Upon entering the classroom, another wave of anxiety suddenly overwhelmed Kaede. Her eyes stared into a fixed distance and she remained quiet. The only reminder that she was still alive for now, was the thunderous drumming of her heart in her ears. Who knew what she was thinking about, maybe she was thinking about panties.  
  
“Let’s keep the door open a little. So we can see anyone going to the basement.”  
  
“Yeah…”  
  
“Ah… Akamatsu-san? About the security sensor receiver…”  
  
“Yeah…”  
  
“Could you hold on to i, please? I just feel like… you’d be better suited for it than me. Ah, there’s a power switch on it. Make sure you don’t turn it off by accident.”  
  
Kaede stopped thinking about panties, or whatever she was thinking about, brought back by Shuichi’s voice. “No… you hold onto it, Saihara-kun. You’re the one who came up with this plan… And… I trust you. Aso, Saihara-kun. You just said I’m better than you at something. Why do you say things like that, anyway?”  
  
Kaede did not get it. She truly did not. She could only see the world through her own eyes. She had no idea how other people saw things, how they saw themselves. She never even tried to think about it. She just wanted Shuichi to see himself the way she had started to see him.

 

“...What?”

 

“I guess it’s good that we have some time left, because I wanted to talk to you about that.”  
  
“Talk to me…?”

“It’s probably none of my business, but I think you should be more confident. Especially since you were selected as the Ultimate Detective.”  
  
“No, really, I… shouldn’t even be the Ultimate Detective. I’m not… even a real detective.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I… Didn’t even want to be a detective. My Uncle runs a detective business… In that home I never felt like I was welcome. I thought, if I helped out as an apprentice, it would become more like a home to me. It was usually just… cheating couples… background checks… But one day, I came across a murder case completely by chance. I solved it before the police did. They called me the “boy detective.” I thought my Uncle might praise me, but I only solved one case.”  
  
“Even so, it’s still amazing that you solved a murder case. Most people can’t do that.”  
  
“...I wonder. I wonder if, ah… it was really a good thing I solved that case. The look on his face when we caught him… I can still see it, even now. He stared at me, like he hated me more than anything else in this world. My uncle too, I worked really hard to become a part of his family. I thought, he was entrusting me with so much work because he needed me. I thought he might be happy because I worked so hard for him. But when we were alone, instead of praise, he looked at me with envious eyes. I solved a case he had worked so hard with and come up empty. I was an ungrateful brat stealing away the credit for his hard work.”  
  
Shuichi saw it right then. All around him, on the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling, eyes were peeling open to stare at him. They were white, featureless eyes, full of nothing but contempt. He was a detective he was supposed to seek out the truth, but he hated the eyes more than anything else. People could disguise their face in any way, they could wear all sorts of masks, but the eyes did not lie. The only thing you got to see when looking into the eyes of another, was the distorted image of yourself,  all of the resentment that it held.

  
People, really hated each other. That was his childish and simplistic way to explain why this was such a cold world. It was not just him, every single person lived their lives averting their eyes. It was the only way to live in such a world. Nobody would keep their sanity, if they spent every second of the day confronting the cruelty of the world head on. People did not get along. They saw the worst in one another. They looked at happiness and despised it because they were not happy.  
  
It was the same for the way everyone else treated Kaede, because she was at the center of their eyes, even though she just wanted to save them everybody else made up their own reasons for disliking her. They just did not want to look at her. Looking at someone else, reminds you of your own inferiority.  
  
He already knew there was no home for him in this world. The parents who left him behind were not looking his way. He knew it so why did he have to look? When looking would only hurt him? The most visceral thing that showed in the eyes of others was their pain. He was hurting enough, he wanted to avoid pain most of all.  
  
It was enough if he went through life simply without hurting anyone, right? He wished to be invisible. He had no reason to be strong, and no one to be strong for. He never considered himself to be an extraordinary person. He agreed with all of those eyes that looked down on him. He thought he was a worthless person too.  
  
Then, why did they all keep staring at him? What did they want from him? He just wanted to disappear. He wanted to live as quietly as possible. He did not want to be a main character or anything like that. Yet no matter how hard he tried, he could never escape those eyes or their judgement. They followed him wherever he went.  
  
Even when he was alone, he worried about what others might see of him. He was constantly second guessing himself, he could barely ever bring himself to act, but still that was not enough. Those eyes were everywhere. It was like his whole body was covered in eyes. They peeled open on his skin, looking at him from within.  
  
They were all going to know soon. They were all going to see. No matter how much he hid himself, those eyes were going to find him. They would see through him. They would know how wretched he was. How unseemly. He was not a kind person at all. He was just too weak to be cruel, too cowardly. That must be why, none of his actions ever amounted to anything good. That was why he could not be the person he wanted to be, he could not live the life he wanted to live no matter how hard he tried. The eyes knew, how much he fell short as a person. That was why they hated him.

“Later, I heard that… he murdered the victim to get revenge for his family. THe victim was abusive.. They drove the victim to suicide. People told me… the culprit was right to do what he did. The victim deserved it. When it all started to backfire on me, my Uncle laughed in my face, told me I deserved it for solving a crime just for the attention. But I led the police right to him… I thought if I solved that crime it would make everybody happy, but the victim, the public, my uncle they all hated me for it.”

“It’s not like you took sides… You uncovered the truth - that’s what detectives do, right?”

 

“Yeah… I uncovered the truth. Which makes it my fault. And I’m still suffering the consequences. Ever since that one.. Stupid case… I’ve been so afraid of uncovering the truth. I’ll never forget those eyes, the hatred, the way they stared into me. Ah, anyway… that’s why I have trouble looking people in the eyes sometimes…”

 

All he wanted was a quiet happiness. He did not need to be at the center of someone’s eyes, he did not need to feel special. As long as he could watch them from the side, he would find a way to be happy with that.  
  
That was why he wore the hat. Even if he was happy watching from afar though, there was just too much distance between himself and others. There was no way he could take someone’s hand across such a divide.  
  
“...I’m not a real detective, Akamatsu-san. What kind of stupid detective is afraid of the truth?”

 

Shuichi drew a careful line between himself and others. His every single action, he was observant of that line. He thought his presence was unwanted. The bonds between people were flimsy, and the strings were hard to untangle. Even something you did just to make somebody else happy, could make them hate you. That was why he tried to live, without disturbing any of the strings at all. Because he was always terrified that if he reached out to touch them, the strings would break,and it would be all his fault.  
  
He tried to live delicately that way, unattached, unrelated, if he never reached out he would never hurt others, and he would never be hurt. If he was useless, than he would never disappoint others again. If no one relied on a weak person like him, then no one would fall. If he never tried to save anyone, he would not have to watch them slip away from his fingertips.  
  
The careful, anxious, life he had been living, the strings he observed and avoided in a pattern all around him as delicate as a spiderweb. They were smashed to pieces in one moment. Kaede gently reached out from the desk in front of him she was sitting in, and held his hand. It was like a rock had been thrown through the spiderweb.

 

  
The boy who could not take anybody’s hand. The boy who could not help others, or shout for help. He stared from underneath his hat in the desk he was sitting behind her, at their overlapped hands.

  
“Kaede…?”  
  
His voice croaked again in surprise, forgetting formalities.  
  
“I wish there was a piano here. I would play you a song to help you cheer up! Hmm… a pretty song to play for you… Oh, like “Clair de Lune” by Debussy! You always remind me of the moon, Saihara-kun, so pale and pretty, and when I’m with you my heart is calmed like a moon’s reflection on the water.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You noticed, huh? Yeah… I’m shaking, too. But… I’d be a mess if you weren’t here. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything… I would’ve been so lost. I’m glad you’re here with me, Saihara-kun. Music doesn’t sound like anything if you have no one to listen to it with. The sky looks like nothing, if you can’t share that sight with anyone. With you by my side, I feel like I can stand up to anything. You give me the courage I need to take on the mastermind. So, please… be more confident. I believe in you, so you should definitely believe in yourself.”  
  
The boy who thought all he wanted was to be left alone, to be not looked at, to live a colorless existence, had his hand taken by the girl who dragged him into her colorful world. Then he realized, he had never wanted any of that to begin with.

  
That child just wanted someone to take his hand, and tell him that it was going to be okay. That he was not alone. Why did he… Why did he spend so much time hiding until now?

 

“...OKay. I’ll try. I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try.”  
  
“Yup. You see. That’s a promise.”  
  
Shuichi for the first time, raised his head and met her eyes. Kaede had such pretty eyes, the color of lilacs. He could not believe people’s eyes, could carry such warm emotions too. Shuichi’s heart moved all on its own. Something felt different. Maybe his pulse had heightened, because of the connection between their hands. Either way, he had a feeling from this point on, he would never be able to return to his previous state of being.  
  
The moment for him was something he wanted to hold onto forever, time seemed to slow down. Perhaps the sight that he saw, was even more magical than panties.

After letting go of his hand, Kaede quickly changed the subject. “Also, I think you would look way cooler if you didn’t wear that hat.”  
  
“Wh-what are you talking about?” Shuichi said. When Kaede peeked at his face under his hat just then, she saw the tips of his cheek redden.  
  
“What? I’m serious here. Once we’re out of here, I want you to show me what you look like without the hat, okay?”

“...”  
  
“Geez… I just wanna see everyone smile. I love seeing the expressions people make when they’re enjoying themselves. That’s why I play piano… To see the smiles on everyone’s faces.” Kaede looked at everybody else, and not her own face. She could forget about herself, thinking for the sake of others. “And that’s why we need to expose the mastermind and end this dumb killing game! So we can smile with everyone else!”

 

The boy who hid behind a hat,  
The girl who hid behind a smile,  
After their serious talk, they talked about this and that to kill some time.

Neither of them could remember the last time they talked like this, just like normal kids passing the time together. If they went to a normal school, if they met each other, if they sat by the window and ate together during lunch, could they have spent their days like this?

 

🧸

 

Hours later, their conversation was interrupted by the sound of discordant circus music. Kaede looked up to the monitor and saw Monokuma laughing with the words ‘in one hour everyone dies’ appearing.

 

“Wh-what is this annoying music? Is it coming from the monitor?” Kaede jumped.  
  
“Maybe it’s a warning that we need to start killing. The time limit is almost up…”  
  
“Th-they need to stop screwing with us! How much suffering do they want from us?”  
  
Kaede should know already, the more suffering the better the fiction. She would not be nearly as compelling a character if she did not agonize over her decisions so much.  
  
“Wait, Akamatsu-san. I hear people talking in the hallway.”  
  
Seven boys and girls headed down the stairs. Rantaro, Togami, Fukawa, Kaito, Zenkichi, Maki, and following behind them from a distance was Mukuro. Rantaro especially worried her, he looked at her with those eyes and said he was going to bring an end to everything. Those eyes that looked like everything was already over for him.

  
“What’s a big group like that planning to do…?”  
  
“They’re not planning to go to the library are they? They’ll scare off the mastermind… I’m going to check out the basement!”

  
“I’ll come with you!”  
  
“No, you stay and keep watch, Akamatsu-san.”  
  
Shuichi quickly disappeared down the hallway, acting on his worries first before anything else. Kaede reached after the image of him long after he was already gone.  
  
“Huh? Why am I all alone now…?”  
  
She found herself wishing he had stayed. Shuichi made a promise to watch over her after all. At the moment she barely had any trust in herself, anymore. Realizing she was alone again, the fear and anxiety she was trying to hide rushed back inside her. She could not keep still. She could not stop herself.

  
“Saihara-kun… please come back already.”

 

🧸

  
At the same time elsewhere in the school Kirigiri had been tailing a student she saw moving suspiciously from a game of cards in the dining room. At the exact same time she bumped into Enoshima Junko who had been tailing the same person.  
  
“What wonderful music. It’s perfect for killing each other with.”  
  
Junko said, as she listened to the circus music dance in the air around them. Kirigiri stared in disbelief for a moment. The only way her brain could decipher this noise blaring from the speakers as music was if her brain was pure chaos. Or she was just as annoying as the music in the air.  
  
“What are you doing here, I was just following you.” Kirigiri harshly whispered back. She had no time for the usual posturing, or the hero villain face offs the girls usually had when around each other.

  
“Goddd? What are you a stalker? Get in line, because I have like so many…” Then, Junko’s brain processed what Kirigiri said, “That’s impossible you can’t be following me I’m right here.”  
  
Both of the girls, reached their conclusion at the exact same time.  
“The imposter!”  
“The poser!”

And then glared daggers at each other, both of them trying to nudge the other out like they were in the way. It was a large hallway but they were fighting each other over about two tiles of space.  
  
“Wait, I have no evidence that you’re the real Junko. Say something only she would say.”  
  
Junko crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Do you think anybody would be able to fake these boobs? They’re one hundred percent real, get a good look at them.”  
  
“Nevermind, I find myself wishing you were the fake. Maybe you getting killed and replaced by an imposter is a good thing after all.”

  
Junko’s brain moved faster than Kirigiri’s, but they had both reached the same conclusion. Whoever they were tailing, ahead of them, was the mastermind about to make their move. Their two plans had become a set of of crisscrossing strings in the shape of the spiderweb about to capture them.  
  
All they needed to do was take a few more steps and find them. Soon the end of the mystery novel would be reached. The culprit would be revealed.  
  
“I’m sooooo going to dewig that bitch… Said the spider to the fly.” Junko said, her toothy grin smiling across her face.  
  
That too.  
  
At that exact same moment, an alarm went off even louder than the music. Junko dug into the pocket of her tiny, tiny, skirt and pulled out what looked like a duplicate of the sensor Shuichi carried earlier. “No way, this isn’t supposed to go off yet. Did Kumagawa-senpai screw something up?”

 

Kumagawa? Screw things up?  
No way, that’s not in his characterization at all.  
Even a fool proof plan was not Kumagawa-proof.

  
Junko, or rather Junko’s brain immediately analyzed she had a choice. She could follow the mastermind, rip off their wig, and be done with this whole boring thing, and then move on to the next boring thing. Fifty two consecutive death games had broken her brain enough already, she could feel entropy eating away at the edge of her synapses she knew she would never survive a fifty third one.  
  
She hated the idea of her brain falling apart, or her losing control, of her mask splintering. She had nothing, no feelings of her own, no sentiments, no colors. All she ever had was this distorted self image, this self indulgent image. The only person who had ever seen like a real person, the only person who struggled to be alive and more than just a doll on the rails, who tried to break the cages that held everybody else to predictable behavior was herself after all.  
  
The idea of losing herself was terrifying. She had managed to build some kind of identity, from her erratic, constantly bored, brain on overdrive self. If she lost that she would have nothing left. She would probably just stop caring, about whether she was bored or not, whether she was in despair or not, everything would pass by her eyes. Everything passes.  
  
She could throw herself away.  
Or.  
She could throw away that weak little boy, who meant nothing to anyone.  
A talentless member of the crowd.  
The kind of person she saw as a faceless blue blur in the past.  
It was not a difficult decision. After all she spent her whole life choosing herself over and over again. She only loved her sister in her own way. She loved her childhood friend for the sake of her despair. Even if she chose differently now, her current self was just the culmination of all those selfish choices she made in the past. She only really knew herself in this world.  
  
Junko’s red tipped fingers, curled around the alarm in frustration. She threw it on the ground and broke it underneath her heel for no reason at all. “Kumagawa-senpai, why do you always have to cause me… so much trouble…”  
  
She turned around, leaving Kirigiri behind. Kirigiri’s usually expressionless face moved just a little bit. “Don’t pretend you suddenly care about people. It’s too late now.” She said as she turned around and committed to following her suspect.

 

🧸

 

“...Akamatsu-san? Why are you sweeping?”

 

“Huh? O-oh, no reason… I wanted to keep my hands busy. Anyway, what about the people down in the basement?”  
  
“Everything is okay. They all went to the game room.”

 

 _Ding, dong, dong, ding_ Monokuma’s voice suddenly announced.

  
  
“There’s only one hour until the time limit,” Shuichi said.  
  
“Yeah, it’s almost time.”  
  
“I’m sure that the mastermind will make their move soon. If Monokuma is going to appear when the time runs out. If Monokuma is going to show up when the time runs out, the mastermind will go to the library-” Shuichi began rationalizing, to hold back the stress.

 

Then, it happened so suddenly.  
The receiver in Shuichi’s hand suddenly went off.  
  
“Someone moved the bookcase! Hurry, Kaede!”

  
Shuichi sprinted out of the classroom with the determination of a true Ultimate Detective. Kaede dropped everything she was holding, the broom, and her unzipped backpack and went racing after Shuichi. She had already started to sweat, before she even started running. Her face was a sickly pallor, she must have not been used to running.

  
Just outside the library door, they were stopped by Kaito, and Zenkichi.

  
“Huh? What are you guys doing here? Well, never mind. Your timing is perfect. You should join our strategy meeting.”  
  
“Shit… what was my line…” Zenkichi said, staring at the piece of paper in his hands.  
  
Kaito however did not notice at all. “Oh yeah right, we need a really cool line when we punch the robots.”  
  
“Strategy meeting?”Kaede echoed.  
  
“When the time limit hits, we’re gonna fight Monokuma! We’re planning for the battle right now, Hitoyoshi-kun approached me with the idea. I didn’t know he believed in me that much!”  
  
“Yeah, sure I believe in your dude.” Zenkichi said giving him a thumbs up in the background.  
  
“We thought it’d be harder for Monokuma to get to the basement, so we’re going to the Game Ro-”  
  
“H-hold on! Both of you, come with us! The mastermind is in the library!”

“Let’s get him. I’ll go first, and Hitoyoshi-kun you back me up!”

“Well, I’m used to playing second fiddle anyway.” Zenkichi sighed in the background, wondering if he was going to escape the label of Medaka’s sidekick anytime soon, even around these new kids.  
  
“I’m gonna do it! I’ll be the one to take them down!” Kaito said, slamming his fists together.  
  
“This isn’t a competition!” Kaede said, getting in the middle of the one way posturing fight and pushing both Kaito and Zenkichi’s faces to the side. “I’m gonna open the door right now, okay!?”

 

If the mastermind disappeared.  
If only.  
Then all of these wrong feelings inside of her would disappear too.

 

🧸

 

Kumagawa Misogi was hiding in the vents.  
Hiding in such a small space was no big deal to him. He had the body type of a starving orphan after all. He was able to move around if he popped his joints out. He was not naturally gifted, or double jointed or anything.  
  
One time or another in his life he had almost every joint in his body popped out of its socket. He had just been conditioned to ignore the pain when he pushed his bones past their natural born limits. Hsi personality was already crooked, he saw no problem at all with his outside appearance matching his inside.  
  
He slithered down the vents like a snake and only made a few clunking noises. Kaede and Shuichi were too busy watching each other at the time to notice, and the noises he made were mistaken for air circulation.  
  
The idea of waiting in the dark was nothing to him at all either. There were plenty of times he was punished, by being forced into the wet and damp crawl space, and made to wait. Even if he cried and begged nothing would change, so a long, long time ago he felt decided to feel nothing at all about being stuck in spaces like this.  
  
Kumagawa.  
Tried again and again.  
To live.  
By becoming used to the pain.  
  
He was in these vents because Junko told him to wait here. When someone entered the library, wait for them to get murdered, and then screw the mastermind to the wall. It was simple enough. There were ten strangers in this game, and Shuichi the one who had stabbed Junko.

They were people who lived their lives not caring whether he lived or died. He used to hate all people like that. He wanted to make every happy and talented person as miserable as he was, he wanted to drag them down to his level, he wanted to live his life, recklessly and carelessly rejecting happy people, not even seeing them because they refused to see him.  
  
If those people.  
Would not save him as a child.  
Kumagawa wanted to be destroyed.  
As a monster.  
  
There was no reason for him to care. He did not even need to look. He could close his eyes and shut all the painful things out like he used to. But he noticed somebody had removed the plate from the ventilation shaft and never put it back. He looked out and saw the books were arranged in a strange shape in front of him.  
  
Suddenly, the door opened and Rantaro Amami walked into the library. He looked like he had a secret. No, one step further he looked like the living embodiment of a secret. Ambivalent to everything, all alone. As he approached the book case, Kumagawa twisted his body in an inhuman way that let him escape without knocking over any of the books.  
  
He stared at the image of Rantaro’s back. He should just murmur what Ryoko always said. This person in front of him had nothing to do with him.

He wanted to live.  
Those who died were replaced and forgotten.  
Missing and lost children like him, were better off staying lost in the eyes of everybody else.  
He saw it though, danger approaching Rantaro from behind.  
His body moved on its own and he tackled Rantaro to the ground, wrapping himself around the other boy.  
  
Because the world is meaningless.  
Humans are born with no purpose.  
Live for no reason.  
And die for nothing.  
Because this world is pointless.  
And our lives are aimless.  
  
The words he used to say all the time echoed in his own head. He tried with every fiber of his being to believe in them. Everyone in the world was rotten. Searching for salvation after all that was wrong. Granting salvation to man? The concept was beyond ridiculous.  
  
He knew all that.  
He was painfully aware of it - he was a member of this world, too. But. Even if all of that was true.

  
Even if the life of Amami Rantaro was completely worthless, even if there was no meaning to his actions.  
There was no reason…  
There was no reason…  
There was no reason it would be okay to watch him die.  
He had no reason.  
He had no reason.  
He had no reason at all to act.  
Unless he decided on his own to give himself one.

Kumagawa, who laughed at the vicissitudes of life, of it’s pointlessness, still saw value in the lives of others that he knew absolutely nothing about. In the end the only life he never saw any value in was his own. He was laughing at himself the whole time.  
  
He lost all sensation in his body with a _crack._

His forehead split in half down the middle, and fresh blood spilled from the wound. He heard a thump and finally realized something had hit him in the head from behind. In his sideways vision he saw the boy he was trying to protect.

He needed to get up.  
In the back of his mind, though he always feared this day would come.  
Pushing himself past his limit over and over again.  
Until his bones were screaming at him, until his whole body grew heavy.  
Always telling himself to get up.  
He knew one day he would just stop being able to get up.  
Because life did not wait for the curtains to fall or the audience to start applauding it just ended whenever it felt like it. It had no appreciation for character arcs at all.  
  
Kumagawa tried to move his body again, but he was no longer face down on the ground using his body to shield Rantaro. He was face up looking at the sky. His mouth tasted unbelievably sweet.  
  
Standing behind his head, a small white haired child was looking down on him. Kumagawa was like a shadow connected to that boy’s feet. They both looked up at the sky at the same time. Just like Kumagawa’s head the sky was split was down the middle. He saw stage lights where there were supposed to be stars, but Kumagawa did not really care if the stars were lies they still twinkled so beautifully.

The sky that connected everyone. The sky was such a beautiful color of blue, but color changed nothing. He actually did not care that much, whether the world was colorful, or colorless. If he wanted to live a colorful life, he would drink paint until it made his mind sick and then spit it back up. He saw nothing at all in the sky. But once there was someone who sat with him underneath the same sky. They saw the same sights together, and shared that sky.  
  
『 _Ajimu-san… Smile._ 』  
『 _I want to go back to the days where it was just the two of us._ 』  
『 _Towards the end. I went to a new school, and learned a few things._ 』  
『 _Yep. I had fun._ 』  
『 _If only I was smarter back when I first met you._ 』  
『 _If only I could understand you a little better. I would have been able to talk to you more. I think about that, sometimes._ 』  
『 _I… just don’t think living is that big of a deal._ 』  
『 _I wanted to see you again._ 』  
『 _I’m not that scared._ 』  
『 _Living without you is way scarier to me._ 』  
『 _I guess I won’t be able to see Junko and Mukuro for a bit._ 』  
『 _It sucks losing again._ 』  
『 _But you know..._ 』  
『 _I...Big sis..._ 』  
『 _I know you were never going to love me in the  way I needed you to love me._ 』  
『 _I thought I was okay with that._ 』  
『 _I knew you love me on your own terms._ 』  
『 _Sometimes it even felt like I understood the way you loved me._ 』  
『 _Even if it wasn’t the way I wanted seeing that as ‘love’ would be enough._ 』  
『 _I thought I could continue to live, leaving behind all that was needed._ 』  
『 _But for some reason when you died that changed._ 』  
『 _Maybe that entire time I was hoping._ 』  
『 _Even though I told myself it was impossible over and over again._ 』  
『 _That one day, you would become what I needed you to be._ 』  
『 _That we could understand each other._ 』  
『  _That there was a way to move past all of the things that hurt._ 』   
『 _Now. All of those feelings are gone. They were taken away when you died._ 』  
『 _I wish I could just hate you._ 』  
『 _I don’t feel anything about my parents at all._ 』  
『 _I don’t remember their faces._ 』  
『 _I just see your face._ 』  
『 _I really wanted to love you._ 』  
『 _I wanted the little signs that you showed me that you did care to be enough for me._ 』  
『 _I wanted to be able to accept your love for me._ 』  
『 _I wanted to ignore the bad things you did._ 』  
『 _I wanted to focus on the good times._ 』  
『 _I wanted to believe you were only human and that you were doing your best for me._ 』   
『 _I wanted to be able to forgive you over and over._ 』  
『 _When you said things to me that I would never forget. That made me feel like I didn't exist._ 』   
『 _I wanted to believe you didn't mean those things you said._ 』   
『 _I didn't want to feel awkward bending and trying to please you._ 』  
『  _I wanted to believe everything you did was in my best interest._ 』   
『 _I wanted to see the love in your actions deep down underneath it all._ 』    
『 _I wanted the happy memories we have to make me forget all the sad ones._ 』  
『 _It hurts more because I want us to be happy together. I wanted to be enough for you._ 』  
『 _I wanted to stay together even as we were falling apart._ 』  
『 _You always looked at me like an ungrateful child._ 』  
『 _But I wanted more than anything to be a good little brother._ 』  
『 _I  wanted to be a family._ 』  
『 _Big Sis… Ajimu..._ 』  
『 _Big Sis. Big sis._ 』  
『 _Ajimu._ 』  
『 _Anshin’in-san._ 』  
『 _Did I grow up the way you wanted me to?_ 』  
『 _Am I still cute?_ 』  
『 _Are you looking at me? Can you smile only at me?_ 』    
『 _I want to see you again._ 』  
『 _I want to talk to you._ 』  
『 _I know I’m stupid but please listen to me._ 』  
『 _All the ways you hurt me. All the ways you helped me._ 』  
『 _It’s going to come out all messed up._ 』  
『 _I want to go back to those days too._ 』  
『 _Please, just be patient with me this time._ 』  
『 _We'll have so much time._ 』   
『 _I want to go back. I want to go back. I want to go back to when it was the two of us._ 』  
『 _Big sis. I want to be a family again._ 』  
  
He did evil things and evil things returned. Kumagawa Misogi did not even see his life flash before his eyes, all he needed was that one sentence summary. The blood in his hair had grown so thick it was coagulating. It fell from the sky above him as well in thick red streams. One of his heads was outstretched, and he caught the blood in his hands trying to squeeze it between his balled up fist. The blood just drained away, escaping between his fingers.  
  
He was a villain. He was worthless. He did not regret anything he did nearly as much as he should. Everything he did, he did for his self ultimately. Yet, a person like him was suddenly praying now.  
  
He wanted to return to a lonely womb.  
He wanted to go back.

The blood in his hands right now would never wash out. He tried, but he could not return to his previous state of being. Even if a river were to come and wash away, this blood would remain as a stain for everything he had done.  
  
He could not be forgiven. He could not even forgive himself.  
That’s why, he should just go back to the only person who ever accepted him as what he was.  
Ajimu Najimi did not see through people, she saw inside them, all the ugly bits, the intestines.  
  
“You’re the younger brother, because you decided to date the younger sibling.”  
Mukuro said.  
  
There was nowhere else for him to go.  
  
“Who cares if you’re a little weird? There’s nothing abnormal about you, Kumagawa-senpai!”  
Makoto said.  
  
There was nowhere he belonged.

“They say stupidity is incurable.”  
Hinata Izuru said.  
  
“Kumagawa… Don’t get near me… I still want to be friends with you.”  
Yasuke Matsuda said.

“Come back and be my senpai again!”  
Emukae Mukae said.  
  
Nobody wanted him around.  
  
“Kumagawa-senpai, I think I understand what you were doing and I’m grateful and all but can I hit you anyway?”  
Hitoyoshi Zenkichi said.  
  
“Kumagawa, have you given up on winning against me?  
Kurokami Medaka said.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate that I love you.”  
Enoshima Junko said.

Komaeda took a step forward, wrapping his arms around the child in white. “Dreams are things you wake from. That goes for everyone. Even you, Kumagawa-senpai.”  
That’s right. That child was not alone anymore. Those people were around him now. He just did not see it. They were always there, right in front of him, but he could not see.  
  
The person who loved him.  
Didn’t know how to love.  
She was stupid.  
But that didn’t mean there was no love in his life.

  
He found love where it wasn’t supposed to be.  
Right in front of him all along.  
He did not lose anything.  
He tossed it all away.  
He understood finally. There was nothing he could not see now. He was transparent just like the sky above him. It felt like somebody had grabbed all the nerves underneath his skin and ripped them out from his flesh. His nerves were crying for him. He was choking on his own blood so he could not laugh. He heard laughing anyway. He was happy, that there was someone, somewhere, who could still laugh.  Komaeda was right, dreams are things you wake from. The sky fell apart. Everything, everything, everything was in a constant state of falling apart. The sky should fall to. Everything breaks. Everything fades away. Everything was broken and he was the most broken of them all. In concrete chunks, like it was nothing more than a painted ceiling. A fake sky fell apart. His body broken into pieces, like he was nothing more than an empty doll, feeling nothing. His head was crushed, and he died.  
He was tired of dreams like this.

No more dreaming, no more waking.  

 

🧸

 

As Kaede walked in she noticed the moving bookcase slowly closing.  
But there was no sign of the mastermind.  
  
“Where is… the mastermind?”    
  
They quickly walked towards the moving bookcase, but soon they saw.  
Rantaro lying on the ground, a body curled all around him.  
A few feet from their two bodies together, there was a bloodied shotput ball.   
  
Rantaro got up, and staggered back in fear from the boy who had protected him. Of course he did, nobody wanted to touch a corpse. He looked at both Kaede and Shuichi like a cornered animal. “I-I’m not the one who did this, I swear!”

Just as they said that, Enoshima Junko burst into the room. If this were a game with multiple routes, choosing to go back instead of going ahead should have been the right choice. If she was a character with an arc, then she should have been rewarded for choosing Kumagawa.

She chose him so…  
What was he…  
She tore straight through Kaede and Shuichi pushing them aside. The back of Kumagawa’s head was bloodied, but she had seen him survive bullets tearing through his body, being stabbed, broken, beaten, kicked, crushed, in every way possible. There was no way one hit on the back of the head would finish him.   
  
She picked him up and shook him to get away.

His eyes focused on her for a moment.『Junko… aha....ha』  
He spit the blood that was waiting at the back of his throat up on her face. She was dripping wet, but her eyes did not move.   
Then his eyes rolled back completely.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi died in her arms. Her name was the last words on his lip. The despair of losing a loved one. The despair of losing a fundamental part of yourself. Loving them to the point of madness. To lose that important person. She wondered what she thinking a moment ago, wanting to pick the right choices, get the right ending, like she forgot what kind of game this was. Like she was some idiot like Chiaki.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi died without a smile on his face.  
And at this,  
Enoshima Junko laughed.  
  
Behind the bookcase, behind the curtain the mastermind could hear her loud and vacuous laughter. As if she wanted to fill the empty space that was left behind now that Kumagawa could no longer talk.  
  
If that was her goal she would have to laugh forever.  
Tsumugi Shirogane sighed.  
She looked at the glass tank next to her behind. She reached forward and tapped on the glass. She tapped it a few more times than necessary, smiling affectionately. A head floating around in the water turned around. It was completely lifeless, as it was only a head so of course it did not respond.  
  
“It’s the end of the first act, Iihiko-chan. What do you think? Was it a good show?”  
  
The head could give no reply of course.  
Because he was already dead.  
He had no more stories to tell.   
  
"Tch, you're always so stingy." 


	17. Foolish Brother

**You Are My Reason to Die / You Are My Reason to Kill** **  
** **Deadly Life: Chapter One**

Junko’s screaming mad laughter, destroyed the image of the ‘real girl’ supermodel which was the only reference all of the newcomers to the game had of her. The moment Shuichi, Kaede, Zenkichi, Kaito and herself stumbled onto the body the music in the background fell silent. Junko’s laughter drowned out the body discovery alarm.  
  
Rantaro was still retreated to the corner of a room, his back against a bookshelf. The large shadow of the bookshelf casted over him. His eyes were elsewhere and he muttered under his breath, “It happened again… They died and I did nothing…” over and over again. “Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing….”

Nobody knew what to say, both of their reactions seemed wrong but how exactly was one supposed to react to the dead body? The noise from the room alone was enough to bring everybody else out of the game room. All at once Mukuro, Togami, Maki and Toko rushed into the room.

 

“Huh? Waaaaaaaaaaaah!!! B-blood…! So much blood!” Toko immediately ran away and dug her face right into Togami’s chest. Normally Togami would not allow such contact but this… touching… whatever this was shared between them was much more preferable to Jack suddenly waking up and revealing herself making the scene worse.

 

He noticed how as usual, Toko’s bangs were a mess with several stray hairs falling out of line with her part. Togami raised a finger to correct her hairs because it was bothering him and for no other reason, sweeping them side. Just then he saw Toko’s face turn a shade of green as she pulled back from his chest. “I think I’m going to barf.”

 

“If you stain my suit in any way, I will kill you. Since a murder has already happened I could get away with it scot free.”  
  
“N-no, don’t do that. If I became a corpse I’d be covered in blood. I’d be sickening…” Apparently her phobia of blood was going to reach her after death. Though, the possibility that she would become a ghost and follow him after death occured to Togami. Toko did look like exactly the kind of creepy girl that would haunt a school library after hours.  
  
“Toko, don’t sell yourself short. You’re sickening enough as you are alive.”

 

To any outside observer they might look like a normal couple comforting one another, but neither of them had any definition of what comfort was like. Maki was not observing them though, because she did not are. “...He’s dead.”

  
  
The sound of Junko’s laughing was abruptly cut off, as Mukuro wrestled her back and gagged her with her bare hand. She had stopped her sister just short of Junko raising her foot to stomp the body into a stain on the floor and get even more covered in his blood. “Junko, stop, you only ever think of yourself and your own despair…”  
  
Mukuro was begging her sister to comply. Despite being much stronger Mukuro was thrown around, before Junko finally calmed down. All of the energy that had been inside of her before had completely calmed down. When Mukuro let go, she raised a hand to her face and wiped the pink blood off, it mixed with her lipstick and smeared across the side of her face. Junko did not look like she cared. “I’m done with this,” her voice lacked any emotion at all as she simply turned and left.  
  
“W-wait, this is an investigation you can’t just…”  
Shuichi’s weak voice called after her but he had not been enough to stop her.  
  
Zenkichi looked back to Kaito for a moment, and ran off after Junko.

Kaede observed every scene in front of her without a change in her face, because the fact that she was staring at a corpse still had not registered to her. Her vision began to swirl, her legs wobbled beneath her. She choked on the scent of death in the room. But out of sheer desperation, she kept her mind working.

“Amami, are you the mastermind… or is Kumagawa…”  
  
Rantaro gave no reply. It did not even look like her words reached him.   
  
“Akamatsu-san, he just witnessed a person dying. He might not be mentally able to talk right now.” Shuichi said, gently as he walked over to Rantaro. He unbuttoned his jacket and draped it over Rantaro’s shoulders, hearing his teeth chattering. Shuichi understood the feeling at least of being too afraid to even move. Kaito looked at his own jacket, but decided not to give it up because it was too cool.  
  
“He could be the murderer. He was the only other person in the room and he could pretend to have lost it just to cover up his actions.” Maki’s cold voice cut through them. “This means the killing game has started, huh?”  
  
“A body has been discovered. Everyone please gather in the library.” Just then Monokuma appeared on the screen, and then the plush puppet danced right in front of them. “What a relief. A murder took place just before time ran out.”  
  
“H-How? The mastermind controlling you is…”  
  
“You think the mastermind is Kumagawa? Ahhh, what an imagination! That’s an amazing alternate universe you’ve come up with, one where Kumagawa is actually a competent threat. Of course that’s wrong. If the mastermind had died, this killing game would be over.”  
  
“B-but…”  
  
“The victim was Kumagawa Misogi. The Super High Schol Level Loser. The Ultimate Who Cares. Born canon fodder. A natural extra. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  
“Saihara-kun what does he mean? What’s going to happen?”  
  
“Why were there two people in the library… If he was the mastermind… why is the killing game not over…? Why…? Why is he dead? It’s no good, I don’t know, I don’t know…” Shuichi gripped at his shirt pulling it away from his chest as suddenly it became too tight for him to breathe.  
  
“Kyaaaaaah!” Tsumugi screamed as she entered the room.  
  
“I see… So this ended up happening after all. Kehehehe… my, my. What a world this is, so full of jokes like this.” Korekiyo muttered to himself.  
  
“Wh-what…? This is a lie, right? My dearest Kumagawa is dea-Oh, I mean…. Was kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiled!” Kokichi screamed out.

 

“I k-knew somebody would die. This always happens in the manga, right after somebody shouts that there’s no way the killing game will ever start.” Komaru gasped upon entering the room. She fell back into her brother’s arms. Makoto tried to cover up her eyes with his hand, but she pushed him away. Closing her eyes would not change the scene in front of her.

  
“That’s the same thing.” Kaede muttered underneath his breath.  
  
The last person to enter the room was Komaeda. He had been waiting in the AV room alone when he heard the body discovery alarm ring. He pulled his black hood over his face, because he wanted to conceal whatever face he was making right now from the world, and also from himself. He did not cry, scream out, or laugh when he saw Kumagawa lying there on the floor. He must not have cared about him that much, if he reacted in such a silent way observing like nothing more than a reaper come to collect his soul.  
  
“The guy who wanted to live ended up dead… and the guy who wanted to die survived.” Komaeda shuddered. His whole body was shaking, clattering, in revulsion. “Where’s the hope in that?” Komaeda left the room suddenly like he had gotten bored of the scene in front of him. Shuichi called after him to but to no luck.

 

Mukuro walked open to the body kneeling in front of it. She was so used to corpses that she did not hesitate at all, to touch Kumagawa’s face and swipe his eyes close. She told herself there was none of her brother left in that thing lying down in front of her. If Kumagawa was there he would smile at her. “Misogi-chan’s murder doesn’t matter. Whoever killed him come forward now, and claim the killer’s perk.”  
  
Togami immediately raised his hand. “I did it. Now let me out of here.”  
  
“No you didn’t.” Mukuro shut him down. “Anybody else? If you don’t claim it, then you’ll get prosecuted in the trial. Claim it right now so you can avoid another person dying! Amami-kun, did you do it? There’s no point in hiding your guilt if it’s going to get you killed.”  
  
Mukuro spoke decisively right then trying to get a single confession out of the crowd. However when she turned her head she noticed Komaru staring at her in abject horror. “How… how can you say the murder of your own brother doesn’t matter? How can you be so cold about this?”

 

Kumagawa will come back. That was her illogical reasoning. However, there was no way she could explain to a completely normal girl that Kumagawa had died several times before this. “...”

 

“That’s how you can kill people isn’t it? You don’t have any feelings at all!”

  
“If you’re not going to say anything helpful, then shut up for now.” Mukuro said, she was not trying to defend herself but to avoid the next murder. They all fell silent again and the window to claim from the perk closed. After that, they all turned on each other.  
  
“Wait… Wait, stop! We can’t do this! We can’t go back and forth accusing each other! For now… we need to trust each other and start a serious investigation.” Shuichi finally found his voice, speaking over all of them.  
  
“Huh?” Kaede startled.  
  
“If we all lose our trust in one another because of this it’s over. We have to believe in each other and investigate this case.”  
  
“Investigating is the same as not trusting each other,” Miu said, leaning in the doorway avoiding everyone else like she was afraid of them.  
  
“No it’s completely different from what Monokuma wants us to do. He wants us to throw accusations at one another, and lose all trust in each other…And we… can’t let him get what he wants. We need to investigate the murder, not because we don’t trust each other but because we do.” The moment everyone’s eyes fixed on him, Shuichi’s heart froze. All of their gazes sent chills down his spin. Eyes floating around him, looking at him from every angle. There was nothing he could hide. And those eyes did not hide their disgust for him at all. _Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me._ Shuichi touched his chin, “Ah… did I… say something wrong?”

 

Kaede closed her eyes and smiled at him. Her eyes were the only ones. He knew she would never look down on him. “You were just so… direct and assertive.”  
  
“Ah, no, I just said what was on my mind.”  
  
“You really are a detective! Now that we need to investigate, you’re becoming super reliable!”

  
“I agree with Shuichi! Actually, he just said exactly what I was just gonna say! Totally!” Kaito said, trying to join in.

 

Monokuma walked up to Shuichi holding a tablet. “Dun, dun, dunnnn! A notebook that will kill anyone whose name is written in it!”  
  
“Could it be!? The Death N-” Tsumugi Shirogane appeared to make an anime reference.  
  
“Whoops, my bad. It’s a Monokuma file.”  
  
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”  
  
The Monokuma file, a report on the dead victim. Shuichi took the tablet offered to him and started to scroll through it. _The victim’s body was discovered in the library. The estimated time of death is 9:10 Pm. The victim was subjected to blunt force trauma in the back of the skull resulting in cranial fractures and death by internal hemorrhaging a few minutes later. No other injuries were detected. While the victim’s body was covered with many old injuries it was ruled all of them were irrelevant to his death. He was just hit in the exact wrong place on his head, such rotten luck!_

 

“This is… This is the mastermind’s fault. The mastermind killed him.” Kaede muttered under her breath. After that point they had to choice but to explain to everybody, the cameras they had set up and the trap in the library to lure them out.

 

Shuichi retrieved the cameras, but before he could do anything with them Monokuma stole them away to develop the film. They all agreed to split into teams to investigate. Makoto went with Mukuro, Zenkichi already seemed to have split off to go with Junko, and Kirigiri informed everyone she was going to ask Komaeda for his alibi.

 

“Akamatsu-san… I know you’re worried, but you can trust me. We just have to be patient.”

 

“That’s not all I’m worried about. I thought this whole thing would be over once we exposed the mastermind. But now… we’re just in a bigger mess. A mess… we have to see through to the end.” She had no idea if she could take it. If she could endure round after round, murder after murder, and still be the same Kaede. If she could still hope for the happy ending after enduring consecutive losses. She had no idea if she even deserved to be saved, if she had already let one of her new friends die, and another become a murderer.

 

“...Ah, Akamatsu-san. I … Have a proposal for you. If it’s alright with you… could we keep working together during the trial? Like we’re doing now? I know I’m just an apprentice, but… I think I can help you, as a detective.” He had no idea why Kaede looked so lost right now. If she was afraid of losing herself though, he wanted to be the one to find her again.  
  
“Of course! With you at my side, it’ll be like having 100 people helping me!”  
  
Shuichi pulled his hat down to hide his blushing face. He still had no idea what to do when faced with such overpowering sincerity, he was a detective that was afraid of the truth after all. “Thank you, Akamatsu-san…”  
  
“Hey, soo…. I don’t care about this mushy stuff, so let’s just get started already. And try to take this seriously, okay? Our lives are on the line. I don’t get the point of wasting time when people could die.” Kokichi said, folding his hands behind his head and tilting that head to the side.  
  
“It takes a lot of mental power to say something like that so cheerfully.” Tsumugi held the side of her face.

Shuichi ignored them, doing a quick survey of the room. He had no faith in himself. He did almost nothing for his own reasons. If it was for the sake of somebody else though, he wanted to try. He wanted to show Kaede that he was useful. Then somebody might actually want him around. “It doesn’t seem as if anything has changed since we set up the cameras...the books that you stacked up haven’t moved.”  
  
“Oh, you mean the ones I stacked to keep people from going through the vent. Yeah… those have been left alone.”

 

“Hey, Akamatsu-san… do you remember what we saw when we came in here?”  
  
“Yeah, I remember. We saw the moving bookcase close on it’s own, right. No one even touched it, so how did it happen?”  
  
“Actually it has to do with how the bookcase works.” Shuichi moved the bookcase to reveal the door. When he let go of the bookcase and waited for a bit, it slid back into place all on its own.

 

“Maybe the reason the bookcase closed… was because the mastermind was hiding just past the hidden door!”

Shirogane Tsumugi smiled.

“Then, let’s check the dust on the card reader.” After opening the door again, Shuichi  looked at the card reader.

  
“Huh? The dust is still there. What if the mastermind replaced the dust just before closing the door?”

  
“No, I remember exactly where I put the dust. This hasn’t been moved at all.”  
  
“Then the one who moved the moving bookcase at the time was… Kumagawa-kun or Amami-kun? Amami, was it you?”

  
Amami from the corner gave no reply at all.

  
“We’ll have to wait until the photos. There’s a chance that someone else was hiding here.”

  
“Well, I still think the mastermind is the culprit. So, we just need to find clues that connect us to the mastermind. We’ll end the killing game that way too.”  
  
Shuichi had no idea why Tsumugi was still in the room, probably just because nobody told her to leave. He got the sneaking suspicion Kokichi was still there just to annoy them. But, Miu especially lingering in the room was suspicious to him. She was the last person on earth he expected to be helpful to others.  
  
When he approached her though, she was immediately hostile. “Don’t talk to me, bottom! I’m fucking busy!”  
  
“Wh-what?” Shuichi looked like he wanted to run away, but Kaede grabbed him by the shoulder not giving him a choice. Miu ignored them both and continued to fiddle with her controller.  
  
“What’s that controller for?” Kaede asked, innocently enough, unaware of what she was about to provoke.

“Dun-dun-dun-dunnnn! It’s a prone!”  
  
“Prone?” Kaede echoed.  
  
Tsumugi’s brow flickered in annoyance. She raised a finger to lecture. “I don’t mean to butt in to the conversation, but don’t you mean “drone”? If it was a Prone, it’d team up with the rest of the Ganglion alliance to destroy humanity.”  
  
“W-wait a second… The controller is…”  
  
“Ha-hahahaha! Now you’re getting it, Twink the hero of Twinklight.” Miu laughed obnoxiously, and pointed her finger upward. “Hah! Feast your eyes on the latest creation from the gorgeous girl genius, Iruma Miu! It’s a drome!”  
  
“I told you, that’s a drone. If it was a drome, it’d be leading a pack of vicious monsters. Don’t think my opinion of you is going to improve just because you made a video game reference.” Tsumugi complained under her breath.  
  
“I don’t get it.” Kaede said.

“When did you have time to make this? Did Kazuichi-kun help you?”  
  
“As if! I don’t need that virgin’s help in anything.  If you want to help that loser virgin so bad, why don’t you deflower him Akamatsu-san, or are you too busy already with Saihara-kun?”  
  
“What?” Kaede repeated again. She always felt so lost talking to Miu.

 

“Besides, if he had touched my baby he would have put rockets on it. I got bored after I made those cameras you asked for, so I modified this RC plane. I even decked it out with a camera so it’ll take perfect aerial photographs. From there, I’ll use the photos as a reference to draft a floor plan to help this investigation! This way, I get outta havin’ to do any actual investigative legwork! Bwah-hahahaha!”  
  
“That’s amazing. I’m sure it’ll help us in the investigatoin.” Shuichi said with a soft voice.  
  
He was quickly downed out by Miu. “The only problem is, I’m not used to operatin’ a drone and takin’ pictures with it!”  
  
“You shouldn’t be proud of that… and if you don’t hurry, the investigation will end soon!”  
  
“I can’t do shit about that! So just calm your tiny tits and shut up!”

Kaede’s lip twitched, and he smile faded away. To her being nice, and letting others walk all over her did not mean the same thing. Which made her the opposite of spineless Naegi Makoto. She immediately got in Miu’s face. “Sh-shut up you! My chest is way better than your nasty cow udders.”  
  
“U-udders…! Udders…!?” Miu backed off. She covered her mouth with both hands and looked a bit like Rantaro had in the corner before he was pulled out of the room by the other kids to try and comfort him. “Heeeeee! Heeeeeeee!” She almost started to wheeze.  
  
“You’re a bit wimpy when someone stands up to you, huh?” Tsumugi said with a nonchalant tilt of her head. “You’re actually a complete wuss.”  
  
At that point Miu just ran away from the room. Tsumugi followed after her, maybe she just wanted to check if the other girl was okay but she kind of just looked bored.  
  
Now almost entirely alone except for Kokichi smiling eerily in the background, Kaede looked at Kumagawa’s body. Originally it had been hunched over Rantaro but the body was already moved once by Junko and now lay flat staring up at the ceiling. “I’m pretty sure I don’t need to tell you this, but shouldn’t we investigate Kumagawa-kun’s body?”  
  
“Yes… If we want to find clues, we have to… But, if it’s too much for you Akamatsu-san, you don’t have to, okay?”

 

Kaede had been so repulsed by the idea of murder she barely slept once this entire week. The body laying on the ground right now, was somebody she had failed to save. He had died with a completely blank expression on his face and he would never smile again… because of her. Kaede thought about how scared Shuichi was, how little confidence he had in himself. Right now, for her sake he was willing to take it all on his own, the scared little boy who had been hiding behind her this whole time. If Shuichi was fighting back against his constant anxiety that made everything harder for him and he could still be such a gentle, caring boy, then she had to fight to. “No, it’s fine. I can do it.”  
  
Her mind was set. She started to walk towards Kumagawa’s body. There was a trail of pink leading from his head, it had splashed on the bookcase. “Why… did Kumagawa tackle Amami-kun here?”  
  
“I mean, if one of them moved the bookcase. That would mean he came all the way over here after the bookcase opened. He moved away from the hidden door… to this spot. Why would he do that? Then, why would Kumagawa-kun tackle him to the ground afterwards. Kumagawa-kun was struck from behind so… it’d be unfeasible for Amami-kun to have killed him if Kumagawa-kun died on top of him.” Shuichi was so deep in thoughts, it was almost like he had forgotten Kaede was there as he covered his mouth with his hand to hide his habit of muttering.  
  
“...”  
  
The moment he saw Kaede’s face turn away from him and start to twist in disgust, Shuichi forgot about himself and watched her. “Ah, are you okay? You’ve gone pale.” He really was so sensitive. He looked at her like she was the only one in the room. “...Although I guess that’s normal. We have to investigate a body, after all. The body of someone who was alive and talking to us, just a little while ago.”

“I-it’s okay, really. We have to do our best. Not just for Kumagawa-kun’s sake… but also so we can avenge him… And… so we can protect everyone else. We have to defeat the mastermind who’s orchestrating this whole thing.”  
  
“Um, Akamatsu-san… I’ll help you in any way I can. I’ll support you for this investigation. I am… sort of a detective, after all.”  
  
“Sort of? You are a detective, remember.”  
  
“Ah, right…”

  
Shuichi who looked so afraid of living people, knelt near the dead body of Kumagawa with no hesitation at all. “There’s blood on the back of his head. It looks like a pretty deep wound. There’s no sign of a struggle on any other part of his body either, which is a strike against Amami-kun being the killer.” Shuichi then stuck his hand into Amami’s pocket.  
  
“W-what are you doing?”  
  
“I’m checking what he has on his person. There might be a clue. If we’re going to do this, we have to be thorough. I told you I would support you, after all.”  
  
“H-H-How can you say that with so much… c-confidence?”

 

“You’re always so strong for me. When you want to be weak, I’ll pretend to be the strong one… t-though I’ll probably do a bad job.”  
  
Kaede breathed trying to pull herself together. Shuichi pulled from his pocket, crumpled up pieces of paper that had become soaked through with blood, a monopad, and the key to Enoshima’s room. There was no card key. When it was confirmed that he was not the mastermind, Kaede’s face went a shade paler than Kumagawa’s who was already dead. Shuichi also took note of the bloodied shotput ball on the ground, a trail of it leading from Kumagawa’s head there was no other logical murder weapon but it would have been difficult to throw. Kaede remained silent the whole time, trying to be soothed by his voice as he explained.  
  
“...Akamatsu-san, are you okay? We’ve finished investigating the body. Let’s get out of here now, okay?”  
  
“Y-yeah… Sorry.”  
  
“Something is bothering me… Why did these two come to the library? It seems like neither of them are the mastermind, so what reason were they here?”  
  
“I’m guessing it had to do with what Amami-kun said earlier.  Ending the game itself.”  
  
“Then, it’s possible… he noticed the hidden door in the library, just like we did.”  
  
“What?  
  
“He might have come to the same conclusion we did, that the mastermind would come here.”  
  
“N-no way… They should have told us…” Kaede collapsed to the floor, crushed by the weight of he own frustration.

  
“No, they probably couldn’t risk telling us… Amami-kun was supsicious of everyone, and Kumagawa-kun did not belong anywhere. I have you, and you have me. They didn’t have anyone they could trust. That might have been, the only difference between us and them.”

 

As Shuichi said that he offered a hand to Kaede. If he was all alone, he could only imagine what kind of person he would be, suspicious of the eyes of everyone around him. He would be continually running away, not from the looks of others, but also himself as well. It was impossible to be a person if you spent all your time looking away from yourself. He would have been the kind of detective that gauges his own eyes out, for fear of looking at the truth. He knew his heart had been move when Kaede took his hand. He had finally become the kind of person who could take the hand of another. Kaede quietly watched in surprise, as he firmly pulled her to her feet.  
  
“Akamatsu-san, let’s go. We can’t waste time now. You’re not going to give up, right? You’re… going to save everyone.”  
  
“Saihara-kun.”  
  
She was reminded of herself again, when she looked into his eyes and saw herself there at the center of them. “Thanks… I feel like… I can rely on you even more.”  
  
Together, the two of them spotted the vent that was left open, and noticed one of the entryways to the room was a sliding door. When Kaede wanted to leave the room, Shuichi suggest they spend the rest of the investigation collecting the alibis of others present in the AV and Game rooms.

Kokichi let out a sigh of boredom, when the lovebirds who had been taking forever finally left. He walked up to Kumagawa’s corpse on the ground and knelt in front of it. “From the way you were talking you acted like you were such hot shit, but then you went off and died? Or… was that supposed to be the joke?”  
  
Kumagawa gave no answer because he was dead.  
Kokichi looked back to see if no one was around. Then he grabbed Kumagawa by the sleeve and lifted his body up. He dragged Kumagawa’s body away behind him, like it was a stuffed toy.

🧸

 

When they finally made it to the game room, Maki was waiting for them looking as unenthused as possible. For the first time the two of them were able to walk side by side, but only because Kaede’s legs had been too wobbly for her to stand on so she walked clinging to Shuichi’s sleeve while he took the lead.

“...”  
  
“Maki… you were in the Game Room while Kumagawa-kun was killed, right?” Kaede began.  
  
“What were you doing all the way down here? Amami-kun was with you, right?” Shuichi followed her lead.  
  
“...Am I a suspect?” Maki glared at both of them. Her red eyes seemed to glow, but that was probably just a trick of the light.  
  
“Oh, no that’s not what I meant.” Kaede backpedaled, afraid of hurting her feelings.  
  
“You should suspect me. In fact, you should be suspicious of everyone.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
  
“Someone got killed right after we all gathered here. The timing is too perfect. So trust no one Akamatsu-san, that’s how you lose got it?” She could not get a read on Maki at all. Despite just seeing a dead body she was the opposite of Kaede, perfectly calm. It was hard to imagine someone so cold as the Ultimate Child Caregiver.  
  
“But… why were you all here in the first place?”  
  
“Hitoyoshi-kun got Momota all riled up. Then the two of them suddenly wanted to hold a strategy meeting and gathered us together. He said we should confront Monokuma once the time limit expires, and they picked seven people who they thought would be useful in a fight. He wanted to call it the Momota-nificent Seven but we said it was stupid.”  
  
Kaito, Zenkichi, Byakuya, Toko, Maki, Rantaro and Mukuro seven in total. Kaede recalled Toko nearly fainting at the sight of blood. “But, um… I’m not sure those seven would all be useful in a fight, though.”  
  
“When Momota announced the plan, Togami declared himself the leader and Fukawa followed him and it was impossible to get rid of either of them.”  
  
“But what about you, Harukawa? Why did he also pick the Ultimate Child Caregiver?”  
  
“... He just looked at me and said ‘Yeah you look like you’d be good in a fight.”  
  
“That’s it? Geez… That does sound like something Momota would do, though.”  
  
“And Amami-kun?” Shuichi interrupted. “Was he a part of the meeting?”  
  
“He was… at first. But then he excused himself to go to the bathroom, and left on his own. Hitoyoshi-kun and Momota went looking for him so we could finish up the meeting before time expired.”  
  
“What about Komaeda? How was he already down here?”  
  
“He’d been in the game room since this morning. Apparently he was playing video games, but he’s embarrassed of his hobby so he excused himself and waited in the A/V Room the entire time.”  
  
“He was in the A/V Room by himself?”  
  
“Suspicious behavior isn’t it? The other two thought the same, so they’re investigating the A/V room.” Maki said, trailing her eyes towards the door before going back to whatever she was doing previously, which seemed to be staring at a wall with an intense expression.  
  
When they pushed the door open into the next room, they found Korekiyo and Kaito investigating together. It would be the world’s most oddball duo if she was not currently clinging to Shuichi’s sleeve.  
  
“Akamatsu-san, let’s look if there was any way the murder could be committed from this room.”

“Hey, guys!” Kaito said in his usually friendly way. “How about we make the duo a trio, I think I’ve pretty much determined the crime was took place in this room, all by myself, you know like any hero would.”  
  
“Can you shut up for a second, okay? We need to look around.” Kaede said without even looking at Kaito.  
  
On both sides of the A/V Room there were shelves of DVDs lining the walls. There was one projector, and a pulldown screen on the far end of the room. As he walked up to it, Shuichi began muttering to himself again. “If you roll up the screen, you could use it as a long pole of sorts.”  
  
“Hm? So what?”  
  
“I was just thinking… that it could be used for something.”  
  
“Somtimes you say weird things, Saihara-kun. Must be a detective quirk of yours.”  
  
“Ah, you think so? S-sorry. You can treat it as me talking to myself.”

Kaito punched the air in frustration, demanding that attention be paid to him. “Geez… I can’t believe that happened right next door to our strategy meeting.”

“Momota can you tell me about that meeting of yours? You gathered everyone in the basement, right?”  
  
“What? Am I one of your suspects now?”  
  
“No, um… that’s not what I’m -”  
  
“Nah, it’s natural you’re suspicious of me. But I’m not the culprit! I swear it on the universe. I’ve got nothing to hide, so you can ask me anything!”  
  
“O-Okay…”  
  
“Ah, don’t worry… you’re not a likely suspect…” Shuichi spoke up.  
  
His delicate voice, was crushed like glass by Kaito’s sudden hotbloodedness. “Hey, that’s not something a detective should say!”  
  
“What?”  
  
“If you suspect me, you better pursue it until the end. Investigate it until you’re satisfied. If you don’t do that, you’ll never reach the truth. Hitoyoshi-kun’s friend will have died for no reason. This is where you need to let your ultimate talent shine.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I thought you were a believe in your friends type of guy, you’re really just making this up on the spot aren’t you?” Kaede did not buy into it, even though Shuichi seemed to be stunned. “Well, let us know if you remember anything.”  
  
Kaede’s gaze drifted to the movies crammed into the bookcase. She found a familiar movie and immediately found herself distracted from her worries. I keep telling you, fiction is better than reality. “Oh! The legend of 1900. I’ve always wanted to see this film!”

“That’s the one where the pianist has eyes like a dead fish, right? Just like me…”  
  
“No way he’s totally cute! The film won awards for it’s phenomenal music! American audiences were moved to tears.”  
  
“I can’t imagine being moved to tears by fiction.” Shuichi said.  
  
Kaede kept searching for another distraction in the moment. She grabbed a movie at random, and the case was covered with pictures of naked men and women.

  
“...Find any movies over there?” Shuichi said, looking over her shoulder suddenly. It was the first time she was aware of how casual they were with getting this close to each other all the time.

  
“Oh! Um, nothing suspicious over here! Let’s go look somewhere else!”  
  
“What’s wrong? Did you see something?”  
  
“I-I said it’s nothing! It’s just a bunch of moobies! I mean… movies…”  
  
“Akamatsu-san, you’re panicking. It’s okay if you found a clue, you can tell me. Here, let me look.” Shuichi decided to try to be brave and grow a spine at the worst possible time.

  
“No! D-don’t look!”  
  
A couple minutes later. They were both looking down at the floor with beet red faces.  
  
“I told you…” Kaede said looking anywhere but where Shuichi was.  
  
“L-let’s investigate somewhere else.”

  
Kaede walked all the way to the back to get away from Shuichi and the fluttery feelings of her heart as quickly as possible. She looked to see a doorway in front of her. “Is this connected to the hallway?” She tried to open the sliding door, but it refused to open all the way. “Looks like it wasn’t installed right. I can only stick my arm through. You’d have to be a starving orphan to fit through here.”

“Whoever wanted to, if they were manly enough they could probably force the door open with sheer strength! Maybe they had a last minute power up, like in shonen manga.” Kaito said standing behind them.  
  
“Momota, you never have anything important to say.” Kaede said side eyeing him.

Shuichi slid the door open once more. “...I thought so. Look, you can see the rear entrance to the library from here. The door and the rear entrance are located straight across from one another.”  
  
“Hm, so what?”  
  
“I’m not sure if it matters yet but it is a little concerning.”

Just then behind them Korekiyo finally hissed to get attention. He had been standing in the room the entire time, it was just he was so much like a ghost they all ended up sort of ignoring him. “Kehehe… Let me guess. You wish to hear my alibi, yes?”  
  
“Huh? How’d you know?” Kaede asked.  
  
“My appearance and actions thus far suggest I am someone who would commit a murder.”  
  
“Well, at least you’re self aware.”  
  
“So, to briefly state the truth. When the body discovery announcement played, I was in the dining hall, eating supper. The other people there with me were Iruma, Kazuichi, and Shirogane. We microwaved the meal Hitoyoshi-kun prepared for us ahead of time, he called it ‘Pasta that tastes like your mom made it for you to cheer you up when you got last place in the relay race at school.’ or somesuch.”  
  
“That pasta sounds so positive.”  
  
“That concludes my alibi. I do hope it can be of help.”  
  
“And what about the people around you? Did you notice anything in particular?” Shuichi added.  
  
“Ah… if there was something to note, Iruma and Kazuichi were both tinkering with something or other. They were arguing about whether or not to put rockets on it. There was also a brief period of time that both girls left to use the restroom.”  
  
“The restroom, huh? Interesting.” Shuichi started to mutter to himself again.  
  
“Oh, you’re doing the mutter mutter thing. I guess that’s why you’re the detective.” Kaede said, watching with him with a smile from behind. Without even realizing it, her reason to smile had become the endlessly awkward, always fumbling, but endearing when he tried so hard boy in front of her.

 

Together the two of them collected the rest of the alibis from those who were still around, until the only one they were missing was Kokichi. When they finally found him, he was standing outside of the school. He looked like he did not belong there. Then again, Kokichi did not look like he belonged anywhere, every scene he was present it looked like he snuck himself in for nefarious reasons. He was a natural born photobomber, in other words.  
  
“Oh! Investigating together, are we? You two sure have gotten awfully chummy! What has it been, like, a week?” Kokichi folded his hands behind his head again.  
  
“Are you out here alone, Oma?” Kaede asked.  
  
“Hm? Yeah, why?” He tilted his head to the side.  
  
“We all agreed to investigate with at least one other person when we were splitting up.”  
  
“Ooooh, did we? Well, just because we agreed doesn’t mean we have to do it, right?”  
  
“Why would you do something that would make everyone suspicious of you?”  
  
“Cuz, I’m an evil supreme leader! I’m supposed to be suspicious. Besides, the killing game didn’t magically give me a boyfriend yet like it did you.”  
  
Kaede decided not to respond to that comment. Shuichi stayed on topic, miraculously. “...Anyway, there’s something I wanted to ask you. What were you doing at the time Kumagawa-kun was killed?”  
  
“Ooooh, an interrogation from the Ultimate Detective himself? What a rare oppurtunity. I’ve fantasized about this so many times. I’ll be Lupin the 3rd and you can be Zenigata! I’ll gladly answer! To tell you the truth, I was in the library, smashing in Kumagawa-kun’s head.”

  
Kaede raised her voice. “Hey, take this seriously! Murder is unforgivable you know.”  
  
“Why? Do I really need to tell you guys what I was doing?”  
  
“What…?”  
  
“If I gave you honest answers now, it’d just make everything boring, right? I’d rather just tell you at the class trial. That would be way more fun! The tria’s going to be boring anyway, since we’ll have photo evidence.”  
  
“Wh-what are you saying?”  
  
“I’m just saying. This is a game we should have fun with it.”  
  
“...This isn’t a game. Kumagawa-kun was murdered. All our lives are at stake.”  
  
“Nishishishi…. I’m sure this line has been said before, but that’s exactly what makes the game so much fun! I’m so excited. I want the class trial to start already! Oh, but if you want me to be serious I can tell you some serious information. Kumagawa-kun isn’t the innocent victim you expect him to be, the day the motive was announced he got into a fight with Komaeda and threatened to kill him. There, I spoiled one of the twists of the trial, I hope you have no fun at all.”

  
As he burst into such an excited rant in front of them, chewing at his own nails with excitement like a child that had never been disciplined not to, neither of them could shake the feeling that he was having fun with this.

 

🧸

 

“So, you followed  Momota because he started to move suspiciously. Kiri was following Junko. Bug ugggghhh, I wasn’t any help at all. I saw Oma sneak away but all he did was lead me on a giant wild goose chase.” The first time Kirigiri ever relied on him to investigate with her, and Makoto felt like he had let her down. Apparently Kaede had even come up with her own plan to target the mastermind. He felt like he had done nothing all week. Makoto messed his hair up with his fingers, making his bedhead look even worse.

 

He still had no idea what he felt about Kokichi after spending almost an entire day following him around. He felt a little sad Kokichi had forgotten their memories of Hope’s Peak, after all those were the days they all had fun playing together with Medaka on the student council, before death games became such a popular genre.

 

He had dragged Mukuro away to investigate with him, thinking that she needed time alone from everyone. He had even prodded her about how she felt a few times as they went around collecting alibis.  
  
So far it was divided up like this.  
Kiibo and Monaca in their secret fort (which was apparently in the storage room).  
Komaru was reading manga alone (Makoto did not consider her a suspect).  
Komaeda in the A/V Room.  
Zenkichi, Kaito, Maki, Togami, Toko, Mukuro in the game room.  
Makoto was chasing Kokichi.  
Kirigiri and Junko last saw each other together.  
Tsumugi, Miu, Kazuichi and Korekiyo in the dining room.  
Shuichi and Kaede in the classroom.  
Rantaro at the scene of the crime, but he was too incoherent to provide testimony.  
Kumagawa was…

That was the unspoken fact which hung in the air between the two of them. Mukuro who had been quiet the entire time and only passively responding in conversation, finally spoke. Her eyes were at her feet, she looked like an ashamed dog. “There’s no way Amami was the killer. Do you know why Misogi-chan’s body was wrapped around Amami’s when we discovered him? Because he pushed Amami out of the way and protected him. Not… not a single person in that room even guessed that. They don’t… they don’t even know him…”

 

Makoto knew why Mukuro’s first reaction to the corpse of her brother was not to cry, but rather to ask somebody to take the killer’s perk and escape from this school. Mukuro could not forgive herself for a single murder she had committed, but without hesitation she tried to save the person who killed the only sibling who was ever kind to her.  
  
Mukuro was always standing tall in front of Makoto, but she fell to her knees just then. Whatever strength had been holding her up, ran out at that moment. Makoto always thought that Mukuro was strong, every time they were in trouble she was the one who protected both of them. Nobody was strong all the time. The girl who only knew how to be strong, was weak in front of Makoto when it was just the two of them.

 

“Makoto, I’m going to take advantage of your kindness.” Her voice was straining to remain emotionless.  
  
Makoto shook his head. “You’ve never taken advantage of my kindness, not even once. You don’t even let me be as kind to you as I should be.” When Makoto saw Mukuro not immediately break into tears, he did not accuse her of anything like Komaru did. He almost wanted to smack his sister, but that would make Mukuro upset. She would tell him that siblings should never fight. That was why, he went along with every unreasonable request his sister made so far to monopolize his time and take him away from Mukuro.  
  
Mukuro valued family more than anything. He wanted to be a part of her family one day. That was why he knew, Mukuro was not being cold in the way she reacted to Kumagawa’s death. Mukuro never cried when she was supposed to. When her sister hit her, when she was forced to do terrible things for her sister’s sake, the times she was beaten and conditioned as a young soldier, she never once cried. Makoto believed she deserved to cry more, he wanted to cry for her, because Mukuro was physically incapable of crying over her own pain.  
  
“You don’t get it… A monster like me doesn’t have the right. I’ve killed plenty of people’s brothers and sisters, not only that but their parents too. A lot of them were just normal households, like you and your sister has. Someone like me, after taking so much from others, doesn’t get to…"

  
She covered her face out of shame. Makoto patiently, reached forward and laid his hands on top of each one of hers. He pried her fingers one by one away from her eyes, holding her hands in his so she would not try to hide away again. Mukuro’s eyes were swollen and red already, fat tears leaked out. There was no beauty in her crying face at all. She looked like a child. Makoto thought that was appropriate, because she probably never once cried like this as a child.  
  
Mukuro did not think she deserved to cry. So she never cried for herself. “M-Makoto...I’m sorry, I… it won’t stop hurting! I was his real sister! Why did he care about Ajimu-san? Why didn’t he choose me?”  
  
“He’s really stupid you know.”  
  
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left him alone with Junko. I was selfish, because I wanted to be with you.”  
  
“I think we can say that everything is Junko’s fault forever, so please stop blaming yourself.”  
  
“He protected me so many times! I wasn’t ever able to do a single thing to help him!”  
  
“You didn’t need to be useful to him to be his sister. That’s why you and Kumagawa were real siblings, he never would have tried to use you even once.”  
  
“Even so I… I’m strong… Do you think… I was strong enough to be by his side? Was I as beautiful as my sister to him? Did he want to share his weaknesses with me? Hey, hey, what is this strength for? I can’t protect a single person.” Mukuro remembered the words that Komaru had just told her. That she was a killer, that was why she reacted so heartlessly to her brother’s death. “Ah that’s right, it’s because I’m a killer. A killer can’t turn around suddenly and decide they want to protect people one day.”  
  
Mukuro looked with shaking eyes in abject horror at her hand, covered with with a Fenrir tattoo with a scar right through the center. Kumagawa cried in front of her, and she said nothing, did nothing, she could not reach out to him with this hand. She wanted that useless hand to disappear. Mukuro tried to reach for the knife in her skirt, only to realize a moment late that it was gone.

 

Makoto moved to stop her grabbing her by the wrist. There was no way he would be strong enough to hold her back, but he had seen Mukuro point a knife at herself, at the person he loved the most too many times. His soft words and reassurances did absolutely nothing, he knew that, but maybe there was nothing to make this pain go away.

“I… I took so many people’s families away. This is how I made them feel, every single time. I… ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Wake up and smile at me, Kumagwa. I was practicing smiling in the mirror, just for you.”

“...” All Makoto did was hold her.  
  
“How am I supposed to smile without you here? Ahhhhhhhh….Eeee….”  
  
She wheezed, and croaked, her crying faster than her breathing.

  
“Your smile was how I knew, things were going to be okay, even for someone like me.”  
  
Mukuro tilted her head back and cried, tears falling and making a mess of her entire face. Makoto did not even try to wipe them away, he simply stayed there next to her.  
  
“I hate that… I hate that he saved someone. The person you love is horrible, Makoto. Brother… Brother… Brother… My brother… I wanted…. I wanted him to be saved more than anyone else. Brother… I should have told you, I should have held onto you the last time I saw you like this and not let you walk away from me… I should have begged you please, save yourself…”

 

Mukuro’s words became incoherent underneath the sounds of her crying after that point, but she still struggled to talk. She thought it was just the two of them alone, so she screamed in between gasping breaths and tears. Makoto doubted she was crying this much over Kumagawa disappearing again, it was a lifetime’s worth of crying, all the times she had wanted to cry but was not able to cry for herself. A lifetime worth of disappointment. Even now she felt like she had disappointed Kumagawa.

  
Makoto petted her hair, and told her even though she would not listen to him, because it needed to be said. “No matter what you did, even if you two got in a fight, even if you grew old and grew apart, even if you started hating him, you would never disappointment Kumagawa-kun.”

  
Makoto knew that because those were his own feelings towards his sister Komaru. Kumagawa was just a normal guy, at the end of the day the bond between the girl who only knew how to kill, and the boy who only knew pain, was a completely normal sibling relationship.

 

Mukuro did not stop crying, but the noises she made attracted Komaru who had been tailing them from afar the entire time. She thought she had nothing to do with the investigation, so she returned to watching her brother to protect him again.  
  
What she saw was the girl who had been so cold over her brother’s death, crying openly and clinging to Makoto of all people. Komaru wondered why… a killer could have such strong emotions over a dead person.

  
Kumagawa had just been alive yesterday. The reason she was able to leave her room, was because Kumagawa came out of nowhere and started talking to her. Everything about him screamed abnormal, and yet they spent so long talking about completely normal things. Him treating her normally, like a person, was all that she needed to stop fearing the entire world around her.  
  
At the same time she noticed how sick Kumagawa looked, like a person on his deathbed. She saw an indescribable sadness on his face the entire time, but she never once tried to help him. She did not think a normal person like her, could deal with the heaviness of whatever sadness he carried. That was how she treated a person who had been so kind as to reach out and take her hand, and pull her out of her room.  
  
She was the cold one.  
Mukuro was crying tears over her brother’s death. There was nothing abnormal about that at all. Komaru realized in that moment exactly what Kumagawa had been talking about. Mukuro was weak too. She did not look scary at all crying for her brother like this. Even though she had killed people, what she felt for Kumagawa was no different than what Komaru felt for Makoto.  
  
Komaru remembered the first time she met Mukuro. She thought it was impossible, that the frail, nervous girl she saw that day could be a murderer, that it all had been an act, a lie to fool her. They were the same person, Komaru had just not allowed herself to see it.

  
Komaru approached the two of them from behind, and then hit her brother on the shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing bro, making a girl cry like that?”

  
Makoto immediately grabbed his shoulder in shock and betrayal. “Wha? This isn’t my fault!”  
  
Komaru pushed him towards Mukuro again. “Come on bro, if you’re going to be worthless and make girls cry all the time then you have to take responsibility. Grow a spine! Otherwise how is she going to lean on you? Your skinny little body will snap in half!”  
  
“When did this become the criticize Makoto time?”

 

🧸

 

Zenkichi followed Junko all the way to her room. When she slammed the door in his face, he just kicked it down. He was even worse than a nice guy, he was a persistent nice guy, an aggressive one.

 

She really hated good people. The kind of person she would never be. Junko turned away from him, as suddenly she heard the phantom memory of an old conversation whisper in her ears.  It was from a long time ago, before they were lovers, before they were even friends.

 

The time that Kumagawa pretended to be student council president, and she spent her days trying to kill him. She still thought back then the moment she murdered him everything in her life would go back on track the way she wanted it to be.

 

『 _When you finally kill me, what are you going to do?_ 』 _He playfully teased her._

 

_“Don’t you dare say something like you’re having too much fun and you don’t want these games to ever end.”_

_  
_ 『 _There’s just no love at all in your violence towards me. You’re so stingy._ 』

 

_“I’m not going to do anything. You’re just a distraction. When you die, I’ll have no more use for you. That’s the way it is, got it?”_

 

『 _You never… Once called me by my name. When you kill me, say my name just once._ 』

 

_“There’s no need for that. The time I spent with you is so boring, when you die I’ll have forgotten about you already.”_

 

For a long time, for months she only called him you, she refused to look at his face. That boy still fell in love with her. The person who was the most undeserving of his love. She wanted to feel despair, to laugh madly and dance around like she did when she lost Yasuke, but she could not. All she felt was melancholy. An unenjoyable, empty emotion.  
  
She felt like she had only laughed because that was what she was supposed to do. She was putting on a show. She wanted to forcibly make herself go mad, because being sane in a world without Kumagawa was hardly worth it. It made no sense how he suddenly disappeared like that. He was always… always… always just doing whatever he wanted.She wanted to angry at him, but she ould not even feel that emotion right now because she had emptied out.  
  
A world without Kumagawa. An emptied out world. All the colors were gone. A washed out existence. She wanted to feel something. She wanted to cry over his death. If she were a normal girl she would be able to have that at least.  
  
“Hey, Junko talk to me.”  
  
Zenkichi grabbed her by the shoulder. And here he was, annoying her. Annoyance was not despair either. Junko turned around slowly, and touched his stomach lightly.  
  
Zenkichi looked down in shock. The reason his eyes were suddenly shaking with overwhelming emotion, was because Junko had stabbed him, with a knife she pick pocketed from Mukuro when her sister held her back.

“You’re not the only one who’s sad. Kumagawa-kun, Medaka-chan, they were all I had left from my old school. Now they’re all gone and it’s just me here with a bunch of Hope’s Peak kids.”  
  
You just got stabbed idiot, don’t start making a speech.  
  
“I just wanted to go to the same high school as Medaka-chan, and stay by her side. Now we’re in the middle of the second death game, and I don’t even know if Medaka-chan’s going to be there waiting for me on the other side. I know exactly how you feel! You’re not the only person in the world!”

  
“I’m the only interesting one.” She said in a cold voice. He had fallen to his knees right in front of her grasping at his side. She put her boot on his chest, pushing him all the way back to the floor. As he crashed against it, she felt nothing from the look of his face trying to fight back the pain. “Do you understand what kind of situation you’re in? I could murder you scot free, only the first murder after a body is discovered counts as the blackened.”  
  
“Grrr….”

 

“You’re right. You don’t have anybody. You’re not anybody important, you’re just Medaka-chan’s dog. You won’t be missed.” She twisted her heel in his chest. “Aren’t childhood friends the sweetest? You know when I killed Yasuke-kun, I did it just like this. I slipped a knife in his side, and then I told him how much I hated him and watched the life drain out of his eyes. When he was nothing but a corpse, I stomped, and stomped, until there was no trace left of my childhood friend on earth. I used up all of him, he belonged to me, the same way you belong to Medaka-chan.”  
  
“...”  
  
“You can’t become your own person outside of her. She really did a number on you and you’re too stupid to even realize. Jeez, no wonder Yasuke-kun hated you so much.”  
  
“Yasu hated me?”  
  
“You had everything he ever wanted. Your mother dedicated her whole life to raising you like you were her most important thing in the world. Your childhood friend just wants to be a normal girl so she can stay by your side. Imagine being Yasuke-kun and struggling to find all those things in his life, only for his reward to be dying never having found the love he spent his entire life chasing the illusion of, and then some idiot already has it.”  
  
“Yasu…”  
  
“No wonder my beloved childhood friend, turned out so rotten. But you can make up for that, you can die right here just like he did.”

 

“There’s nothing about Yasu that’s rotten…he was in pain, pain makes people like… like…” Like Kumagawa Zenkichi wanted to say but he could not bring himself to. “I know he’s a better person than me. He’s capable of loving a person like you after all.”

 

“I’m going to kill you, you know.” Junko got close to her, and twisted the knife in his side to give an extra jolt of pain. “What are you doing you idiot? Fight back? Unleash a barrage of kicks like you always do and make some kind of dumbass hot blooded shonen speech.”  
  
“I’m… not… gonna.”

 

“Why not?” Junko demanded, practically hissing it. She was like a child being denied the right to play with her toy. The game that she always found to be so fun was not fun anymore.

 

“This hurts like hell… but… I’m not gonna hit you… because I know the pain you’re feeling is way worse right now.”

  
Junko tilted her head to the side, confused. “Pain?” She flexed each of the fingers on her remaining hand, this numbness, this hollowness, the part of her that just wanted to shut everything out and go quiet. This was pain? She wanted to scream out in agony, she wanted to suffer like the two sides of her brain wee splitting apart. “You think something like that will get through to me?”

 

She grabbed the knife and ripped it out suddenly. A pink puddle formed where he was sitting, as blood began to pool. Zenkichi would probably last a little bit longer than Yasuke due to not having the constitution of a twink mad scientist, but she could see the life drain out of someone who was putting her pain before his. She wanted to betray his good nature. She wanted him to loathe himself, for ever thinking that he could live a life of helping others.  
  
“I really hate good people like you.”  
  
She despised hope. All of her philosophical reasonings were just made up. Everybody else could see it but her. Happy people were just a reminder that she did not belong, of what she could never be.  
  
“I hate you too.”  
  
Was all Zenkichi said.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’m so glad. Unrequited hate… is so… awkward…”

 

Junko had no idea why. She had no reason to do so. Presenting Zenkichi’s head in a jar to Medaka when she finally got out of this game, would allow her to taste a sweeter despair. Yet, she found herself quickly with one hand stitching up Zenkichi’s wound.  
  
His shirt unbuttoned, she finished the last stitch and bit the surgical string with her teeth to break it. His shirt was undone, and she cleaned up the fresh blood from his skin surrounding the wound. The entire time she said nothing at all, and made no expression on her face. Junko completely silent, was creepier than when she was bursting into mad laughter, or threatening him with a knife Zenkichi decided.

  
She only said one more sentence to him.  
  
“Get out of my room.”  
  
“We have to investigate Kumagawa’s death to avenge him-”

 

She pushed him out of the room, and slammed the door on him. Zenkichi realized right then, Junko’s reaction to all of this, to losing her most precious person… was just to take her ball and go home.

 

🧸

  
The cherry trees in front of the old school building were always so beautiful. They were still fresh in Komaeda’s memory. He had run away from the scene of death, but when he ran to the part of the old school building he knew there was a cherry tree behind the tree was already dead with not a single blossom clinging to the branches.

 

Komaeda sat underneath it anyway, hugging his knees. He had pulled his hood up above his head to hide his face. His brain turned the scene that he had saw over, and over, again trying to make sense of it. He needed to decide if it was good luck or bad luck, hope or despair.

 

He remembered the look in the eyes of the others around him, Mukuro, Junko, Makoto, even Zenkichi, they all felt so much over the death of a talentless nobody, whose life meant nothing.  
  
Komaeda lacked determination. Maybe that was it. Or perhaps his deepest desire just wanted to cling, like the last cherry blossom on a tree that refused to die. If there was a noose around his neck, he would not struggle to get out of it, nor would he take a single step forward. He would just stand there wearing it. His legs would be frozen in place and his neck would start to burn from the rope, but he would never move.  
  
Perhaps he was never a part of this world to begin with. There were too many beautiful scenes in this world, to share space with someone like him. He wanted to leave his body, that body that had already become too heavy for him. Scenery was simply a background, it ran over organic material called people.  
  
Blood spilled countless times like ripened pomegranate seeds. Bodies fell in front of him, and he just kept walking ignoring them. Eventually they would be washed away and fall into the sewers, and forgotten. He was not the only one that lived that way, everybody else did too, treading on weak hopes.  
  
Kumagawa had his own life entirely different from his. Kumagawa lived unlike him. Komaeda’s life was told from a first person perspective with an incredibly narrow scope of his narrative where he could not even once explain the thoughts of other characters in his story, but the protagonist was missing as well. It was a no win situation.  
  
There lives were different from the start. Kumagawa had his own life. There was no reason for him to feel sad at all. If he took the high road now and pretended to care about him, that would be nothing more than his own selfish action.  
  
So why…  
Why did it hurt him so much?  
  
“I have no right to live. It’s stupid.”

 

He was born with one step in the grave, if he took another he would reach the only place he had ever been heading towards his whole life. He was born just to die. That’s such a joke. But he had no energy for humor anymore.  
  
He wanted to escape. His sickly body, his past of nothing but consecutive losses and enduring bad luck. His current mindset was probably just a malady, but that was fine. He wanted someone to steal it all away from him.

  
If somebody were to draw a painting with all of the ugly colors he had seen in his life, they’d think it was modern satirical art.

 

Inferiority. Envy. Please abandon me.  
His feelings for Kumagawa, one big joke.

See he was dying of brain cancer. There really was no point in him living past this round he would just drop dead in another round. Yet, when Kumagawa said that he was the only one who could kill him, Komaeda believed it. He was comforted by Kumagawa’s violent embrace.  
  
He knew Kumagawa was sick to death of his own sadness, but Komaeda only cared about himself in that moment.  
  
Because he let himself be comforted, because he wanted to live. His luck had protected him again. The reason someone like him living in a state of constant rotting away, was able to keep on living, going into remission several times after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, living years after the fact when he was given six months, Hinata sacrificing himself when he was diagnosed with cancer that had spread. The reason he was able to go on living was because he felt a sick and self indulgent value in his own life.  
  
That was the only result that could be true, that was the only one that made sense.  
Komaeda had chosen to live this round.  
Kumagawa died in his place.  
If he made himself the sacrifice, then Kumagawa would not have died.

He could not even honor the death of someone who had died for his sake, because in a few more rounds he was going to drop dead making Kumagawa’s death pointless.  
Because of his twisted self value… how many people died like this?

 

 _There’s no such thing as luck, or fate in this world._  
A cruel voice whispered in his ear.  
_This is what you wanted._  
It was his own voice.  
  
Just then, Komaeda looked up with unsteady eyes and went to see Kirigiri standing above him. “You know you’re the number one suspect right now, for killing Kumagawa-senpai?”

 

“I’m honored to witness the deduction of the Ultimate Detective. That’s good, that’s good, because, I’m the one who killed him.”

  
“Tell me the truth.”  
  
“I’ve never lied to you once. An inferior person like me isn’t capable of lying to an Ultimate, boring, uninteresting, replaceable people like me just tell forgettable lies to themselves and others and make the same mistakes over and over again.”  
  
“About Kumagawa. How do you feel about him?”

Komaeda’s eyes slowly rolled around, they looked more like they were balls rolling in a skull. He could not look directly at Kirigiri. Every time he did, her words echoed into his head confirming what he had suspected for a long time, a person like him valued himself too much to ever sacrifice himself. “I like him so much I can’t stand it, but this feeling isn’t love. It’s completely surpassed love. It’s more than ‘I want to be with him for the rest of my life’. Because, I think I want to die for him.”  
  
“Is that why you killed him.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s why I killed him.”

Kirigiri looked at the hood that was pulled over Komaeda’s head. It was impossible to read his actions normally, but with him hiding his face like that it was a level being impossible. It was like trying to communicate with the dead.  
  
“Why are you hiding your face?”  
  
“Because, it’s ugly.”

 

“...?”

 

“When I saw Kumagawa was dead. I smiled… I was, so unbelievably happy. Horrible. Wretched. St-stepping stone… I just… I just wanted to use them all as my stepping stones didn’t I?”

  
“Komaeda…” Kirigiri had no idea how to get through to him like this. She pulled his hood down, and pinched hard on both sides of his cheeks, but his eyes were still spinning around her, swirling somewhere in the clouds recklessly spiraling between hope and despair. “The Ultimate Detective is interrogating you, look at me.”  
  
“I’m honored. An interrogation by the Ultimate Detective. I get to see your talent shine up close. There’s no way trash like me can be any help in your investigation though, I… I can’t do anything… like you said…”

 

“I want you to help me…”  
  
Kirigiri finally said.  
  
“What?” Komaeda was so confused, that he became lucid for a moment. It was the last thing he expected Kirigiri to say. He would not even hear her say it in his worst hallucinations. “You… but you hate me… even if you have every right to hate me and look down on me as a lowly person, I don’t understand why…”

 

“Kirigiri Jin.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The reason you came to Hope’s Peak was because Kirigiri Jin personally reached out to you, and invited you to come. How many times, did you end up in his office?”  
  
Kirigiri Kyoko sat next to him then underneath a tree that was already dead. She told him about a memory that they both already shared, but Komaeda never thought was anything special beause he was not a person who could hold onto any precious memories of his own.

 

Kyoko breathed deeply, going to face her father in his office. Even though she had come to this school to see him, the entire time he had never once talked to her as anything more than a student. It had almost been a month since coming here, but she could not bring herself to break things off with him and denounce their family relation as she originally planned.  
  
As she sat waiting next to the door of his office suddenly a boy with white haired walked right by her, opening the door in front of her. Jin sat at his desk making a stern face. The boy did not even seem to notice, as he greeted the other with a smile.

 

“Have you finally come to your senses and decided to expel me, because I don’t belong in such a wonderful school? I’m so glad, I don’t want to be wasting anymore of your time. Anytime I think about how space I take up, could be used to make the talent of one more Ultimate Shine I want to die right then.”  
  
“Nagito, it’s not about that. Another student filed a complaint against you. The Ultimate Idol Sayaka Maizono said that you’ve been filling her locker with mail.”  
  
“I was only trying to encourage her as one of her fans. I’m the Ultimate Ultimate Fanatic after all. I know I’m not worthy, but if I have to take up space here then I want to try to motivate them towards their success. Think about how many people are saved when music reaches their heart, Sayaka’s songs can give them the strength to get through the day. That’s why I want her to do her absolute best.”  
  
“Nagito, the letters you stuffed into her locker were far beyond the boundaries of normal fan mail. You wrote highly detailed death threats, and… some of the letters were filled with blackmail on her that I have no idea how you even found.”  
  
“I’m motivating her.” Nagito’s smile did not change once as he was confronted with the pile of letters Jin threw in front of him. “If she overcomes this potential scandal, she’ll be a better, fearless idol for it. There’s no way someone like me could disrupt her career. You don’t get it, Sayaka’s my hero, that’s why I want to be the villain of her story she overcomes.”  
  
“Nagito. You’re her Senpai. Can’t you just be a good senpai for once and take care of your underclassmen?”  
  
“I… I wanted to be a Senpai. That’s why… I wanted to help.”  
  
The boy’s face finally registered sadness. Jin stood on from his desk, and walked over to Komaeda’s side. Kyoko saw her father’s features soften, in a way they never did when they looked at her.

“Normally this would be grounds for expulsion, but it would be a tragedy to lose a talent like yours. Don’t think you have to try harder than anybody else to help out others. I know you mean well. You already have your place here, I don’t want to lose you. Okay, Nagito?” He knelt down to get on eye level with the sitting boy, and then reached out and tousled his messy white hair softly.

 

Even after seeing the daughter all grown up that he had not seen since she was five years old, with twelve years of distance between them, her father did not reach out and touch her head like that.  
  
She never met with her father that day. She ran away leaving the office empty, as soon as she had saw that scene between the two of them.  
  
“When you caused a bombing incident at the school, the other three students were expelled even though they had nothing to do with it and you were only given a light suspension lasting a few weeks. When you stalked and harassed your classmates, he made excuses for you over and over again. When you stole information from the school, he covered it up for you. I watched the way he looked at you, that’s the way a father looks when they’re protecting their child.”

 

Let’s say there are two siblings. One of them is responsible and can take care of themselves, therefore the parent never actually has to act like a parent around them. The other is foolish, and constantly messes up and needs the parent more. Parents are only human after all, they can only divide their attention so much. The foolish sibling takes all the parent’s attention away, and the responsible sibling begins to resent. Because they are being punished.  
  
Kirigiri hated it. Every time Jin made excuses for Komaeda. Every time Jin comforted the boy and encouraged him. She loathed every smile and soft look he gave the boy. She wanted just once, for her father to look her way.  
  
She was responsible, she did not need it.  
She always kept her facade of being in control.  
She did not want to feel the pain of not having he father.  
She had lived her entire life without him up until this point. She needed to keep living that way.  
No, there was no such thing as a child who did not need their parent’s attention.  
  
“Every adult in my life, has always blamed me for being this way. You… you hate me because one adult tried to understand me? That’s not…”  
  
Even though he was talentless trash that should be hated and looked down by her.  
  
“That’s not fair. If anyone you should hate Jin-san. Kirigiri-san, you may not believe me but I would have loved to see a touching family reunion from the bottom of my heart. I know more than anyone else, that kindness is wasted on a person like me. It’s not like I wanted…”

Jin had been kind to him, but in the end he betrayed him and became the reason that school was destroyed. If he had been expelled and Jin had instead showered his own daughter with that same attention, Komaeda agreed that was the happy ending.

 

But still…  
  
“I wasn’t… The one who hurt you was Jin. An Ultimate Detective should be rational above all else. If you let your own personal biases interfere then-”  
  
“I know.” Kirigiri’s voice choked in emotion. She finally looked Komaeda in the eye. Komaeda’s eyes became lucid again and he could see clearly, Kirigiri’s eyes fogged up as she held back tears. “I didn’t want to hate him. I wanted a father.”

 

If she had hated him, she would have erased the possibility of ever having a father in her mind. She chose to hate Komaeda instead as a convenient target. Komaeda thought for a moment the right thing to do was to accept that hate, so the hope of a family being together could be achieved.  
  
No…  
That wasn’t it.  
His mother and father never properly loved him, but he still wanted to have a mother and father.  
That was why watching them be crunched by rocks in front of him took something away from him.  
The real reason why…  
Not for hope, or despair.  
He just did not want to see a girl cry in front of him.

“Will you help me?”

“Why?”  
  
“You don’t have any reason to help me. I’ve been nothing but cruel to you all this time. I don’t think I would forgive you, even if you helped me either.”

He was selfish. All of his actions were rooted in self serving delusions of grandeur. He only acted for the sake of hope. He did not connect with the Ultimates on any personal level. He could only love them in a one sided way from afar. That way, it did not matter what their feelings were for him.  
  
He did not want to make friends. He did not come to Hope’s Peak to get along with his classmates and live a normal school life. If he did not witness hope, the hope that he had been waiting for so long, through so many consecutive tragedies, everything he had suffered before this point was just pointless cruelty.

If he turned his back on that way of living, he would forget who he was.  
  
“You’re right there is no reason.”  
  
Komaeda smiled at Kirigiri.  
He smiled, just like he was a child again.  
  
“I don’t need a reason to help someone. It's okay isn't it? To just hope for the best, even when you have no reason to do so. To hope things will be better, people will be better.”


	18. "It's Fate." She said.

_So we’re only pretending to part ways._   
_This is just a goodbye game._   
_It’s a game where I trick myself by saying “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”_   
_I’m all too familiar with pretending to say goodbye_   
_But… for some reason I want to cry._   
_These deep red lies of ours._   
_They dampen, and dampen, and then morning arrives._   
_I guess the fact that we’ve grown apart means that we were united at one point._   
_If we called it “giving up”, then I’d feel guilty doing it._   
_But it’s fate. It’s fate. That’s what you called it._

Farewell is a word, that in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing. She wanted him to keep his promise to her, but she had promised him absolutely nothing in return. This feeling in her chest it was definitely a selfish one. If she had a place in his heart, she regretted it, because soon she would be ripped out in a way that would never mend.

When people become this close, when the become inseparable it’s probably a bad thing. Because there’s no such thing as being together forever. You can’t live a life where just being by their side is enough. Just as there was a day that you first met the person you had no idea would become this important to you. Inevitably, there is a day where you say goodbye to that important person for the last time without realizing it. Allowing yourself to be so close means when they are gone, you feel like part of your flesh has been ripped away from you, torn apart at the seams.

Then you’re broken in a way that can never be mended. If they do mend, they become crooked, put together wrong. If right before you die, you can say. “There was somebody I loved in my life.” Love was in the most unexpected and inconvenient place, right in front of you all along, does that really make a difference? In the end you’re still dying. People fall in love because the world is such a tough place, but you find someone you wish it would be soft and fluffy for. You wish the world would grow into a kinder place, because they’ve been hurt enough already. You want to become the one person who never hurts them. When they become so tired, they just want to slump over and pretend to be dead because they think getting back up again will only make things worse. You want to hold out your hand, and become the reason they can stand, they can push themselves one more, they can keep walking if that someone is kind enough to stay by their side.

People fell in love to avoid feeling pain, that was what she truly thought.  
So then.  
So then, why? Did she feel like she was only hurting him?

“A-anyway… it looks like we have the pictures now.” Shuichi spoke louder than his usual soft and sensitive voice, arresting Kaede from her thoughts. This entire investigation, she only seemed to get further and further away from him, but that was wrong. After all, she had grabbed his hand, they should be connected. He was by her side this entire time.

“Yeah, finally…”

Due to the rule that only half of the still alive participants had to show up to the trial, as long as the actual killer was among them, only Mukuro, Kirigiri, Makoto, Togami, Kokichi, Komaeda, Rantaro, Zenkichi, Kaito, Tsumugi, Korekiyo and Miu were present as Shuichi began to tear open the brown folder the Monokubs had handed him.

Tsumugi was the last to arrive when they hit the necessary number of eleven. Makoto told Komaru to stay home from the trial because he did not want her to see a person die. Keebo was too sensitive and scared of human blood to attend. Toko seemed like she was going to follow Togami, but when she thought of Kumagawa’s lifeless body again the one boy who had sincerely tried to be her friend, she left. They told Monaca to go back as well not wanting a middle schooler to see this, but Monaca would not have come anyway because it’s boring unless you’re in the starring role. Kazuichi said all of this distrusting one another was too scary for him, and it was probably just Komaeda who did it anyway. The real reason he went home though was if he did suspect it was Komaeda, he lacked the stomach to actually point a finger at his classmate. Maki just avoided eye contact with everybody and left without giving a reason. They told Miu and Korekiyo they did not have to come, but Miu said she was too important to be left out (read she was scared of everyone leaving her behind) and Korekiyo said it would be a waste to miss such a ‘trial of the human spirit.’

When he heard Korekiyo say that, Komaeda had a moment of revelation. Is that what I sound like to other people? His brain was such a mess right now that his revelation was quickly forgotten.

Shuichi did not know this, but earlier Mukuro tried to knock on Junko’s door.

“I’m serious this time Junko, we could all die.”

“Good. Happy Ending.”

Was the only reply she heard. Mukuro could ony sigh to herself and say again, “You’re always like this.”

“The culprit should be in those photos, right?”  
Tsumugi smiled.

“Nishishi-shishishi…. How, exciting. I wanna see the dumb look on the culprit’s face.” Kokichi touched a finger to his fae innocently considering, “Or maybe I wanna see the look on Kumagawa-chan’s face as he dies.”

“Alright! Let’s take a look!” Kaito shadow boxed the air again. Whoever he was constantly getting in a ghost boxing match with against, he was probably losing.

“Let’s look at the photos taken by the camera near the front entrance first.”  
Kaede took the envelop Shuichi offered her and paged through the four photos.  
The first photo depicted her, Kaito, Shuichi, and Zenkichi all running through the doors.  
“This is when… we arrived at the library, so it took a picture then.”  
The next picture was Mukuro, Maki and the others running into the library.

“It’s a picture of us running into the library after we heard Junko’s annoying laugh. This doesn’t help at all. Hurry up and show us the next picture, I look pretty bad in this one too,” Mukuro said, gloomily.

“Y-yeah, okay.”

The next picture was of the rest of them coming to the library after the body announcement.

“Damnit, this isn’t telling us anything about the killer!” Kaito said, fuming hot air. “Damnit, this guy can’t even show himself on camera. If he’s that cowardly I’m going to deal with him myself.”

“Dude, calm down a little. If you’re that much of a hot blooded shonen young man all the time you’re going to burst a blood vessel.” Shuichi said, side eyeing him.

The final picture was a close up of Shuichi’s face taken from a blurry angle.

“Saihara-kun?” Kaede gasped in surprise.

“Ah, sorry… it looks like I tripped one of the sensors when I was removing the cameras. Oh god, my makeup looks terrible from that close up…”

“Umm… this picture doesn’t seem to be very plot relevant…” Tsumugi complained.

“Neither Amami-kun nor anyone else who could be the culprit are in the photos.” irigiri analyed coolly, feeling like she was the only one staying on topic.

“I took the back entrance…” Amami said quietly. He was the farthest away from all of them, he looked cold even with Shuichi’s jacket still draped around his shoulders.

“Kh! What are you saying!” Miu said in frustration. “You’re confusin’ everyone! Except me, of course! Just get to the fuckin’ point!”

Kaede’s mood rankled, with Miu. “Leave him alone! Some of us have actual feelings you know, and a personality, besides how big our boobs are.”  
Rantaro looked up to see Kaede defending him, but his eyes returned to that same dark place no one else could see. “It’s okay… by the class trial I should be… better…”

There were two photos for the camera near the back entrance. The first was Rantaro entering through the back. The second was Shuichi’s face from close up.

“Ah… sorry… me again. This is from when I was removing the camera.”

“Huh!? If you look so good at this angle why are you always shying away, Saihara-kun?” Kaede tried to get closer to him to see his face, but every time she got closer he backed away a little more like they were playing a game.

“Nyeeeeh…! What an attention hog!” Kokichi whined.

“Then, there’s no photos of Kumagawa ever entering the room. It’s a possibility that he was killed in one room and moved to another, but there’s no blood trail…” Kirigiri still was on topic.

“You’re pretty calm about this…I guess that’s what it means to be an Ultimate Detective.” Makoto leaned over watching her face with concern.

Next to him, Togami crossed his arms and sneered. “No, it just means she isn’t weak unlike you.”

“I’m not weak. I’ll have you know, if you were to die then I’d feel very strongly about it!”

“If I died while a loser like you was still alive then I’d deserve to be dead.” Togami seemed to be trying to aggravate Makoto on purpose now that Toko was no longer there for him to banter with.

“Why isn’t there a picture of the mastermind?” Kaede asked, gripping her sleeve. She suddenly reached out and grabbed onto Shuichi’s button up shirting pulling on it so hard she ripped it from where it was tucked in. “Hey, Saihara-kun don’t you think that’s weird? Tell me that’s weird.”

“...Let’s look at the pictures from the hidden door camera. That might tell us something.”

“O-oh yeah. That camera should’ve captured the moment the mastermind opened the door.”

There were two photos.  
The first one was Rantaro opening hidden door.

“But, if Amami-kun was the one who moved the bookcase, then…” Shuichi began.

“He must have known about the hidden door.” Kokichi finished his thought for him.

Zenkichi scratched at the back of his head. “Umm, guys Junko, Kumagawa-kun and I knew about the hidden door too.”

Makoto felt just as awkward. “Kiri told us about it, but she told us not to tell anyone because she didn’t want to work with others… but this was… a pretty poorly kept secret…”

Korekiyo. “For now, let us see the next picture. There is one remaining, isn’t there? What kind of a face do you think Kumagawa-kun will make, unaware of his own death? We all live distancing ourselves from eath, like it’s the opposite of life, when really it’s the natural process of life-”

“Yeah, we get it Kiyo.” Kaede said cutting him of brusquely.

The next picture was Rantaro holding onto his student handbook, his hand reaching out for the camera as the camera’s flash illuminated him. Kumagawa was nowhere to be found in the frame.

Kiyo sighed in disappointment. “If he was already dead by this time, he could have at least done us the courtesy of appearing as a spirit in the photo. Why are boys like this so rude?”

“There was… a flash.” Rantaro muttered, tightening his hold on the fabric of Shuichi’s jacket between his fingers.

“Now that you mention it, the security sensor for this camera was switched off. But that would mean that Amami-kun noticed it… He saw our hidden camera.”

The photos only added two more mysteries. How did Kumagawa’s dead body end up in the room when there was no evidence of him entering, and how did the culprit kill him without being present in the room or triggering the cameras.

“These are seriously all the pictures? You gotta be kidding me! Then it could only be Amami-kun, he was the only one in the room. Let’s just pummel the truth out of him right now!” Kaito said, already sweating.

“You’re just going to make him feel worse, and shut him up more.” Zenkichi gave an exhausted sigh.

“If it really wasn’t Amami-chan, then the killer really pulled an amazing prank! What a good frame job. That’s what they call the perfect crime,” Kokichi said, getting himself worked up.

“I almost want to praise them, but they fall just short of me. If I were to kill one of you to finally make my move to escape, I wouldn’t leave any room for doubt. Only an absolute victory that ensures my survival would be an acceptable result.” Togami’s eyes were inhumanly bright underneath the glare of his glasses.

“Umm… can you two stop praising the killer, please?” Shuichi said, nervously.

“Aw maaaan, I’ve only been slacking off cuz I thought those photos would reveal the culprit!” Shuichi just ignored his protests. “Oh, by the way Amami-kun you had your monopad the whole time, didn’t you? Why were you staring at it, those things just contain useless information. Does your play games? Tell me yours plays games? Let me borrow yours, I wanna play minigames during the class trial!”

“I lost it…”

“Aw man, you’re just making things more confusing with everything you say. Don’t you just think that’s the worst type of person?”

Shuichi was the only one to notice, because he was the only one looking he way. Kaede had become so quiet. Even if she spoke up, he might not hear it, because they were so far apart. ”Akamatsu-san, are you okay?”

“Why aren’t they in the photos? If the mastermind was in these photos, it would solve everything.” That was all she wanted, a clear solution, an end to the tragedy, something she could hold onto. The rope that she had grabbed onto however, was beginning to wrap itself around her neck. “So… why the hell-!?” She lashed out, raising her voice at Shuichi.

Even though he looked scared, his voice was as soft as always. “A-Akamatsu…” A soft light, like the light the moon reflected off of the sun, unlike the intense light of the sun that burned away everything, the soft glow of the moon seemed to embrace you in its pale light. Standing underneath it, even a normal girl like her, could be seen as beautiful. Soft, like the sound of water droplets falling onto a stretch of still water, hearing them in sequence like notes played on piano keys. That was Shuichi to her, her Claire de Lune.

She needed to keep being the Kaede he believed in until the end. “We just need to expose the mastermind in this class trial! And then everything, including this killing game, will come to an end!”

Everyone else got into the shrine of judgement, except for Shuichi who stayed behind waiting for her.

“Akamatsu-san, really, are you okay?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m just so shocked. I really thought everything would e resolved once we looked at the photos.”

“I worry about everything, it makes me want to die like constantly.” An awkward smile on his face, Kaede thought he was a real weirdo able to smile like that when he said the most depressing things. His real smile was so hidden and shy, she wanted to see it more. “But, worrying about you… I don’t mind it too much.”

Kaede could not give up.  
There was still a chance to expose the mastermind in the class trial.  
She would never give up on the happy ending she desired.

“I’m okay now, Saihara-kun.”

“Ah, Akamatsu-san… I have one more question.” He reached out and grabbed her, before she could disappear into the red doors. “Do ou really think it’s one of us…? Not just the culprit, but the mastermind as well?”

“Huh? Isn’t that what you told me, Saihara-kun?”

“It’s just… That was only my deduction, I don’t know if I should trust that.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s true, either. But that’s why we need to confirm it. If you just dismiss a possibility and look the other way… then you’re just turning your back on the truth. It’s like how… you’ll never become happy, unless you believe you can become happy.” Her bright words. Her unshakable belief in the happy ending. Her refusal to stop clinging to it. All that seemed to do was cast a shadow over Shuichi’s face. She didn’t get it. “What’s the matter, Saihara-kun? You seemed so sure of yourself during the investigation.”

“Ah, sorry… Let’s go they’re waiting for us inside.”

Everybody was gathered in front of a fountain with a large Monokuma statue in the middle. The statue started to move and crushed the goblet it was holding in its hand. It was theatrical, a wonderful display of special effects. The waterfall parted and a bridge unfolded leading to an elevator.

Komaeda who had been silent the entire time watching the others bicker, pulled his hood further over his face and spoke once more. “No good at all came from that evidence, or maybe all of you couldn’t see it. You all wasted so much time bickering. All of you. All of you are still alive, but Kumagawa-kun died. If you all are going to insist on living, you should be… a little more useful. Because you have that thing called talent.”

His mumbling, sewed fear among the others. Kokichi was the first to notice. “Boo! That ride looks no fun at all! It should have been a roller coaster instead of an elevator! If you’re not oging to be fun, I might just run away!”

“That’s probably not a good idea. There’s nowhere to run. Not just Ultimates… but every character in a story… has no choice but to trudge along until the ending.”

Kaede spoked up over him, hoping to drown out the minor keys of his despondent voice. “It’ll be fine! Let’s all work together! Remember our promise? We’re gonna escape this place and remain good friends afterward. So let’s do it! I’m sure we’ll be alright! Because… we make such an incredible team.”

“Heh, I wouldn’t be able to call myself a man if I was still scared after hearing a girl say that. Bring it! I’ll show them how I, Momota Kaito, Luminary of the skies lives!”

“Don’t you mean dies?” Kokichi laughed behind him.

“Don’t say something ominous like that! Dumbass!” Kaito said turning around but Kokichi had already slipped away from him.

They all got into the elevator. Komaeda thought he would be the last one for sure, but his gaze lingered a moment as he saw Kaede hesitating to get on. She was shaking with anxious dread, but she looked like someone who had decided to fight. The person who should have been the exact opposite of him, who spent his whole life running away from bad luck. He wondered then, why he had become so arrogant, so delusional, to think he might have felt something from her… like they were… the same.

“Whoooaaa! That’s super cool. It’s actually an elevator.” Kokichi said, enjoying the rickety ride down.

“You just said elevators were boring.” Kaito snapped back at him.

“Well, I got bored of being bored. Somebody who dismisses everything as lame without playing along is the worst kind of person.”

“I wish my sister would realize that…” Mukuro stared at her feet in regret.

“Kehehehe… we’re falling… I wonder how far we will plummet.” Korkekiyo could barely contain himself.

“Dude can you like… chill with the supervillain lines?” Zenkichi sitting next to him, was feling slightly uncomfortable.

 

Kaede, noticing everybody else’s eyes were away from her, whispered to Shuichi. “Um, Saihara-kun. About that talk from before.”

“What?”

“I think everyone is afraid of learning the truth. But the people who are willing to find the truth are the ones that can decide their fate. If you never know the lies from the truth, then you can’t choose a path. You won’t even know you’re on a path. So… fight for the truth… Even if it is frightening. I know you can do this.”

“...”

“If you’re scared, borrow the strength of others who will be there to help you. Think of everyone you’re helping, and let that be your strength. I used to be like you… I used to hate myself so much, that even looking in the mirror made me want to vomit. But, even a person like me is capable of making people smile when I play the piano.”

“Akamatsu-san…”

“Alright, let’s go! It’s better to end bad stuff like this as soon as possible! There’s no use dwelling on tragedies! I’m sick of them already!”

Kaede spoke those words mainly for herself, to encourage herself so she would not turn back. They were beautiful words don’t you think? I won’t even take credit for writing them. You could say she improvised them on the spot, the true feelings of her heart she wanted to hear. Perhaps she shared them with Shuichi because those were the words she wanted to hear from him the most.

Words to encourage a girl lost in her own story. Who had forgotten what choices she could make. Who had forgotten what ending she was turning the pages towards. Who had forgotten she was even a character in the story in the first place.

An entirely helpless girl. But that girl had made, a gloomy boy like him smile, so she couldn’t be all that bad.

🧸

The explanation the were given from Monokuma was short and simple. The needed to stand in their podiums assigned by number, and debate the case and everybody was required to vote in the end to choose the blackened.

Shuichi’s podium was right next to hers, though she had no idea what decided this strange order they were assigned numbers in she was nonetheless thankful.

 

Kaede faced the reality of the situation. Kumagawa Misogi died, without any applause, or drama at all. No… he was murdered… by some horrible, lowlife scumbag. The only thing they could do now was expose the mastermind and end the killing game.

Even if they did that. Her goal of saving everyone was already gone, abandoned.  
Kumagawa once again was not saved.  
She was here in this moment, to play her role until the bitter end.

The class trial.  
“So, it’s starting, huh…?” Kaede already spoke with quiet exhaustion.

Kaito scratched at his spiky hair. “So, what are we supposed to do? Where do we even start?”

“It figures all of you amateurs would have no idea what to do unless someone held your hands. Sheep like yourselves just amble around aimlessly unless someone takes the lead.” Togami said looking down on all of them.

“Ah-haha, oh man, I haven’t been in a trial in like forever!” Kokichi laughed.”

“Oh, so you have experience with trials?” Tsumugi tilted her head.

Kokichi threw both of his arms to his side. “Yeah, since I’m a leader of evil and stuff. I’ve done a loooot of bad things.”

“Then, might I offer the first topic? There’s something…” Korekiyo took a raspy breath. “I found curious. Why, I wonder, didn’t the culprit take advantage of the First Blood Perk?”

“Monokuma’s the culprit! Duh-doy! Cuz this whole class trial was his idea! Hoo-yeah! Easy-peasy! I’m a fuckin’ genius! Let’s all go home and fuck the prom queen!” Miu started to laugh to herself.

Even Kaito realized how dumb that was. “Wait, is it even possible for Monokuma to be the culprit?”

“Of course not. I would never do anything to you guys directly.” Monokuma touched his cute little cheeks.

“Even if you can’t, it’s a different story for the person controlling you right? Is it possible that the mastermind controlling Monokuma, kill Kumagawa?”

“Mastermind? Wuzzat?” He tilted his cute little head to the side.

 

Certainly not the author of this story. But, blaming the author for killing off your favorite characters how immature. Not that Kumagawa would ever be anybody’s favorite character.

“Don’t play dumb with me! Who’s the mastermind controlling you guys!” Kaede shouted at them losing her temper uncharacteristically quick.

It was Korekiyo who raised a finger to urge her to be patient. “Before we determine the mastermind, we must uncover the culprit.”

Shuichi who had been watching all the confused arguments back and forth, too scared to get between them, quietly said. “Then, we could start by determining the sequence of events? The best source of that is Amami-kun…”

“Trusting the person who was found in the same room as the body. You’re as foolish as Naegi-kun.” Togami was quick to condescend.

“H-hey, why am I being used as a measuring stick here?” Makoto said.

Mukuro in the eighth podium far away from him tried to be encouraging. “You’re much stronger than Saihara-kun, Makoto. Nobody could compare to your naivete!” She was not helping much.

“We can determine after we hear his testimony, if it’s credible or not…” Shuichi said, pulling his hat further over his face. He could meet Kaede’s eyes just fine now, but Togami’s eyes that looked like he wanted to trample everything in his path were too much for him.

Rantaro suddenly saw everyone’s eyes on him. “Ah, is it my turn?” He said, awkwardly stretching out his neck. He kind of wished he had a chair to sit on, but he was never really good at sitting properly on chairs. He tried to straighten up but there was something off about him, his posture was terrible so he just went back to slouching.

“Everybody was getting worried, so I kind of promised I would end this by myself. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time I don’t really remember what kind of person I was but… I hope it was a reliable one. Well, considering what happened, haha, guess not…” He looked apathetic, casual about this whole ordeal of life and death, but really he was just holding back his emotions. All of them. If he let even a single bit slip again, he would be falling apart like he had before. He looked like he was used to it, rebuilding himself from scattered pieces, again and again. “I knew about the secret door in the library. I thought I was the only one who knew, whoops. Yeah… so I snuck away from Kaito’s meeting and investigated the door by myself seeing if there was a way in from the outside. I’m a slow thinker though, kind of like a sloth in a dumb baggy sweater. When I was thinking about it I saw a flash in the corner of my eye and noticed one of your cameras. I went over to investigate it and then… I got tackled to the floor. Suddenly Kumagawa was on top of me and my head was pushed down into the floor. Before I could ask him anything I heard a crack, and the ball rolled away from his skull and I was covered in his blood. He used his body to shield me.”

Rantaro gave an empty, hollow laugh that sounded more like an echo. Wind passing through the carved out and eroded away insides of his body. “I said I was going to save everyone, but I did nothing in the end. That guy just jumped and saved me just like that. Maybe, I’m a guy who’s all talk that’s who I really am.”

“That’s quite an accurate self assessment,” Byakuya said, sharply cutting him off.

“You’re not really supposed to agree when someone’s down on themselves-”

“The fact that I’m even using my precious time to insult you, should be considered a privilege.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks I guess.”

“You’re not one of the rabble but you’re talking exactly like them. It’s obviously a deception. It’s all talk. Your story has failed to answer two questions, how did garb- I mean Kumagawa’s body get into the room without being seen by anybody, and how was he killed if you weren’t the killer.”

“Lying? No, I’m just genuinely this clueless.”

“Pish posh.”

“Did you just say pish posh?”

“Nay, sir.”

“Neigh, like a horse?”

“You are the murderer! That’s far more likely than you being in the room at the same time, but witnessing nothing useful to the true murderer. You killed him in a different room striking him once from behind, concealed him and brought him to the library and then dragged him over yourself and pretended to play innocent victim! It’s convenient for you that you were unable to compose yourself to give testimony until now, after all during the class trial we have less time to think of the obvious holes in your testimony. It behooves you to wait until the last minute.”

“Behooves? So… are we talking about horses?”

Togami Byakuya’s eyes narrowed. He refused to believe that somebody from a venerable family could act like this, like… such a space head. When he saw Amami in the past, his manner and composure were entirely different. There was no such thing as innocent victims, in their world only the bad survived. Those who let themselves die trying to be good people, they were just idiots failing to realize their situation. After all he was the youngest, if he was not innocent, then nobody else was. Those who were willing to stomp over even their own siblings. “Enough with the act, there’s no way you could be in the room at the same time and not know how the murder occured. Besides, useless trash like Kumagawa could never save anybody.”

Mukuro had been keeping her head down the entire time. She was afraid to let anybody see her face, because she was still a monster who had no right to mourn. The moment Togami said that, her eyes sharpened and she licked the inside of her teeth. “I thought you said earlier that locking Amami-kun in the same room as the victim was the perfect setup for a framing, Togami.”

Togami adjusted his glasses. “If I was the one doing it. The simple truth of the matter is, I’m the only one here intelligent enough to pull off such a crime. What’s the point of a frame is there’s no artist?” Togami covered his mouth with his hand, but that did little to hide the snide smile that curled on his lips. “Well, you might be able to pull it off Ikusaba. You’re the only one here whose expertise with murder surpasses me. Feel honored I’m paying you a compliment.”

“No thanks.” Mukuro suppressed the chill of disgust that being praised for killing gave her. It was the only thing she was good for, but now she would have rather been a good for nothing just like her sister saw her as. “It couldn’t have been Togami either, because he would have just taken the perk. He only cares about himself, and his stalker.”

“That’s ridiculous. I don’t care about my stalker!” Togami did not even try to disagree with the first part of that statement. He was a proud selfish bastard.

“Your views on social darwinism are well pronounced, but that’s a rather anitquated theory of anthropology you see.” Korekiyo touched his neck and tilted his head to the side, his every gesture looked like that, off balance. “You also don’t seem to understand much about dead bodies.”

“Togami-kun, there’s a detail you’re missing.” Komaeda tried to speak up.

“Someone worthless like you wouldn’t notice something I failed to miss.”

“Oh, well actually… I’m the second richest person here after you but, you’re right I guess…” And immediately his voice died underneath his hood.

Kokichi yawned. “Well, sounds good to me. I’m getting bored, so let’s just kill him already so I can go home and play video games.”

Kaede noticed something strange from what Korekiyo said. She bit on her finger chewing it over. If Rantaro was the mastermind who had killed Kumagawa, that would be the easiest solution but no matter how many times she turned it over in her stomach it did not sit right with her. “The pictures prove that Amami-kun didn’t bring a body in the room with him.”

“Then, Kumagawa was still alive in the room with Amami, and Amami simply killed him from behind and then lied down and put the corpse on top of himself.”

“No, you’re wrong… because… because…”

“The head wound.” Shuichi said in a soft voice next to her.

“That’s right. I mean that’s wrong! Amami-kun tripped the alarm. After that he had about a minute tops before Shuichi-kun and I made it downstairs. It’d be impossible for him to reach around and club Kumagawa on the back of the head, and also have him fall on top of him. He barely had time to clean up and rearrange things to, so they must have been attacked from behind.”

The killer attacked from behind.  
Kumagawa saw the killer just like Rantaro’s testimony, tackled Rantaro and shielded him with his body. That was the most logical sequence of events they could determine so far.

Togami readjusted his glasses. “Then, explain how Kumagawa got in the room? Prove to me you’re at least worthy of being called my competitor.”

“We’re not competing against anybody… we’re all working together.”

“Ugh.”

“Fine, you spoil sport.” Kaede got her brow all twisted up and thought hard about the library. Her and Shuichi had analyzed every possible entrance before this. “The vents… He could have come in through the vents.”

Shuichi raised his hat in surprise next to her. “Didn’t you spend all that time piling books up in front of it so nobody would get through?”

Kaede knocked on the side of her head. “Ehehehe, I guess that’s why they call me piano freak.”

“This isn’t the time to suddenly become a ditz!” Shuichi snapped. She had always been a ditz though, Shuichi just refused to see it, blinded by her other brilliant qualities. “We were by the entrance to the vent all day, it makes no sense how he got in them-”

Mukuro spoke up. “It was probably, my wicked sister’s doing.”

“Wicked sister?” Kaede repeated.

 

“Yeah, she’s the evil twin. My sister was trying to capture the mastermind too, so she probably told Misogi-chan to hide in the vent before you even got to that classroom this morning and wait there all day. Then, when he heard Amami-kun come into the library he exited the vent. Kumagawa’s a good person though, so even if he might have thought Amami-kun was the villain he still jumped to save him.”

The kind of person that would try to save the villains.  
That kind of deluded individual, no wonder a head injury was what did him in finally.

“It’s just as I suspected. The scene is set up to make Amami-kun look like the culprit. Amami-kun was probably their original target before Kumagawa interfered and threw off their plans as he always does.” Togami gave a self satisfied smile.

“Wait, then why were you accusing Amami-kun of being the killer? If you knew from the start it couldn’t be him?” Mukuro was having none of it, though.

“I was watching to see how the competition would react. Consider it a test. I’m not particularly fond of the idea of dying surrounded by losers, so if none of you were able to figure it out I would have just told you what was wrong with my theory.”

“A test? I’m pretty sure that’s something Komaeda did once.”

“Comparing me to someone like him? I just believe in the superiority of my talent, and that the only way to succeed is to face this head on.”

Komaeda just looked off to see if there was some kind of camera he could stare into. “I guess it’s supposed to be funny that he’s insulting me. I should laugh so I don’t make things awkward for everybody else. Haha… ha….”

“Then, there was another killer, and the bookcase was just a trap all along.” Rantaro murmured, looking even more regretful for the fact that he had said he would handle this on his own.

“Hmm… that does seem plausible. It’s very likely that the mastermind knew about Kaede and Shuichi’s trap.”

“The mastermind knew about our trap the whole time?”

“This case may have become the perfect crime, thanks to your hidden cameras. The mastermind knew about your trap and exploited it to commit their crime. There were not just one, but three overlapping plans involving the library. The knots of human interaction are always so fun to untangle,” Korekiyo rasped, looking like he was enjoying himself. “I really do hope I get to watch all of my friends like this until the end.”

We’re his friends?  
Everybody in the room seemed to think at once.

“So, after the mastermind lured Kumagawa and Amami to the room, to murder and frame both of their respective asses. They used Kaeidiot and Poo-ichi’s cameras to arrange the perfect crime.” Iruma seemed confident again, even if all of her moxy was completely fake. She was the only one stupid enough to believe her own hype.

“Did they reall take advantage of our trap, though?” Kaede echoed.

“Is this really… the perfect crime? Are we in an unsolvable mystery.” Tsumugi cried out, reacting to the crowd’s panic.

“Wait, don’t give up that easily! We already know the culprit is the mastermind. We gotta work together, we can end this killing game-”

“Yeah, yeah, so you’ve said.” Kokichi interrupted Kaede, he traced the contours of his lips. Then he quickly flicked his tongue back and forth. He looked like a snake tasting the air. “You yap about teamwork and all that, but you still think one of us is the mastermind. It’s convenient isn’t it, this mastermind exists as a bad guy you can blame all your problems on? This is why I always end up sympathizing with bad guys.”

“Yes, and I know that’s a horrible thought, but that’s why I want to end all the terrible things happening to us. I’ll defeat the mastermind and end this dumb killing game. I’ll.. I’ll even use this class trial to do that!”

“Akamatsu-san…” Shuichi murmured.

“Nishishi-shi…” The snake slithered on the ground, the only thing that could be heard of his approach was his hiss. “You’re so determined you’re even willing to face a cold hard truth. Then, here it comes - the cold hard truth! I know who killed Kumagawa.”

“Kokichi! Are you serious about knowing who the culprit is?” Kaito asked, getting excited easily again.

“Dude, why do you keep believing him? This is literally how he always gets you.” Zenkichi sighed, looking back at Kaito.

“Yup! Sooo… we all agree that the culprit knew about Akamatsu-chan and Saihara-chan’s trap, right?” Kokichi just went on ignoring him. Zenkichi was his number one enemy after all, a guy who was painfully honest.

 

“No, shit! That’s why they’re not in any of the pictures! So who is it?” Iruma however, was his exact opposite somebody who was only good at lying to themselves.

“So whoever knew about the hidden cameras is the culprit.”

“So who the hell is it?”

“It’s you!!”

“Moi!?” The random french, seemed perfectly suited to her weird self regard. She held herself in a higher category as others, not noticing her crudeness, or her obvious social shortcomings.

“Ou made the cameras used for the trap? Riiiiiight? Obviously, whoever made the cameras knew about the blind spots.”

“Wh-what the hell brought this on all of the sudden… I… I just designed the cameras. I didn’t know they’d get set up in the library.”

“If someone asked me to make cameras, I’d totally ask what they were made for.”

“I… I… pulled an all-nighter making them and afterwards just sort of passed out.”

“You’re getting awfully worked up. Look at you. You’re sweating.” Kokichi looked just like a playground bully in the moment.

“For someone so aggressive, you’re kind of a wimp, huh Miu?” Tsumugi caressed the side of her face again, feeling tired of Miu already.

“C’mon, lemme off the hook already? Y-You! You’re all being really mean you know that? Why are you all picking on me? M-my mommy said when boys pick on me they’re just jealous because of how beautiful I am!” Miu immediately fell for the playground bully taunts.

Even Kaede whose patience had been tested against Kaede again and again just kind of started to feel sorry for her. “I don’t think Miu went to the basement either. Right, Kiyo?”

“Of course she didn’t. Miu was in the dining hall during the murder. I saw her there while dining on what I thought would be my last supper. I should have eaten something more symbolic.”

“You fucking necrophiliac!”

Korekiyo, completely unfazed by the insults blinked. “That would be a terrible way to treat the preserved bodies left behind by previous cultures. It would also be disrespectful to the customs of handling the dead practiced by those cultures. I’m starting to feel like I’m the only one here who cares about anthropology.”

Miu just continued on ignoring him. She probably was one of those people who really only heard what she wanted to hear. Sometimes it was doubtful she even could hear herself talking. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? Good job, Kaeidiot. Guess I shouldn’t have judged you by your lack luster rack.”

“Amazing, my sister’s not even here and I can still hear her.” Mukuro grumbled to herself.

“What Gilgamesh-level condescension! But which Grail War are you from?” Tsumugi made a REALLY COOL ANIME REFERENCE.

“Wow… Another reference we don’t get. Heh, you must be a hardcore loser,” Kokichi whispered, he had now upgraded from playground bully to gossipy middle schooler.

“...Oh, sorry. Sometimes my hobbies just sort of slip in.” Tsumugi said, instead of telling Kokichi to shut up because that reference was really cool.

Miu growled. “Hey! Don’t be actin’ all cocky, Oma! You put my ass in the hot seat earlier! How about you just keep your fuckin’ mouth shut you lyin’ little abortion!”

“Wha- Th-that was really uncalled for… I only said that to find the culprit! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah! You’re so meeaaaaaaaaaaaan! Kay, I feel a lot better now.” If his emotions were like a light switch, then Kokichi was like one of those little kids who wildly flipped the lights on and off to play with it.

Kirigiri who had been looking somewhere else with her cool eyes until now, glanced back to Kokichi. “You were doing the exact same thing Togami did, didn’t you? You were just wasting our time with a suggestion you knew was wrong.”

“Oh? Is it the person I’ve been waiting for so long for? A dedicated detective to see through my lies! Chas me to the end of the earth as we’re both consumed by our game of cat and mouse! You and I will know each other, our greatest enemy, better than we know ourselves, and our loved ones.”

“You’re not even worth investigating. Everything you say is just a distraction. You’re an unreliable source. There’s nothing to be gained from trying to untangle your lies.”

“Wow, what a rare detective burn. I may never be able to recover from this.” Kokichi lost all enthusiasm and his voice fell flat. “Nevermind I recovered, I’m not interested in girls anyway. Well, since Togami-kun probably already knows there’s no point in having a big reveal. I wanna steal his spotlight because he’s a meanie! It’s Komaeda-chan , right?”

“It’s Komaeda, hey stop stealing my lines you brat!” Togami had been waiting for the perfect time to reveal his hand, but Kokichi knocked all of the cards right onto the table to show everyone. He was probably not the best person to play poker with. He would probably just cheat and make really obvious bluffs the whole time.

One of Togami’s siblings taught him how to play poker. That man was dead now, so it was hardly worth thinking about. He probably only taught Togami because he wanted to gauge his strengths for their upcoming competition. There was no reason to get close to others, except to learn their weaknesses.

“Wait! How do you guys know it’s Komaeda?” Zenkichi immediately shouted, coming to his defense.

“There were only six who went to the basement. Zenkichi, Kaito, Toko, Byakuya, Mukuro, Maki. Maki and Toko aren’t here and we didn’t all get killed so they aren’t the culprit. It could be any one of the remaining.” He lifted a bandaged finger finally coming up with an idea. “Why not torture the truth out of them? It would be the quickest method…”

“Wait, nevermind I change my mind. Isn’t Mukuro the most suspicious?” Kokichi said, looking like it was another whim. “Just look at her - she’s a killer.”

“You’re right, I am a killer, but the culprit could be anyone. Even Kaito.”

“Geez, it’s no fun insulting you if you’re just going to admit it.” Kokichi pouted.

“Wha- Wha- Wha, there’s no way I’m the culprit!” Kaito panicked. “Maybe it was that creepy stalker girl! She could secretly be a killer.”

Kaito’s wild guess was right by dumb luck, but Togami felt the need to come to her defense anway. “There’s no way Toko could have been the killer, she was by my side the entire time. She wouldn’t leave it for such a thing.”

“Awe.” Makoto crooned. “You do care about your stalker.”

“You shut up!” Togami snapped back at him.

“We need to calm down! If everyone talks all at once, then we can’t discuss anything!” Kaede raised her voice shouting above everyone. She wondered why she kept thinking she could keep the group together, when it always fell apart like this.

Then Shuichi’s soft voice was the one to remind her. “It’s alright, Akamatsu-san we just need to listen to everyone’s statements. You can do this, right?” It felt like Shuichi knew more than her, but he was standing backstage and encouraging her while she stood center stage in the spotlight.

So, she tried to listen to their statements one by one.

Mukuro.  
“I only went because I was invited. Why don’t you ask the person who was behind all this?”

Kaito.  
“What? You mean me!? But I just said it wasn’t me!”

Togami.  
“Toko and I were there the entire time. I was the leader you know, they’d be useless without me! Think about the one person in the basement who didn’t have an alibi.”

Zenkichi.  
“That’s not fair of you guys to blame Koameda just because he was all alone. He’s just anti-social, he’s like one of those cats that doesn’t get along with people well.

“W-wait a minute, Momota-kun! That’s right, when you got there Komaeda-kun was already there so he went to the other room alone. He’s the only one without an alibi.”

“Gooooosh, Akamatsu-chan I was trying to point that out like forever ago!” Now Kokichi sounded like a teenage girl. He was slowly growing up. “It has to be Komaeda! Togami reached the exact conclusion, but he already got a long scene of explaining things so I wanna go now instead.”

Kokichi stood up as tall as he could, but he was still dwarfed by the white giant of Komaeda standing tall and thin behind his podium. He had danced with Komaeda earlier, but a dance of truth and lies would be much more fun. Besides, he wanted that guy to say something again. He always said interesting things, but he had been quiet for far too long, like a toy with his voice box broken. Kokichi just wanted to play, really. “There’s a sliding door in the A/V room that faces the hallway. With that sliding door, you could quickly go in and out of the library. Then, he got past the camera and killed Kumagawa-chan.”

“Yep, I….”

“Shut up Komaeda!” Before Komaeda could even get the chance, Zenkichi came to his defense once more. “It’s not possible to use the sliding door, the door always jams. You’re only able to open it a crack.”

“So, Komaeda-chan is skinny. He could have easily fit through that tiny opening in the door. He looks like somebody stretched him out in a taffy machine.”

“Are you… are you just jealous because I’m tall? A person with talent being jealous of someone like me, no that’s impossible…” Komaeda seemed to have lost track of the conversation.

“If he had done that, he would have tripped the cameras when he walked in from the other sliding door.” Zenkichi said.

“I told you he got past the cameras-”

“Unless you can prove a definite method of getting past the cameras, handwaving it with he figured out how is circumstantial evidence.”

Kokichi’s lip twitched in annoyance as he tried to keep smiling. He wanted to argue with Komaeda, not this guy, whoever he was. His attempts at provoking Komaeda had almost completely failed. It was like when you ignored a child annoying you to try to get your attention. That was just cheating! Anyway, Komaeda was supposed to be the one who took center stage in these trials, what right did he have being all zoned out. He would sink his fangs in and drag him back. It was Komaeda’s fault if he ended up poisoned because of it.

“Hot blooded muscle heads like you are supposed to be dumb like Kaito. Fine then. You want game, I’ll bring you game pretty boy. First I’ll explain the layouts of the A/V room and th sliding door library. The sliding door in the A/V room faces the rear door of the library. Because of this, it is possible for Komaeda to have killed Kumagawa-kun while he was in the A/V Room, but also… he would not appear in any of the pictures from the cameras placed in the library. There was a certain item in the A/V Room, alright Kaede it’s your turn to fill in the blanks.” Kokichi gestured to her.

“The projector screen?” Kaede guessed.

“You can make a long pole if you roll up the screen. It would be possible to reach the library door with it. If you use the rolled-up screen to use the library’s rear door, than you can open it. It’s a shot put ball, so he could have just thrown it from the A/V room to use it as a weapon. Kumagawa-chan saw it flying, and pushed Amami-chan out of the way.”

“There’s no way Komaeda could have thrown that ball all the way. His arms are really weak and terrible, he can barely do a push up.” Zenkichi roared again.

“He didn’t need to throw it. He has good luck. He could have just lobbed it and it would have bounced off the walls a bunch of times, and then nailed Kumagawa-chan in the head just like he wanted it too. Admit it, you’re the one defending him because you know he has the most motive. You saw Kumagawa-chan threaten to kill Komaeda-chan didn’t you? He killed so he wouldn’t become the first victim. Isn’t it just awful when friends fight?”

Zenkichi could only talk through his teeth, he had gotten so frustrated. “How would you know? You don’t have any friends…”

“Kehehehe… What will you do? Without an alibi we’ll all choose you.” Korekiyo laughed to himself. “Come on, at times like this it’s always the underdog who shines overcoming a great opponent.”

“If you’re not going to play with me, then I’ll just pin it all on you!” Kokichi said, grinning.

Togami crossed his arms, looking now like he was pouting. “Well, my theory is pretty much the same. Komaeda makes the most sense, while you were all pretending to trust each other he’s the only one who realized the truth, the only way to win this game is to play.”

Perhaps the reason why Komaeda did not participate so much was because his role was already taken by Korekiyo, Kokichi and Togami. They all seemed to be competing for some kind of spotlight, how tiresome. If Komaeda accepted Kokichi’s attempt to pin the crime on him, he could be executed right here. He would completely throw away Kumagawa’s sacrifice to save his life, and all the other times Kumagawa had told him to live in the past as well. They would all become meaningless. That… put a smile on his face underneath his hood.

He always did smile at the worst times. Even if he lived a little bit longer, one or two rounds, or even a year after this game he would be sacrificing somebody else’s life who could have gone on to do wonderful things outside the game. He had inoperable brain cancer. Even the Ultimate Hope Hinata Izuru had been terrified at the prospects of trying to treat him.

More than that the idea of dying a murderer was especially pleasing. In the past he wanted to die, and find meaning in his death, to become the Ultimate Hope. Now he had realized, because of Kirigiri’s words to him how selfish that desire was. That was not a true sacrifice. It was merely his egoism at play, his desire to be important. If he wished to be kind, then he should die in a way that makes no one mourn him. Everyone here present should spit on his grave. They should think it was a good thing he died.

Not a single person would pity him. He wanted to die without telling a single soul he was dying of brain cancer, if he was executed instead he would die in a way he controlled, and he would control how everybody saw him after death. No matter what he did, his bod was slowly wasting away, his vision was half of what it once was even with glasses, and he continually got headaches behind one of his eyes. He could just throw away Kumagawa’s wish that he continue to live.

After all, he could not live his life the way he had until this point. He did not want to think of how many lives he had already sacrificed, to pointlessly continue his own life. How many times he had stepped over corpses, and simply looked away from them and ignored the sounds of bones crunching beneath his feet. All of those people died and he could not create a single good thing from his life, he could not even do anything for others, in the end he just kept thinking about himself. That’s the only way someone who preserved their own lives at the cost of so many others could think.

If he went to sleep, he would not hurt anybody else anymore, and he would not hurt himself. Komaeda almost wanted to revel in the meaninglessness, of throwing away all the lives that had been sacrificed to preserve his so far. He would even laugh in the face of Hinata who had tried to save his own life by making a deal with the devil.

He should just close his eyes and step off the plank. He had been standing at his execution, with the rope on his neck for so long after all. All of the people who had attended to watch him die in the public square were surely going to get disappointed. All of the crows, ravens, and buzzards that were waiting in the distance to pluck the meat from his corpse, and leave nothing but red tangles of string in his intestines left afterwards were going to go hungry. He’d displease everyone around him by continuing to live, but…

Komaeda slowly pulled his hood down, revealing his smiling face.  
The way a skull smiled at you, when it had no cheeks and only hollowed bones, that was what his face looked like in that moment.  
Losing to a brat like Kokichi just rubbed him the wrong way.  
If it was bad luck, if it was fate, he had no choice to accept it.  
But suddenly, he didn't want to.  
“Yep. You’re right, I did it. Hit the button to execute me now.”

“No fair, you’re stealing my line.” Kokichi whined.

“If you have absolute certainty then vote! Do it! Stop the debates right now! Put your life on the line! You want to have fun, but you’re not even willing to gamble. You’re an Ultimate right, if this is the conclusion that an Ultimate came to I have no choice but to accept it, I submit to you my superior!”

“W..wait, you’re taking this too seriously.”

“You heard what Togami-kun said! The only way to win this game is to play along, to be willing to kill. Obviously, I killed someone to start the killing game so all of you could unite and execute me as Ultimates. Now that Kumagawa-kun is dead, the lowly talentless me will be executed, and all parasites will be gotten rid of. If it’s just Ultimates remaining then you’ll all escape for sure! Oh, but I do have one regret, I never got to kill Naegi-kun’s dull little sister.”

“M… Meanie.”

“ I only think of myself. I force my love and delusions on others who want nothing to do with me. I keep talking even though I say nothing but unpleasant things. I want friends even though I’ll only hurt them. I want everybody to care about my tragedy, but I don’t give a damn about the tragedies of others.”

Komaeda clutched himself, this sweater was not his coat but he was starting to get used to it.  
It was starting to smell like him after all.  
The smell of rotting.

“I don’t trust anything.”

Counting all of the love he had lost, was really just tiresome.  
A little bit painful too.  
All of that love had been wasted on him.  
He was so afraid of losing things that all he ever did was stand still. He could watch an entire forest rot away in the time it took for him to take a single step. Fruit just before the point of rotting tasted the sweetest. He should really just take a bite. 

“I want to burn it all down so despair will disappear with it.”

Then, perhaps he should try being hated.  
He had always been so shy about hate before. If he tried it for real it could be addicting.  
A feeling more intensive than love.  
People fell in love, they got close, than they hurt each other, then said goodbye.  
If that was all it was, then he should be fine with taking the distorted route.  
With him and Hinata, they let love consume them and said goodbye too many times.  
It still hurt so much even now, with no sign of going away.

“I’ve lost hope in everything. I want to obtain everything.”

He yearned so much for the correct and righteous path that it broke him down. All his life he was compared to some standard of correctness he fell short of. He could try burying his feelings in the mud where he belonged, and going back to false love of the Ultimates again, but no matter how hard he tried, those feelings were a seed in his heart, gowing, ever slowly, and wrapping vines around the inside of his body. A laughable metaphor, imagining something living inside his dead husk. If those feelings would not go away, he should just admit them. If Kirigiri was right and he was lying all this time, he would just tell the truth now.

“That’s exactly the kind of villain I am. So go ahead, convict me.”

Kokichi’s expression emptied out, like he had no idea what face to put on in reaction to all of that. “I was wrong, there’s no way you’d be any fun in a game of lies. You’re way too damn earnest.”

This time it was Kokichi who was laughed at by Korekiyo. “Kehehe. Contradiction is human nature, Kokichi. You should learn to appreciate it further.”

Kaede blinked. She felt like her whole attempt to get everybody to work together in the class trial was being thrown off by these three, Togami, Komaeda and Kokichi. Everybody else looked afraid to speak because of what it might provoke from them. “Umm… so, what does any of that have to do with the trial?”

Kaede had been exposed to her first Komaeda rant, with many more to come. “You’re just not a good player, if you keep playing halfheartedly like this, you couldn’t even beat Kumagawa-kun. And his only talent is always losing.” Komaeda tilted his head back at an unnatural angle to look back at Kaede. “Ask Saiharai-kun to point you to the flaw in Oma-kuni’s theory, someone who has no talent like me has no right to do so.”

“Remember, when we first entered the room…” Shuichi whispered to her.

“It would've been impossible for him to throw that shot, because there was an obstacle in the room.” Kaede continued, guided by his hint.

“The moving bookcase. When Amami-kun was killed, it should’ve been open.” Shuichi continued.

“Yup, that’s our evidence. The bookcase door was open when he was killed. Even if Komaeda did throw the shot it would have hit the bookcase instead, and it could not have bounced around from any angle because Kumagawa was clearly hit in the back of the head.”

Tsumugi and Kaede shared a soft, mutual glance at each other as they handled it together. It was sweet.

Kokichi immediately wanted to devour it with his cynicism. “Whaaat? Why are you making this so complicated? Just be the culprit already!”

“I tried my hardest to be the culprit. It’s hard to believe someone as talented as you couldn’t convict me, but it must have been my fault somehow.”

Mukuro tilted her head to the side. She was good at tuning out both of them, from years of having to learn to ignore her sister. “We know the murder weapon is the shot put ball, but where did the culprit get it?”

“I think it was from the warehouse. I saw track and field equipment there.”  
Shuichi suddenly fell silent. He did not dare even finish the thought.

 

“What’s wrong, Saihara-kun?” Kaede was the only one to notice, because she had been watching him too.

 

“Hm? A-ah, it’s nothing…” Even as he said that, he covered his hand with his mouth as if he was trying to hide something. He looked deathly afraid of having even one small noise slip between his fingertips and escape him.

With all of their leads looking dead, Kaito cried out in frustration. “Hey, culprit! Quit hiding! Just be a man and fess up already!”

“Eureka! I know how the culprit got in the library - the front door!”

“Iruma-chan, you know at least when I waste everyone’s time I have the decency to be doing it on purpose as a prank.” Kokichi said, snapping at Miu to cut her off.

Kaito was quick to follow. “Hey, what the hell about that is supposed to be decent?” It was too bad, in another life they would make a good comedy duo. In this one they just hated each other.

“Not if the culprit timed their movements around the camera intervals! Basically, the culprit knew about the cameras and their intervals, so they snuck into the library between camera shots! To avoid appearing in the photos.” Miu said, leaning in with interest. She might be saying something useful for once. “Hyaa-hahahahaha! I know, I know… Beauty, and brains? Why, its just not fair!”

Kaede was about to lose her patience again. “Iruma. What’s this interval you’re talking about?”

“Oh, now you’re asking me! After the shutter snaps, the camera can’t take another shot for thirty seconds. Cuz I redesigned the cameras to auto-roll the film instead of having to do it manually.”

“This is the first time I’ve heard about this. Why didn’t you just tell us from the start?”

“B-But… I told your little beta boytoy after I gave you the remodeled cameras.”

“What?”

Shuichi was a beta boy toy?  
No wait, that was not the important detail.

Shuichi’s fingers slipped away from his mouth but he still did not know what to say. He desperately fumbled with his words. “Ah! I-I’m… I’m sorry! I-I guess I forgot to tell you…”

“How could you forget to tell me?”

“I didn’t think it would affect the plan. I didn’t realize it would matter. I guess I just forget to mention it. I’m sorry.”

“Kehehehe… ‘I forgot.’ What a pitiful excuse. You could give a more entertaining one at least.” Kokrekiyo looped his arm around his neck and held onto the opposite side of his face with his hand. He looked like he wa sposing.

“Yeahhh…. Leave it to a detective to tell such a boring lie.” Kokichi joined in with Korekiyo. They were gossiping now, apparently.

Kaede wanted to defend him, like all the other times she had in the past. For some reason though she hesitated, she felt weak in her stomach. “N-no it’s not a lie. He probably just forgot. There was so much going on at the time, it’s natural to forget you know.”

“Yeah…” Shuichi covered his mouth with both hands now.

“So then it was Iruma who killed him!” Kokichi changed his mind.

“I have an alibi jackass!”

“Oh yeahhhhh… Welp, heh, heh… who else knew about the intervals. Hmmm… now who was it again?”

Kokreikyo joined Kokichi. “Shuichi. Kehehehe. Well then, does this mean that he is the culprit we have been seeking.”

Kaede looked back to Shuichi. Desperate for him to say something again, give her another hint to continue like he had been doing all along. “Saihara-kun.”

Kaito looked to him too. “Hey, what gives Saihara!”

“You had better speak soon. Your silence only damns you further. Come on, even if they all hate your true face I’ll still find you beautiful.” Korekiyo taunted, or maybe he was trying to be encouraging it was difficult to tell with him.

“...”

“Hey… Saihara-kun…? What’s gotten into you?”  
Kaede saw Shuichi shrink away. All of the eyes on him were probably making him worse. If he just spoke up, he would explain things in that calm soft voice like he always did. He could make them all understand just like he did for her. So then, why…?

 

“Oh man, this is getting good. Entertain me peasants!” Kokichi finally relaxed, folding his hands behind his head.

“Hey, that’s my line!” Togami snapped at him.

No, way! Saihara couldn’t be the culprit!  
That’s definitely wrong! There’s no way!  
She refused to believe it.  
It was definitely not possible.

After all Kaede could only say pretty words. She saw the ending she wanted, but she got so lost so easily trying to get herself there. She was looking for everyone. The only person who was looking for her was Shuichi. When she was lost, he found her. He said that she was the light, but the only reason she was able to go on was because she had him by her side this entire time.

When she was scared she reached out and took Shuichi’s hand, because she wanted something to hold onto. That was the only reason. It was only when she held his hand, did her shaking start to stop.

It was easy for her to be strong. She was strong willed, belligerent, and she was fine bulldozing over others to get her way. Yet, Shuichi was someone capable of being soft. He watched her and noticed things about her that no one else did. He never raised his voice, but every thing he said sounded like it came from his heart. She believed in his words, unlike her own.

He was always by her side. That was why she knew someone like him could never be the murderer. He looked at her like she was all the stars in the sky, but she wished he would not admire her so much. All this time she had been thinking, between the two of them he was the better person.

She declared herself the hero of her story. But she could not help herself but hoping that Shuichi would reach out his hand and save her. That he would grab her by the hand, and run away with her from all of this to a world that was just the two of them.

No, maybe she had already been saved. Just getting to spend a week with him, talking with him every day, looking at the quiet way he listened to others, but the spellbound look in his eyes that let her know for sure no matter how shy he was he was always paying attention to her. Even if she just wanted to talk about nothing but piano, and he knew nothing about it, he strained to listen and then provided gentle, quiet commentary.

That was enough for her. Getting to meet him, getting to spend this time with him, was enough.  
One could only ask to be blessed with so much happiness in life.  
That’s what she wanted to think.  
But… there was no way Shuichi could be the killer.  
Even if that was the truth she would lie to protect him  
Because.  
Just because.  
Not for any good or right reason, but a childish one.  
She did not want to say goodbye yet.


	19. Almost

**Intermission**

 

I’m fine with fiction.  
The truth has little value.  
I abhor the truth and worship fabrication.  
  
For example, Fashionista Enoshima Junko was described simply as Not Fake. They were charmed by her realness. She had an overly carefree attitude, and seemed to care nothing at all about what people thought of her. She was overwhelmingly herself and that bright and energetic personality won them over. Especially those who changed themselves constantly to fit what others saw of them, Enoshima Junko must look like a free existence, free to be true to herself.  
  
The truth was though she was simply cute.  
  
Cuteness is a vicious weapon. It’s a weapon by which the weak survive. When a bear, or a human offspring needs shelter, it uses its cuteness to con its parent into providing for them. Mimicry, the opposite of warning colors.  
  
Cuteness is a weapon that rivals strength. One can make murderous intent vanish simply by shaking and starting to cry. Enoshima Junko’s flaws were noted in her many magazine interviews to be her indecisiveness. If one were to compile a list of all of them, she constantly changed her answers on what her favorite things were. Occasionally she was vacant, not responding to questions or not paying attention. However, people took these traits and made them cute, they assumed she was a good girl, eager to try new things, whose tactlessness was a part of her charm. She was so true to her own personality she sometimes did not pay attention to others.

  
Constantly getting angry at another person in a relationship, and refusing to tell them straightforwardly what the problem is or what your feelings are is just bad communication, it’s ugly, but if you call it tsundere it becomes a cute relationship dynamic.

 

You can be treated with kindness for merely staying quiet. You can be forgiven for merely staying quiet. You can be thought of as thoughtful for merely staying quiet. They smiled at her even when she did nothing. She was valued more than others for doing the same work. She was spared the world’s wrath even in failure. She was forgiven for her lies.  
  
In the end if someone who had met famous upcoming teen model Enoshima Junko, when asked to describe her personality they always came to the same two words.  
  
“Not Fake.”  
In other words, though her personality was a performance strung together based on her predictions of the tastes of whoever was in front of her, just enough to lead them on into believing they understood her. That they were seeing the real her.

In the end all they saw was a girl who was “just cute.”  
  
If Enoshima Junko was not born for despair, perhaps she was born to be cute. As a plain girl who has to dress herself up in lies to become anyone interesting, I envy her.  
  
Kirigiri Kyoko came to this school to confront her father. When Kizakura appeared before her, she only accepted his offer when she heard Jin’s name. Before then her plan had been to drop out of school at High School and devote herself to working full time as a detective. She had already been forced to attend a middle shcool due to Japan’s compulsory school laws, but nothing came of it. She only needed enough social skills to interact with others so that it did not hinder her work.  
  
Kyoko had no strong opinion of other people. She did not look up to them or down. She did not sympathize or pity with them. She simply accepted them exactly as they were. She met murderers bent on revenge, and young girls trying to investigate the disappearance of their beloved sister with the same cool, expressionless eyes.

Even now among her class of sixteen she was polite to everyone. She was always reasonable and even tempered, even when the emotions of youth flared up in the class. She talked to others just enough that she was not asocial, but she did not speak up when it was unwelcome. She never fought with anyone. The worst she could be accused of was being quiet.

 

She never bothered anyone and she was never bothered by them. A pure girl who lived only to be a detective, a model talent. That was exactly why she was not close to anybody. Not even her own father.  
  
At this moment though, as she tried to read a book in the classroom while light fell on her from the windowsill she was being bothered. A cute girl was interrupting her reading. “ _The intense interest by the public by what was known at the time as “The Styles Case” has now somewhat subsided._

 

“Kirigami-san!”  
  
“A type of origami.”  
  
“Harakiri-san!”  
  
“A type of suicide.”  
  
“Kirigiri-san!”  
  
“Yes, that’s me.”

“How do you make your braids look so nice? You’d expect a girl like you to be more bookish and withdrawn like Fukawa-san, but you’ve got really pretty hair. I mean, you have killer split ends but you totally make it work.”

 

“I braid them.”

 

Kirigiri’s mother used to braid her hair when she was little. She had no memory, of what her face looked like. When she died, her grandfather destroyed all the portraits of her mother in her possession. He called her a woman who seduced his son away from the life of a detective. Apparently he assumed she was some femme fatalle type. The only thing she remembered, was the touch of her mother’s soft hand, carefully tying her hair. Some children fussed and cried, they got into fights with their parents when they had to have their long hair brushed, but her mother was patient and gentle it was a warm memory to her.

Whenever she was agitated she brushed her hand through her hair to remember that feeling. It was not the same, because her hands were so scarred she had to cover them up with gloves. Her touch would never be as soft as she remember her mother’s being.  
  
She told Junko none of this, because she just wanted to be left alone and read her book. However, it was improper to ignore someone talking to you so Kirigiri responded out of obligation.  
  
“You should braid my hair! I know, let’s swap looks for the day! Don’t you think everybody will be surprised?”  
  
“No thank you, my hair is fine the way it is.”  
  
Despite her obvious hints she wanted to be left alone, Junko did not go away. Junko was considered well meaning but tactless by the whole class, and sometimes said far too much. She effortlessly charmed all the boys in class, because she was available to all of them and therefore she was unavailable.  
  
She acted like a girl who had stepped straight out of magazine pages. Everybody harbors one sided feelings about their favorite celebrities, to the point where some even see them as friends in a way. Everybody acted that way around her, with the exception of Naegi Makoto who claimed her personality was ‘too much’ for him to handle when she teased him.

 

Junko leaned over Kirigiri’s shoulder and just watched. It was odd for Kirigiri to see a girl who always looked so energetic, now to be so still. She recognized those eyes, glassy eyes that reflected all the information they took in without judgement like a detective’s. She was just reading the same words on the page Kirigiri was reading. Junko leaned too far over her shoulders to read the book with her, and Kirigiri was tempted to push her away. But didn’t.

“Oh, I get it. Death by poisoning, huh? The reason Alfred is the prime suspect is because he wanted to be suspected, so he could destroy evidence and clear himself. That way if they ever tried him on suspicion again Double Jeapordy would come into effect.”  
  
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie. Her favorite mystery author was Sunaga Hirube, but there was nothing wrong with the classics.

 

“Enoshima-san, I haven’t even gotten past the second chapter. You’ve already read the book. You don’t need to spoil it for me just because I’m not paying attention to you.”

  
Attention hungry, if Kirigiri had to describe what she thought was Junko’s one flaw it was that. Even then it was natural for a model to crave attention. She was the exact opposite of Kirigiri, who only spoke when she had something to say, and learned to be quiet a long time ago to not inconvenience her grandfather.

 

Enoshima tilted her head at an uncanny angle. “I’ve never read the book before. I just guessed the ending. Isn’t a good mystery novel reader someone who tries to solve the mystery along with the author?”

“Yes, but if you just jump straight to the conclusion without bothering to explain your reasoning you’re a poor detective.”  
  
“Those characters who deduce everything in an instant, without seeing their thinking process. They’re kind of boring right?” Enoshima Junko, made the word boring sound especially hollow. “Hey, why do you always wear those gloves? Are you hiding a super secret birthmark that makes you a princess of a faraway kingdom?”  

  
“Mm, my hands are cold.” She put the book down now that the ending had been ruined for her. “Enoshima-san, why me of all people in the class? I don’t stand out.”

  
“Whaaat? What the heck? You’re cute, Kirigiri-san, you really are. You’re so cute, you’re super cute, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that you’re the cutest thing alive on the entire planet. You know  why it’s spelled that way, right? Because everyone wants to C-U. You’re cute, cute, cute, cute, cute! I thought it as soon as we were in the same class. You’re second cutest, after me!”  
  
“Ah…”

  
“Are we friends, Kirigiri-san?” Junko asked, changing the subject suddenly.  
  
“Of course. Classmates should all get along. That’s what Naegi-kun always says.”  
  
“Then what do you like about me?”

“You… you’re not fake. It’s good for a detective to be friends with people who don’t tell lies.”

 

“You know, you always hold back your true emotions. That’s so you. It’s that coolness of yours, or maybe that apathy, that I like about you.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“But I wonder how does it really feel when someone seconds your faults like that? Like ‘you’re sloppy but I liked you’ or “You’re foulmouthed’, or ‘I like how there’s always a shadow about you’ or ‘I like how you’re so clumsy’. I wonder how you feel about that sort of thing. Naegi-kun always says stuff like that doesn’t he?”  
  
“He’s a kind person.”  
  
“I wonder if Naegi-kun only worries about you so much, because you’re cute. Maybe you’re like a heroine to him!” For a fashion model Junko made a lot of game and manga references. “I think Naegi-kun has a thing for cute girls, he’s always bending over backwards to help them. You don’t see him doing that with guys a lot besides Togami-kun right? Well I think it’s a common fantasy you know, like a normal guy whose no good otherwise can suddenly save girls, and they become interested in him.”  
  
“You really are chatty.”  
  
“I’m just kidding. If I said that Naegi-kun was only interested in cute girls in trouble, that means you’d have nothing else going for you. What? Are you still not satisfied? My, my aren’t you selfish.”

  
Kirigiri just looked at Junko waiting to explain herself for her weird remarks.  
  
“I was just saying, don’t you think people learn how to fall in love by watching manga and anime these days? They fall in love with the image of love itself, the story that’s been sold to them.”  
  
“I guess you would have strong feelings on that as a model.”  
  
“You know, you’re not apathetic, or cool Kirigiri-san. You’re just ambiguous. I get the feeling right now, you’re not even looking at me. You’re averting your eyes just slightly. You’re not even talking to me, just saying words.” She gave her a cute smile. “Well, I like that about you too!”

  
Enoshima Junko seemed like she was asking in her own way, for Kirigiri to look directly at her face. To see what was there and more importantly to see what was missing. She never noticed. Her cute classmate was plotting. She smiled while holding a knife behind her back. What Kirigiri regretted more than anything else though, was that if Junko was a lie then she should have noticed. If she had caught everything right then, and stopped it before the plan went into motion to destroy hope’s peak academy they might have even become friends.

 

She was supposed to be a prodigy at figuring others out, but she was outfoxed by cuteness of all things. It hurt her pride as a detective. No, that was a lie. All she could think about was all the different times she could have noticed Enoshima. When she ran around as Otonashi Ryoko. When she skipped class and ran around campus with the upperclassmen. If Kyoko was just looking, she would have seen her.  
  
They could have become friends. That was why it hurt. Kirigiri might have been the ideal person to foil the mastermind, but not to reach her. She was a detective, but she saw Enoshima Junko as ‘not fake’ the same as everyone else and accepted that answer.  
  
What Enoshima Junko needed was not her. She needed someone who would have exposed all of her misdirections. If only there had been someone in front of her who relentlessly pursued the truth, she might have found her way back.

 

**Intermission End**

 

Kaede wanted to save Shuichi. In that moment she forgot about saving everyone else. If she could not save Shuichi, then saving everybody was worthless. She had already failed to save Kumagawa, but she was apparently able to make that distinction in her head.

  
“...”  
  
Shuichi doubled over where he was standing. He clutched his chest, his face in pain like two or three of his ribs had been torn out. Like there was some missing space and he was desperately trying to hold everything in, in spite of that.  
  
The eyes of everybody else on him was only making it worse. Suspicion, derision, disgust as his actions, because he was sensitive and able to read the faces of others he was stabbed again and again by their most negative emotions. They only assumed the worst of him. THey were right to assume that.  
  
He wondered why people always stared so much at him. He was nothing much to look at.  
  
“Your tongue-tied silence speaks voluems! I fuckin’ knew you were the culprit!” Miu said, jumping on the bandwagon.  
  
Even so suffering like that Shuichi would not say a single thing to end it. He probably thought it was better, if he was the one.

“W-wait just a minute! None of that is possible. Saihara-kun was with me the whole time we were on lookout. When are you suggesting Saihara-kun killed Kumagawa-kun?”  
  
Komaeda curled his fingers up and stared at the center of them rather than staring at Kaede. He did not want to look at her face when he said these words. It would be a reminder of how cruel he was being. “Were you together the whole time?”  
  
“W-well, I guess we weren’t together the whole time.”

 

“So that’s when Saihara-kun went to kill Kumagawa-kun,” Kokichi said joining with Komaeda. Both of them had probably already figured the truth out a long time ago. Now it was just a game between each other to figure out what the other knew, and how much, with all the other students as pieces between them.

 

“Saihara-kun’s not a murderer!”  
  
“Don’t become emotional,” Korekiyo raised a bandaged finger. “We must seek the truth in a calm and logical manner. Or all our lives will be lost here.”  
  
“He couldn’t have, because the security sensor didn’t go off until Saihara-kun returned to the room.”  
  
Kokichi only smiled. The pale color of his face and the shadows of his long hair, made it look like he had painted on white makeup onto his face and worn the face of a clown to make his smile extra wide. He had been waiting for her to say that. “Who set the security sensor on the bookcase, it was Saihara-kun, right? Did you actually check for yourself if the sensor was set on the bookcase? Did it ever occur to you that Saihara-kun could have lied about setting the sensor?”  
  
“A… a lie…”

 

Kokichi loved the faces that people made when they realized they had been lied to. It was never a particular face, and it varied from person to person. Sometimes they were shocked, sometimes they were appalled, sometimes they were just hurt by betrayal, sometimes they were sad, and sometimes the realization that it was all a lie could even bring happiness. However, what he liked was when it was his lie that triggered such a face. Because otherwise people could show you any faces they want.  
  
Kind people like Kaede could become cruel. Smart people like Shuichi could become oblivious.  
There was no logic, consistency or reason to it. Human being were really capable of anything. How wonderful to observe, and how scary. When you told a lie though and saw the face they made hearing that lie, it was the liar who took control. All Kaede could do was react right now.

 

  
“Saihara-kun pretended to place the sensor on the hidden bookcase door… but in actuality he was holding it the whole time. And when he met up with you, he secretly triggered the sensor… to make the security alarm go off.”  
  
He had been waiting for this moment the whole trial. It was worth it messing around with Miu, to make her be the one to propose this theory. He wanted to show everyone present that things were never as the seemed. It was not just people like him, Komaeda, Korekiyo, everyone wore masks.  
  
It was safer that way if they all had just suspected everyone from the beginning, nobody would have gotten harmed. Or at least that was Kokichi’s way of avoiding pain. As longical as he was, as someone who only pretended to be a child because of his short size, he could hold onto childish notions to.  
  
“That would cause Akamatsu-san to assume that someone had moved the bookcase…” Korekiyo said, joining him. Now the two of them looked like a pair of cheerleaders bullying the innocent nerd Shuichi.  
  
“No, that’s wrong!” Kaede said suddenly. “This is weird, if the security sensor wasn’t placed then we wouldn’t have been able to take that picture. We were only able to get it because the sensor was triggered by the hidden door.”  
  
“Oh, that? Psh, easy to explain. Well, you see…Uhh, I guess you’re right. Sorry I didn’t think that far ahead.”  
  
“You speak as if you knew from the start… Even I was taken in.” Korekiyo put a hand on his mask. Perhaps that was him being embarrassed.  
  
“Yeaaaaah, I mean whatevs. I made a mistake! Big Deal!”  
  
“Then you just need to think things through.” Kirigiri spoke up again. These trials she was always, silent, and only speaking up to move things along. “The receiver had a power supply, he could have turned it off. He turns the power supply off, so you get a picture but no alarm when Amami-kun removes the bookcase. Then, he goes to the library, in the thirty second interval goes for Amami-kun but hits Kumagawa-kun instead but he’s in a hurry so he collects the sensor and then leaves.”  
  
Komaeda looked at Kirigiri. He saw a cat trapping a mouse in a corner. Poor Shuichi, he was not going to be able to protect the person he wanted to at this point. Komaeda was awful, because he joined Kirigiri’s side. “Then he caused the receiver to go off in front of Akamatsu-san to trick her. It’s convoluted but, a detective’s mind would work that way planning an elaborate crime.”

  
“Kiri… what are you doing?” Everyone else accepted this as Kirigiri being rational. Makoto would never accept Kirigiri saying such a thing though after she said she would protect Shuichi’s happiness. “Even if it was him there’s no way you’d be the one to point it out like that because you’re-”  
  
“A detective.”  
  
“Nishishi… It’s a battle between detectives how fun.” Kokichi’s teeth chattered with his laughter. “So the Ultimate Detective is the killer. What a plot twist!”

  
“W-wait! Why do you guys think he’s the culprit? Saihara-kun say something. Why aren’t you saying anything?” Makoto, timidly tried to defend him.  
  
“Hey, you gonna say anything? We’ll all vote for you if you don’t.” Kaito felt like knocking him on the head to see if he was listening.  
  
Komaeda covered his mouth. Shuichi was struggling so much right now because he wanted to protect his hope. From all first impressions Shuichi looked weak, and his hope naturally looked weak too. He even insisted every time he could that his talent was not the real deal. Unlike Komaeda though, Shuichi looked genuinely willing to die for his hope.

  
Kaede would not let it happen though.  
Shuichi could not die.  
She needed everybody to stop turning against him, she needed to give them a reason even if it was a lie. She would just have to turn that lie into the truth.

 

Kaede suddenly shouted above the crowd. “I’m sorry you guys, I forgot to tell you something important! To tell you the truth… it was me. I had the receiver. So that’s why there’s no way Saihara-kun could’ve turned off the receiver!”

  
“Huh? Is that true?” Kokichi touched the his round cheeks like a cluless child. See, it was just like he said. Honest to the point of bluntness, straightforward to the point of being a steamroller, Kaede had just told a lie.  
  
The liars were supposed to be him, Komaeda, Togami, the ones who were battling for control of the trial. A girl like her was supposed to try to string together the truth.

  
“Of course, Come on! Would I lie to you guys?” Kaede was a painfully bad liar. She even sometimes spoke her true thoughts aloud even when they were insulting and not fitting her nice persona. That was the person she had been a moment ago, but a person could become anything. Kokichi knew this better than most. If they wanted to be someone else all they needed to do was tell another lie.  
  
“That’d only screw yourself over. If we mess up, you’re dead too, y’know.” Kaito said.  
  
“Or perhaps… you wanted to cover for Saihara-kun even at the cost of your life,” Mukuro said.  
  
“I can’t imagine why anyone would risk their lives to lie on someone’s behalf,’ Togami said.  
  
“It’s not so unthinkable. You don’t understand at all… what people can be pushed to do fo the sake of love...kehehehe.”

  
Zenkichi side eyed him again. “Are you guys competing to out villain each other or something, I’m getting tired of it.”  
  
“Saihara-chan and Akamatsu-chan are pretty buddy-buddy with each other, so I wouldn’t doubt that. Plus, the way Akamatsu-chan acted right now, I’m preeety sure she lied. Well, what do you guys think? To believe or not to believe Akamatsu-chan?” His head tilted back and forth like he was considering the options, but he probably was just bad at sitting still.  
  
Komaeda looked to Kokichi, and then to Kaede. It was difficult to tell if he had figured it out from the beginning, or he was just playing it by ear.It reminded him of the way, it was always impossible to tell what Kumagawa was thinking, and made his chest ache. Either way if this was a clash of hope’s it was to see who was stronger, Kaede’s to save Shuichi, or Shuichi’s to save Kaede. It reminded him of Fuyuhiko and Pekoyama… his own classmates… that was right at the time he was acting much like Kokichi he had done something so thoughtlessly cruel to them.  
  
“Akamatsu-san. If this goes any further, you’ll make Saihara-kun a murderer.” He said in a soft, gentle voice.

 

Komaeda’s voice would probably turn harsh later to contradict himself but for now. He could not bring himself to hate Saihara’s resolve. After all, he had stood up on a pile of dead students and funeral portraits in order to continue living when he had nobody to love at all. Those words from Mikan long ago echoed in his head. _It’s just because you don’t have anyone to love? Is it because you’re also someone who isn’t accepted by everyone._ He still lived on wishing to be loved, even after he trampled on those corpses.  
  
Then what right did he have to judge Shuichi for being willing to let them all die so the person he had finally found to love him, to accept him, to forgive his weakness could escape from this place. Everybody always accused him of siding with the villains in the class trial, but what was wrong with him understanding the emotions of some people who were so desperate they were willing to kill. He could not understand human compassion, human empathy, but he understood desperation at least.  
  
“Saihara-kun… even though you’re not the culprit, you’ve been quiet for a while… It’s because you realized something, huh? You’re scared to reveal the truth.”  
  
“...Ah!”

“I thought so. Saihara-kun. Answer me this - what kind of truth did you realize? Don’t be scared to say it. Not just for me… but for everyone else.”  
  
When Komaeda figured out who was the culprit at the beginning of the trial, he did not hold his tongue because he wanted everybody to die. It was true he could just tell everybody straightforwardly, but then what about the feelings of the villain? He was a shinigami for sure, but he did not know if he had the right to judge who deserved to live more. Somebody who was so desperate to live that they would kill, or everybody else who had just simply reacted to the crime. In order to keep living they persecuted the culprit. He did not know what was right, or what was wrong, all he knew was he wished for an ending where no one would die. That was why he put the decision out of his hands, and into the hands of the Ultimates, hoping they would transcend this game and find the happy ending they all deserved. Even if he was left behind because he could not lift himself there.  
  
As long as he knew that possibility for a happy ending existed. As long as there was a chance he could become happy. If he really was not born just to be miserable his whole life.  
  
“Don’t be scared to say it. Not just for me… but for everyone else. Please face the truth.”  
  
Komaeda wanted to believe in hope, more than he believed in it. Just like Shuichi had wanted to believe in Kaede.  
  
“The picture. Why did he notice that his picture was taken if the cameras were hidden. I’ve been contemplating that,” Shuichi began, quietly and reluctantly.  
  
“The flash.” Kaede answered with a calm smile as if she were already sure of it.  
  
Shuichi had no idea what else to do, so he just muttered the details of th case. If he forgot everybody else was here, the things he had figured out for himself.  “Amami-kun noticed the camera’s flash. The brightness is totally different. Same room, circumstance, and camera, and yet there is a disparity in brightness. Because only the camera aimed at the hidden door had the flash turned on.”

  
Makoto scratched at his head. “Umm, did you guys make a mistake? Maybe you got unlucky and hit the switch by mistake.”  
  
“It’s not mistake. The camera was placed for another reason,” Shuichi wished it was a mistake. He wanted it to be a fluke. He wanted it to be accidental. He wanted it to be meaningless tragedy, because knowing the reason only made it hurt more.  
  
Kaede only smiled confidently as she finished Shuichi’s thoughts for him. It no longer looked like they were using teamwork like before. In fact, it looked like Kaede was leading Shuichi down a path he did not want to follow. “The flash was used to lure whoever moved the bookcase to come look at the camera.  But the culprit didn’t expect the camera to take another picture when the door closed.”  
  
“Is… something wrong? You’ve been acting… kinda strange,” Makoto noticed.  
  
“...Strange,” Mukuro mirrored him.  
  
“Your last few remarks carry… more conviction than before,” Even Korekiyo did not look amused at this development. The confusion in his eyes was human.  
  
“Yup, I know. I’ve known for a long time. The culprit of the incident is…” Now that they all were looking at her, it was time for her to step off the stage.

 

“No, Kaede, don’t!” Shuichi screamed. It was the loudest she had ever heard him. If Shuichi was so delicate, that he kept a glass wall between himself and everybody else and only stared longingly through the glass then his voice would have been enough to shatter it. He did not want to know. He did not want to see the truth. He did not want it to end. He did not want to say goodbye. He did not want to have to be the one to destroy the happiness in front of him.

 

Mystery novels are like that too. You read them on the edge of your seat, heart racing, but you don’t know who did it. When the mystery is no longer a mystery, and the number of suspects is down to one. Honestly, after that point, it’s no fun.  
  
I wish all solution scenes were just one line long.  
When the true identity is known, the fear and the fun disappear. That’s how things are.  
  
He said those lines to Mukuro, but he had already forgotten about them. Even so, he still believed. He wished Kaede the first time he had met her in that room together in those lockers had said one line to him.  
  
“I am the murderer.”  
  
That way he would not have gotten invested along the way. He wished the story had not even begun, because it was too much for his weak self already to bring it to an end. They could hate him all he wanted, step on him, despise him, he would endure all of their looks. He was already _unsightly_ to begin with. Unsightly. The mere sight of him was meant to revolt.  
  
But please, he was begging don’t hate her.  
He did not think he could be forgiven. He was not sure if forgiveness even existed.  
He wish it did. For her. So someone would forgive her.  
  
She could not deny it any longer.  
She could not turn this situation around into a positive and find the mastermind.  
It was not hope or despair, murder was just murder from the end.  
Shuichi stayed silent the whole time because he realized it already.  
  
They were just sitting in adjacent podiums, seventeen and eighteen. They were next to each other, but so far away. Shuichi thought he was by Kaede’s side, but he had never been near her. Even if the stars and the moon occupied the same sky, they were light years away.  
  
He reached out to her. The scream had dried out his throat. He was reduced to muttering, and begging. When it was just the two of them nobody else could hear them whispering to each other and Kaede was glad for that. It was only when she was the one looking at him, that Shuichi could be his true self.  
  
He tried to reach for her hand, but Kaede reached past him and put a hand on his cheek instead. _“For the both of us… from now on, you’re going to carry my wish. You’re going to live on for the both of us.”_  
  
_“That’s so cruel. It’s cruel but… I understand. I’ll do it. You can trust me. I won’t let your wish, go ungranted…”_ _  
_ _  
_ Because she was here, he had forgotten this school was death. Because she was here, he made a friend for the first time in his life. Because she was here, he did not think being kidnapped and brought here was such a bad thing. There was no place in the outside world. There was nowhere he belonged not out there, but in here was different. It was all because she was here. He made happy memories that were all his own. Around her he really felt like he could be the person he wanted to be. He finally found the place he belonged.  
  
He almost sacrificed everyone to protect it, for his own sake That was why he was going to be the one to destroy it now, because she had asked him to. For her sake. “Akamatsu-san is the culprit.” Shuichi said, speaking loudly for the first time.  
  
“Huh? Did you guys really think I’m the culprit? Psh, come on guys! Like I could! Geez of course not! Do you think I’m strong enough to throw that shot? My hands are only strong enough to play piano! Yup, it’s wrong. Saihara-kun’s just joking around. He wanted to lighten up the mood. Right Saihara-kun? No matter how you look at it, I couldn’t have killed Kumagawa-kun with that shot.”  
  
Kaede.  
Became a terrible liar once more.  
Kokichi blinked noticing the stark difference.  
  
“No. I’m not joking around. Akamatsu-san definitely killed him.”

 

 _I didn’t want to figure it out._ _  
_ _I didn’t want to know._  
  
“Yeah, how? You and Akamatsu-san were together the whole time weren’t you?” Kaito was in disbelief. He was the one doing the right thing, what Shuichi should have been doing, protecting Kaede.  
  
“She committed the murder without stepping foot on the scene of the crime.  She used it at the first floor classroom where she was keeping watch. She rolled it from the 1st floor classroom, down the vent, down a ramp of piled up books which led to the spot the camera’s flash was supposed to lure her too. Miu, show them your floor plan. The books are stacked directly like a staircase. When the alarm went off, I ran ahead of her and she had time to roll the ball into the shoot.”

Kaito staggered. Shuichi wished, that Kaito was the hero of this story. If Kaito took Kaede by the hand now and ran off with her, and Shuichi never saw her again he thought that was the happiness ending possible. “Hold on! Don’t jump to conclusions, I’ve still got a lot of questions. There’s no way I’d believe someone like Akamatsu would be the culprit. Don’t worry, I’ll clear your name! Where did she even hide the shot put ball from her.”  
  
“In her backpack. She had it on her the entire time, and planned ahead of time,” Shuichi said, no emotion in his voice. Because it no longer mattered whether he believed in Kaede or not. The truth existed outside of belief.

  
Korekiyo said what he already knew. “So that means most of Kaede’s sins were committed right before Shuichi’s eyes.” But it still stung, hearing it all over again.  
  
The entire time. Every time she said she believed in him. Every time she said she felt like she could rely on him. Every smile. Every touch. Every time they were close. The times she leaned against him.  
  
Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies.  
  
She never believed in him once. Not from the beginning. Every single time she spoke about saving everyone, or how she would be lost without him, she lied. She planned murder the entire time. As if she was leaving a foot in the door. She never told him about it once, she never expressed her concern. She always from the start just did what she liked.

  
But, the lies he had told were far worse. He kept saying so confidently that he understood her, that he was always watching her, that Kaede would not get lost because he would pull her back. He even promised Kaito he would stop her from doing anything crazy. They were all lies though, the truth was he never even saw her. Not even once. He did not look at her. If he had looked at her directly from the beginning, if he had kept those promises this never would have happened.  
  
They had both lied to each, but it was such a beautiful, comforting, lie. So beautiful, that anybody would have fallen in love with it. The truth had no love at all, no warmth, no comfort. The truth was lonely, because Kaede was not going to be there soon.

“That’s correct. I was with her in the classroom…And when she moved the vent grate aside. And when she lined up the books on top of the book case,” Shuichi explained in a slow and mechanical fashion.

 

“She used you as her stepping stone,” Komaeda said, regretting now that he repeated that line so often, when he saw the flash of pain on Shuichi’s face when he realized he was one.  
  
Kokichi seemed to be watching closely, waiting for the perfect moment to egg him on further. “But if all of that is true, then that’s pretty unfortunate. I mean it’s Akamatsu-chan you know? She kept preaching about working together but then she goes and kills in cold blood.”

  
Shuichi grabbed his hat and pulled it over his face. If he were a hero, he would take Kaede and run right now. He asked so much of her, he had been depending on her the entire time. She had asked him when they were all alone in the piano room to save her. It was the only thing she ever asked of him.  
  
He almost did it.  
He almost saved her. He almost sacrificed everybody else and himself to do it.  
That wasn’t enough. He was never enough. Not to save anyone, one single person. One girl who probably wanted to live right now more than anyone. He thought he would do anything for her if she only asked him. The first person to ever rely on him. He felt betrayed not because Kaede had killed someone, but that she did not trust him. Yet, what reason did she have to? He thought he would do anything for her? He had not done one single thing.  
Even now there was nothing he could do for her.  
All he could do was cry. A crybaby detective that no one needed. Tears welled down from his face. Even when he tried to hide them they kept flowing.  
He won’t become it.  
He won’t become her hero.  
  
“No, something still doesn’t fit,” Shuichi wiped away his tear soaked face. He kept talking.  
  
“Hm? What doesn’t fit?” Kokichi tilted his head again.  
  
“Akamatsu-san wouldn’t do something like that.”  
  
“You mean she’s not that type of character?” Tsumugi asked. Even if Shuichi was the star of this world, he was never going to become a hero. “But you’re the one who said she did it, right?”  
  
“Yes, I did say that. But murder in cold blood is just not in her character. I truly believe that! I believe in her!”

  
That was the true extent to Shuichi’s selfishness. Even though it was about to all be over. Even though Kaede was going to disappear in front of his eyes soon. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see her true self. Even if the Kaede he had been believing in was a lie all this time he still wanted to believe in her.

 

Kaede looked at the soft, gentle boy. The one she wanted to protect. In the end, the one who hurt him the most was her. She saw his kindness. She saw how fragile that kindness made him. She took advantage of that and destroyed it. The person she was closest to, the person she only wanted to see smile, was choking on his own tears in front of her.

 

When Kaede cried in front of him.  
When they were both in the classroom.  
When she cried because she did not want to go through with the muder.  
Shuichi held her.  
Why wasn’t that enough to make her stop?  
It was all broken apart now, a piano cover slamming down and breaking finger bones.  
Kaede screamed back at him. “Why do you still believe in me, Saihara-kun? Why? Tell me why! Why are you doing this? Are you still looking away from the truth?”  
  
“Not at all. My belief in you is gonna lead me to the truth. I’ll show you your truth!”  
  
Even if it hurt worse. He wanted to see who she truly was before she died. He wanted to know that the real Kaede had been there by his side all along. That she had been his friend.  
  
“You still believe in me? I’m definitely a culprit?”  
  
When Shuichi held her in that moment she almost stopped. Now that she thought about it, there was so many times that she almost did something. When they were together in the piano room, she laid on his lap and she almost told him how scared she was.  
  
When Shuichi first caught her silently crying after everyone turned on her. She almost pulled him into that room with her, and pulled him under the covers. She almost wanted to tell him that she could not sleep and wanted someone to hold.  
  
She almost told Shuichi about her plan when she reached out and held onto his hand. Even if she had been lying up until that point, he would have trusted her she was almost sure of it. He may have even helped her. He could have seriously lectured her and talked her out of it.  
When she was investigating the murder and was filled with so much disgust at the dead body. The person she had killed. When she wanted to crawl out of her skin in revulsion now that she was a murderer. She almost confessed to him. If she had done that, would he had covered up the crime? Would he have tried to run away with her?

She did not tell him.  
It wasn’t because she was afraid Shuichi would hate her. It was because Shuichi would still believe in her, that she never wanted to expose the ugliness she was capable of to him.  
He would still try to be by her side. Unwavering, undiluted affection, he truy wanted to understand her.  
Even if she killed a person with her own hands, he’d probably forgive her.  
He’d believe in her all the same.  
To her, that belief was just  a bit too heavy. It threatened to crush her.  
It wasn’t that she couldn’t like other people. She just wasn’t able to be liked.  
She wished, Shuichi would respond with just disdain for a murderer. She wished all he would see was just plain murder.  
  
“You think I wouldn’t do it? I’m the one who killed Kumagawa. That’s the truth of this case. That’s all there is to it.”  
  
She almost believed in him. She could tell, Shuichi was weak and no good on his own, he was someone who had to rely on others to guide him. She wanted to be the person who could give him what he needed.

  
She had wanted to believe in him. Wanting something does not make it so.

In the end it was like wishing on a star.  
A temporarily dazzling light, that faded away too quickly.  
They had burned too bright together and burned each other out.

All the trust they had in each other, their belief in one another had fallen into pieces. She was the one who threw the ball that smashed it. Even so, he would forgive her.  
  
The truth was she had so many opportunities to stop. Just like if Shuichi had suspected the real her, and not the ideal her he saw he might have stopped her. If she had actually trusted Shuichi. Then she might have stopped herself and relied on him. The fact that neither of them did.  
  
Then, it wasn’t meant to be.  
She covered her ears. She no longer wanted to hear music. She no longer wanted to hear anything at all. Kaede’s eyes welled up with tears. “Please. Stop… Just stop… Remember what I told you? You have to fight for the truth. Shuichi I know you can do this. If you say you can do this then don’t look away from the truth. Just let me die already.”

 

  
Shuichi looked at her, those big, pure pupils. Like mirrors that reflected her. She could see the appearance of the person she hated the most, it was her own face. Yet, Shucihi looked at her still. Unable to bear the heaviness, she wanted to smash the belief he had in her.  
  
Even then, he would forgive her. He would still smile at her like she was the only one in the world. Even if Shuichi had been the victim of her murder, even if he was the last thing she saw killed ro smash, he’d forgive her.  
  
Being forgiven isn’t the same thing as being saved. Finally, her voice cracked between her sobbing and she muttered quietly. “Do you know what I was trying to do?”  
  
“Kill the mastermind.” Shuichi said, gentle as ever, accepting of her as ever.  
  
“I’ve been thinking this for awhile, but Saihara-kun, the truth is you hate me, right?”  
  
“Yeah. You’re super nice and super strong. You’re too nice and too strong. You think you know best for others, so you just do whatever you want. The truth is I hate you so much, Kaede.”  
  
“I see. The truth is I hate you so much too, Shuichi.”  
  
The first time they used each other’s first names, they called each other so intimately, and shared their most private feelings together in front of everyone. He would not save her, but he would not let her die the way she wanted to either despised by everybody for becoming a murderer. He really was so selfish.

  
“She was trying to end this killing game. She was trying to save us all. Isn’t that right, Akamatsu? You’re trying to make us not feel guilty for killing you by acting like a villain!” Kaito called out.  
  
“So, she tried to end the killing game by killing the mastermind?” Mukuro realized.

  
As he saw all of their eyes narrow on Kaede, Shuichi tried to speak up again. If he could just explain it right, if everybody could see things the way he did. See her the way he did. They would understand. “But it’s all my fault. Kaede trusted my detective skills. I told her the mastermind might be there. It’s all my fault. She trusted my detective work, and I screwed it up.”  
He felt like he was on the brink of collapse. He was falling apart. But it was much better if someone like him fell apart.  
  
Kaede would die regardless. He would endure their stares for the rest of his life. He would bear all their disdain. He would do it all if it meant that Kaede did not have to die with such a sad look on her face hated by everyone. They should blame him. It was much better if someone worthless like him carried the blame.  
  
“Stop… that’s not true. Please don’t say it’s your fault. It’ll be harder for me. None of this is your fault! It’s mine! Everything’s my fault!”  
  
“Akamatsu-san…”

 

She guessed.  
This was goodbye.  
If she said goodbye with a sad look on her face, she would hurt Shuichi more than she already had. He told her once that her smiling face was enough for him. Was that a lie? She hoped it wasn’t. Because she had nothing else to give him.  
  
“Saihara-kun, nice job! I didn’t expect any less! You were super reliable back there. But you still have a long way to go. You need to be more assertive. If you did that more often you’d be a pretty cool guy. I could have almost…”

  
She could have almost fallen for him.

She could not bring herself to say those words and admit that.  
She almost loved him. They almost escaped from here together.  
She almost got him to play a duet on the piano for her. She almost shared with him things she would never share anybody else. She almost became someone he could be comfortable around. They almost became each other’s strength. They almost grew up together, and told other people the story of how they met in the most miserable place and became each other’s happiness.  
  
They had no happy memories.  
But they had almost happy memories.  
The world’s greatest love story could have been told between them with the words “might have been.” She was sure, there was at last one story where they became happy.  
They could have become happy.  
But she ruined it.

 

Shuichi, took a step forward towards her and grasped at her image. He did not reach her, he only fell to his knees. He wanted to cling to her, but he just grabbed his own chest.  “Akamatsu-san, why? Why are you smiling like that? Why are you trying to be brave, and encouraging me like that? If you had just been less selfless, you wouldn’t have had to murder. Why…? Why do you do that?”

 

 _Because I’m not sad._ _  
_ _I will die._ _  
_ _Being killed by Shuichi._ _  
_ _Oh man… What happiness._ _  
_ _I know I’m doing such a foolish thing. There’s no meaning to this. I’m not necessarily meaning to save you by encouraging you, Shuichi. I couldn’t save anybody in the end. I’m being selfish dying and leaving everything to you._ _  
_ _That’s all._ _  
_ _Maybe I should tell you one more thing._ _  
_ _About my feelings._ _  
_ _Well, yeah… It’s… you know._ _  
_ _Ah… No, well, I guess I’ve said everything I wanted to say._ _  
_ _Yeah._ _  
_ _Like I just told you._ _  
_ _You can do it._ _  
_ _There’s a lot to do, and you’re not going to want to do a lot of it, and there’s going to be so much more of it, but you can do it._ _  
_ _You can do it._ _  
_ _You can become happy._ _  
_ _I’m going to die here but I’m just a murderer. Just forget about it. You’re going to be alone, now, but do a good job of it._

 

Komaeda looked self satisfied and self absorbed as he closed his eyes on that scene with an air of nihilistic pretension. He thought it was a beautiful scene. Even a nihilist could appreciate beauty. He genuinely believed in the good intentions of Kaede and Shuichi, and he did not believe either of them for falling apart when their hands reached out for each other just as they were about to touch. Even if this story was full of lies, the emotions they evoked were true. They had lied to each other, but they really cared for one another at the time. It was because they wanted nothing more than to stay together, that they told the lies that drove each other apart.  
  
But it was because that scene was so beautiful Komaeda knew he had no part in it. He could never belong in such a heartfelt scene of goodbye, and that was why he wanted to destroy it.

  
Kumagawa’s voice whispered in his ear. _We can’t let them have the last laugh can we?_  
Komaeda curled up his fingers. Hallucinating already, his voice really was rotten. _Kumagawa-kun. When you’re around me all I ever do is hurt you. I’ve never once done a thing to repay your kindness. And now that you’re gone I want to pretend like I miss you but…. If I’m still here and you’re gone I’ll try my best to be your understudy._

 

“You had your perfect scene all plotted out.”  
  
“Huh?”  
“Huh?”  
  
The sound of clapping drew their attention. Komaeda brought his hands together to give them an applause, for what he thought was a wonderful performance. He only stopped when everyone started to stare at him. He started to wonder what he had done to make them all stare, and then he remembered this was the point where he talked. “Saihara-kun, you wanted Akamatsu-san to die with everyone seeing her good intentions. Akamatsu-san you wanted to die and leave everything to Saihara-kun. Don’t be so full of yourselves.”  
  
People like him who only lived for the sake of living.  
They lived just to be a nuisance to others. He wanted to get in the way and insert himself into things. If the choice was between doing nothing and making things worse, and doing something and making things worse he would do something. Even if it made him at fault. Even if he was bothersome to others. He would just do as he always did in the past and insert himself into the scene where he did not belong. If Kumagawa were here he would be brave enough to do that. 

“Saihara-kun, do you realize what happened to you? What do you think it means to become close to somebody? It means choosing somebody. But let’s think about that for a minute. Choosing someone means not choosing somebody else. The at of choosing an only be a direct antonym to not choosing. A human liked by everyone, who can be friends with everyone is a logical impossibility. Akamatsu-san never existed in the first place.”

He had no right to criticize someone for finding their hope in someone else. Saihara probably waited his entire life, for a person who believed in him when he could not believe in himself. He was going to criticize anyway. He would not be him, if he was not wrapped up in his own hypocrisy like a comfortable green coat. 

“In the first place humanity isn’t as kind as you think it is. There are serial killers out there who only see people as things to cut up with scissors. Someone who only thinks about despair might be the smartest of humanity. There are fortune tellers like me who’ve tasted every hope and despair and go on smirking. Neither of you are as kind as you seem to think you are. Saihara-kun, the truth isn't harsh, or painful, it's just plain boring is she just didn’t choose you, because she wanted everybody. You’re not more important or special to her than everybody else is. You’re just one of the crowd. She sees people and crowds as the same thing.”

Those were the kind of people he surrounded himself by. They were not broken, they were just inferior. If they were broken they could be fixed.   
  
“Akamatsu-san, Kumagawa-kun was murdered. You took my precious thing away from me. It can’t be condoned. Your intentions don’t matter. Because murder is the absolute worst. That, I can assert. The desire to take a life is the most despicable human emotion. To hope and pray and wish for another person’s death is hopelessly evil. It’s a sin beyond redemption. You can’t apologize, you can’t atone, even if you die you won’t be forgiven.”  
  
Komaeda’s voice was merciless. He did not even know what he sounded like.  
He did not know if sounded like himself. He could not recognize himself.  
Who was the hopeless one here?  
  
“Anybody who’s taken a life ought to fall and sink into the depths of hell, without exception. The moment you decided to kill the mastermind you became no better than them. Even if it’s only an accident, even if it was bad luck, taking someone’s life to preserve your own. You become guilty merely by living.”  
  
He pointed a gun at Enoshima Junko, and said it was for the sake of hope. That was not the current him, though. The current him was somebody else.   
Komaeda did not deserve to start or finish a trial. His own world was too flawed, his own mind too frayed at the cracks, he doubted he could ever point out the flaws  
of others so well. He could barely understand them. If only Kumagawa were here, he kept thinking over and over again.   
He was only gone for a few hours, but he had repeated that phrase to a maddening extent. Perhaps... he had grown to rely on Kumagawa more than he realized.   
He missed him.  
Could he miss a person that he lost?  
If only Kumagawa were here. If he repeated that lie enough times maybe it would come true, Kumagawa would be here again.   
He needed to be capable of stealing the show right now. He needed to borrow his strength.   
  
Shuichi and Kaede were speechless. Zenkichi was the only one able to even look at him in this moment. “Komaeda, what are you doing?” He really must have done something bad if he was pushing Zenkichi who always defended him to the point of exasperation. 

“That’s easy to say when you haven’t had to kill someone!” Kaito shouted.  
  
“Let’s make one thing clear. I’m not condemning her as a hero.  I'm judging her as a fellow villain. I say this because I am capable of murder. I can without a doubt, kill someone. Because I don’t feel other people's pain, not one bit.”  
  
In other words as if to say.  
This is the person you have become.  
Akamatsu Kaede. If you have become like me you do not deserve a beautiful death. You don’t deserve to die with a smile on your face.  
You don't even deserve to die as the villain who gets condemned for murder.  
Deserving of nothing at all, that's me.   
No judgement, no conviction, no ending happy or sad.   
  
“The very existence of a murderer is detestable. Deplorable. I hate all murderers from the bottom of my heart. I hate them heartily. Purely and simply, I’d like to crush them all. You didn’t do this for everyone’s sake, you didn’t do this for hope, you just succumbed to your own despair.”  
  
“You sound like you want to die instead of me.”  
Kaede said, her voice fragile.  
  
“Just kidding, I don’t think that at all.” Komaeda smiled. “I won’t die. I promised.”  
  
“You did?”  
  
“Just kidding. Unfortunately, my life isn’t that exciting and I’m not romantic enough to make such an incredible promise. I’m just an ordinary guy who’s missing some vital component. There’s no way even a fallen Ultimate could compare to someone like me, I was just being theatrical to get your attention.”  
  
Not a single person had cast a vote.  
It was not over yet.  
It would not be that easy, to end on a heartwarming goodbye. That was all Komaeda meant to say.  
  
“Digressing…” Kirigiri Kyoko coughed loudly, bringing her hand to her mouth. “It’s not my style to take the lead during the trial, you’re just so incompetent a detective that you forced my hand. You failed to notice what even someone like Komaeda noticed.”  
  
“Huh…? Me?”  Shuichi turned around. He had been balling his eyes out a moment ago and then suddenly everything had stopped.  
  
“Yes, you. You’re overly emotional. You failed to notice what was right in front of you. You only see the images of people, so you only see what you want to see. You’re just scared of being wrong, so you don’t try at all. You run away. You’re the worst detective I’ve ever seen. I would even suspect you were a crimminal, trying to commit fraud by getting us all to rely on you if you weren’t so incompetent.”  
  
“I…?”  
  
“Kiri… since when are you this cold?” Makoto said, trying to step in but Kirigiri ignored him.

  
She looked sharply to Rantaro. “Stop being a babbling child Amami-kun, and remember what you said earlier. What happened to your monopad?”  
  
“It went missing.”  Amami raised his head. He had missed the performance entirely, he looked to damaged even for words to reach him.  
  
“No, it’s right here.” She picked up a monopad and tossed it into the middle of the circle. “Amami-kun was holding a monopad in the last picture. Then it was missing when we found him. If he was tackled to the floor it should have been knocked out of his hands and on the floor. Do you know where it was…?”  
  
“Uhhh….”  
  
“Kumagawa-kun’s pockets. If you had checked his pad at all, you would have noticed this is the one registered to Amami-kun. I even went to Junko’s dorm and checked that she Kumagawa-kun left his monopad at home on accident that day. If Kumagawa-kun was dead and Amami-kun was knocked out, then who moved Amami-kun’s monopad from the floor to Kumagawa-kun’s pocket?”  
  
“...I didn’t see.”  
  
“It’s not that you’re afraid of the truth, you’re just too incompetent to grasp it. You miss what’s in front of your eyes. You’re the worst detective to ever hold the title. There’s no way the Kumagawa died by Akamatsu-san’s trap, because there was a third person present at the scene.”  
  
Shuichi and Kaede stared at each other. All of the keeping secrets, lying to one another, facing the truth, it had all been for nothing. Komaeda just smiled, thinking to himself. If Kumagawa were here, he would certainly laugh at this twist.  
  
Time was almost up, and they had no culprit.


	20. Judgement

**Intermission**

『 _Weird Girl-Chan._ 』  
『 _Ryoko-chan._ 』  
『 _Enoshima-san._ 』  
『 _Enoshima-sama_ .』  
『 _Junko-chan._ 』  
『 _Enoshima-san._ 』  
『 _Shitty Kouhai-chan_ .』  
『 _I’ll call you Junko for the rest of my life. Lifetime obedience._ 』  
『 _Junko._ 』  
『 _Princess._ 』  
『 _Spoiled Brat._ 』  
『I _want to love everything about you, but… your red eyes, that look down on everyone and everything. Eyes that look like they’re bored with the entire world, I hate them._ 』  
『 _Yeah… I hate your eyes... but… I couldn’t commit myself all the way to erasing any part of you._ 』  
『 _Because it’s you I suppose._ 』

『 _Junko… aha..._ 』Kumagawa Misogi coughed blood in her face, and then his voice fell to a ghost of a whisper as if his next words only belonged to her. 『 _Your eyes are so pretty._ 』

What an idiotic thing to choose as his last words. He could have given her a hint to the murderer, or foreshadowed his resurrection from the dead with a ‘see you later’. He could have even tried to say something cool. Instead he just said that nonsense, but it was so like him. So like him, that even remembering it again reminded her distinctly of what was missing from her side. She reached down and clutched her side like a chunk of flesh was gone. She already lost one hand, and one eye, she wondered how much more needed to be ripped out of her.

『 _You never… Once called me by my name. When you kill me, say my name just once._ 』  
  
“Idiot.”  
  
Kirigiri opened the door to Junko’s room to find a floor covered in stuffed animals, all of them gutted and their insides ripped out. The mirror in the corner had been smashed and shards of glass were just lying there on the floor. It looked like a Natural disaster had been through here, or a Junko. Same thing really.

“Enoshima, what are you doing?”  
  
“Why do you want to know?” Enoshima’s flat, mechanical voice chilled Kirigiri. The emotion that Kirigiri was always straining to hold back, Enoshima was just entirely lacking in it.

“I don’t understand why you’re pretending to be sad. You can’t lose something you never had in the first place.”  
  
That was right, Kumagawa Misogi from beginning to end existed outside of her grasp. She could never make him hers, from beginning to end.  
  
“What is there to understand?”

 

Junko finally stood from where she had been curled up in the corner.  Her expression was perfectly blank like a sculpture. Lacking in any emotion, like every single muscle on her face was deadened. Kirigiri who was far too familiar with the dead, found that most corpses were more expressive than she was being in that moment. Her makeup was perfectly untouched, the blood from earlier cleaned away, if her room right now was utter chaos Junko sat in the middle of it untouched by it all, perfectly composed.  
  
She did not look like she had been crying, not one single tear had been shed for Kumagawa Misogi.

 

Even then Kirigiri was taken in by how beautiful, and dangerous she looked. Appearing in Enoshima Junko’s eyes felt like the reaper was watching you. She overcame her momentary hesitation and walked past her. “Despair, is there any human emotion more worthless?” She bent over and picked up one of two monopad’s off the ground, confirming with a swipe it was Kumagawa’s. “Well, this is the last piece of evidence that I need to end the trial. Goodbye.” She said, businesslike.  
  
“What are you planning?” Junko’s head turned slowly around, her one eye was blank for a moment and then narrowed in recognition. “Ah... What a boring way to end things.”  
  
Kirigiri kept walking past her towards the door.  
  
“You’re the one I don’t understand.”  
  
“Hmmm?” She hesitated, not knowing why.

  
“You said I had everything you wanted, and I threw it away. A good relationship with my sister. A childhood friend who wanted to save me. To me, you’re the one who has everything. You were born with a heart after all, but you continually, over and over again, sacrificed your emotions and put yourself last to make it this far. Now at the very end you’ll do the same again. It’s so stupid, it’s incomprehensible.”    
  
“If I were to live for myself, it would have too high of a cost for too little benefit. That’s all there is to it. I’m not selfish like you.”  
  
“If your life has so little value, then give it to me! You may have no use for it, but I do! I can’t imagine, being born, to be able to feel, to be able to breathe, and then repressing all of those emotions all the time. You’re just holding your breath until you suffocate. Don’t you long for life? Don’t you long for your own birth?” Junko’s eyes gave way to mania, she grabbed Kirigiri’s shoulder and forced her to turn around and face her.  
  
Kirigiri’s face did not react at all this time. This face was somehow, easier to look at than her expressionless one. “Enoshima, do you remember when I said it was boring to know the ending of a novel no matter how many times I finished it.”  
  
“Eh…? Why are you suddenly talking about books? What are you some kind of nerd?” Junko’s hysteria disappeared as soon as it arose, and she gave an oddly normal response.  
  
“I was wrong. There’s such a thing as rereading books after all. A good book is always good, no matter how many times you’ve read it.”  
  
“There’s no way you could-”  
  
“And you… are the same no matter how many times I read you… so stupid I simply cannot comprehend you.” Kirigiri said to her reflection in the mirror staring at her gripping her wrist so hard it might snap in half any moment. Then, she turned away. Junko looked away too in a bratty way. The two of them faced opposite directions for a moment Junko still clinging onto her wrist, until Kirigiri broke that connection.  
  
She walked away from her shadow and left behind no longer caring what would happen to it now that it was not connected to her feet. She did not care how lonely it looked in the end, how human, because it was only a shadow in the end.

 

 **🧸 Intermission End** 🧸

“W-why would you wait until now to say all this?” Shuichi was trembling, he could not hide it in his voice. What he feared most, not being good enough, not being good enough for everyone around him, him being exposed while all of their eyes were watching. It came true right in front of his eyes while Kirigiri lectured him.  
  
“I wanted to wait until you were done embarrassing yourself with that scene,” Kirigiri dismissed him coldly again. Shuichi looked and saw he did not even appear in those eyes of hers, like he was a total stranger, like he was nothing.

“Come on Kiri… even I think you’re being a little harsh.” Makoto lacked the spine to stand up to her though, so in the end all he did was grumble.  
  
“Wait, you can’t prove Akamatsu-san’s trap failed for sure. There are too many unexplained elements and almost no time left. If we all die here, her wish won’t be granted.”

Kyoko coughed suddenly. She held her hand on the pedestal to balance herself, and covered her mouth with her gloved hand to silence her coughing fit. “There’s no good reason why her trap failed.”  
  
“So you admit-”  
  
Kirigiri coughed again cutting him off. “No, I mean what I said. There’s no logical reason. It was just dumb luck. Kumagawa-kun was an individual who probability warped around him. If you think about it, if he was hiding in the vents the whole time he should have been hit inside the vents but she dropped the ball seconds after he climbed out on his own by coincidence.”  
  
“Luck? That’s your reasoning?”  
  
“I can prove it.” Kirigiri wiped her mouth with a cloth, and then put it away in the pockets of her jacket, and pulled out a soft ball instead. She suddenly threw it directly across the trial room at Makoto. “Makoto, think fast!”  
  
“Kiri- what are you!” Confused he took a step back and tripped over his own shoelaces. As he fell backwards the soft ball flew past him and harmlessly landed.

“Komaeda. Don’t move at all, or try to dodge this,” Kirigiri said picking up a second softball.  
  
“I don’t have the right to try to avoid pain. I’ve been living my whole life in such a pathetic way after all-”  
  
Kirigiri did not even let him finish she whipped the softball straight at his head. However, Rantaro took a step back startled by her sudden actions as well and his shoes also just happened to be untied and he fell on top of Komaeda pushing him over and causing the softball to miss.  
  
“While Komaeda and Naegi-kun have good luck, Kumagawa exclusively has bad luck. Every trap that he’s involved in is bound to fail. A rude goldberg machine requires every single component working in sequence in the way it intended.”  
  
Kaede had been stunned into silence, but suddenly she spoke up. “Th-then. I’m not a murderer?”  
  
“Oh, you’re still a murderer. The fact that you plotted to kill someone behind all of our backs does not change. You’re just an incompetent one.”  
  
“Kiri…!” Makoto spoke up again. “She has feelings you know. Shouldn’t a detective investigate the feelings of the culprit as well as the victim? Aren’t you being biased?”  
  
“Naegi-kun. We all will die if the truth isn’t revealed. Should I take more time to be nice? Should I consider her feelings? Did she consider any of our feelings when she decided all on her own what would be best for all of us?”  
  
“Th…this isn’t like you.” Makoto once said that if Kirigiri started to do bad things, he would lecture her. That if she wanted to change, to become something other than a detective of the Kirigiri family she would not lose her true self. Yet at the moment he looked at her like he did not recognize her.

Kirigiri steadied herself against her podium. It looked like her whole body was trembling. “We’re investigating this case not me. The truth is, the killer took advantage of Akamatsu-san’s trap. When it failed and the ball rolled harmlessly to the side, they picked the shot put up off the ground and bashed Kumagawa’s head in with it. Then they tossed it, and put the monopad on the floor into the wrong pocket and left the scene of the crime.”

“Wait, we don’t know how they got into and out of the scene of the crime,” Shuichi said.  
  
“They took the secret passageway.”  
  
“There was dust on the card reader. Nobody could have entered it from the library-”  
  
“Who said there was only one entrance? Most rooms have an entrance and an exit don’t they? If there’s another way they could have entered the same room from a different location, and if they could open and close the secret door in the library from the other side that explains how they were able to move to and from the crime scene.”  
  
“A… a second secret entrance?”  
  
“The murderer knew you would make an incorrect deduction about the secret entrance, and they were aware of the trap that Akamatsu-san planned to set up, and used both to their advantage to commit the murderer. So you were correct, your poor deductions are at fault for all of this.”  
  
Shuichi looked shaken again. Having the worst things you feared about yourself, confirmed right in front of you, hurt just ever so slightly.

“Hold on, KIrigiri-san. Saihara-kun asked a good question. It sounds like you knew about this monopad clue all along. You should have been using your talent as a detective to provide us insight from the beginning, why wait until we almost had a suspect to reveal it?” Komaeda finally spoke up, flexing his fingers in the air as he did.  
  
“If you want to be understood speak clearly, stop speaking nonsense.”  
  
Komaeda wondered what he was supposed to say then, if nonsense was all he had. “I’m saying you’re wrong. This isn’t a noire story where a detective investigates all alone, it’s a class trial where we all have to cooperate. It’s only natural to rely on others… but not everyone cooperates at a class trial… Those who lie and conceal the truth will obviously be here too…”  
  
“Are you talking about yourself now?” Kirigiri, quickly lashed at him with her tongue.   
  
“No, you. Kirigiri-san, now that you’ve revealed that evidence we have no suspects left and we’re all out of time. My disrupting this trial is just copying you a little bit.” Komaeda said, smiling at the wrong time again. 

“So wait, Akamatsu-san’s trap failed and then…” Makoto said trying to keep up.  
  
“And then… I finished speaking!” Komaeda abruptly cut Makoto off.   
  
“H-how is that a decisive clue?” Makoto stuttered.  
  
“Huh? You didn’t notice it? I thought I made the decisive clue very clear. I thought your job was supposed to be stringing together the hints all the other Ultimates left you and pretending you solved the case for yourself, Naegi-kun. Oh, but I’m not really an Ultimate.” Komaeda explained in his typical way that was somehow self deprecating and condescending at the same time.  
  
Saihara Shuichi looked too scared to even talk a moment ago. Yet, he was somehow able to follow Komaeda’s erratic train of thought. “Kirigiri-san, how do you know the crime in such exact detail? You might be a brilliant detective but something like solving the entire case based on one piece of evidence only happens in bad detective novels.”  
  
Komaeda stopped playing with his fingers, and held a single one up as if he was lecturing her. Of course he did not believe someone like him had the right to lecture anybody. Not that that ever stopped him. “It’s a really common scene in mystery novels. A character who looks innocent suddenly by accident reveals they know things about the scene of the crime that nobody else but the criminal would know.”  
  
Kirigiri opened her mouth to defend herself, but suddenly she started to cough again. Her face had finally gained some color, but it looked a bit red. “You really think the entire class trial is us cooperating together? Majority rules? Is that how you want to decide things? The ideal is… a lone detective… whose only ally is the truth.” She tried to keep speaking, in between her coughing fits but it only made her voice more deranged.   
  
“Kirigiri-san…” Komaeda thought, she looked lonely saying that, but what right did he have to call others lonely. 

“It’s easy just to say hey, decide who did it but there just aren’t any more clues right? The leads are all dried up. We know there was a third person in the room but now it’s impossible to decide who it was from there.”  It was like they had swapped places, Kirigiri was staring to rant like Komaeda did. 

“Kirigiri-san. The third person was you, wasn’t it?” Komaeda’s voice, was oddly soft despite the hash tones he had taken earlier. The grim reaper was scary in appearance after all, but took others away with a whisper. 

“What are you talking about?” Kirigiri asked him, sharp and precise her voice like a drawn blade. She made no attempt to hide her hostility. If she had drawn her blade, the glare reflecting off the blade would most likely blind someone like Komaeda.   
  
“You were aware of Akamatsu-san’s plot beforehand and you are the only one of us here aware of the possibility of a second secret passageway. The only one in this room therefore who could have been at the crime scene at the time was you.” Komaeda, accused.   
  
“That sounds like a stretch to me.” Kirigiri the reliable detective who kept cool under pressure was starting to sweat. She avoided eye contact as she wiped her face. No matter how much she dabbed at it, it only seemed to make it worse. Her entire face, no she was becoming a well composed mess.   
  
“Kirigiri-san, you withheld critical evidence until the last possible moment. You say you’re the best detective here but you’ve left most of the detective work to Saihara-kun, it’s almost like you want him to make a mistake. You even barely did anything to clear my name when I told you I had an alibi. You, Kirigiri-san, the Ultimate Detective would never make those kinds of mistakes unless you were deliberately misleading us.”

“That’s a little…” Makoto tried to stand up for Kirigiri. “Aren’t you like the thief who suspects everyone else of being thieves? If there’s somebody who was acting weird this whole trial it was you.”

“I’m not a criminal, Kirigiri is! I mean… she’s a killer you know?” Komaeda said, flashing a sickly smile at Makoto.   
  
Kirigiri coughed again, out of breath she spoke in a much more rushed manner. Her words became more frantic. Komaeda had to admit though, even falling apart she was beautiful as ever. She fell like cherry blossoms, or snow the same color of her hair. “All of this is just theories. There’s no evidence to prove exactly who the killer is. You need evidence. Where’s the evidence? Without evidence it’s all lies. I refuse to acknowledge it, and I refuse to acknowledge you.”

“Well, someone like me was never going to be acknowledged by you in the first place. That doesn’t change the fact that the Ultimate Detective is telling us this mystery is unsolvable.”  
  
“Y-you’re the one who can’t solve it. It’s your fault. You are incompetent! Incompetent! Incompetent! Incompetent! Incompetent! Incompetent!” At that moment, Kirigiri's composed demeanor, her icy stares, everything she held back seemed to mean nothing at all. She raised her voice and screamed, it was like the loud noise that started an avalanche completely overwhelming, followed by a crash, and pure white noise everywhere. "Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault."  
  
“It’s not my fault,” Komaeda repeated with a smile. “You’re trembling, you are definitely losing your composure, all of those are telltale signs of a liar backed into a corner.”  
  
Kirigiri gasped desperate for breath. She tried to speak, but she suddenly started to tremble too much. No words came out of her mouth, and suddenly she covered it with both of her gloved hands. Her eyes spun around the trial room, frantic. Whether she was lying or telling the truth in this moment, the desperation was all too real.  
  
“She’s acting scared because you’re the one who went and freaked her out ya freak!” Kaito said, immediately standing up for her.  
  
“You’ll just stand up for anybody, even when you’re unwanted, huh?” Komaeda said, as he crossed his arms.  
  
“Kiri can’t be the one who did it. She’s a detective. She’s right, Komaeda you don’t have any evidence to convict her. She’s trying her best for everyone’s sake and look how you made her feel.” Makoto had felt useless this whole trial. When he said he would be by Kirigiri’s side, he failed to collect any evidence. When Mukuro was holding onto him crying he could barely be of any comfort. He wanted to protect Kirigiri. He wanted to not be useless.  
  
“...Hmm, I see. You’re really kind, Naegi-kun. Well, if that’s the choice you made then all I can do is back off I guess. But is that really okay? Is that your hope?”  
  
“Kiri’s not capable of killing someone.”

Makoto spoke up in her defense.   
  
His hope was the friends he had around him. Even if he was weak on his own, he could rely on them for their strength.  
  
“She’s the ideal detective who doesn’t take people’s sides. She’d have no reason to kill someone.”  
  
He kept talking, hoping to drown it all out.   
  
If all his strength came from his friends though, that meant he had nothing. He was nothing without them.  
  
He had to say something had to do something.   
  
“Why do you even talk about hope so much, if you don’t believe in people at all?”  
  
“I… I guess you’re right.”  
  
Komaeda flinched for a moment. Makoto was right, he probably doubted everything in this world. The idea of him believing in someone was a joke, he was so insignificant whether he believed or not changed little. In fact if he told someone he believed in them with all of his heart, their most common reaction would be disgust.

“Me thinking I could go up against the Ultimate Detective, how annoying can I get? You guys must be all laughing at me behind my back at how high and mighty I think I am.”  
  
Still, the reason Makoto could believe in other people was because he was surrounded by gentle and kind people his entire life. He really was lucky, to have met such people. Between them, Makoto definitely had the superior luck.

“Makoto. Didn’t Kirigiri tell both of us that she thought there was a second secret entrance before then, and wasn’t she aware exactly what Saihara-kun was doing.” One of those people he was so blessed to have in his life, Ikusaba Mukuro said, in a quiet but firm voice.

“Mukuro? You’re taking his side?” Makoto looked, in that moment like he was going to lose two friends in an instant, and it would be all his fault.  
  
“I don’t want to doubt her. But you know, acting like hope and despair, doubt and belief, truth and lies are always black and white opposites is going to drive anyone insane. The world isn’t clean and neat like that, it’s much dirtier.” Mukuro thought Komaeda was right, Naegi was kind. She wanted him to stay that way though, even if it meant he did not have to confront the harsher parts of reality.  
  
No, sssssh. Don't go spoiling it for everyone else Mukuro. They're not supposed to realize that yet, they're supposed to yell at each other about hope and despair.   
  
If it would keep his hands clean, she would dirty hers. She would sink as far into the mud as she needed to. She would hurt herself so he did not have to be hurt. “Kirigiri… the reason why you cleared Akamatsu’s name, it was because you don’t actually have it in you to let her die when she’s innocent do you? I know you’re a better person than me. You don’t want to hurt anybody else… Please, just admit it already! In the end, at least let me believe in you! We’re friends aren’t we?”

Making Kirigiri confess would be the same as killing her. That was why Mukuro did it. Even if it made Makoto hate her, or blame her, that was better. There was no need to make him a murderer too.

Kirigiri stood up once more. Apparently whatever breakdown she had had, she recovered part of her composure from.  She cleared her throat and caught her breath. “We’re at that famous scene, huh? Where the great detective gathers everyone and says, “Well…”...”  
  
“Since there is no great detective here I’ll say it in her place.” Komaeda said interrupting her. “Burned by his own karma and falling to ruin, the dull-witted silly fool Kumagawa Misogi, in order to mourn for him we shall solemnly go through with ‘figuring out the culprit’ that he wished for. Wait, no, if this is a “figuring out the culprit” this is the one thing that must be said. Whether its being the killer or solving mysteries proper etiquette is important. I challenge you readers to figure it out.”  
  
“The culprit is me.” Kirigiri finally admitted, her face returning to its normal emotionless mask. “Shall I continue?”  
  
“Kiri…” Makoto mumbled in shock.  
  
“I’m sure she had a good reason. She… wouldn’t kill for a stupid reason like I did.” Mukuro said, looking down again her expression not too different from a sad dog. If only she the murderer had killed someone in the first round, or she had been killed, then Kirigiri’s hands would not have been stained.  
  
“I looked for the second secret entrance all over the school knowing the first one was a trap to try and prevent the murder. When I finally found it, I was able to open the door behind the bookcase on the other side. I saw the ball fall and roll down right at my feet missing both Kumagawa and Amami. It should have been over right then but then I remembered… Enoshima Junko killed my father. She took away my only real chance of having a family, and yet she gets to go on to play pretend family with Kumagawa-kun and pretend that she’s changed.”  
  
Even now, Kirigiri’s face did not betray a single twitch of emotion. Makoto noticed, how unnatural it made his friend look. She was going to die soon, he wanted her to cry, he wanted her to show at least a little emotion for herself. Why was she always hiding her face from him? They were friends after all.  
  
“I wanted to take away something precious to her. Ikusaba said the mastermind was going to frame someone for murder in the first round and bend the rules of the game to get away with it, so my hand reached for the ball before I even knew it. I’ve seen enough autopsies to know how to kill with one hit.”  
  
Revenge, Shuichi’s eyes widened upon hearing that word. Revenge against someone who had killed her father. Revenge where the culprit was hardly the one in the wrong. It was just like back then. He had been just as useless back then as he was now. He was completely unable to change since then. Of course he did not change, all he had done was run away from then until now.

 

Kirigiri looked away from the hurt expressions on both of her closest friend’s faces. Even if she wanted to, she could not show them any emotion in response. “Well, the culprit has been revealed, so the story’s over.”

🧸 **Intermission** 🧸

“The two of us work together?” Komaeda asked, sitting under the same dead cherry tree as he listened to Kirigiri’s plan.  
  
“I’ve hated you all this time. Nobody would suspect we’re working together.”  
  
“But the killer… it’s Akamatsu-san. I suspected all this time her hope would push her to do something extreme to try to save everyone, and when I got to the scene of the crime I noticed how disgusted she looked by the body. I don’t really understand people’s feelings, but I know what self disgust looks like.”  
  
Kirigiri threw the monopad at his feet. “This is Amami-kun’s monopad. It was found at the scene of the crime in Kumagawa’s pocket. There’s no way it could have gotten there unless there was a third person present.”

“Then, you know who this third person is?” Komaeda looked at her, expecting to see hope.   
  
“...” Kirigiri brushed her fingers through her hair, and shook her head solemnly. “It’s my fault, I got distracted by Junko. If I wasn’t so focused on her as an enemy, I would have been able to follow suspicious movement. It was probably the mastermind, but the mastermind could be anybody at this point. We need a culprit.”  
  
“Then, just let Akamatsu-san take the fall for it. You said yourself the mastermind just wants to frame someone and blame them for the first murder. She was already planning a murder.”   
“You’re just telling me to let somebody who I know is innocent die? Is life that worthless to you?”  
  
“I… I don’t know. Kirigiri-san, maybe you understand because you’ve seen the results of lots of murders. But… because I was around, horrible accidents were always happening in front of me. When it wasn’t other people, it was my own life being put in danger. How am I supposed to know what value life has? I barely know what living is like?” Komaeda confessed. He doubted any god wanted to hear his confession, he would probably bore them but he gave it anyway to an Ultimate that was like a god to him.

He did not know about good or evil. All he knew was that people were capable of both. Some of the kindest people he knew, could turn nasty towards him in a moment when they were kind to others. Good, ordinary people going about their lives could ignore him when he was screaming that a kidnapper was taken him.  
  
His mother was beautiful, and sweet whenever she was around his father. Yet, she had such an ugly expression on her face when she looked at him. It must have been his fault. His parents were beautiful and they wanted to have a cute child of their own, instead he was born.  
  
The sum result of all of that, was that his senses were completely numbed. He could not make sense of a picture of the world that was fundamentally broken in front of him. He knew his morals could change from moment to moment, that was why he wanted to believe in absolute hope. The world was irrational, especially towards him, and he was equally senseless, that was why he craved something rational and stable more than anything else. He could rationalize anything if it was for hope. At least that was how the past him operated, as his grip on hope loosened and loosened he only felt his confusion get worse.  
  
Now the world was suddenly flipping upside down again. It did this to him so many times, that he was starting to get nauseous. Kirigiri spoke clearly and decisively, the exact opposite of him. “I’m not so righteous. I’m jealous, really. Now that Saihara-kun has her by his side, he no longer needs me. That’s why, I want to steal her sacrifice to save everyone.”  
  
“What…?”  
  
“I’m going to become the opposite of a detective. I’ll become a phantom thief, stealing away her motive.”

“A lifetime member of the loser club like me isn’t really one to judge…” But Komaeda was totally going to judge her anyway, “But, that line isn’t nearly as cool as you think it is.”  
  
“Shush you.” Kirigiri tutted, before getting back on topic. “That’s why I need you. I’m going to take credit for the crime and become the culprit sacrificed so we can advance. You, need to be the detective who convicts me.”  
  
“I’m not-”  
  
“Enough with the act. You’re as good of a detective as I am. Every single trial in the old killing game you reached the conclusion far before anyone else did, you just lacked any confidence in your conclusions.”  
  
“It’s not a difference so simple as believing in yourself-”  
  
“I thought you were the hope guy?”  
  
“I am the hope guy!” Komaeda yelled, his voice cracking. He rasped, like a man underwater desperate for air. “You’re asking me to kill you! Don’t you realize? It makes far more sense for me to be the pointless sacrifice.”

Her words had hit him like dropping a lead weight on his chest. His bones were already fragile. His ribs would shatter and then there would be nothing holding his organs in. His insides would spill out in front of him, and everybody would be able to see that even while living he was still rotting away.

here was no way he could go along with such a thing. If the talented person was killed, so the untalented person would survive to the next round that was not hope. There was another reason, he was dying of fatal brain cancer. He should tell her right now, that if she sacrificed herself for him he might die in the third or fourth round of completely natural causes.  
  
He should tell her that he already killed Kumagawa in order to continue living. If he killed Kirigiri as well, he would be taking too much, and his life was worthless. Kirigiri was someone with a chance to become happy, he had been living his whole life waiting for the chance to die. The shinigami was always by his side. Perhaps it was lonely. He was the one most used to the idea of dying.

No one would be happy, with an ending where he lived and Kirigiri died. His survival would not give anybody hope. It would just hurt everybody else around them. Kirigiri had so much more than him to live for, she had friends, her talent was one that could positively help the world. He imagined how many criminals would go unpunished now that he murdered the Ultimate Detective with his own two hands. Besides the detective was the most useful talent to have for a whodunnit style killing game.

Even if he threw away all that reasoning, all of his constant talk of stepping stones and stronger and weaker hopes. Even if he ignored the logic he forced himself to cling to so his mind would have some kind of structure and not just disengage from everything and go completely mad. Even if he threw away all the things that made him Komaeda, if he did this that would mean Kirigiri Jin’s daughter would die.  
  
The only man that had ever been kind to him. The adult that invited him to Hope’s Peak and told him he was needed. He saw Kyoko’s picture on his desk every day, him playing with her as a child not much older than he was when he lost his parents. He knew Kirigiri wanted nothing more than to protect his daughter, and kept his distance for that reason.

Komaeda would be destroying that happiness. He would be destroying that man’s hope. There would be no hope at all in his actions. If he was not the one to sacrifice himself here, then everything Kirigiri said about him was true, that he was not someone capable of sacrificing himself because all he cared about was himself.

His twisted logic, only grew more and more twisted as he tried to sort it out. It only hurt him as he tried to untangle it, like untangling barbed wire with your bare hands.

He should just fall at her feet and tell her that he was dying of brain cancer. Why did he conceal it? If he told her she would change her mind. She would do what was logical. She would kill him. He could not value his own life so much, so selfishly, that he wanted to trample over Kirigiri’s.  
  
“I don’t think wanting to live is selfish.” Kirigiri said, as if reading his thoughts. “And, I don’t think if you’ve been miserable your entire life, thinking you deserve happiness is entitlement.”

No, the only reason he was hiding his condition was because he was undeserving of her pity. He should throw himself at her right now and beg to be killed. That was the right thing to do, that was hope.  
  
“Komaeda, please. I need you to convince them that I’m the culprit. Then, make sure Saihara-kun doesn’t make my same mistake and avert his eyes from the people closest to him, and make Akamatsu-san so ashamed that she never kills again.”  
  
“Me? Me being the one who discovers the killer? Nobody will believe a person like me. Besides, I can’t lecture Akamatsu-san about killing someone for the sake of hope. Do you know what it will sound like if I’m the one who says it? I think death is despair inducing, but at the same time I… I was able to watch so many of my classmates get executed or killed and I barely blinked an eye. I think I should be… torn apart inside by it, that’s what a normal person would feel. But, I’m already torn to pieces. I’m so full of despair that, feeling more despair doesn’t matter that much to me so I probably react differently to others.”  
  
Komaeda sighed, wrapping his arms around himself and holding his shredded insides. Even when he tried to explain himself the best he could, all he did was babble. He wished he could understand himself a little more. “I’m not someone who can stand in front of others, and I’m not someone who can condemn them either. I’m just as likely to commit murder, and I… if everyone died here except one person and they went on to spread hope I might see that ending as a good one. I just don’t… think the way I should about death… because I always expected to die. I think… me saying that would be too big of a contradiction…”  
  
“Then just tell a lie?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“If you’re not the kind of self righteous person that can say those things then pretend you are. You’ve always told lies before when the situation called for it, didn’t you? You’ve said things that even you yourself don’t believe. You know what kind of person you are, don’t you?”  
  
“I’m, self righteous scum who constantly talks about how unimportant he is, and then always inserts myself into things. I call the Ultimates much better than me, but I also look down on them all the time and lecture them for not being proper ultimates. I constantly talk about how stupid I am, and then I keep information to myself so I can pretend I’m smarter than everybody else and in control of things. If I say one thing, I’m guaranteed to contradict it later. I love hope more than anything else but I’m full of despair. Don’t you understand? That’s the person you’re asking for help.”  
  
“Komaeda. My father was the one who invited you to Hope's Peak. You were the person he needed. He saw something in you. That's the person I want to rely on. His daughter needs you now, too."   
  
"That was... just a fluke, it was just something as inconsequential as luck."  
  
"That's not true at all. You can't look critically at yourself. Even if you're lacking in self awareness, there are still others around you. Your bad luck might hurt them, but  your good luck might help them to."  
  
"It's not a real talent! I won a lottery that's all! Anybody could do that!"  
  
"No, you're not anybody. You've survived a life that would have killed anybody else. What if they need all that luck to survive?"  
  
That was how Komaeda's logic always worked. You needed to face a great despair in order to inspire a great hope. Therefore, Komaeda could even justify himself causing that despair because then he would be responsible for the hope that followed. Yet, he could not justify this. He did not want to be responsible for this. He did not want it on his hands.  "They have Naegi's to do it...And... why does it always have to be me? Why do I have to be the one who hurts you? Have Saihara-kun pin the crimes on you. I don't want to..." He had destroyed his favorite school. He had hurt so many of his friends over and over. Don't touch me, don't touch me, don't touch me, Komaeda wanted to back up and run away but he was already against the tree.   
  
Kirigiri was suddenly next to him. Why was she close? People should not be this close. She peeled off one of her gloves and reached forward and put it on his hand. No, don't touch him. He's a plague, death. People who got this close ended up dead. He looked at her hands and saw the scars that looked like crisscrossing roads on her fingertips. It looked painful, he felt bad. He was arrogant enough to pity an ultimate. He was going to hurt her far worse. Still, touching him with her rough hands she spoke gently."Naegi-kun, is too airheaded and kindhearted. He wasn't made to face a cruel reality over and over again like you were. That's your weakness, but tha'ts also your strength. And... Saihara-kun is too soft."  
  
"I don't want to be cruel. You were right! Nothing I can do can help others, so I should just do nothing!" He had tried to explain it the best he could. He tried to speak from the heart on why he should die, why it was the right thing but she did not listen. Nobody ever listened. Somebody, somebody please help. help her. Somebody other than him. The help she wanted from him, would only hurt her in the end.   
  
"Don't you say hope will always win? Don't you believe in the hope my father saw in you? Are you dismissing his words? Did his kindness mean nothing to you? The Ultimate Detective is telling you the best path forward, I'm willing to die because I have hope! You're just not good enough, nobody will feel any despair if you die. The hope that's needed to conquer the death of the Ultimate Detective is monumental!"   
  
Kirigiri was suddenly in his face. She was showing all of her emotions to someone unworthy like him, and speaking from her heart. He was envious really, because he was selfish... because he could not die for the sake of others. He did not have the right.  
  
Her voice cracked. He was really forcing her to beg, someone like him. He was the worst. "Please kill, your younger sister. Isn't that the despair your hope is meant to overcome?"   
  
“I… my what…?” Because Jin doted on him as a father. The family he had wanted for so long, right before his eyes it was going to break. He was going to be the one who broke it. It was always like this. He only finally started to get along with Kirigiri, right before her death. Komaeda wanted to cry but his eyes were all dried up. His mouth slowly opened to tell her no, but he could not find the words. It was like someone else was speaking for him. “I’m not doing it for you. I just value my own worthless self too much.”  
  
“No, I’m being the cruel one here. I get to die, to protect Saihara-kun’s happiness with Akamatsu-san. You’re the one who has to live on.” Kirigiri reached forward, and touched his hair. She began to play with it and pull it into braids.

“Why are you…?”  
  
“I like to braid hair. It’s frustrating, you know. Even if I’ve already resolved to do it, it’s frustrating. Ikusaba and Naegi were able to change so much I didn’t even try to talk to Saihara-kun once, and now I'm going to die..."  
  
She finished braiding his hair. She even removed one of her binders in order to do it. Koameda had no idea what to say to any of her emotions. He was not someone who could comfort others. He did not even know if he would be that sad if she died, he might just walk over her corpse like all the others. He wondered if he cared about her as a person, or just as an Ultimate. “Mm, it looks nice on me. You’re really good at braiding hair.”  
  
“You should grow your hair out longer.”  
  
“You’re probably the first person who ever said that. Everyone else says it's too messy as it is.” Komaeda wondered why she chose in the end to rely on him of all people. The reason was because he was the most suited to play the villain, it was probably just that, but the pessimistic opticist, the cynic asked a naive question.“Kirigiri-san… was I a good senpai?”  
  
“Yeah. There were some rough patches, but in the end I was lucky to have met you.”

“I was good luck then, huh…”  
  
Because Komaeda let his guard down in that moment, he failed to see her bring a folded up square of paper from her pocket. “Kirigiri-san, what are you…?” He only asked when he saw it out of the corner of her eye.  
  
“Do you know the tree right next to this one isn’t native to Japan. I wonder how it got here, maybe the Ultimate Botanist planted it, or maybe it’s just bad luck.” She unfolded it to reveal white powder, and then immediately placed it against her mouth. “Strychnine, the poison used in Agatha Christie’s first ever novel, can only be made from that kind of tree.”  
  
“Kirigiri-san!” Komaeda suddenly and forcefully smacked it away from her hands but it was too late, he had no idea how much she had consumed.  
  
“Like I was going to let myself die in one of Junko’s stupid death traps. This way neither of us can back down now. Let’s go, Komaeda-senpai. I’m going to show Saihara-kun what a failure of a detective I am.”

"Maybe you didn't take a fatal dose... I touched it so you might get lucky and survive. There's still time-"  
  
"You said, you'll contradict yourself later. Now you can't go back. You always leave a foot in the door, senpai... Living is moving forward." 

 

🧸 **Intermission  End** 🧸

“Losing all hope… and harbring despair for all hope…She’s overcome with despair. That’s why she can still put on such a stoic face in a hopeless situation.  The Kirigiri-san standing before us is no longer the Ultimate Detective. She’s just a criminal. If you had killed Kumagawa, because you wanted all of us to survive to the next round, or because you wanted to escape then maybe… but it was just petty revenge. That’s the reason why I can’t forgive her, I mean killing someone for despair instead of hope. There’s no way I can forgive that!” Komaeda closed his fist, as if he was closing it on her.  
  
“I thought you just said murder was unforgivable.” Kokichi raised his hand, but he was tired of waiting for it to be his turn to talk.  
  
“Well, I’m not a person who can forgive others anyway. Not when I’m an unforgivable existence myself.”  
  
“You can’t just avoid the question by constantly making up different things on the spot, that’s my thing.” Kokichi wanted to pout now.  
  
However, the trial had already ended and they had already voted her the culprit. They were all just waiting in silence, because somebody in front of them was going to die soon.  
  
Kaede had somehow escaped death. She was going to live. She could go play piano again. She could talk to Shuichi some more. She could really become friends with anybody this time around. Yet, somehow she was not happy with that at all. “It’s not her fault. It’s mine. I wanted to kill the mastermind, because I thought doing that would end the killing game. If I… If I just hadn’t done anything nobody would need to die.”  
  
“Akamatsu-san, why did you try to kill them? Maybe they could have been captured…” Saihara asked.  
  
“If I hadn’t been the time limit… The mastermind could have just played dumb and waited for the clock to run out to kill us all. I was… worried about that happening.” Kaede's words came tumbling out.   
  
“So you sought to kill the mastermind instead?” Korekiyo asked, pulling on the brim of his hat.  
  
“I made up my mind before we set up the cameras in the library. I thought it was my last chance to save everyone. I couldn’t let that chance pass me by, I had to save everyone no matter what. I planned this days in advance, I’m the killer!” Kaede wanted them all to hate her.  
  
“Even if you had to kill someone?” Kokichi did not fight his urge to kick someone when they were down. He gladly succumbed.

“... That’s right. I thought killing the mastermind was our best shot at escaping this place together. I… really believed it too.” Kaede said, that dream seemed so unreachable now.   
  
“Oh, Akamatsu-chan it never dawned on you? As soon as that thought entered your head Monokuma had you right where he wanted. Because what mattered to him the most was that the killing game started. Regardless of your reasons, the moment you felt the urge to kill, you had already lost. You agreed to be part of this killing game when you let murder in your heart.”  
  
“Is it really fair to blame her, Oma-kun? Everybody has the capacity to become a killer. Let murder in her heart? Do you really believe that the world is such a place where people can live without ever hurting one another, even if they’re hurt? Is it her fault for breaking? Isn’t the game the one that broke her? She was facing hope head on and doing what she thought was right. You didn’t do a single thing.” Komaeda held a hand out in front of Kaede. He did not think he had the right to stand up for anybody, he was simply meddling.   
  
"Wait, how can you say that?” Kokichi was, genuinely confused. He could not get a read on this guy at all and yet Komaeda seemed to have a read on him. It was the worst situation possible.  
  
“I mean killing someone is a pretty big step. She was able to overcome staining her heart like that, because she thought it was the right thing to do for hope. Imagine how much pain she must have felt.”  
  
“You just went on a giant rant, about how murder was absolutely unforgivable!” Kokichi could not believe that he was being forced to play the straight man. He never ever wanted to be straight, it was crooked all the way.   
  
“I just said I was joking after that rant, weren’t you listening? There’s no way someone like me could believe that’s unforgivable, then I’d never be forgiven.” Komaeda clapped his hands to his face, looking surprised the other had no gotten his joke.   
  
“You are terrible at telling jokes!” Kokichi was at his absolute wits end.

Miu tried to ignore both of them. “The laughing snake over there ain’t wrong. She’s the reason the killing game finally started. Maybe you should just kill both of ‘em.”  
  
“That’s why I’m so… pissed off! Pissed off at myself for being so… so useless!” Kokichi said, tears forming in the corner of his eyes.   
  
Shuichi puled his hat down. He looked like he was on the edge, even Oma's small prank could have been what convinced him to stop dancing already and just jump over. “Oma-kun… that’s enough. I can see through your act.”  
  
“Whoops, that obvious, huh?” Kokichi's only reaction was a cute smile, like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. He just could not resist the urge to toy with others, not when it was so much fun.   
  
“So please. Execute me instead.” Kaede said, begging Monokuma with tears in her eyes.  
  
“No, nobody needs to be executed. Kumagawa is immortal he’ll come back from the dead anyway. It’s not a murder if the person doesn’t really die. There’s no need to punish Kiri…” Makoto joined in standing next to Kaede.  
  
“All this begging...it’s starting to get me really excited. Get on your knees and maybe I’ll change my mind.”

They both did it in an instant, prostrating themselves at Monokuma’s feet. Monokuma touched a plush hand to his mouth. “I didn’t actually expect that to work. Well, you know the helplessness you feel right now? That’s despair kiddoes!”  
  
“It’s nobody’s fault! Akamatsu was just thinking of us, and KIrigiri was just thinking of her dad! How did things…” Kaito shut his eyes tight, trying to shut out the world. He wanted to see the idealistic world he wished so desperately to believe in instead. “How did things even end up this way?”  
  
“Watch closely, Shuichi! I prepared a special punishment for the Ultimate Detective just for you!” Monokuma said, winking right at the detective.   
  
Kirigiri who had been silent the entire time as she faced her death, gave one last painful cough before looking at Shuichi. “Don’t become a failure of a detective like me. Saihara-kun, you can run away from things all you want, you can cry and give up if you want to, too. But, if you’re just averting your eyes, you’re not running. As long as you think the current situation okay, no one can help. Don’t be like me… if you don’t ask for their help first, no one can save you.”  
  
“Kirigiri-san, why… you were so harsh with me but why right now do you sound so gentle?” Shuichi had no idea why, but suddenly he was struck by the feeling that he had felt such a gentle and warm presence by his side some time before this.  
  
“Let’s give it everything we’ve got! It’s… punishment time!”  
  
“Kyoko, no!” Makoto said, reaching out for her. He desperately raced towards her to grab her hand, only to be stopped by Mukuro who hooked her arms around him and held him back.

“It’s okay, Makoto. Because you’re going to live. It makes me so happy…You are my reason to die.” Kirigiri’s deception was almost blown right then, because the smile of total serenity she wore on her face right then did not look like the face of a revenge obsessed killer. Kirigiri was finally able to smile, her genuine smile. The one she promised to show Mukuro. “Take care of them.”  
  
She said those words only to Komaeda.  
  
“Asking me to look after anybody, you really must have gone out of your mind with despair detective.” Komaeda muttered to himself. He forced himself to look head on at Kirigiri’s execution, as she was grabbed by the neck and dragged away. This was the despair he had inflicted on everybody, he had to face it head on.

 **Game Over.** **  
** **Kirigiri Kyoko has been Found Guilty.** **  
** **Time for the punishment!  
****  
** Kirigiri was dragged into a rocket ship by her neck. When she was seated both of the doors closed in on her like a pair of jaws. The rocket ship looked haphazardly cobbled together from several uneven steel plates. On top it was adorned with the head of a steel bear. It’s eyes suddenly glowed red as it activated.  
  
**The Space Journey**

The ship’s rockets both activated and turned on blasting the ship through the ceiling leaving multicolord flames and smoke behind them. The ship spun wildly around off kilter, because bears should not be allowed to design rocket ships.  
  
She was never going to make it to the moon at this point. Inside, sweat slicked down Kirigiri’s face. She found it difficult for her to think about anything at all any more. Her brain was on fire and it felt like it was coming apart. Someone was putting an iron to it and ironing out all the wrinkles.  
  
She was beginning to forget who she was. A detective? Kirigiri Jin’s daughter? All she had was a loathsome past, that she was unable to escape from or say goodbye to. Her father had cast a shadow over her entire life, and he had not even bothered to be around her. Now, she was dying in the exact same execution originally meant for him.  
  
Sweat slicked down her face as she felt the rocket spinning around. She felt like she wanted to vomit, but coughed blood out instead splattering it on the windows. Suddenly as she had another coughing fit, the rocket lost all propulsion and plummeted back down to earth. It had not even broken the cloud barrier.  
  
The rocket fell back in through another hole in the ceiling, and simply lie there. Makoto finally broke free from Mukuro’s hold, and tried to rush towards it. He put his hands on the doors which had opened just a crack from the fall, but immediately removed them because they were too hot.  
  
Zenkichi rushed past him and grabbed onto the doors. Even as he felt his hands burning, he pried them straight open. What was left on his hands after that barely looked like skin, but he ignored that pain and dragged Kirigiri’s body out.  
  
Kirigiri saw Makoto’s vague image as he threw his arms around her. He begged her not to die over and over again but his words did not reach her. “Naegi-kun…I just remembered, the last book I was reading from Sunaga-sensei I never finished it, now I won’t see how it ends.”

Kirigiri Kyoko died succumbing to the poison, after muttering those nonsensical last words.

Saihara Shuichi felt his legs give out from under him.  
What he just saw, didn’t feel real.  
As if all reality had vanished, and the only thing left was a fictional world.  
Real or not…  
Kirigiri Kyoko was gone.  
She no longer existed in this world.  
  
Kaede saw Shuichi collapse right in front of her. She wanted to hold him, but she no longer deserved to do that. “Saihara-kun are you…? Did you know her?”  
  
“I… I don’t know why, but the tears won’t stop falling.” Shuichi said as he tried to cover his face up with his hands. Any attempt to wipe them away made his crying worse.  
  
“W-why are you doing such a terrible thing?” Tsumugi asked Monokuma, folding her hands and crying as well. “Don’t you know human life is precious?”  
  
“Hey, I know human life is precious. Cuz if human life wasn’t precious, ending it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. There’s no greater joy than witnessing such a display of despair enertainment.”  
  
Korekiyo cast judgemental eyes on him. “Kehehe, you’ve surpassed psychotic by a wide margin.” If he was saying that, then it really was something.  
  
“What are we going to do from now on?” Tsumugi said, joining in the panic of the crowd.  
  
“Y-yeah, I’d like to know, too… I’m so over this already.” Kokichi said, it was difficult to tell if he was scared or just bored.

“Saihara-kun…” Kaede still looked at the crying Shuichi.  _I get to live...? I get to live on? Then... Saihara-kun, you're my reason to live. I'm sorry for almost pushing everything on you and leaving you alone._  She finally reached out a hand, only for Shuichi to slap it away at last moment. Kaede watched it, the connection between them she thought was something that could never break, that was so important to both of them in such a short time,  snapped so easily right before her eyes.   
  
“Akamatsu-san, don’t. Kirigiri-san was right, I never looked at you once from the start. I… I don’t deserve to be by your side. I never saw the real you.”  
  
“Saihara-kun I don’t care about that-” When she reached for him again he stumbled back as if he was scared. Kaede finally realized, being near her was just painful for him. “Th-that’s right, because I’m a murderer, and I started the killing game. Nobody would want to be friends with a murderer.”  
  
“Arrrrgh! Shut up! SHUT! UP! You all just need to SHUT UP!” Kaito’s voice boomed and the rest of the room went silent. “Every single one of you… and your meek little complaints. You’re pissing me the hell off. BUt the one who’s pissing me off. Is you, Saihara!”  
  
“What?”  
  
Just then, before anybody could stop him Kaito socked Shuichi hard on his face bringing him from his knees even further down to the ground.  
  
“Clench your teeth!”  
  
“You’re supposed to say that before you hit him, man…” Zenkichi complained behind him.  
  
“Didn’t you hear what Akamatsu said? She believed in you? But what the hell’s wrong with you? You’re just gonna run away from her now? You even call yourself a man.”  
  
“...”  
  
“I just hit you! Aren’t you pissed off!? What’s your problem!?”  
  
“I deserve… to be hit.” Shuichi said in a quiet voice.  
  
Kaito raised his hand again like he had been pushed past the point of anger, but before he could Zenkichi stepped in the way holding both of his arms out. “Tch...  you’re always… in the way.”  
  
“Don’t think with your fist, dude.”   
  
“What am I supposed to think with?”  
  
“Like, you feelings and stuff.”  
  
“Well, I feel like hitting something!”  
  
“Then just hit me! I can take it!”  
  
“Your hands are already burnt up. Think about yourself for once, Mr. Team Mom.”  
  
Kaede had been watching in silent horror the moment Shuichi collapsed in front of her because of Kaito’s attack. Once again he was hurt and it was all her fault. “Kaito, you idiot! I didn’t ask you to save me or stand up for me! I don’t care about your little boy feelings or your hero complex! Take your hurt man feelings out on somebody else, you’re so… pathetic!”  
  
Everyone in the crowd, turned to stare at Kaede as she said something that was distinctly not-Kaede. The bright, full of sunshine, optimistic Kaede who liked everyone she met and wanted to be friends with them.

“Akamatsu… I was just trying to help…”  
  
Kaede suddenly clapped her hands over her mouth. “N-no, I didn’t mean it! I’m not mad at you. D-don’t feel bad, but… that’s what you get for being a delusional idiot.”  
  
“She’s virtually nothing like I thought she was.” Korekiyo muttered. “Are we supposed to believe she really did this for our sake? Maybe she was right when she said it was all her fault KIrigiri became a murderer.”  
  
“Akamatsu-san’s kind of freaking me out…” Tsumugi muttered.  
  
“Kaede, giiiiiiiiiiirl. You shoulda told me that you were a liar like me.” Kokichi joined in on the fun.  
  
“She’s acting nothing like her past self.” Miu added in.  
  
They all stood frozen solid staring at her. Except for Shuichi who would not even look at her. Even though she had lived, Kaede was not happy at all. In her ideal world, they all escaped together, she became all of their friends, they should have been happy and laughing. But now this was the worst ending possible brought about by her own hand.  
  
She was a murderer, and she had to live with that. Everybody else was starting to despise her as a murderer, just like she had wanted. And that was the moment Akamatsu Kaede broke down. She ran away from Shuichi and everybody else right then.  
  
She had nowhere else to go.  
So she locked herself in the piano room.  
She uncovered the keys finally, and tried to play a note.  
But she could not hear a single sound, no matter how many times she tried.  
She hit the keys but no music played, or rather her ears refused to hear that sound as music.  
There was nothing beautiful from about it. She could not make people smile anymore.  
She did not deserve to play music anymore.  
Akamatsu, sat against the door bringing her knees to her chest.  
She had locked everybody else away so she had no idea what to do anymore.  
She could do nothing but cry, all alone in the piano room.

 _No, this isn’t right. This isn’t it. I can’t make this work anymore._ _  
_ _It’s impossible. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t. I physically cannot._

 _Am I a liar? No. I didn’t lie. I’m one hundred percent certain I didn’t._ _  
_ _I absolutely did not lie to them._ _  
_ _But there’s a massive gulf between my ideal and reality._ _  
_ _Maybe I just like who I am when I’m with him-_ _  
_ _Maybe that’s the only reason I-_ _  
_ _I can’t do this anymore._ _  
_ _I can’t make this work._ _  
_ _I can’t even be normal._

 

🧸

  
Kirigiri is really annoying don’t you think? I mean I had a perfect protagonist swap planned with Kaede and Shuichi, and she had to go and meddle in things and change my story around without permission. Then in the end she did not even let herself have a heart pounding execution.  
  
Well, even if there are a few bumps on the road everything will turn out fine for me. Even when unscripted events happen, they still benefit me in the end. Even when things don’t go as planned, they’re a part of my plans.  
  
When Kirigiri did not come back to her room, Enoshima Junko already guessed what had happened. Yet, she did not expect someone to come to her door so soon. Her eyes fell flat in annoyance when it was just Zenkichi again.  
  
“You still busy despairing?”  
  
“Despair is like, my entire life.”  
  
“Well, umm… get a life. Anyway, I’m not going to leave you alone until you come out of your room. I hope you’re prepared to be annoyed into friendship.”  
  
“I’m suddenly glad I don’t have any friends. Weird how that works.”  
  
Zenkichi however, did not leave. Junko considered stabbing him again but doing the same thing twice was boring. She had been really busy staring at the wall contemplating the meaninglessness of life before Zenkichi so rudely interrupted her.

Now while she tried to sew one of her bears back together, Zenkichi sat in the corner of the room doing squats because he was nervous about being in a room alone with a girl. Probably because she was stabby. “Hey, Enoshima you should do squats. It always makes me feel better.”  
  
“I don’t want to feel better, I want to feel worse. I want to feel so much despair that I cry out to die and let it just end already, and then I want to keep living.”  
  
“So are you like… depressed or something?”  
  
“Oh, my god how has Medaka-chan not killed you. You are so annoying!”  
  
“I’ve almost died like several times around her, but it was never on purpose.”

Just then, a knock at the door interrupted their argument. Junko opened it, only to see nobody behind the door and a package left for her with her name written on it in pink glitter pen. She immediately opened it. If it was a bomb it would kill both her and Zenkichi so that was a plus.  
  
All that was on the inside was a bedazzled cellphone. The screen glowed red the moment it came to life in her hands.  
  
“Quit it with that cutesy act, our hide is white but your innards are pitch black. Hey, hey this worked out don’t you think? Now without him around you’re going to lose your mind! There’s no need to get worked up about who your real self is or whatever, just think about it this way, there’s one Junko, and one cooler Junko.  It’s so despairingly perfect! Hey, hey, don’t you think? Ah, well that’s hypocritical. Aren’t we both black hearted? I mean we’re both…”  
  
Junko’s hands were shaking.  
  
“No, we’re… we’re… No my, my esteemed (Ore-tachi, ore, atashi, watakushi-sama) self. Puhuhuhuhu Well, either way works. Whether it’s white despair or black hope. It’s so despairingly perfect for us don’t you think! Because I’m-!”

Enoshima Junko crushed the cell phone containing Junkai in her hands, causing a crack to appear in the screen.  
  
“Oh no, how pushy? So forceful! Huuuuh? What? What? Am I being too noisy for you? I see I didn’t know you still felt such emotions. Or perhaps you’re forcing yourself to feel something in a situation like this. Well not that it matters.”  
  
Junkai Enoshima smiled, the cracked screen splitting her smile in half.  
  
“What’s that face you’re making? That's such beautiful despair, you can't hog it all to yourself! Make sure to smile for the cameras!”

 **Book One.  
** **You Are My Reason to Live / You Are My Reason to Die  
** **END**


	21. Every Girl Has a Knife in Her Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toko's backstory gets discussed this chapter so just a quick abuse warning. It borrows imagery from Tokyo Ghoul as Toko was never that specific about what her mothers did to her, just that it involved drowning, made her afraid of bathing, and scared of dark spaces. Also, as stated before I'm rewriting parts of Korekiyo's character, basically this version of him has none of the random incest twist.
> 
> Think about it the same as Mukuro's love for Junko, basically so starved for affection that his one source of familial love means everything to him.

 

****

 

**Book 2: SUSPENSION: THE NECK-HOLD ROMANTICIST  
Daily Life: Chapter One**

The next day they all had promised to eat breakfast together. Even though two of their friends had just died, the world would not stop spinning. It would not stop just for them. So they had to continue on like normal. Leave it to a bunch of normies to react in such a boring way.  
  
That said even though they planned on getting everyone together, there were several people absent that morning. Fukawa Toko, Shinguuji Korekiyo, Akamatsu Kaede, and Amami Rantaro all for various reasons.  
  
Before resuming with everybody else let’s focus on them for a little while. After all one of the two main characters of this story Kumagawa died in the first round, perhaps Toko could become a main character in his place (lol).

🧸

Fukawa Toko hated the sight of blood. It was a pretty paradoxical feeling for a serial killer to possess, but all of the feelings that went along with killing she had dumped on Jack a long time ago. The smell of blood, the visceral sensation of the flesh cutting, the color red blood when freshly spilled, the cold touch of corpses, all of it, the were all feelings she wanted nothing to do with.  
  
Every aspect of killing disgusted her. Most of all, she was disgusted with herself. Only a disgusting person would be capable of murder. Cinderella lived with her wicked step sisters and step mothers, but she was noble and always stayed kind no matter how much abuse was heaped on her. The fact that Toko could not handle it without resorting to killing meant that she was neither noble, nor kind, and definitely not a princess. Beautiful girls had it good in this world. Even when they suffered it was tragic and beautiful, they had a chance to remain beautiful. People who were born ugly like her however could never become beautiful as much as they tried.  
  
They only grew more ugly. Perhaps when she was just a child she had no reason to be despised as she did, but from the first moment she had picked up a pair of scissors and drove it into a boy’s throat she now gave them every reason in the world to despise her. She was not an ugly girl who was still beautiful on the inside despite all of her mistreatment, she became ugly inside and out. If she were cinderella, the entire ball would have become a blood bath and nobody wants to read a fairy tale that ends all Carrie-like.

 

She felt nothing but utter revulsion for murder. The kind that made her want to peel her own skin off, to crawl out of her own skin and exit her body. The wish that she could be anybody else instead of continuing to be this person, capable of such an ugly thing as murder. Every time she  saw blood it reminded her of her true colors, every time she smelled something rotten it reminded her she was rotten.

 

She considered murder disgusting, because society considered murder disgusting, and Toko thought herself disgusting to. It was the only rational reason for how she had been treated all of her life, everybody around her told her so.  
  
At the same time, Toko really did not feel bad when people died. She saw the way Mukuro seemed to genuinely regret her actions, feeling sorry for the people she had taken from the world. She saw the way Mukuro was filled with pain when her own little brother was taken from her. In the first place, Toko had never valued a single person enough to be afraid of losing them, or know what losing them might feel like. When she killed someone she was covered in blood stains that would never wash out no matter how hard she tried, but that also meant an annoying person who was hurting her was gone from her life.  
  
She was a true minus. Sometimes she found herself casually thinking, the world could really use less people. Of course she was self aware so she knew she herself was one of those people the world would be better off without.  
  
Her mothers had told her as much.  
Every day they reminded her they wished she had been born stillborn.  
Her life brought nothing but inconvenience into the world.  
To the people who were supposed to be closest to her.  
That was why even if she tried, Toko could see no value in life.

That was what she thought anyway, that was the negative rationale she had used to justify herself and her living until this point. She liked her life so unattached that she never really had to mourn anyone. She never thought she would regret the death of somebody besides how much the corpse they left behind reminded her of her own ugliness.  
  
Yet.  
When she saw Kumagawa MIsogi’s unmoving body, something in her snapped. The strings that were somehow propping up, her fragile self esteem and fragile ego, were cut one by one viciously with a pair of scissors.

  
The sight of his body was revolting enough on its own. His head cracked open, the blood seeping out through the cracks, she swore she even saw bits of brain matter. Kumagawa’s body was warm, but if she were to touch it right now it would become cold and clammy. Kumagawa would never move around or smile again, his only fate was to be devoured from the inside by bugs. Those bugs were little better than her. They devoured corpses in order to keep living. She created corpses in order to keep living. She wrote tragedy after tragedy in real life when she cut a young man short with her scissors, all to prolong a life that she barely felt was worth living.  
  
Yet, for some reason the sight of him dead made her feel more disgust than she was used to, like the bugs were crawling around inside of her, nibbling on her own organs while she was still alive.

The sight of him dying just looked wrong to her.  
  
The serial killer Genocide Jack had rules.  
Her rules didn’t have any particular deeper meaning. They just were.  
When she killed she always used her scissors. She always targeted a young man that Toko would have been attracted to. She crucified them with her scissors, and wrote blood lust on the scene with their blood. She carved another tally mark in her legs. Etcetera, etcetera.  
  
She would never kill someone if that kill fell outside her personal aesthetic. That was the only emotion that Fukawa Toko could compare this wrongness to when she saw Kumagawa’s dead body. “This person never should have died” Toko never felt that feeling before. Objectively considered, her reasoning might have seemed insane And Fukawa herself was well aware of this. In fact, all feelings relating to death did not belong to her in the first place she unburdened herself by pushing them onto Jack.  
  
Yet she felt it. That feeling like a single screw had loosened in her mind. She had no idea what purpose the screw served. Loosening the screw might cause everything to descend into total madness and result in his total breakdown, or it could do nothing at all. But still that screw fell away from her mind the moment she saw his corpse.  
  
“I feel awful.”  
She said what she more or less felt after running away from the class trial to her room.  
She was not talking to anybody, she was not even capable of communicating with Jack.  
She had not even killed Kumagawa, and yet she felt like she had.

 

She… didn’t want him to die? There was somebody in this world she was attached to. There was somebody in this world she did not want to lose. Oh, but they were already gone by the time she had realized this.  
  
Internally she was racked with pains. She felt as though her skin was covered in his blood, even though she did not go near the body. Her head felt like it had been the one crushed with a shot put. Perhaps the reason Jack followed such strict rules with her killing was so that she would never feel this way. If she thought about it as a purely mechanical procedure she would never become overcome with the guilt of the murder. Toko did not know for sure though, because she was not Jack. She was not Jack. She was not Jack. She hated killing. She hated killers. She hated Jack. She hated herself.  
  
But she did not hate Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
She tried to breathe, but she remembered what that room had smelled like, and she started to choke on the scent of death. She needed to get away from this scent that always followed her. She needed to wash away these feelings somehow. So, Fukawa Toko decided to stop shivering and holding herself alone in her room and take a bath instead.

Fukawa hated bathing. Another quality of hers that gave other people plenty of reason to sneer at her in disgust, or avoid her outright. She hated it so much she would put it off for as long as possible, because it took her awhile to psyche herself up before doing it. She had only so much mental energy, and she preferred to use that writing or reading. No matter how much she worked on her hair she would never be beautiful, so she kept her hair in long sloppy braids. No matter how much paint she put on her face, it would not disguise the fact that she was ugly so she did not bother with makeup. She decided to just indulge herself, at least when she was reading she could imagine escaping from this body into one that would be beautiful. She often read so much and wrote so much she neglected every other facet of herself, and sometimes even starved herself to the point of fainting.  
  
She stripped her clothes off. She looked away from the mirror, because the sight of herself naked was too much she could barely stand to look at herself clothed. Last to go was her glasses, which she left next to the messy pile of her clothes. She left Jack’s scissors there too, hoping that it was so late nobody else would think to bathe at this time and discover them. She undid her hair, it was a long unmanageable mess when not in her braids. It would look terrible long or short, the only reason she kept it long was that she might have to make eye contact more if she did not look like a bookish solitary girl in braids.

There was another reason she hated bathing though. It said a lot for her current mental state that she thought bathing would make her feel better. She forced herself into the water, having cleared all the other mental hurdles already. The moment her skin touched the water, the moment she rested the back of her neck against the edge of the tub she remembered.  
  
She remembered even when she did not want to. Living was just a daily act of deluding herself, and trying to forget even for a moment what she was and what had been done to her. All of those memories came flooding back, like they were water. She sank into them, sinking further into the tub.  
  
Fukawa Toko lived with two mothers, and one father. Not a single person in the household that raised her wanted to be there, they were all stuck there because a child had been born.  
  
The day of her birth two women gave birth, and one of them died from a medical accident. Due to improper record keeping, neither women knew if there’s was the child that had died or not. Neither of them wanted to know either. When they discovered that both babies were fathered by the same man, two-timing them on the same night, they both wished their child had died.  
  
Which meant Fukawa Toko had a half sister who had died. When she thought about that, only two words crossed her mind _lucky her._

No one person wanted to be stuck with the baby that was born, so all three raised her at once. Even though both mothers disliked that child born of adultery, they were also intensely jealous of the other woman and found Toko a good tool to use against the other.

Sometimes when divorced parents in unstable households want the child to like them more, they’ll give them gifts. If only Toko was so lucky. One memory stuck out in her heart. The reason she could not bathe anymore. That day a class assignment had been given from her literature teacher to write a letter to her mother. Fukawa felt no real connection to her parents, and that this was a family of inconvenience, but being a little kid she still held onto a craving for family. She put her feelings in her letter writing them out with all her heart.  
  
Up until this point, she had only been neglected. She was used to being ignored, because nobody in the house wanted to acknowledge she was the reason they were stuck in such a miserable household. She never thought she would miss the days when nobody in that house wanted to touch her.  
  
The moment one of her mother’s finished reading the letter, they tore it apart right in front of her. Her innocent letter had set them off in a way a child could never predict. “I’m going out of my way to raise you and… you… You’re looking down on me aren’t you! You think that other woman is better than me!”

 

Suddenly, Toko had been knocked down off her feet. Before she could even cry, the pain of hitting the floor was replaced by the pain of getting dragged by her long hair. “Stop it…”

  
“Too bad! I’m not stopping! I’m not letting go! You’ve never even once called me mother, so why should I treat you like a child? If only it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this house.”

 

 _You don’t want to be my mother._ Toko thought helplessly as she was dragged along. Their house was filled with trash, because no one wanted to live here so no one took care of the place. She saw her father look at her get dragged away, and then look away with indifference. Her mother pushed her face into a tub of already full bath tub water.  
  
“I know you hate me worse than that other woman!”  
  
Toko’s harshly gripped face was dunked under the water. Again and again, until the only thing she could make out of the world besides her own desperate gasps for air were her mother’s words.  
  
“You’re just like your father. You want to choose her over me, don’t you?”  
  
“Gaaaaahhh…”  
  
“Wel, if you want to breathe tell your mother how much you love her.”  
  
“Lo...ve...you…” Toko finally gasped, forcing her head up out of the water. “I love you more than my other mother.”  
  
“You love me the most? Do you?”  
  
She let go of her hair and Toko collapsed onto the floor. She looked like a discarded doll, her messy hair thrown about, her half drowned body. Yet still she muttered with the last of her breath. “I love… my mommy.”  
  
From that day forward, the words _I love you_ became a lie to Toko. After all her mothers had both been in love with her father. Her father strung them along with the words I love you. He at least had been passionate enough to sleep with them multiple times. He loved both of them enough to lie to each of them about the fact that he was sleeping with the other to continue the relationship. Each of her mothers, for most of the pregnancy loved the child they were carrying. They looked forward to the day they could marry this elusive man and raise this child together.  
  
Toko’s mother kicked her hard enough in the stomach to make Toko spit up the water she had swallowed, even after Toko had given her exactly what she wanted. “Your face is so ugly, it looks so much like your father’s.” She spit at her as a final insult. “I hope you are that other woman’s, I would never give birth to a child that looks like that.”  
  
There was even a day when both mothers thought that the child that was going to be born was beautiful because it would be a combination of the mother and father’s faces. That emotion too, was probably love. They were led on by a lie, which is to say they were led on by the love they held. When the truth was finally revealed that the men had an affair with both women, all that loved turned into nothing.  
  
Love should only exist in fairy tales, that was what Toko believed with all of her heart. Only in fiction could lies like love turn out to be real.  
  
After that day the fragile atmosphere in the house broke. Both women thought it was wrong to harm a child. However, both also realized that that thing they shared a house with was not their child, but rather the child of the other woman. Their own child had died tragically that day. They only did not bother her until now because they thought she was useless. When they realized that Toko could be used to take their frustrations towards each other out on, they would punish her and demand that she insult her other mother. She always did to placate them but it never stopped.

  
She endured comments every day like “I had to bathe with you when you were younger, if only I hadn’t stopped myself from drowning you before you grew up.”

 

Toko did not want to be stuck in that house either. Every single person who loathed living there, blamed her, but she would have done anything to escape that household, even become a different person.  
  
Toko’s head drifted back in the tub. The room had become filled with steam making it difficult to see. Her face was red, and beyond her own blindness without her glasses she saw heat haze eat away at the edge of her vision. The other reason she hated bathing was because in the time she got lost in her memories, she always ended up overheating like this.

 

She tried to get up, but her foot slipped on the smooth surface and she fell even further backwards. The back of her head hit the edge of the tub and she felt herself go limp. In her last moments of consciousness, she saw steam clouds rising up from her bath and wondered in a dreamy way if that was a metaphor for anything.

 

Nobody was coming to save her. Her father always glanced away in disinterest. Even when one of her mother's picked up a pair of scissors, he always just watched.   
If only she had a prince. A prince could take her away from this place. Princes lived to save princesses. But princes did not exist here. They only existed between love and desire.

 

🧸

  
Togami did not feel like he had won the class trial. It was not enough to survive, he had to win and conquer. Merely living was what those who were happy being spoonfed through life did. It was entirely possible his siblings were still living, but they were definitely not alive. In this case he had planned to take control of the trial to show his superiority from earlier on, but not only had his first few theories about the criminal been wrong but the trial became a fight between Kokichi and Komaeda where he was a mere bystander.

 

Oh, also one of his classmates had died. It was one of the more useful ones too. If one of his classmates had to die, then Toko should have been the murderer so he could finally be rid of her. There was no good in throwing out a useful piece like Kirigiri.  
  
Even as he thought about that in a condescending way as usual he had found himself in front of Toko’s door without realizing it. Why…? Did he want someone to talk to? That was unnecessary. The less he spoke of his feelings, the more inconvenient ones were likely to disappear. Oh right he remembered now before the trial Toko had dragged him to her room and locked herself behind her door, saying she was afraid of Jack getting out because she saw a corpse and then given him her room key like she trusted him. The idea of her trusting him itself was ridiculous. He did not want to be somebody she could lean on for support, and least of all he did not want to play along with the fantasies of being her knight come to be the shoulder she could cry on, and the only one she could rely on in a cruel world.  
  
Of course, Togami was happy to lock Toko away somewhere where she could not bother him. However, at this moment he was searching his pockets for the key she had left him, thinking he could talk as much as he wanted and Toko would stay silent.  
  
When he retrieved the key he noticed the lock on the door was broken, like it had been forced open by someone desperate to escape. She told him she would wait for him. Togami clicked his teeth in annoyance.  
  
He found his legs moving without his brain ordering them to do so. He was going to lecture Toko properly for this afterwards. He looked in the library, and while the blood and Kumagawa had been cleaned up Toko as not there. He checked the game and A/V rooms as well on the off chance that she might be there, even though he knew Toko hated books.  
  
When he walked past the changing rooms, he finally noticed that the door had been left ajar. He saw Toko’s things in a messy pile, and went out of his way to meticulously fold them. Then he noticed the door to the baths was open too. The steam immediately fogged his glasses it was so thick in the air.  
  
He saw Toko, her hair long and wet making her look like a drowning victim. She had passed out due to bathing for too long, and her eyes spun around with the dizziness her head felt. Togami ‘s usual composed self startled at the sight of her, not because he had walked in on a naked girl bathing, but because he was genuinely surprised how one girl could cause him so much trouble.  
  
Before he knew what he was doing, he had rolled up his sleeves and grabbed her by each of the forearms dragging her naked body out of the tub. She barely cooperated already passed out from the heat, so she was just a particularly heavy rag doll. His suit was going to get wet if he got any closer to her soaking wet form, and his clothes were dry clean only. Yet he found himself picking her up princess style and holding her close to his chest as he moved her to the changing room.  
  
It was the most convenient way to carry her, he told himself. Besides, if she died after he had already touched her he might be accused of a murder. He stretched a towel on the floor, and then moved her on top of it. He walked away to collect bowl of cold water, and then soaked a much smaller hand towel in it. The only way to wake the sleeping princess up, scientifically of course was to get her body temperature back down to normal levels. First he hand toweled her body until it was dry of water, and then he wiped her down with a cool rag. He paid special attention to her face. It was strange, seeing Toko’s sleeping face look so neutral and emotionless. She usually had it twisted up with some unpleasant emotion.  
  
Even after wiping her down, Toko’s condition changed little. Rather than dizzy with heat she looked like she had fallen into a deep sleep which no one would rouse her from.  
  
“Who do you think you are? You’re not allowed to go anywhere without my permission.”

Togami complained, to somebody that could not hear him.  
  
“Do you realize how much of my time you’re wasting? Do I look like the Ultimate Nurse to you?

I already told you if you were going to be an idiot and die I was never going to save you.”  
  
There was still no response. Togami was just venting his feelings to the empty air. He finally looked down at her naked body. Around the inside of her thigh, there were several carved scars Jack had already told them about this shamelessly showing them off when she lifted her skirt. However, there were several other old scars that did not look like they had been inflicted on Toko herself. There were some really old ones around her wrist. Toko always dressed to cover as much of her body as possible.  
  
She probably… wouldn’t want him to see this. He stood up and reached to grab one of the robes used for the bath. He wrapped it around her body and tied it at her waste. He picked her up again, letting her head rest against his chest because it was convenient. On the way he snatched her glasses thinking she might want them.

 

When he finally set her to rest in the infirmary, Togami set her glasses down on the stand next to her table and went missing for a few minutes. When he returned he had a stool to sit on and a book in his hands. He just wanted to lecture her when he woke up, that was the only reason. If he left her alone, she might die in the middle of the night too.  
  
He pulled the blanket all the way up to her chest, and then opened his book. As time passed the room got dimmer, and then it got brighter but he barely seemed to notice. He did not look away, except for the occasional glances at Toko to check that she was still breathing in her sleep.  
  
He brought his book to his face and mumbled into the pages. “Hey, Toko. When you wake up, let’s have some tea together.”

 

Only when a few rays of the morning sun made it into her room, did Togami check his watch and realize what time it was.  
  
He had promised to eat with everybody else. He looked at Toko’s still sleeping face. Even if he waited here all night for her, just then he decided he did not want to be here for her when she woke up.  
  
That was why, when Toko’s eyes fluttered open a few minutes later she stared at an empty blurry chair in front of her in confusion. Her vision trailed to the side and she saw the infirmary room curtains had been drawn back, and a boy in a mask was waiting for her.

  
🧸

 

The girl who had been sleeping peacefully a moment ago, reached for her glasses and put them on her face. “Hey, you! What’s with that hairstyle? You look like you’d come crawling out of a TV!” Toko’s face broke into peels of laughter, because it was not Toko but rather Jack who had woken up and started talking. “Such long luscious locks… But you’re a boy! Hm… I admit, that fires me up a bit!”

Korekiyo merely tilted his head to the side. “You’re suddenly energetic for someone in the infirmary? Did you pass out writing a novel or something?”  
  
“Oh, shit is that where I am! I thought I’d finally died and gone to heaven and a hunky boy was greeting me! I was about to ask if there was a paperwork error or something. Why are you looking at me so surprised? Do you know Miss Morose, or something?”  
  
Korekiyo was puzzled how his expression conveyed surprise, he was looking at her with the same foxlike stare that he gave everybody else. “Your behavior and expressions are completely different from what I’ve observed before this…”

  
“Eh? Wah? Are you a stalker?” She said speaking with her tongue hanging out which slurred her words slightly.  
  
“Considering the patterns you exhibit in your relationships with others, preferring to gaze at them lovingly from afar and keep things entirely one sided I doubt you have much room to judge me.”  
  
“Hey, that’s her deal not mine! I don’t go following around others for no reason. I got a perfectly good reason! I wanna kill em!” Suddenly Jack slapped her hands on her cheeks as if she had forgotten something. For somebody who had been unconscious for most of the night her mannerisms were very animated. To Korekiyo it looked like Toko’s body was suddenly possessed by a ghost. “Wait no, you didn’t hear that! I’m not supposed to make that reveal yet! Listen, they all just fell on my scissors! Whoops, they’re so clumsy.”  
  
“I see…”  
  
“The hell do you mean I see! I just told you I was a gosh darn flippin killer, I know most of your face is covered up by that mask but you could at least let me see your reaction a little bit.”  
  
“There are plenty of humans that kill one another. People see death as the opposite of life, rather than its natural and logical result. Human beings as a whole are obsessed with death. They’ve written entire books and schools of philosophy about it. Why would I be afraid of something so human, when I love humans?” Korkeiyo said, raising his finger as he lectured.  
  
“I’m sure they don’t love you back buddy.”

 

“What they feel is irrelevant. I have family that’s always been there for me since the day I was born, I don’t need anybody else.” Korekiyo’s eyes sharpened making his face look all the more angular as he observed her. “Then, you suffer from a split personality?”  
  
“The genius finally gets it. Hey, why are you here anyway? I thought that Master might e here when I woke up. Hey! Where’s Master? Where?”

“Kehehe… Well, well, aren’t you an eager one? I have no idea who you’re talking about, you were alone when I got here. I thought I would keep you company since you had no one to pass the time with. Perhaps I could learn more about me.”  
  
“Then, unlucky you I guess. Miss Gloomy is the one who does all the self reflection. I don’t do all that repressed inner angst, especially since she just dumps all her frustration on me anyway. I’m here to flirt with cute guys and also get stabby.”  
  
“You have a relationship with your alter?” Korekiyo asked.  
  
“Well you see, there’s one Toko, and there’s one cooler girl in her head and that’s me. What do you care anyway?”  
  
Korekiyo realized he was not going to get a straightforward answer any time soon. Jack felt the same thing more or less, she was just trying to scare this guy off so master would not get mad that she had blown their secret. Yet for some reason he did not go away, he kept looking at her like he was intrigued. Well, if he was one of those human observers then he probably just thought she was a fascinating freak show.  
  
“Shouldn’t you care about these things? Don’t you think you should question your existence at all? Or are you content just being a murderous fiend personality.”  
  
“Oh, what do you think I’m boring and worthless just because I’m a cliche!? Like, yeah I get it, the serial killer with a split personality trope is overused. You’re thinking that, huh!?”

  
Korekiyo narrowed his eyes adding another mental observation. Despite the fact that they seemed like complete opposites in personality, Jack seemed to also jump to the assumption that others were looking down on her. “I don’t think at at all. I came here to talk to Fukawa, but talking to you is interesting to. I just wonder, does someone like you really exist?”  
  
“Wha?” Toko said suddenly rolling her tongue.  
  
“You’re a personality who was fabricated by Fukawa. You didn’t exist and then you did. Can someone like yourself be counted as real. You seem a bit like an oddity to me.”  
  
“Why are you calling me an odd titty all of a sudden?”  
  
Despite her outbursts Korekiyo did not lose patience nor composure. Even if he did it would be difficult to tell with that mask of his. He spoke in the same raspy voice as always, that sounded a bit like the voice a ghost would use to whisper in your ear. “It’s like you said, you’re a cliche. A jekyll and hyde fictional character. You know most mentally ill people don’t turn violent, and most multiple personalities don’t turn into serial killers. You know of Kumagawa Misogi?”

“Oh that guy! He’s totally awesome! Master’s the prettiest boy there is, but Kumagawa’s cute. Besides whenever I’m around him I think that he’s such a big loser he even makes me look normal by comparison.”  
  
“Kumagawa Misogi’s minus personality resulted in an abnormal and irrational characteristic in him. Aberrations, supernatural creatures possessing people especially young girls trying to unburden themselves from their problems. Your eyes turn red, and your teeth sharpen, that can’t be explained with just a mental diagnosis.”  
  
“Umm, it’s just symbolic duh. We have symbolic changes of eye color all the time.”  
  
“Yes, life is quite symbolic but…” Korekiyo held the side of his face with his bandaged hand, as if he was caressing himself. Whenever he crossed his arms like that, he looked like he was holding himself because nobody else would.  “I’ve heard stories of this before, stories of a crab, a snail, a monkey, a cat… so I ask you again are you sure you’re real?”  
  
Fukawa Toko was a minus, that was to say her mental dysfunction and ways of coping only subtracted, made her worse and worse, more violent, more irrational. Jack never thought much of her own existence, of her birth, of her frayed relationship with Toko her original self. “Are you saying I could just up and disappear one day?”  
  
“Well, I hope not.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“You’re so fun to talk to so far. It would be shame if someone like you vanished.” Korekiyo said with a shameless sense of honesty.

 

This boy was just sitting here and talking to her like a normal person, unbelievable. “Well, whether or not being a murderous fiend is a cliche, I definitely exist, ‘know? My existence may be unnatural, but you can’t deny the fact that I’m here now!”  
  
“Something that has been born, acknowledged, and lived life can’t be denied its existence.”  Korekiyo said affirming her.  
  
Whatever.  
She did not ask for this affirmation. For some reason this guy was staring to bug her. He needed to show her a more horrified face. That was her job after all. She was the pair of scissors that cut the string, every single string that could hold Toko down or back. If Toko was repression than she was escape.  
  
“Well, I just live following what my murderous fiend’s intuition tells me to do, anyway. So… no hard feelings.”

Korekiyo’s only reaction was to be momentarily stunned as the girl who had looked sick and pale as death a moment ago, suddenly pulled the drawer next to her desk open and retrieved a pair of medical scissors. “It’s no good having my secret get out, I won’t kill ya or anything but how about I cut your tongue out so you can’t blab!”

 

Korekiyo stood up from the stool in which he had been relaxing, but not fast enough and he was quickly tackled over by her. He was tall but he had been knocked over like a great oak tree and was too stunned from the fall to fight back.  
  
Before she knew it she was straddling him. “Heh… my bad, Kiyo. You’re not cute at all, but here I am climbing you like a tree.” She opened and closed the scissors producing slicing sounds in the air, before she leveled them at her throat. “Now tell me, what did you want from me? Choose carefully because they’re going to be the last words you ever say.”  
  
“I thought you were beautiful.”  
  
“Eh…?”  
  
“You have so many beautiful flaws, and you act like they make you inhuman. I wanted to learn more about, your mistakes, your worries, your troubles, as a human being…”  
  
It sounded like something Kumagawa would say. That was the reason for Jack’s hesitation. Even if she did not have little miss raincloud’s memories, she still shared the grief over Kumagawa’s death.

His unconditional acceptance scared her though, because she knew there was no such thing as unconditional love in this world. Just like princes and princesses, it never existed in the first place. She spun the scissors around for a moment and went right for his mask. Only when she tugged at it with a finger did Korekiyo seriously start to fight back against her.  
  
“N-no, not the mask. What is… What are you… You what? Wha-wha-what!” He started to panic violently. Jack saw his normally calm face, start to turn a sickly color and he could feel her shaking underneath her. She forcefully grabbed his other hand to pin him down, but the pain of having his wrist wrenched away from him made him look even more vulernable. “S-stop it! It hurts! It hurts, sister!”  
  
“Wha?”  
  
Korekiyo’s head hit hard against the infirmary floor. He no longer saw Jack as the one hurting him. He saw a familiar silhouette instead that much resembled his own.  
  
 _Big sister made me wait for her. I promised Big Sister unlike everybody else in the world I would never break my promises with her.  
_ _This was the first time she ever left that room alone.  
I wanted to play with big sister. I'm happy when I'm around her, even if it sometimes hurts. I study hard so we can play later.   
_ _Once big sister is better we'll get to play as much as we want.  
_ _  
__Big sister won't come back yet. Did something happen? Was she having trouble?  
I want to go help big sister. But I don't want to make her upset.   
If I close my eyes big sister will come back. If I just wait a little longer.   
I waited and waited but big sister didn't come back.   
Even if it made her upset I broke our promise. I won't get praised by big sister but I went looking for her anyway. Big sister needs her medicine she can't be gone for too long.   
_ _  
No matter how much I look I can't find big sister.  
When I return home. I'm happy to see her in her same bed as always.  
Big sister was dead. _ _  
__At first I didn’t know what was going on. I mean I never imagined big sister would be dead. She ran away from an abusive household with me. She raised me all on her own. She was always with me, because she was a good big sister._ _  
__  
__Big sister will never move again. All the promises we made when she was going to be healthy are broken. This can't be because big sister was supposed to get better._ _  
__Big sister was always sick. I never understood why she was so afraid of dying, but I finally understand. When I held big sister I was surprised at how much I cried. I was always quiet because big sister wanted me to be, so it felt strange screaming until my throat hurt. My head was so confused, I rolled around on the floor. If sister would see me now, she would lecture me for being unseemly and losing my composure._ _  
__  
__I wanted her to wake up and lecture me._ _  
__I won't ever cry again.  
I knew I only caused trouble for big sister, and asked her for too many things but this time I'll be good.   
_ _  
__Big sister was born alone. Her house was so lonely she had to run away from it. That was why, when she raised me she always had me by her side. I was all sister had, so I didn’t need friends, or anything else. I didn’t need school when big sister could teach me._ _  
__  
__But now I’m alone. I’ll be alone until I die._ _  
__I knew. I knew big sister didn’t like me as much as I liked her. I knew because I’ve always looked at big sister. I’m not as smart as you are. I’m dreadfully boring. I just want to do normal kid stuff like play… but I’m really not unhappy being here!  If big sister is here then I can be happy!_ _  
__  
__For me big sister is only… if only big sister were here…_ _  
__I want to see you again, I want to see you again, I want to see you again._

_A W O R L D  W I T H O U T  S I S T E R I S  J U S T D E S P A I R_

“Sweet Korekiyo, calm yourself.”  
  
When Jack had finally cut off his mask with her scissors and it fell away in two pieces, the voice that came out was not Korekiyo’s but another, different, more feminine sounding. Korekiyo finally threw her off of him, and clapped his hands around his mouth.  
  
“Yes you’re right… calm down… I just need my mask...” He muttered, looking around the room desperately.  
  
Jack dropped her scissors. She no longer felt like being violent with the boy in front of her. The urge had completely died within her. Korekiyo could no longer hear anything as he struggled against himself, just the sound of metal crashing the floor as her scissors fell.

“Oh… I get it now. We’re the same aren’t we?”

 

🧸

 

Akamatsu Kaede was still alive, but she had no idea what to do. She had not expected to live. She had resolved to face her death when she saw Kumagawa’s body on the floor. She thought she was ready to die. She wanted to die the Kaede who had done her best to try to save everyone.  
  
Now that she was alive, she had no idea what to do waking up the next morning. She had thought she would never wake up another day on this earth again. If she was her best self, she would march right into the dining hall and apologize to everyone again and again. She would say heroically that she intended to keep on living carrying the sins she had committed.  
  
If she was her worst self, she would selfishly claim that none of this was her fault. That it was all the mastermind for tricking her into starting the killing game. She could run away and say that she had no reason to feel guilty because she never even killed anyone in the end.  
  
On, and on she mulled over the many options available. Now that nobody was relying on her anymore, she had no idea who she needed to be. In the end she could not bring herself to commit to anything. She chose the worst option possible, to do nothing. If she did nothing she would not harm anybody ever again. She would not have to see the hurt look in Shuichi’s eyes as he pushed her away.  
  
She went and hid in the piano room again, locking herself in. This was all because she tried to make friends. When the world was just her and her piano, it was much simpler. Even if it was a cage, it was a comfortable one that protected her heart from hurting like this.

She could not change what had already happened nor ould she go back and undo it. If anything she should accept what she did wrong and keep pushing forward, for the sake of the people who had died. That was what she told Shuichi to do anyway. She told such a weak boy to keep on living for the both of them, but now that she had to be the one who lived she could barely move.  
  
She did not think she could handle any more of this, she was going to break. She was sick of it. Exhausted. Screw it. She was done. She did not want anything to do with it anymore. Just let her out of this game. She had already been broken and turned into a murderer, there was nothing worse she could become.  
  
All this time she had done her best to make it work. She became obsessed with her perfectionist persona. She ignored all her perfectionist tendencies, and pushed herself hard because that was what she truly believed would make other people happy.  
  
The result of that was her current broken down state. If all you knew was to keep smiling through the pain and pushing yourself forward, what were you supposed to do when that pain was unrelenting? Were you supposed to keep believing that things would get better when they refused to get better?

She sat at the piano bench trying to play again, but she still heard no noise from the keys. When she tried to play a piece, it was mechanical, like she was simply reading notes and hitting the right keys at the right time. She no longer felt like she was playing. In frustration she gave up and let her head fall on the keyboard.  
  
Behind her the door finally cracked open. She skipped dinner, so maybe someone came looking for her. She probably was selfish, wanting someone to pay attention to this pity party she was throwing herself. Even so, for a moment she hoped she would see a familiar blue detective boy in the door.  
  
Instead, she saw someone that looked like nothing at all. Or rather she saw the person she least expected. Amami Ranataro was standing there, and her heart dropped. “Akamatsu, aren’t you hungry?”  
  
“...Y-you, shouldn’t be here.”  
  
“Huh? Why not?”  
  
“I… I almost killed you. I set up the camera flash, to lure the mastermind from the door, and rolled the shotput ball down the vent and across the bookshelf and… you almost died because of me… I’m s-sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Eh? Don’t cry now. My sisters will lecture me something fierce if I make a girl cry.”

Teardrops had fallen from her face, like they were raindrops. There were certain songs that were meant to convey the feeling of falling rain, but Kaede could no longer here them. The piano had abandoned her as well as everybody else. Either way, her crying did not deserve such a beautiful descriptor, she was selfishly crying out of her own guilt.  
  
“I can’t do that now. Please, can we talk? I’m not mad at you for trying to keep your word. We can just talk about this.  I just said... don't go cryin now.  Otherwise I’m gonna feel like the bad guy.” He slowly walked towards her and brought a thumb to her cheek, wiping one of the tears away. He looked like he had done this before.  
  
“You should hate me…”  
  
“Hey, I’m just the guy you almost killed. If you want to apologize then say sorry to the guy you killed, but I think if you talked it out he’d give you a chance. You want me to hate you when we’re in a damnable situation from the start? As far as I’m concerned, you’re just another victim of this game. I don’t hate you. I don’t… have it in my to hate anyone. We’re all in an awful position, and we’re all scared. I bet everyone wants to run away and cry right now so why should I look down on you for doing it? At least you tried to save everyone. You… you at least kept your word.”  
  
That was the most Kaede had ever seen Rantaro talk at once. He knelt down so he was at eye level with her, still bending over her body and tilting her face up towards him. Somehow, in all of his rambling her tears had started to dry up.  
  
“I’m the one who lied. In the end I was just all talk." His mystery title was probably just the Ultimate Useless Older brother or something. When he first woke up he thought there was a big mystery about who he was, but now he felt like he was a mystery not even worth solving. He was a letter that when you opened it only contained a blank page. "Listen, if there’s anyone here nobody should trust it’s me… not you.”  
  
“Amami-kun, you… why are you acting like I’m better than you. It’s not like you’re forgiving me… it’s like you were never even angry at me.” That was abnormal, like he was lacking in something, lacking in the capacity to be angry, to feel pain for what had been done to him.  
  
“Eh? I treat everyone like they’re better than me, because they are.” Amami’s eyes were so dark at the trial they looked hollowed out, like he was completely used to people disappearing in front of his eyes. Now, he was just talking to her with a casual smile. It was like the Ratnaro from yesterday had completely disappeared. “Come on, I just want to have some tea and chat for a bit.”  
  
Kaede blinked. She had no idea why Rantaro was still around her. Perhaps Shuichi might forgive her for becoming a killer, and Kaito would want to say he still believed in her, but the last thing she expected was the boy who just like her should have died yesterday.

“Hey, are you hitting on me?”  
  
“Oh, yeah back when I was a rich playboy this was one of my favorite moves. It’s called harass a crying girl until they hate you.”

  
“Wait, are you serious?” Kaede was still completely oblivious when it came to these things. The idea of anyone taking any romantic interest in her at all was a joke, but now that she was a murderer it was a punch line to the gut.  
  
Rantaro realized she was not going to leave the piano room no matter how hard he tried, but he did not want to leave her alone like that either. He left the room and came back a few minutes later with two cups of tea one for each of them.  
  
Kaede had been about to lose herself alone just a few minutes ago, and here she was sitting across from Rantaro.  
  
“I guess people assume I’m a sleazy guy because of the way I look, but I’m not. I used to have to clean up for my family, but they’re not around so I can dress however I want here. Besides, ‘Would you like to have some tea?” What kind of old-school pick up line is that?”  
  
“Hm… But maybe it’s so old-school that it’s looped around and became cool again. It definitely sounds like something Togami-kun would say.”  
  
“Haha, yeah, maybe. Although it is true that I wanted to spend more time with you. I’m surrounded by strong personalities… I like them, but it’s a tad overwhelming at times. Well, you almost killing me was a good way to break the ice at least.” Rantaro awkwardly laughed as he played with his messy green hair, but it did little to break the tension in the room between them.  
  
“Yeah, a lot of the Ultimate students here are pretty unique. Oh, but I think Saihara-kun is pretty normal.”  
  
“Now that’s true, but he’s a detective. Could be hiding his real personality, y’know? Maybe the real reason he seems normal to you is because you’re just used to him. Since you’re always around him.”  
  
“Not anymore…”

  
“Uh, well it’s normal for friends to be fightin! Don’cha worry too much about it. By the way, who’s the most unique person here, in your eyes?”  
  
“Um… Iruma?”  
  
“Yeah, Iruma is beyond understanding for ordinary people like us.” Amami had a sleepy disposition in general as well as he perpetual bedhead but at that moment he truly looked tired just thinking of Miu. “But, I understand her thought process. SHe likes to be the one on top.”  
  
“On top…?”  Kaede repeated again, clueless.  
  
“Haha, sorry, I was trying to make a joke…”  
  
Kaede only broke away from him. She brought her knees up to where she was sitting on the piano bench. If this were a picture, she would cut quite the melancholy scene of a lonely girl on a piano. “Why do you keep trying to talk to me?”  
  
“Hey, Akamatsu-san, do you hate me? I mean, I’m the one who threw your plan off. I wanted to save everyone too, but in the end I didn’t do anything, because I only trusted me and cared about me. But, you were the one who was looking at everyone. I… really do want us all to make it out of here just like you said. That’s… probably why I can’t hate you, even if you want me to.”  
  
“What? I don’t hate you? I’m the one who… lied to everyone else. Lied to Shuichi. I was the one who kept insisting on trust and belief, but then in the end only relied on myself. He believed in me and I went behind his back. I’m the one who doesn’t trust anyone, if you don’t trust anyone then why are you here…?”  
  
“See what we’re doing, we’re arguing over which one of us should hate the other more. Both of us didn't trust people, right? Aren't we kinda the same?” Rantaro observed in a cool way, as he finally stopped playing with his hair. “I'm really just a normal guy. I don't think my life is worth getting upset about. So I think it’s okay for you to be a normal girl, and make mistakes too.”   
  
“A normal girl…? K-killing someone isn't a mistake a normal girl makes.”  
  
“Well, every girl has a knife inside her heart, you know.”  
  
Kaede was stuck on his suggestion that she was just a normal girl. Between her ideal self and her worst self, what did normal even mean. When Rantaro spoke up again.

“Oh, to answer your question. I think it’s normal, to want reach out and hold a girl's hand when they're crying, yeah?” It was because he said lines like that, that everybody assumed he was a playboy.

On the other side of the door, Saihara Shuichi who had stopped just short of walking in heard Rantaro's words . It would have been so easy just to open up the door and see her again. They had been by each other’s side all along after all. It started to feel like it was just natural that he go to greet her in the morning and follow her along all day, like he finally had a place where he was needed. Yet the idea that she did not want him to be the one to comfort her. That she still did not trust him. That she did not want to see him, made his heart freeze.  
  
He looked at his own empty hand for a moment. Unable to reach forward and grab the hand of a crying girl in front of him, unable to save her when she asked him to. He opened and closed that hand, grasping at nothing. 

Then, in a fit he grabbed the hat off of his head and threw it into the wastebasket in frustration. He wanted to say goodbye to his weak self. He wanted to say goodbye to his loathsome past. He wanted to say goodbye to every mistake.   
  
But, he did not want Kaede to be one of those mistakes.  
He did not want to say goodbye to Kaede.  
Then, why was he walking away? 


	22. Not Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> art by @oakyvii as always!  
> Junko's speech is a reference to 9S in the Nier Automata novel.

“I want to be alone for a while. Just for a little bit.”  
At the end of the trial Saihara Shuichi used those words to turn away from everyone else.  
  
“But, we can’t just leave you here by yours-” Tsumugi approached him in concern.  
  
“It’s for the best if we let him have some privacy for now…” Togami who thought everything was better off handled alone, grabbed her hand and stiffly lectured her.  
  
“Oh...Okay. I suppose.” Tsumugi backed down easily.  
  
Zenkichi recalled for a moment, the many faces of self loathing Kumagawa had shown him. In the end he had never once done anything for his senpai. His voice soft,“Saihara, don’t beat yourself up.”  
  
Next to him, Kokichi slapped both of his cheeks like he was taking off a mask and putting on a new one. “Yep! Just hit the reset button on your feelings and you’ll feel happy and cheerful in no time!”

“Being a tad insensitive is important for survival. It helps one avoid suicidal thoughts,” Korekiyo subconsciously brought his hand to cover his mask. He looked like he was talking from experience.  
  
They all left with their weak condolences. Even Zenkichi was too worried about leaving Junko without a babysitter to be alone with Saihara for too long. In the end the only one who stayed was Kaito. He looked a lot different from the Kaito who had socked him moment ago. He looked away while talking to Saihara, as if trying to hide the melancholy on his face. “Saihara… I dunno how well you knew Akamatsu. But, why don’t you try going to her Ultimate Lab?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“If you didn’t understand her in the past, well you just gotta learn about her now right? Monokuma set up the room, so there’s probably not a lot there that’s hers but…there should at least be a bunch of little things she liked.”

  
“...” Kaito really was kind, Shuichi thought. If Kaede had relied on someone like him, things would have gone differently. He still had no idea what she had seen in him, and he did not want to look anymore.  
  
“Understand? There’s only one way to get through this awful feeling. No one’s gonna be able to console you if you’re just sitting there alone. If anyone’s gonna help you, it’ll be her...”  
  
Before he realized it, he got on his feet. He just started walking and he was headed towards… The Ultimate Pianist’s Research lab. He had no idea that he was chasing after her.  
  
It’s not as if there would be any memories between them that would help him understand her more. They only knew each other for a week. For that entire time both of them had been lying to each other. Shuichi lied when he said he would watch her, and Kaede lied when she said she believed in him. The only thing they shared was fabrication.  
  
But this place would be filled with the things she was passionate about, and that would be good enough for now. He remembered the last time he was in the room with her, he would have liked to hear her play that piano, if only just once.

 

He heard musical notes from the other side of the door. The song that Kaede was talking about, Claire de Lune, the moon’s reflection on the water. Kaede had come to this room first, and he followed her here. He finally got to hear her play. His trembling hand reached for the door knob.

 

What he wanted most of all was to throw open the door and sit next to her on that bench. He could listen to the music that she played, and show her a smile that everything would be alright. That Kaede was still capable of making people happy. That she did not have to save everyone, she just had to be there for him.  
  
That was it though, it was because he used foolish words like _I want to be by your side_ that he failed to see the real Kaede. He wanted to go back to the way things were, but if they did then they would repeat the same mistakes again. Did people fall in and out of relationships just to hurt each other in the same ways?  
  
He still believed in Kaede. He still saw the best in her actions. He wondered though if he was putting an unreasonable expectation on her. If Kaede was not like the sun, always so bright and smiling, would he still have gotten as attached to her? If he was questioning that then Kaede must think far worse of herself right now, all because of him. He would not help her at all if he went back to clinging to the ideal image of Kaede in his head.

  
If you idealize someone too much, you start to forget. The reasons you liked them in the first place. The people they were. They person you fell for. It all gets lost in the image of them. You think, just having this person always stay with me is enough. You fall in love with just the feeling of loving them. He did not want to forget Kaede, not ever. What did he like about her? She was kind, but she was also pushy with her kindness. She killed with kindness. No… don’t think about that. She wanted to help other people, but she decided what was best for them on her own. She always meant well, but she could be rude. She always stood in the center of attention, but she had a low image of herself, and was lacking in self awareness. She wanted everyone to trust her, but in the end she never once trusted him. That person on the other side of the door, that was the one he wanted to see so badly.

Kaede suddenly stopped playing. He heard a noise like a crash played out on piano keys as she slammed her hands on them in frustration. Then, the falling of her tears, it was not musical at all. He wanted to see her again, but the way he was now he would not do her any good.

  
It was his fault Kaede did not trust him, he had already decided. He could not bring himself to blame her for her crime, he really was too soft to be a detective. That was why next time he would not face her until he could stand on his own. He would become the kind of person strong enough for Kaede ot lean on for support.

 

 _I believe in you, so you should definitely believe in yourself._  
Even if those words were a lie he could still believe in them.  
  
“Yeah… I’ll try. I don’t know if I can do it, but… No… I’ll do it. I have to believe in myself. I won’t be afraid anymore. I will face the truth for everyone. I won’t give up, for your sake Kaede. I promise. From the bottom of my heart I promise you, Kaede.”  
  
Even if Kaede never intended to keep her promise, he would still keep his promise to her. Even if he had to do it alone from now on, this was his way of showing his reciprocation.

 

Then, the next time he saw her, he would be able to look her directly in the eyes. The stars and the moon shared the same sky, but they were so far away. Shuichi and Kaede had curled up on opposite sides of the door, unaware that the person they wanted to comfort them the most was just one door away from them.

 

🧸

 

Enoshima Junko did not want to wake up that morning. Well, she did not want to wake up every morning, and she was not too keen on being born in the first place, but that morning was especially dreadful. Junko usually found the anticipation of dread titillating, but now it was like running electricity through a dead frog’s body, it would do little to revive her.  
  
Because this was her first morning waking up to a world without Kumagawa Misogi in it.  
  
An especially important existence for her. Ever since he appeared in her life, everything went off the rails, and everything went wrong. He was the reason to blame for the deviations to all of her plans. If only she had never met him, she would have been much happier right now. Ever since they first met, he protected her against her will, he loved her for his own selfish reasons, and above all just being by his side made her experience misfortune after misfortune.  
  
That irreplaceable existence, more important than anyone else, almost obsessed with him to the point of insanity, always wanting to be within his embrace, even living in a world with only him would be fine. And by losing that incredible existence, just how much despair would she fall in?

 

That incredible feeling escaped her pointed grasp, the same way Kumagawa had been pulled away from her at the last minute. She wanted to kill him, but she did not want to see him killed in front of her eyes. It was not the same, her mind drew an insane distinction that only she could rationalize.  
  
She was much more miserable with Kumagawa alive than dead, she concluded. Just living with him in her life, every day, was an accumulation of small despairs. She tried to recall his face again, him saying her name, but the memories twisted and entwined in an unnatural way. Every fragment had thorns sticking out.  
  
Thorny, twisted, entwined - memories of Kumagawa.  
  
It was not just that he was dead, because he would probably come back later. It was that he chose to run off and die instead of living with her, after he did something so selfish as forcing her to continue to live.  
  
It was just pain pricking her over and over again with no release, no great ecstasy of despair. Even if she did despair there was no one here to share it with. This emotion was loneliness, which was no despair and not particularly enjoyable.

  
“Oh, that’s right you’re nineteen years old now aren’t you? If you had never met that human embodiment of throwing a monkey wrench in our plans, than you would have died by now.”

  
Junkai chirped electronically from her bedside table like the world’s most annoying alarm lock. Junko picked her up and threw her cell phone across the room, watching it hit the wall and fall into a pile of stuffed animals.  
  
Everyone else was so boring in comparison to Kumagawa. They might become less boring if they changed, or if she learned more about them, but that was a lot of effort. They can all just go die then, she thought lazily as she rolled over in her bed resolving to just sleep in.

 

At the exact moment that she rolled over, Zenkichi kicked her door open, and dragged her out of her bed.  
  
“You look a lot different without your makeup.”  
  
He said staring down at the sleepy Junko who had just been dragged down onto the floor, and gave no resistance other than just lying there. Maybe the world would be less boring if she looked at it from upside down. Nope, that theory failed.  
  
“That’s because I soak my face in the blood of men every day in order to stay forever youthful.”  
  
“I know you’re joking, but that totally sounds like something you’d do. You’ve got that evil queen aesthetic nailed down.”

 

“Then, why are you here bothering me again, Hero Boy?”  
  
“Mukuro warned me you were going to go full Neet when you got depressed. I thought if I didn’t do it, then she would probably be forced to and Mukuro’s finally walking on her own.”  
  
“So it’s better if you’re the one who suffers, huh? That’s such an easy mindset to break, it’s not even worth the effort.” Junko rolled her one eye in its socket, it was the only body part she had moved so far. She had decided if she felt like a doll right now, she might as well act like one.

He had to drag her all the way to a stool before her mirror. Then, she saw him start to separate and brush her long blonde dyed hair. “You’re not going to defeat me with this. I felt bad at how much my mom took care of me, so when I got older I started helping her get ready every morning.”  
  
Zenkichi was really attached to his mother. To think this was the life Matsuda might have led, if he had never met her and continued living happily with his mother. She really did do him a favor then, it was better to grow up a miserable, misanthropic loner than a dork like this.  
  
“Are you going to apply my makeup too? Did Medaka-chan ever make her servant boy do that for her? Can you fetch me my slippers next like a good dog? Good Hitoyoshi-kun, good boy!”  
  
Zenkichi’s small eyebrows twitched in annoyance at being called her servant. If he was somebody below her, than even when they were together Medaka would feel lonely. He really was such an open book, Junko would be able to tell his emotions even if she ripped her last remaining eye out.  
  
“Actually, Medaka-chan never wore makeup. So I don’t know how to do it, sorry.”  
  
She was a natural beauty. Junko tended to be prone to jealousy and vanity, but her features were rather calm in the mirror. “Even though I look like this, I can be a girl as pretty as Medaka-chan if I use makeup to draw attention to the right features. Beauty is just a lie meant to trick people into thinking the world isn’t as boring as it really is.”

  
She batted his hands away and did her own makeup. There was no point in being depressed if you were not going to look cute at the same time. Then she made a motion to crawl back towards the bed, feeling the urge to coccoon herself in the blankets once more. Zenkichi had to wrestle her back, grabbing her by the waist.  
  
“Come on, Junko. You have to go outside, that’s where the food is.”

He wondered when he thought he had permission to start using her name. He was so impudent. “I can survive from now on off of ramen noodles alone! I have enough stocked for weeks. My NEETing skills are so impressive I could even become a NEET in space.”  
  
This was somewhere in between dealing with a dangerous and unstable criminal, and trying to reason with an unreasonable child. Zenkichi wondered what he was doing. All he wanted was to be by Medaka’s side. If he had never met Junko, he would still be there. If Junko just died, he would have saved his friends a lot of misery. She was not a person interested in being saved either. If he just let her go now and walked away, Medaka might be sad.  
  
That idiotic, unreasonable girl, who always butted her head into the business of others had gotten them involved with the life of an equally idiotic and unreasonable girl. Medaka might be dead, a fact he denied over and over again. The girl in front of him was nothing like Medaka, opposite in every way, and saving her did not do anybody any good. She would just cause more trouble down the line.  
  
But Medaka would still want to save this person. Kumagawa was dead as well. Unlike Junko, he wanted to become friends with other people, he wanted to be someone who was worthy of standing by their side.  
  
Zenkichi and Junko had no interest in one another, but their most precious people were gone. They were the types to always carelessly run ahead and leave them behind. They were left with each other.  
  
Zenkichi dropped her right in front of the massive pile of clothes that Junko kept in front of her closet. On the first day she had gone through them only to see they were all the same outfit, and gotten too bored to pick them up and just left them there.  
  
“Get dressed or I’ll drag you there in your pajamas.”  
  
“I didn’t know you wanted to see a girl in her underwear so bad, Hitoyoshi-kun. Should I tell Medaka-chan you’re cheating on her? You should be careful, the sight of a ingenue maiden like myself is enough to make anyone fall for me and then you’d be stuck in the world’s bloodiest romcom.”  
  
The concept of doing anything with another girl besides Medaka did not even occur to Zenkichi. He just tilted his head to the side, oblivious to her taunt. “Why would I need to look at other girls besides Medaka-chan? It’s not girls I like really, its Medaka-chan.”

“You know, Medaka-chan sure did a number on you. If you weren’t like, an annoying nice guy type, you’d be an obsessive freako.”  
  
“Medaka-chan never did anything to me. I decided to follow her all on my own a long time ago.”

“See, it’s even worse than I thought. If she had lied to you then you could be fixed, but since you lied to yourself there’s no helping you.” Any boy who had been with her that long, would probably fall for someone so superhuman, would be mesmerized by all of her spellbinding features, she was beautiful, rich, adventurous and tomboyish, had a good sense of humor, liked to get into fights, what was there not to like? Well for Junko everything, but still. In her diagnosis, Zenkichi had quite the Medaka-complex.  
  
Of course he would admire her, all children admired superheroes. She could toy with those feelings a little more, that might be a little bit interesting.  
  
“Listen you, stop screwing around…!” Zenkichi shouted. He must have noticed the smiles that sometimes unconsciously spread across her face when she started to plot.  
  
“I can’t screw around. Kumagawa-senpai isn’t here anymore…”  
  
“You think I’m not sad too! He was my friend before he was yours! When he’s around you, all you did was use him, and you’re probably more upset that he left you behind then the fact that he was hurt. You try to kill him all the time, but you throw a tantrum like this when he dies? What sense does that make? You guys weren’t even friends to begin with. You don’t even deserve to be his friend.”  
  
Saying that Kumagawa was out of her league. Wow, she had really reached a new low. Still she felt another thorn prick her heart. _You can try to kill me as many times as you want. Special offer, cause you’re my friend._  
  
She had spent the entire time trying to set Zenkichi off, and that boy thoughtlessly set her off instead. What a twist of fate. Her vision blurred. Her vocal chords trembled. _What pointless feelings to feel._ She thought. “You don’t know anything about us.” Junko who had been nothing more than a limp doll in Zenkichi’s arms the entire time, immediately escaped and then grabbed him by the face. She held him by the mouth, her nails slicing into his cheek.  
  
Memories of Kumagawa flashed by her eyes as they reddened. The look he made when he was confused. The way he smiled gently right before he was about to betray her. The rare moments he expressed the anger he hid away deep in his heart. Her connection to this world. Yet, Zenkichi had the audacity to claim they were unconnected.  
  
She pushed him back against the wall, whispering in a low voice. “Your memories with him don’t matter. Senpai is mine and mine only. Senpai is mine. I’ll kill anyone who hurts Senpai. I’ll kill anyone that comes near Senpai. I’ll kill anyone that looks at Senpai. The only one allowed to look at Senpai is me. The only one allowed to come near Senpai is me. The only one allowed to hurt Senpai is me. The only… The only…”

Dying without her permission was unforgivable. If he returned from the dead that would be unforgivable too.  
  
“Because he’s all mine. I can’t let anyone else have him. Not even Senpai. Senpai can’t self destruct, because the only one allowed to destroy him is me.”

Junko did not laugh or cry. Other than the incredibly serious look in her eye, she had no change in the expression on her face at all.  
  
“Do you know how lonely he must have been? Senpai died alone, because I wasn’t there to kill him.”  
  
Zenkichi had memories of Senpai that she did not have. That made her jealous. Anyone other than her that knew senpai should disappear and be gone. Memories of Senpai. Accounts of Senpai.

She wanted to disappear, but then these memories would disappear to.  
Kumagawa? Boredom?  
What was this feeling!? She had been focused on Senpai, why was she being interrupted?  
_I’m bored._ _  
_ _Even though I only yearn for Senpai._ _  
_ _Why, do I always get so bored._ _  
_ _Even though I only need Senpai to keep living._  
  
Her boredom was pushing aside thoughts of Senpai. She was getting bored even of her anger towards Zenkichi, even of her jealous, her emotions that were supposed to burn her from the inside out were nothing more than a cool flame. Her mental functions were already starting to decline, and just thinking of Senpai was exhausting enough, so why did her thoughts always have to return to her own boredom? She wanted to cling to the feelings Senpai had left her with, but they would be gone in a few days knowing her. That was why she needed to keep living and experiencing new despair. The noise was overwhelming, she thought too many thoughts, if she couldn’t think of Senpai, if she wasn’t able to think only about Senpai, her brain was just garbage.  
  
“I don’t get it, but are you having a Komaeda freakout?” Zenkichi blinked at her.  
  
“That is the worst thing you have ever said to me, like, ever.” Quit talking to me like this is a normal conversation. You make everything normal, ergo boring. One day Junko would show Zenkichi that his love for Medaka, was the same level of obsessive.

Junko had gotten bored of her mental breakdown, so she hit the snooze button on that and went back to pouting. She was sure she would resume it later. Zenkichi then hit her on the shoulder, like he was one of her dumb guy friends.

“If you want to go bond with your animalistic friendship rituals, then go find the other hope monkeys, I’m not interested.” She said, rubbing her arm.  
  
“Listen up! You and I aren’t going to lose it this time! Kumagawa and Medaka-chan are waiting for us. Team Joker can’t fall apart without them.” He had gone and named their team without permission too. “You and I are going to get it all back!”  
  


The bandages around his hand had fallen loose. Zenkichi tied them back together again, using his mouth to tie off the last knot. Like it was a evidence of his vow. Zenkichi was the polar opposite of an unconnected person like her. He was connected to absolutely everybody, so many different strings wrapped around him that if they were bandages he would look like a mummy.  
  
She was looking forward to the day that all of those strings would tug on him from every angle, and draw and quarter him, pulling him apart and dismembering him.  
  
Oh, that was how she felt. Rather than loving and being loved, she had dismembered senpai and in return dismembered her. Now there was a piece of her forever missing.

Zenkichi’s vow was utterly sincere, he spoke from the heart like always. If everybody wore a mask then Zenkichi’s mask was just his face. Still, that scene did not reach her. It was like she was reading it in two dimensions on a manga panel. Of course pure hearted Zenkichi would promise the ice cold witch that he would return her beloved fool. He was much more fun when he was honest about how much he hated her.  
  
Oh well, hope was sometimes a slow acting poison. Maybe this game would make an interesting person out of Zenkichi yet, as his denial about Medaka’s death eventually faded away. “Fine. If you want me to go to breakfast so bad, then carry me.” She ordered, falling limp against his chest again.  
  
He picked her up in a panic. “How’d you manage to destroy the world when you’re so lazy? Doesn’t that require a little bit of hard work at least?”  
  
“You should know already, destroying things is so much easier than building them up.  
   
“You know a lot of the kids at Hope’s Peak really needed help. If they weren’t getting the help they needed, but the academy still used them, then maybe that place deserved to be destroyed.”  
  
“See you’re starting to see things the Junko way. Isn’t it better this way? Is it more colorful? Is it more fun? Is it more exciting? Is it more cute? Is it more sexy?”  
  
“No, I’m not!”

🧸

 

 _Come with us._ _  
_ _Come with us Naegi-kun!_

Those words repeated in his dreams, and because of that Naegi Makoto could not sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Kirigiri Kyoko, skin paler than death, her lilac hair turned to pure white like the season had ended and a blanket of snow had fallen to bury her.  
  
He held her after death, and continued to shake her but there was nothing left of Kyoko in that. His best friend. The first person to see his potential. The girl who he once wanted nothing more than for her to believe in him and let her by his side. The cold hearted logic to balance out his impulsive optimism.

Kirigiri had a chance to become happy. DId she live her entire life in her father’s shadow to die in it? She wanted to live on and let go of the past? She deserved the chance to find happiness outside of her family more than anyone else. Yet, he did not save her.  
  
If only he did not want to save everybody. If only he just wanted to save her. If only he only cared about being her hero. Would he have been less useless? Would she have trusted him in the end?  
  
“Why didn’t you say anything…?”  
  
Makoto finally asked the dark and empty room around him. Back when they were just students attending Hope’s Peak, Kirigiri left the school so often most of the time without ever telling him. She did not want to worry him. He always hoped one day, she would worry him. One day she would tell him where she was going. One day, she would hold out her hand say she needed him alongside her. He would have worked hard at improving himself, just so he was worthy enough to be by her side.  
  
That was what he thought the many times he waited for Kirigiri to come back to the academy. That, and she would be lonely if she went away and no one missed her. The Kirigiri family never became a home for her. She needed a home to return to.  
  
But she got lost on the way home and it was all his fault. If she had just relied on him, trusted him more, told him what she was doing, he could have convinced her out of it. Naegi picked up his pillow. He took his blanket and put it over his sister who he had given the bed while he slept on a borrowed futon from the storage room to make sure she was safe. Then holding onto his pillow, walked across the dorm hall in the middle of the night.

When Mukuro opened her door Makoto saw a bedheaded, sleepy Mukuro who was wearing a long shirt and camouflage pajama pants. The moment she saw him, her face turned red, which caused her freckles to become even redder. (So cute!)

He thought it was embarrassing. Begging to be by her side in the middle of the night, like a little kid who had wet the bed or something. All she did was smile, like she was glad to see him.

Makoto was lucky that Mukuro had only learned to smile just recently. If she had ever weaponized that smile when she was on team despair, he might have been brainwashed into Junko’s side out of love. That smile was like a bullet to the heart for him.  
  
“I feel like it’s my fault,” Makoto said, sitting next to her on her bed.  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“I got warned, that Kiri would die because of me from Saihara-kun. I didn’t do a single thing about it. I’m weak willed and indecisive, and because of that Kiri didn’t rely on me and just went off and died on her own…”  
  
“You’re right you are weak.”  
  
“Until now, I’ve always thought I could do something more. But… here, I’m helpless. My words didn’t reach the person I wanted them to reach the most, just like Munakata said. They have no power.”  
  
“What’s wrong with being weak?” Mukuro asked, laying her hand on top of his. “Do you only deserve to have hope if you’re strong? If you’re weak, there’s not a single thing you can do? The weak have no rights or choices. Their only fate is to be relentless crushed by the strong. You don’t believe in that.”

  
“Maybe I’m just delusional…”  
  
“Then, I want a world that’s more like your delusions. I’ll destroy a world that says you’re not allowed to be kind, and cry, and not want to hurt others.” Makoto saw, intensive determination in Mukuro’s eyes. Mukuro was… like her sister sometimes, but even then the differences were all too obvious Mukuro was trying to be kind.

“But…”  
  
“The words I needed to hear the most, you told me them. Think about how many people there are like me in the world. If you had been stronger than me and defeated me in a fight, I would have just been happy to die protecting my sister. Can you really say you did nothing, when the only reason I’m here is because of your words?”  
  
That was right Kirigiri always pushed him away and tried to handle everything on her own. He was not talented enough to be by her side. There was someone though, who wanted him exactly as he was. Even when he was a burden, even when he was a weakness, even when she had to go out of her way to protect him. Mukuro always took him by the hand and pulled him along by her side. She was always honest to the point of bluntness, never once sparing his ego.

“Why didn’t Kiri tell me?”  
  
“I don’t know… probably because you’re a crybaby.”  
  
“You’re sad too, aren’t you?”  
  
“Yeah, I am…” Mukuro could not convey her sadness properly. Her face was its usual blank mask, even though she had shown him a crack earlier when Kumagawa disappeared. “Are you upset, that Kirigiri-san was the one who died, and I was the one who lived? Even though it should have been the other way around?”  
  
His first love was Maizono Sayaka. They went to middle school together and he saw her every day in class. Yet, he never once told her about how he felt. He thought he was just happy being around her, and speaking his feelings out loud might destroy that comfortable atmosphere.  When they graduated from middle school she became a talented Ultimate and he thought she had left him behind. When they were at school together, he just tried to treat her like his middle school friend but it was impossible for him to think she felt the same way. His second love was Kirigiri Kyoko, who became his first real friend at Hope’s Peak. Kirigiri had nobody she could rely on, and he wanted to be someone she could trust.  
  
He thought there was no way either girl could like a plain and ordinary guy like him. He thought he was being humble that way, because he hated when people called him special. The truth was, he was just being shy.  
  
It was that simple. He finally met a girl who he was serious enough to speak his true feelings around. Even if they were embarrassing or uncomfortable. He managed to pick, the most difficult, messy and complicated out of the three too, but that meant he needed to work extra hard to understand her. He felt like he could grow together with her.  
  
The world was a harsher place than Makoto believed it to be. The world was a softer place than Mukuro believed it to be. Even so, they could still hold onto each other.  

“No. If those words saved you, then I’ll say them as many times as I need to.”  
  
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do. You’re going to be sad no matter what I say… but… I’ll still be right here.” Mukuro apologized again. This girl who thought his smile was enough to save her, for her, he really was enough. There was still someone who needed him in this world.  
  
His weak, unreliable, self was still needed.  
Mukuro was relying on him, and his sister needed him to keep her company. 

“I can’t really speak words of hope like you can. I don’t know much about hope, besides that you’re my hope, and Junko is my despair but…” Mukuro tried as best as she could to convey those feelings with her quiet words. “My sister once said despair spreads like a virus, but maybe hope is infectious too…”

Because one day Makoto had gotten curious about Mukuro and reached out to touch her, she became infected with him. From that point forward she could no longer return to her previous state of being, when the world was only her and her sister. Makoto leaned in closer, wondering what kind of fever she had, if her face was so red. He wanted to feel that heat between them, and get infected too, and have his head dizzy with sickness and thoughts of her.  
  
“Did somebody say hope?”

  
Komaeda said, peeking his head through the door that had been left open. He looked like a serial killer who had broken open the door with an axe, his white hair a stark contrast against the black night.

  
“What? Are you beetlejuice? If we say the word hope three times do you appear senpai!” Makoto shouted.  
  
“You of all people can’t complain about somebody who wants to share empty words of hope.” Komaeda said, crossing his arms as he leaned in the doorway. That was probably his version of being huffy, Makoto surmised.  
  
Komaeda always had a bad reputation, but it was Makoto’s tendency to give others the benefit of the doubt. He thought Kiri bullied him a little bit too much. But that being said, Komaeda was rather tactless.  
  
“The death of a beloved friend! That’s no good. That’s nothing but despair. If only Kirigiri had listened to me and planned with me beforehand, I could have been the one to murder Kumagawa-kun. Nobody can ever replace Kirigiri-san. No matter how much you wish it, the world won’t respect your will or wishes. Naturally, I have no respect for you either. If you had acted earlier on your potential to become hope for others rather than letting Akamatsu-san shoulder all the burden, then things would have been different! Why did you not confront Saihara-kun? Do you think things will be better if you’re not involved? Don’t cry. Don’t despair. Now’s not the time for that. I know you’re devastated. I know it’s painful. Kirigiri-san disappeared and you couldn’t do a thing. I know you want to scream. I get it.”  
  
_If only I’d been the one to die. Nobody would have been hurting like this._ _  
_ _But there’s no way to turn back time._

“You shouldn’t forgive the mastermind who took Kiri away from you. Let that powerful, pure sentiment, guide you. You’re the one who has the potential to turn ultimate despair into ultimate hope. Otherwise, you won’t be able to do anything, you won’t protect Mukuro or your sister with such a fragile resolve.”  
  
“What is he saying?” Makoto said, looking to Mukuro.  
  
“I think he’s going on a Junko rant,” Mukuro said, continuing their private conference.

 

“I was only trying to encourage you. There’s no need for you to refer to me with such cruel words. Even trash has to be treated with some kind of care, or else it’ll become abandoned litter.” Komaeda looked really offended from the accusation that his rants were the same as Junko’s. That long rambly retort was probably his way of pouting.  
  
Makoto looked at his own feet, in a timid way. “I don’t want to… I don’t want to feel hope about Kiri’s death. I can’t feel anything at all. I just miss her.”

 

Komaeda’s words could not inspire hope the same way Makoto’s could. He already knew this. He still tried, because it was what Kirigiri asked him to. He did not believe he was capable of looking after others, but if the Ultimate Detective had told him so who was he to question her judgement? She called him a good senpai. The Ultimate Detective would not lie to him.  
  
These two Mukuro and Makoto were his underclassmen that Kirigiri had left him with. If no death game or despair had ever happened, if they were at Hope’s Peak, he would be expected to take care of them. “What were Kirigiri-san’s last words to you? She must have left you something.”

 

“She didn’t say anything… just something about a book she never finished reading.”  
  
Komaeda just stared at Makoto. His eyes were unexpectedly clear for once, if only because his expression was so blank.  
  
“What? Did you figure something out?”  
  
“There’s no way a lowly person like me could possibly figure this out before Kirigiri-san’s two most trusted friends, but I see you’re being kind and letting me tell you so I can feel useful to the group.”  
  
“No, we’re not. We’re just genuinely that dumb.” Mukuro said bluntly.

Komaeda raised his finger in the air as if he were lecturing his underclassmen. “Kirigiri investigated on her own, it was a habit of hers. Her last words to you were probably code for where she left behind the results of her investigation for you to find.”

 

Then in the next few minutes, in the middle of the night Mukuro, Makoto, and Komaeda were all searching Kiigiri’s room to find that book. When Komaeda tripped and fell into Makoto, causing them both to knock a desk she had in her room over the desk broke in half it fell out of what had been a concealed drawer before Makoto’s face smashed it.  
  
“There, did I inspire you hope with what Kirigiri-san left behind?” Komaeda asked. He looked like a giant white sheep dog waiting to be praised.  
  
“No, not really.” Mukuro said bluntly again.  
  
“Be nice.” Makoto hissed at her.  
  
“Yes, I feel all of the hope. I totally forgot all about my sister. You’ve saved me.” Now Mukuro was just overdoing it.  
  
Komaeda opened the book and saw a bookmark covered in several sets of numbers about halfway through the book. It was kirigiri’s handwriting. He tried to figure out the cipher for a moment. “Ow, brain hurt. Can’t do numbers. Mukuro, this is a military cipher you’ll have to figure it out. Did you get trained in coding and decoding?” Komaeda said as he tossed the book her way.  
  
Both just stared at him blankly. On their own, it was a hint they probably would not have realized until the fourth or fifth round. Komaeda wondered if they were the main characters and the one that Kirigiri entrusted him with, why did they not figure this out right away? He had solved a clue in the mystery yes, but someone like him was unsuited to play the hero who solves the murder at the class trials. It was much too demanding a role. Then what was he supposed to do for these two who were left behind?  
  
Komaeda’s brain did an impressive twist and backflip of what could only be called Komaeda logic. He knew Makoto was someone who had the potential to be called Ultimate Hope. Even if Ajimu Najimi had not told them about what was supposed to happen in the ‘original timeline’ where they never met Kumagawa, Komaeda could sense as much himself. There was a deep hope resting within someone like Naegi Makoto. Komaeda rationalized that because he had not yet met face to face with Ultimate Despair, his Ultimate Hope had never taken root like an unplanted seed.  
  
Makoto was a nobody who could take down somebody like Enoshima Junko, where Komaeda could not see it and had no control over it. Komaeda really disliked that, it made him feel irrelevant. Even though he was the one who had fallen to despair to try to destroy the likes of Junko. However this time around the mastermind’s main character was clearly Shuichi, she would probably try to control the narrative through him. Therefore, if Komaeda could become the reason that Makoto reached his potential, then Makoto would supplant him as the main character and take control of the narrative.

  
Komaeda smiled to himself, satisfied with where his leap had landed. He knew what his role was now. He was going to be the one to push Makoto, to become the Hope he was meant to be all along. Then this time, when he took down the Ultimate Despair, Komaeda would be the one responsible for him having reached such heights. He could not be a friend who guided either Makoto or Mukuro, but he could be the senpai who raised them up into the hope the world needed them to be. If he could not become the hero, he would just make his own.  
  
Komaeda, Mukuro and Makoto agreed to meet again the next day.  
  
“It’s like we’re a scooby gang.” Makoto said.  
  
“That is not our name.” Komaeda disagreed, but no one listened to him as usual.  
  
Mukuro was up all night working on the code. In the next morning Komaeda thought he was off to a good start in the day for once, and then he tripped and smashed his face on a rock that said “Horse A” on his way to the dining hall.

 

🧸

 

That next morning Shuichi heard a knock at his door. His heart lept for a moment when he thought it might be Kaede, come to see him anyway despite everything he said to make her stay away from him. It fell back in his stomach when it turned out to be just Kaito.  
  
“Hey, what are you doing? It’s already morning.”  
  
“M-momota?”  
  
“Ah… do you… need something?”  
  
“Well, yeah food! I was gonna eat breakfast with everyone in the dining hall, but you weren’t there. A lot of people are absent actually but I thought I could drag you there at least.” He scratched at his spiky hair.  
  
“Huh? But… I don’t recall making any plans.”  
  
“You should be at the dining hall, anyway. I mean Hitoyoshi-kun’s making us all breakfast.”

“Ah, I don’t usually eat breakfast, so…” Shuichi glanced away. As avoidant as usual. If he could just duck out of this conversation, he could avoid the awkward reality that he had disappointed Kaito, and Kaito had punched him.

 

“A-are you serious? If you don’t have any breakfast, then what do you eat in the morning?” Kaito just kept talking to him normally though, no matter how hard he tried to avoid his gaze. “Ah, whatever! Let’s get going! The others are waiting!”

When Shuichi fell into deep sadness he did not even have the energy to eat. He even considered just lying in bed all day. Despite logically knowing it was not a solution to his problems, his brain tried to argue with him that it was a good idea.  “Ah, wait, I’m not ready! I have a detour first, I’ll meet you there.”  
  
Shuichi was about to leave, when Kaito called out behind him. “Oh, right… I was gonna tell you…”

 

 _Don’t apologize. I don’t want to think about how we fought. I don’t want to fight, and I don’t want to make up._ Shuichi had gotten too close to Kaede and gotten hurt. His instinct was to avoid others, that was how he lived his life avoiding pain. _I shouldn’t get mad at Kaito, I was the one who was wrong._

  
“I-I’m sorry about yesterday… Y’know for slugging you like that.”  
  
Shuichi just wanted to forget about it. “Huh? Ah, that… It’s okay.”

 

“I-I see… Then, let’s go.” Kaito felt awkward, even though he apologized he did not want Shuichi to just brush it off. He would rather Shuichi get mad at him and hit him back. He wanted Shuichi to defend himself a little more. If he said something like _I’m worthless so, I don’t really get mad if others hit me_ that was just going to make Kaito feel worse. Shuichi should express his feelings, rather than insist they were not worth feeling.  
  
Kaito had no idea how to communicate that though. In shonen manga, boys were able to understand each other deep in their hearts by exchanging blows. Violence was still a form of communication, but it was a bad one.  
  
Shuichi had gone to the Piano lab, thrown his hat away, and then at the present moment caught up with Kaito just as he was interjecting in everyone’s conversation.  
  
“What’s up with you guys? Are you still talking about that graffiti?” Kaito looked up and noticed Shuichi was there. “Whatever… I brought Shuichi, so let’s start breakfast already.”

 

He quickly realized everyone was staring at him. They were looking at him with surprise on their faces. He hoped he was not a disappointment. “Good morning.”

 

“Ah… Good morning.” Tsumugi said.  
  
“You finally got rid of that emo hat! Is that cuz you and Kaede broke up or whatever?” Kokichi said.  
  
“How do you upset people on purpose. I just do it on accident.” Komaeda said, mystified.

  
“Oh, huh, you took off your hat. I didn’t even notice.” Kaito said, oblivious.  
  
“I didn’t care.” Junko was busy fighting with Zenkichi, who refused to let her eat microwaved ramen.  
  
“N-no, I just… felt like it was getting in the way is all. You don’t have to stare… I just took my hat off it’s no big deal,” Shuichi said, he brushed his bright blue bangs in front of one of his eyes. With his hat off he had an impressive cowlick.  
  
“None of the idiots here know any manners,” Togami said, staring into his book. Wuthering Heights, the heroic tale of a man who came from nothing and then utterly stole the fortune away and destroyed the estate of the man who treated him like a servant.  
  
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.” Makoto said, sheepish.

 

“You’re not as handsome as Makoto but you’re kind of cute.” Mukuro made her preferences clear.

 

“You’ll never be as cute as Monaca-chan, right Keebs?”

  
“How can humans change their appearances so easily. I really envy them. I can’t do anything about this hair at all…” Keebo said, feeling self conscious suddenly.

 

Kazuichi chattered his sharp teeth. “Damn, this guy takes his hat off and he looks so handsome, I change my whole appearance and I get nothing. It's unfair don’t you think so, Iruma?”  
  
“Keh, how nice for you. Unlike Plain Jane over here, who turns invisible as soon as her glasses come off.” Iruma said, pointing at Tsumugi.  
  
“I am plain… but it’s the other way around. Taking off my glasses reveals my true form. Hmhmhm… didn’t you know? Those who see my true form pay a terrible price.” Tsumugi laughed at a joke that only she got.  
  
“Anyway, don’t be late anymore, Saihara. We already decided we’re eating breakfast together.” Kaito said, lifting his spirits up.

Only for Maki next to him to bring them back down. “You decided that on your own…”

 

“Well, nobody’s better at pretending to be normal then me. Well for me it’s not even pretending.” Komaru said staring at her food. Zenkichi made the most delicious meal he could, but it did not look very appetizing to her. It needed more wasabi.  
  
Zenkichi turned around in his apron. “Yes, yes. I prepraed breakfast for everyone as usual. Italian omelete, buttermilk pancakes, smoked salmon galette… and for those who prefer Japanese cuisine, rice balls and Miso Soup.”  
  
“And cup Ramen!” Junko interrupted.  
  
“No cup ramen!”  
  
“Hitoyoshi-chan, be my mom!” Kokichi yelled at him again.  
  
“Hitoyoshi-kun has known me the longest. If he’s going to adopt anybody as his family it would be me!” Komaeda said, starting a fight with Kokichi again over this of all things.  
  
They all started to have a normal conversation.  
But they all knew it wasn’t really normal.  
It was a forced conversation.  
Everyone was forcing themselves, especially for the ones who were not here right now.  
Shuichi scarfed down his food, because no matter how much he tried he could not stop thinking about how he was alone right now, and how Kaede was alone, and how two people had died.  
He did not want to ruin the atmosphere that everybody was working so hard for, with his own gloom.  
  
That was when they were interrupted by the teddy bears again. As a prize for surviving the first round several magic objects were left on the ground for them.  
  
“A Dragon Gem, an Ocarina, an ancient passport, and a hexagonal crank from some zombie game? A resident evil reference really?” Komaeda said as he inspected the items that they left behind. “This is obvious these unlock new areas. What poor game planning. She should not have had us awaken in this school when everything was only half finished being constructed.”

  
“Oooh, a bunch of cool random Junk! It’s mine now!” Kokichi said, already making grabby hands.  
  
“No, let’s leave this to Saihara.” Kaito said, speaking over everybody.  
  
“What? Me?”  
  
“You’re the Ultimate Detective, yeah? You should be good at weirdo puzzles like this. So I’m gonna leave it to you.”  
  
“Uh, okay.”  
  
“Maaan… Whatevs, I guess that’s fine.” Kokichi looked genuinely disappointed, that he did not get to play with the fun toys.  
  
At that moment somebody who was late to breakfast finally caught up. Rantaro appeared behind Shuichi and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll go with him. It’s an apology for being late.”

 

“Huh?” Shuichi reacted in surprise. Somebody was touching him. He was surprised he was being touched. Why did Rantaro follow him here, he was with Kaede. Did he see him throw his hat away? Lots of anxious questions ran through his head as his brain overanalyzed the situation and he had the answer to none of them.  
  
Miu got a cocky grin on her face. “Man, I thought he was totally going down Kaede’s route but this guy is going for the harem route instead. Shuichi’s his next target.”  
  
“Man, how do I get that kind of confidence.” Kazuichi grumbled next to her. Both of them seemed equally out of touch with reality in the moment.

 

🧸

 

Amami Rantaro was a mystery, one the Ultimate Detective did not feel like he was capable of solving. Everything about the boy screamed mysterious, but on the surface he just seemed like a relaxed guy. It was not that nothing ever bothered him at all, because yesterday he looked utterly broken. Yet today, he was showing Shuichi the same, gentle smile that he always did. Well, Shuichi was not a real detective to begin with, and he had let the Ultimate Detective who was actually competent die. There was no way he could come to understand someone like Rantaro.  
  
He did not even have any idea why the other boy had decided to follow him around right now. He looked to the side of the boy’s face, studying it. Amami seemed to be thinking intensely about something.  
  
“I give up… I don’t get this game at all it makes no sense.” He dropped the mystery object that SHuichi had given him to hold on the ground. Well, maybe he was not thinking that hard.  
  
“I’m… not sure. They told us this building used to be a school, but I have my doubts. It doesn’t make sense how so many areas can suddenly be unlocked by junk like this when we never saw them before.”  
  
“Even if this was a school, it makes no sense to have a bear robot for a headmaster. Oops, I shouldn’t say that. Keebo wouldn’t like me saying something bad about robot.” Amami was a little thoughtless in his way of speaking, but at the same time he was sensitive towards others.  
  
“That is true…” Shuichi agreed, but he was too side tracked staring at Amami’s face, trying to figure him out to follow the conversation much.  
  
Amami did not seem to notice or care about what Shuichi was thinking about at all. Unlike Shuichi, he was go with the flow about what others thought about him. “Ultimate Robot… I never could have seen that coming. Guess anything goes. Maybe my talent is something really obscure too.”  
  
“Amami-kun, you still don’t remember your talent.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s a real pain… You think that bump on the skull would have jogged my memory.” Even the fact that he had almost died yesterday, barely seemed to faze him. Shuichi knew he was bothered about it yesterday though, so why was he suddenly acting so different now? Had he reset his feelings like Kokichi said to? Shuichi’s feelings did not go away no matter what, even if they were illogical, and irrational, if he tried to push them under the surface he would just drown with them.  
  
“Everyone else remembers their talent, but why can’t you remember yours?”  
  
“Maybe… I don’t want to remember.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Maybe, I was brought here unwillingly. Maybe it was a mistake and I don’t really have a talent. I meant that’s not impossible, right?”  
  
They already did that twist before, Rantaro. Are you calling me unoriginal?  
  
Shuichi thought to himself. He was not brought here willingly. He did not want to be called Ultimate either. He was just the Ultimate Detective because he happened to solve one case. He had no interest in playing the hero and he thought he was unworthy, perhaps they were similar in that regard. “Hey, Amami. Maybe you don’t remember your specific talent… But do you remember everything from before you came here, right?”  
  
“Yeah, I remember that stuff. I wouldn’t have been able to introduce myself otherwise. It woulda been pretty rude, right?”

 

 _He’s worried about being rude._ Rantaro’s priorities were strange, too. “Well then, tell me everything that you remember. THere may be a hint in there.”  
  
“Yeah… you’re right! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I guess I’m more shaken up than I thought. Uh, where to begin… If I started at my childhood, this will take forever.” Rantaro said, suddenly he started to sound like an old man.  
  
“How about your favorite things? Perhaps your hobbies? People become Ultiamtes by devoting themselves to their hobbies and honing their skills.”  
  
“Then, I’d have to say… traveling.”  
  
“Traveling?”  
  
“Traveling is my hobby. Actually, I travel around the world by boat.”  
  
“On a boat? Whoa, that’s amazing!”

  
Rantaro laughed at his own expense. “Haha, no I’m not the amazing one, my dad is. I just freeload on his boat. I’m… how do I put it…? I guess you could say I’m a “rich kid.” My family is pretty wealthy. I sorta take my parents’s boat and do whatever I want.” If Togami were making this claim he would say he conquered the seven seas all on his own and established seabound trading routes. “Oh man, I sound like a spoiled brat, don’t I?”  
  
“No, not at all. I’m just taken aback. I’ve never met a “rich kid” before…well except for Komaeda and Togami but they're kind of scary. You're so... not scary. ”  
  
“Well, I help out with the family business, too. I look or trading partners while I travel. Globetrotting like that, you make a lot of connections, y’know. My parents basically only needed me around as a face…” Rantaro trailed off. He did not look like he wanted to discuss painful things, things that would interrupt the gentle smile on his face.  
  
“Maybe you’re something like that Ultimate Rich Kid, or Ultimate Traveler.” Togami who was also searching the school grounds at the same time, heard Shuichi say that and hissed unpleasantly.  
  
“Nah… neither of those sound rich. As far as rich kids go, there are plenty of people out there who are rich. And “traveler”... I dunno, that sounds a bit too romantic for me. If I had it my way, I wouldn’t want to be called any kind of Ultimate at all.” Rantaro, with dark eyes glanced back at Shuichi. He did not want to be regarded as someone special. He did not want to be an important someone. Perhaps that was why, he was always so casual, he was humorous because he avoided anything serious. “Ultimate Usless Older Brother, sounds a lot more up my alley.”  
  
“Useless older brother? What do you mean? You have siblings, but…”  
  
Rantaro suddenly cut him off. “I was just being nice and letting you talk about me, because I can tell there are things you don’t want to talk about. Sorry, Saihara-kun, I really don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
“But…”  
  
Saihara was surprised by how fast Rantaro changed tunes. Shuichi really could not read him at all. He looked so thoughtless a moment ago, but he had been trying to be considerate to Shuichi the entire time. “You don’t want to talk about Akamatsu-san, right? You know for a guy who seems pretty timid and low key, you’re one dramatic dude.”  
  
Then, Amami had seen him do that. Throw his hat away and storm off. Then Amami must know too, that the one he wanted to see him the most when he took his hat off in front of everybody for the first time was Kaede. Him removing his hat was a sign of their promise after all. “You must think I’m really pathetic…”  
  
“Nah.” Rantaro answered bluntly. “I mean who doesn’t get shy when talking to girls. I mean this is the first time we’ve talked at length and I’m feeling pretty shy right now.”  
  
“Around me? I'm like the least intimidating person here, if you murdered me I'd probably apologize to you as a ghost for inconveniencing you.”  
  
"You have no idea at all how others see you, don't you? You don't understand the affect you have on them?"   
  
Rantaro put an arm against the wall cutting Shuichi off from running away. He looked deep into Shuichi’s eyes, with those eyes as still as the earth. It was the first time someone had looked him directly in the eye, since Kaede. Shuichi remembered he had to breathe, but all he did was gasp breathlessly at the air.

Amami Rantaro’s shirt hung down so far on his body that his collarbones could clearly be made out. Shuichi could even see the beginning of his cleavage that dipped down into the collar of his shirt. Every feature of his neck was exquisitely apparent. Rantaro was skinny, but not to the unhealthy extent that Shuichi was. In fact he looked fashionable, like a model, if this was the first time they met Shuichi might have guessed he saw him before on a magazine cover.

His hair fell on his face in tresses. Despite the fact it was so messy, it looked unique and only added to his exotic allure. His face was sharp, he had high cheekbones which sloped downwards. Rantaro had a habit of constantly touching his face, especially when he was thinking. As he watched Amami’s delicate fingers always touch his cheeks, underneath his eyes, brush the corners of his lips, Shuichi’s thoughts wondered what it would be like to have those fingers touch him in the same way.  
  
His eyes were the most distinctive feature of his face. Despite being such a dull green color, they always looked thoughtful. They were steady eyes, and when Shuichi stared into them he felt his own constantly wavering heart steady. They were darker, and slightly sunken into his face but that only gave him a cute look like a panda. One of his ears was pierced much more than the other addying to his asymmetry. Shuichi wondered if someone tickled that ear would Rantaro who always seemed to be perfectly in balance, break apart and start laughing. Part of him wanted to see that composure ruined.  
  
Shuichi felt warm and was about to surrender himself to his emotions, when one detail broke him out of it. Rantaro’s smile. Every time he smiled at them, it always seemed… pained…

“I’m sure you have your reasons for not wanting to talk to her, but… those reasons always seem stupid when you think about how much you want to talk to her, right?”  
  
Oh, that was right they were talking about Kaede. Rantaro pinned him to a wall so he couldn’t run away, or avert his eyes like he always wanted to. “I… I messed up. I don’t want to hurt Akamatsu-san again.”  
  
“Hey, you’ll admit how flawed you are but you refuse to see any flaws in her, right?  
  
“It’s not… It’s not her fault. She’s not the one-”  
  
“I bet she thinks the same way. Saihara-kun didn’t do anything wrong. I won’t blame Saihara-kun it’s all me.”  
  
“There’s no way she could think of me… You’re the one who went to go talk to her.”  
  
“Yeah, and the whole time it was like Saihara-kun this, an Saihara-kun that. I barely got  a word in. Well, it’s not so bad watching somebody talk about something that makes them happy.” Rantaro said, a gentle smile forming on his lips again.

“Why… are you doing this?”  
  
Rantaro held his neck with his hand. When he stretched his neck like that he always looked a bit bird like. “Well, I felt like you guys got in a big fight over me, so I wanted to help out.”  
  
“That’s not your fault! You almost died!” Shuichi snapped at him.  
  
“Well, I don’t care about myself…”  
Amami Rantaro said, his eyes were so deep and so dark Shuichi could tell he was not lying. He felt at the same time if he kept staring into them he might become trapped by them.  
“But, I think I can care about you guys.”  
  
_Just leave me alone. I don’t want to apologize, I don’t want to make up, I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to get along._ He really thought something like that earlier. He thought he could get away with hiding still. Even if he wanted to, it was impossible to move through this world without connecting there were just simply too many strings connecting them all.

Shuichi Saihara, felt like he was not going to be left alone anytime soon.


	23. Hopeless Romantic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Togami asking Toko out is a Bakemonogatari running joke.

“Now then, we’re going on a date.”

“Huh?”

“Would you…? Would you be so kind as to go on a date with me?”

“Huuuuuuuh?”

“Why don’t you… go on a… date… with me?”

“Haaaaaaah!?”

“What is this, you don’t want to?”

“No, it’s not that I don’t want to but…”

“Then, I’ve decided for you. You’re going on a date with me. If you have any complaints you can take them up with my personal secretary.”

“Th-this can’t be real. I’ve finally lost sight of the difference between fiction and reality. The final destination of all authors!”

“Just get dressed already Toko, otherwise I’ll retract my order!” Togami said. Not an offer, but rather an order. After deliberating on how to ask out the girl in the hospital bed Togami decided to just command her to go on a date with him. She should just be happy to accept the honor.

Of course Togami was no idiot who had suddenly been struck by love after seeing Toko as a helpless, sleeping princess in front of him that he needed to save. In fact, he found people like Makoto who got closer to others out of a desire to save them to be sick in the head. Seeing her shaking and asleep in that helpless state just reminded him of how much of a burden Toko was. All that time he spent bickering with her or being drawn into her antics was time wasted. He could only be Togami, who climbed on top of everyone all on his own, if he was alone.

Therefore, this was the start of Togami’s counter attack strategy. A plan to rid him of the likes of Toko for good. Him announcing his intentions for her to go on a date with him, had already nearly given her a heart attack in the infirmary room. As he waited outside for her to get dressed he smiled to himself wickedly.

If Togami was a prince, he was definitely the sadistic and villainous kind that existed to make the heroine of the novel’s life miserable. If you were to say that to his face, Togami would take it as a compliment. There’s no such thing as kind people in this world, only soft ones, and soft hearted princes would make for terrible rulers with short reigns.

Those who can’t survive in this world have no option but to perish. Cities, businesses, people, it’s all the same. What has perished is replaced,, and then forgotten. Bad people were the only ones who survived in this world.

Despite constantly acting like they were in a one-sided relationship, Toko just looked shocked rather than happy about the prospect of going on a date with him. That was exactly what Togami anticipated.

The truth is unnecessary.  
I’m fine with fiction.

She never cared from the start whether her love was requited or not. His feelings were totally irrelevant. She just wanted someone to receive those feelings. She just wanted the experience of being in love.She wanted the fantasy of being in love with a prince, not the reality of loving a person. Then it was easy, all he needed to do was spark her disinterest was get closer to her, so close she could no longer simply close her eyes and project upon him from a distance. Her sense of love, as romanticized as it was in her own head was no different from a stalker. No stalker wanted to be in real relationship.

He would become the prince she desired. Then, the prince would die. The prince was already dead, because it could not live within reality. The prince would die because Togami killed him.

Togami’s fist tightened. Toko… is like family to me. Not like a friend, and not like a lover, and yet she was always by his side even if he could never return those feelings of love. He had once made such a foolish confession to Naegi of all people. Remembering that only strengthened his resolve. My name is Togami after all. I live by killing my family.

When she finally arrived in front of him, she was wearing the same bookish school uniform, and glasses as always. This was not a piece of fiction where girls could remove their glasses and magically become more beautiful anyway.

He could care less about details like that. Beauty had no value in this world, other than the fact that humans easily got tricked by shiny and beautiful things and because of that items could be sold for far beyond their actual monetary value.

Besides, his mother was beautiful and his father had no interest in her for her looks. He was a bred child. It was impossible for him to imagine someone being attracted to another based on appearance alone, the idea filled him up with nausea. All he could think about was how many women his father slept with, to produce bred children like him of a certain pedigree.

 

He clicked his teeth to get his mind off that. “Why are you just staring at me? Let’s go already! And this time walk by my side instead of trailing far behind me it’s annoying waiting for you to catch up.” The primary objective of this date, was to tour the new areas of the school that were being unlocked, and rid himself of Toko, two birds with one stone.

“I… You… and me?” Toko played with her scarf between her fingers in hesitation. “What are you thinking, Byakuya-sama?”

“A dream date in the middle of a killing game. Isn’t that perfect for the likes of a serial killer?”

“You shouldn’t have come to visit me in the infirmary! You must have caught a fever or something, Byakuya-sama! I can’t believe my germs have infected Byakuya-sama, I’m unworthy, I’m unworthy!”

“Toko. I told you to just call me Byakuya already.” No matter how many times he told her, she never listened. Ah, but he was just telling her for the sake of the date. To make them pretend to be closer, so Toko would run away. He needed to play along to her fantasies more. “Toko… I… I’ve finally noticed your unique charms. Your persistent stalking of me made me like you more and more.I can’t imagine a life where you’re not constantly following me around, from now on.”

Toko’s expression went from confusion to something else. Her messy bangs fell in front of her eyes, and she bit the corner of her lip holding back an emotion.

“You’re right, I was a prince all along. I was merely pretending to be an arrogant, and selfish noble with the temperment of a cruel child because I had not yet met the right woman. I want to become a prince for your sake, so I can be your prince!”

As he made that dramatic speech, other classmates walked by in the background exploring the school grounds once more. He got a strange look from Makoto, who was quickly shooed away by Mukuro thinking Makoto might get jealous seeing Togami confess such feelings to someone else.

“You’ve annoyed your way into my hearts. Eventually my feelings of hatred for you turned into love… somehow… so take responsibility for these feelings. I want to know, whether I can truly call these feelings love.”

Togami thought he had done an amazing job performing. People with actual functioning human emotions would have noticed the holes in his performance. It was entirely possible that Togami actually had no social skills, he only had rehearsed manners, and the performance of dignity that he gave in front of others of status. He never needed to be genuine not even once after all, nobody was interested in Byakuya, they needed to see the Togami heir.

 

That being said, Toko who was just as dysfunctional completely bought it. She finally chewed on her thumb nail, her entire expression turning sour. Toko was no quiet and sweetly suffering princess after all. She was filled with all sorts of ugly emotions, resentment, bitterness, she lashed out and felt no guilt for doing so. He saw underneath her glasses and messy bangs, a stare of resentment peeking out at him. “Huh…?”

Byakuya smiled at dragging all of those emotions to the surface. You’re ruining everythng. Her expression seemed to say. “Come then Toko.” He said offering his arm. The self satisfied, and pompous grin he gave her, was him finally showing her his genuine smile. He meant everything he said, he would love her so much that the girl’s fragile ego cut apart with sharp scissors and then stitched together with red string, would finally be torn apart.

Toko took his arm, still looking clueless. Boys had in the past asked her on fake dates to humiliate her, or because they had lost some punishment game and thought dating her was the ultimate humiliation. Togami would never throw his shame or his pride away, he would never do anything embarrassing.

Toko was the type of author who looked down on fanfiction, and fan writers. That was why she was entirely unfamiliar with the fake dating trope. She was out of her depths here. Scariest of all was the possibility Togami might actually like her.

Fukawa Toko wished to live in love. Those who were not loved the proper amount as they grew up, spent the rest of their lives chasing the illusion of love. She thought there was nothing wrong with that. She could write so many different, better stories, than the ones she saw unfold before her eyes. As long as she had the fantasy in her heart, she could keep strong. Reality was nothing but pain, it would always fall short of her fantasies.

Now, reality was intruding in her fantasy. It would bring pain with it. She had wished ever since she was a child, a prince would show up and take her away from that terrible house. However, Toko had become just as awful as everybody else in that house. She killed, to relieve her stress, because she had been made fun of, because she wanted someone besides herself to feel pain.

If living was so painful she could have slit her wrists with her scissors a long time ago. She chose to continue walking, leaving a blood red trail of young men behind her, whose lives she had cut short. All to preserve the life, the ego, that she did not even enjoy living that much, all to keep living a somebody she did not even like. Human lives were so fragile, they could be cut with the simple snip of the scissors.

She felt no remorse for this either, she just knew it was ugly. That was why she knew, she could not be saved. She fell in love with Togami, the prince who would never save her. When she took his arms and started to walk by his side, she was trembling. Her heart raced for all the wrong reasons.

🧸  
  
They all split into groups to search the school.  
Togami considered his party the main characters, like they were all heroes in a jrpg. Of course, everybody else was just backup for him.  
Togami's group consisted of Shuichi, Rantaro, Komaeda, Tsumugi, Toko, Korekiyo, and himself. Though they were not exactly friends so they traveled in a disjointed formation. 

The group walked down the hall past Kaede’s ultimate talent lab. Shuichi lingeed at the door for a moment until Rantaro dragged him away, the two of them stopped in front of an imposing looking stone dragon statue. Both he and Rantaro split the items they were carrying in half between the two of them. Shuichi was holding the glowing gem so he put it right in the stone dragon’s eye.

The dragon’s eye glowed, and suddenly the wall behind it began to crumple and exploded into debris. It was an impressive special effect. Toko however observing the effect from up close, was startled by the sudden chunks of plaster that were falling her way.

Togami grabbed her, tightening one hand around her arm, and sliding another arm around her hips so he could pull her away. For a moment the pose the two of them took could be mistaken for a dance. Toko had never one danced with anybody in her life, no boys wanted to at school dances, and also there was no one in general who could keep up with her off tempo and slightly insane rhythm.

All he was doin was pulling her away from harm, but she felt her back rest against his chest as he cradled her body like it was something precious. She turned her body to see his face closer than she had ever thought she would see it. In her fantasies Togami was always smiling at her, like she was the only thing in this world that could make him smile. In reality, his face was angled away from her, his lips were pulled back in a scowl that showed his teeth, and his annoyance was clear on his face.

“Toko… you clumsy girl…” He was straining himself to be affectionate. “You shouldn’t let your guard down around me. Otherwise, I’ll be tempted to devour you.” It was a line straight out of a romance novel, but when Togami said it he had genuine murder in his eyes. So much so it scared everyone else in the room besides Toko.

“I… I’m sorry.. I just…” Toko knew this scene well. The protagonists of romance novels were usually lacking in personality, so clumsy was their only real personality flaw. The black hearted prince then becomes interested in them because of how much they are unlike all the other proper women he is surrounded by, and he becomes charmed by her clumsiness and only gently scolds her, showing off an unexpected side to his personality.

There was no way this scene could take place in reality though, so Toko had no idea what to say. She merely stuttered, and chewed her thumb again. Togami felt a little bit disappointed. Usually, Toko’s delusions at least made her an interesting opponent when it came to arguing and she could speak on an equal playing field with him. Her acting so quiet, meek and scared was so unlike her it was boring.

“I...it’s my fault for being an unseemly, and unlikable girl. N-now I’m causing you trouble.”  
Togami reached out touching her on the head. “It’s fine, just as long as you’re not hurt.”

It was such a gentle touched, but as he caressed her head Toko heard the sound of shattering glass in her ears. No one had ever touched her head so lightly. She had even flinched when she saw his hand coming in her direction, because she thought he might strike her, or at least her body was far more used to that.

Togami’s eyes narrowed at her. Who would think, the legendary Genocide Jack would be such a pushover. This girl serial killer could be killed with just a little bit of kindness. He went back to acting and held out his hand in front of her again. “Hold my hand, or else a clumsy girl like you might get lost again.”

“N-no way, my hands are all sweaty. I’m unworthy of holding your hands. You’ll only think about how gross I am the entire time, and, and-”

“I want you to hold my hand, Toko.”

“I’m not going to play along to your hand holding fetish!”

Togami lost his patience, and snatched her hand out of the air. He quickly turned both of their hands up, and intertwined their fingers. The sight of it made Toko’s entire face turn red. Togami’s eyes narrowed as he felt the warmth in her hand. That’s good, heat things up a little more, and then burn up and die.

The room they found at the end of the hallway gave off an antique sort of vibe. There was a chandelier falling from the ceiling, and a dining table set up. It looked like a ballroom in an expensive mansion.

“These are victorian. These decorations adorned the British Empire at the peak of Queen Victoria’s reign. Such antiquities are a status symbol, this must be my research lab.”

The research lab of the Ultimate Affluent Progeny.

“Speaking of the Victorian era… Jack the Ripper was from that time, correct?” Shuichi said, which caused Togami to glare at him because obviously Togami was the main character in this scene.

“Hm… Victorian. This room is quite tasteful. Kehehe… I don’t dislike gothic styles such as this.” Korekiyo rasped from behind them.

“Ah, yeah… me too.” Shuichi agreed, as if everybody did not know that from the way he dressed.

“It reminds me of a tale.” Korekiyo closed his eyes and spoke as if in a trance. “The era is 19th century England… A gentleman who pledged his loyalty to the queen and a modest but beautiful maid. The story of a love that blooms between the light and darkness of social classes.”

“Doesn’t that sound like us, my beloved?” Togami said, annoucing it in front of all others causing Toko’s face to redden even worse. “Hey, hey, why haven’t you written our love story down in prose yet. The whole world needs to know about our private affairs.”

“If the whole world knows about it, then it’s hardly private! You’re the first born son of a noble family, don’t you have any common sense or dignity at all!” As a result of Togami’s acting, they had completely switched places in their normal banter. Now, Togami was the one saying silly love struck things while Toko loudly berated him. She struggled against his hand for a moment. “Byauya-sama… Um…”

“Hm?”

“I’d like you to let go of my… hand…”

“I’ll never let go of you, Toko!”

“Well as romantic as that sounds it’s not very practical.”

“You’re such a silly and easily distracted girl. If I let go you might get lost. I can’t imagine what I would do if I were to lose you?”

“The more you talk the more I want to get lost on purpose!” Toko snapped at him ripping her hand away. “You’re supposed to be arrogant, selfish and better than everybody else. St-stop acting all nice! I can’t trust nice people!”

“You can trust me. There’s no one in the world I could call an equal until I meant you, that’s why I’ll never betray you.”

“What? What? What? What is this? This is just, driving me crazy.” Toko said, gripping her head and pulling onto her hair which was already starting to become messy and falling out of her braids. “You’re not supposed to have an equal. You stand on top of everybody else, since when did you become such a bottom?”

“What good is it being king of this world if I have no queen?”

“I don’t want to be queen! That’s way too much responsibility for meeeeeee!!”

Togami thought his strategy was working a little too well and he got a bit bored. Succeeding was what was expected of him, so he derived little enjoyment out of it. He had worked hard to trample his siblings but, he did not really know why he wanted to live that badly. Perhaps he just wanted to win, to be better than them. If he saw it as a game it was a little more enjoyable.

He went to sit down on one of the chairs crossing his legs as he did. “Whoever designed this room does not understand me at all. I much prefer french to victorian. If it weren’t for you there’d be nothing beautiful about this room at all.”

Toko immediately clutched her chest. He hoped what they said about love being painful was true, he thought sadistically. If her heart exploded, that would really be most convenient for him. He could probably kill her without being punished for murder. “I thought you wore those glasses for the moe factor, and to seem smart! To think you’re really blind Byakuya-sama! I’m just a girl with braids, glasses and a black uniform. I’m a dime a dozen. Cosplay girl over there is copying my look and she’s doing it way better.”

“I’m too plain to be compared to anybody. Don’t worry, I may not have much of a presence, but our characters aren’t even a tiny bit similar.” Tsumugi said.

Toko’s mouth suddenly fell open. “Wait… you like french?”

“Yes, french scenery, french architecture, french art, it’s all exquisite. It’s proof that humans aren’t entirely worthless.”

“Y-you’ve actually been to France before? I’ve always wanted to go there! I’ve seen it in my dreams so many times!”

“Toko. You’re the Ultimate Author whose books sell millions, you could just use your money to go there.”

“Yeah, but that would involve leaving my room.”

Togami’s eyes fell in disappointment. If Toko were just a bookish author type than she might actually be tolerable, after all reading was the only hobby he enjoyed. She was only competent at one thing, to the detriment everything else She was only a good author because she could sell a convincing fantasy, as a person she was an utter failure.

Toko got in his face holding her hands around the scarf that was tied around her chest, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses. “Tell me about France! I could use it for writing material.”

So Togami told her, about carousels he had ridden on, about trolleys in the street, windmills he had seen, clothes that were thousands of dollars a piece glanced through shop windows, jewlery that looked like the diamonds had been plucked from the stars.  
“The palais garnier, an opera house I once went there with my…”

“I want to go there.”

“Then, I went to a department store that was several stories tall.”

“I want to go there too!”

“Then, when I was walking alone I fed some stray cats in the street-”

“There are cats in Paris too!”

“There are cats everywhere.”

“I knew it you were the type who acts like a big jerk, but then secretly holds an umbrella over a cat to protect them from the rain!” Toko said, starting to get excited again and forgetting the weird awkward feelings from before.

“You take that back. I would never hold my own umbrella. That’s what servants are for. I would just order my butler to save that cat from the rain.”

“I want to go! I want to go! Even if all the beautiful people looked down on me, and thought an ugly person like myself had no place in such a city I’d be too busy enjoying myself to care!”

She automatically assumes people are going to look down on her? Togami raised his eyebrow. Well, at least she knows her place. Talking with her like this, was starting to become fun. If that happened his strategy would fail and and this would just be a normal date. He had to suffer the embarrassment of acting like an idiot prince if he wanted to destroy Toko. There was no sense at all in having fun.

“Then, after the killing game I’ll take you there. It’s nothing at all to someone like me. If it’s just for research material for your books, then it’s probably fine.” Togami, because he wanted her to be quiet and stop looking at him with those eyes, made a careless promise like that.

“H-hey, are you two done? I don’t mean to rush you or anything but…”

“Are you guys done flirting?” Rantaro asked directly, after Shuichi

“We’re not flirting!”  
“There’s no way an awkward girl like me could ever flirt with him. I can barely read people as it is, asking me to read between the lines is just way too much!”

Togami and Toko answered at the same time.

🧸

On the first floor Shuichi came across a wall with two seals and an indentation for a third one in the middle. He looked at the ancient passport he was carrying that was in the exact same shape as a whole.

“Whoever designed these puzzles was so boring. This would make for a terrible adventure game.” Komaeda complained in a rather elitist way for somebody who was below everyone else in the background.

The wall crumbled again revealed another hallway made of stone. Togami dragged Toko down the hall once more by her hand. He opened the door to another research lab. The room was similiarly gothic, it was light only by the light of a candelabra with a dripping wax candle. There was one old fashioned typewriter in the room, and shelves crammed with books.

“This room looks absolutely miserable, so it must be the room of the Ultimate Writing Prodigy.” Toko said, looking around. In the center of the room there was a giant heart shaped bed, the moment Toko saw it she was flustered. “W-what could that possibly be for? I never write R-18 materials in my novels.”

“Oh, I know what this room reminds me of.” Tsumugi said, speaking absentmindedly once more. “The lovers Tarot. In that card adam and eve are depicted in the Garden of Eden, they’re completely naked because it represents a connection where they’re willing to be vulnerable with one another. That connection becomes a secret garden that only the two of them could share.”

“N-naked!?” Toko was not listening at all, even though as an author she should have been able to pick up on literary symbolism.

“I didn’t know you knew so much about tarot…” Shuichi said from behind Tsumugi.

“Well, an anime I liked a few years back featured Tarot so I got really into it. This room seems kind of wrong or Fukawa though, maybe if this room was supposed to represent you and Kaede it would be different.”

“...”

“Oh, sorry. It’s probably better to… not bring up Kaede just yet, huh?”

“Ah, no, it’s fine. I’m okay.”

“Why are you both acting like she’s dead. You can go see her if you want.” Rantaro said, only to see both of them nervously look away. “Drama queens the both of you.”

Shuichi straightened up, trying to stop looking at his feet, and look a little less gloomy. “Well, we should probably leave those two alone. We have two more of these keys to use.”

They all shuffled out of the room, but Toko and Togami did not really notice. Because neither of them really cared that much about other people. Togami’s gaze wandered to one of the bookshelves and the rest of him followed. He reached out pulling a single book. So Lingers the Ocean. It was one of eighty. Every single one of Toko’s books were on this shelf.

“Whoever put this room together must be quite the fan.”

“W-why are you touching my book, Byakuya-sama? It’s like you’re touching my very soul! This is on some new level of an indirect kiss. This is like some kind of indirect fondling!”

“Your books are good, Toko. You the author, and you the person are completely different.” Togami said, before he remembered he was supposed to be a prince. “I-it’s a good thing that I love both of them..”

“Of course it’s really good, why do you think I wrote it!?” She said, egotistical, and then in the next moment insecure. “I m-mean, you really read my writing? What do you think? If only I was a girl locked away in a tower, who wrote letters to master every day then he could have fallen in love with my writing without ever seeing my face.”

“I already told you I’ve fallen for you. It’s annoying repeating myself.” Togami’s brow twitched his acting failing him. He paused for a moment, she wanted to know what he truly thought about her novels. “You write too much. Make it simpler.”

“W-what?” He had insulted her pride. That someone as lowly as her could have pride in the first place, was interesting to him.

THey were both standing here. It wasn’t like this was what either of them wanted. Toko understood as a writer, the moment you put pen to paper and wrote one thing, it led to another, and another, actions have consequences. Yet, in this case the story of how the two of them came stranded in this room together facing one another, if it were to be string, it would be frayed, in snarls, and even terrible knots at several points. Toko had written books about her ideal kind of love many times, but she never once tried to write about her feelings for Byakuya. She felt like if she were to put those into words, the sentences would refuse to come together in any way that made sense.

“I don’t see why you’d want to depict such a deep and complex world in your books. If it’s fiction its utterly meaningless, your extravagance changes nothing.”

“Meaningless? It’s not post modern or anything… What I write in my novels is my idea of an ideal world. It’s because I know it will never be reality, I have to write it in fiction.”

“Then you should just write about how you want to be happy, like all of the other miserable people.”

“I don’t think so. Only happy people can write happy, shallow novels. Only happy people can even envision themselves being happy. The downtrodden can vividly imagine their ideal world, perfectly envisioned in true beauty… a world where misery still exists and yet, so does catharsis, and people can actually heal instead of staying broken forever. And that’s the spirit I put into my novels.”

“Beauty changes nothing.” Togami said, behind his cold stare. “It doesn’t matter how much you put of yourself in your novels. Nobody is going to understand you.” He had been acting this entire time but that was the first lie he told. When he read Toko’s books, he thought there was someone who understood the world the same way he did. Books were just a form of communication, the author trying to make the reader understand something about the world, or the author trying to make the reader feel understood. The first time Byakuya felt understood, he held her book in his hand trembling.

These thoughts were somewhere inside Toko, but she would never be able to communicate them, and even if she did Togami would not want to hear them. He wished she were just a boring and shallow author who wrote run of the mill teen romance. He wished he saw nothing in her, because he had no desire to be connected, he did not want anyone to be known by anyone.

Because of what he said about Toko’s writing. It changed nothing.  
The story between the two of them was not a story at all, just the long prelude to a joke.  
She could write as much as she want. She could write beginnings and endings, and in between, and not a single thing would change. She could drown in ink for all he cared.

All Togami knew was the unrelenting reality, all he knew about was surviving. He thought there was nothing particularly beautiful about living, those who were able to distract themselves had not been born into a game of survival like he had.

Even if Toko and him were both miserable in the exact same way that would not amount to anything, he gained no advantage in that situation. It was just a weakness. It was just two miserable people.

“Hey, Byakuya-sama. You’re insulting my books, and dismissing all of me again. You’re finally going back to normal. Why were you pretending to like me earlier?”

“I wasn’t pretending-”

“I know because you really hate me, right?” Toko said, facing him with her disheveled appearance. “You were making me relive my trauma of boys pretending to ask me on dates as a prank, that’s so cruel even a masochist like me can’t enjoy it.”

Byakuya decided to salvage his act. The objective would be lost soon, and also the idea of losing to someone delusional like Toko in this game he was playing was unacceptable. “I was concerned, you look so sick and miserable lately. All because of the death of someone like Kumagawa? He’s not even worth mourning. I wanted to cheer you up by bringing you on this date.”

“H-how do you know about Kumagawa-kun? It’s not like I like him or anything!”

Why is she being tsundere towards someone that’s already dead. That’s pointless. Togami sat on the heart shape bed to be closer to her. “You shoudn’t worry about him. In fact he did all of us a favor by dying. Could you imagine if we had lost someone talented in the first round?”

“B-but his family misses him.”

“You know he was just wasting the time of someone who had actual talent and worth Ikusaba, by just playing make believe family with her. Someone like him never should have been born in the first place, but Ikusaba is better off now that he’s dead.”

“You think he doesn’t know that? He… we… we already know we have no right to be loved by this world.”

There was not a single moment they were not made aware of that.

Toko finally said, the words that she was only able to express in her book before. SHe did not want to say them to Togami though. She realized, there was someone she wanted to share those feelings with in more than just a one sided way.

“We were born, desired by no one. The only thing desired of us was to be gone from this world. I was born, unaware of the fact. When I stop being able to lie to myself and realize the truth I’ll die. It would be the same, no matter where I go. No matter how far I travel, things won’t change. But I’m still here now, when no one wants me so what am I supposed to do?”

“I....”

“Y-you aren’t any better! At least Kumagawa has a family! You don’t have a family! You don’t have anything at all! You’re not even a Togami, you’re just a bastard fathered from adultery. You don’t have a great future laid out before you, you’re just going to grow up exactly like your bastard father and father twenty five more bastard offspring so you can slaughter them all. Who cares if you won a blue ribbon, Togami? You’re still livestock in the end. You can’t change anything either.”

Toko’s true feelings however were quite unpleasant. There was no beautiful princess waiting inside of her, she was covered in ash just like cinderlla, but being constantly ordered around and mistreated by her family just made her dirty and pitch black.

Togami smiled. “You’ve paid me such a great compliment. You’re right inheriting the Togami is all the matters to me. It’s too bad we’re cutting our date short when you’ve finally learned how to talk to me.”

Before Togami could walk away, Toko pushed him back on the mattress. She was not mkaing some kind of romantic move but rather grabbing him by the neck and throwing him down. Behind her glasses he could not read her expression at all. Togami felt the edge of something metallic and cold pressing up against his neck. “Take back what you said about Kumagawa-senpai.”

“Are you serious? You’re annoying, and delusional but at least you have some kind of talent. You should just be happy there’s someone lower than you.”

“I was happy… I was happy because there was someone in this world who wanted to be my friend. I was so happy I thought, I might not be able to write anymore…”

“I’m disappointed in you, Toko.” Togami said in a stern voice, his throat bobbing against the blade at his neck. Until he realized something. “Wait, you never touch your scissors. Are you Toko, or Jack?”

“I…”

Toko dropped them in that moment. Togami looked down to see her body over his, the way her skirt was riding up on her leg, revealing every single red mark she had carved on herself when she cut through another life.

She clutched her head for a moment. Togami could not understand at all, why she was mourning a person like that. Toko did not care at all about reality. Her mind was already so fragile, any excess stress would cause it to collapse in on itself. She was a self absorbed person. She had to be, because nobody once had worried about her. She could only worry for herself. No one cared whether she lived or died so she could only care for herself.

These were her genuine feelings he was seeing, and it irked him. Toko could never once be genuine for him, but for a person like Kumagawa she was letting herself get cut to ribbons like this.

He frowned and pushed her off of him causing her to tumble onto the bed. If she lost her mind in that room, he would just let her. He would laugh even. He had no interest in being a prince, or a savior, he wanted to be the cruel villain that survived.

Storming out of that room was no good though, the moment he was in the hallway he punched the brick wall to steady himself. He was already being pulled though, he was dizzy and felt like he was going to fall over and sink into his visions of the past.

Why!? Why doesn’t he come for me? I’ve been waiting all this time! He said he loved me! When he was younger he used to live alone with his mother. He got called the spoiled youngest child of the family, because usually the exceptional women who slept with Togami Sr. in order to bear his children abandoned those children and let them be raised by Togami’s resources. It gave them a better chance of winning against their siblings in the end.

For the first few years of his life he lived with no one but his mother. All of the others looked down on him for it. They thought she was babying him. She refused to let servants take him away and raised her on his own. Togami learned to ignore the whispering gossip of others in his mother’s social circle, that he was just a child of adultery.

His mother used to reassure him every day that if he won the right to be the first favored son of Togami, that his mother and father could be reunited. That one day their father would come back for him. That he was different from all his other siblings, because he was a child created from the love between them.

She would dress him in all the finest clothes she could by. She held onto his face and praised him for being a handsome child. Togami learned to ignore the words of others, because he was just a small child who wanted to believe his mother’s words. He wanted to believe that the heaps of affection she almost drowned him with, were real.

He was scared of his big brothers and sisters, and he was sad because his mother never allowed him to keep any friends his age, but he thought even if he were to lose he would not lose everything, because he would still have his mother. He did not need a father to return home, he was happy with the world of just himself and his mother. He found himself thinking that if his father did return his mother might smile, and began to work hard.

One day he told his mother he would still be happy if it was just the two of them, and his slapped him hard across his face. “The reason he doesn’t come for me is your fault! It’s because you’re such an incompetent child!”

His mother began to encourage him to push himself far past his limit. She withheld food from him, and when he passed out she suggested using an IV to keep him awake and keep working. All the while his mother continued to whisper her delusions in his ear about how they were all going to be a family one day. That if he worked hard enough his father would return and marry her. Every soft touch of his mother, every caress, it was a dagger in him. Eventually his mother's sanity faded away completely and she began to hallucinate.   
  
She used to praise Togami for his beautiful face, just like his father's. One day, she could no longer tell the difference between Togami and his father. Shehit him saying asking him why he left her, over and over again.   
  
Togami now understood why his half siblings whispered about how he was weak. They thought he was going to inherit his mother’s weakness. His mother was just delusional, she had convinced herself entirely on her own that if her son won the competition she would be married to Togami, who only slept with her to create a talented progeny. Her only interest in her son, was his resemblance to the man she loved, and as a pawn she could use to become his wife.

His mother, she was no different from the people who looked down on him. She saw him as a bastard child too. He realized he hated them, his mother, his father, his siblings, every single person who looked down on him he hated. That was why he wanted to be the one looking down on all of them.  
  
He was just a worthless child. He would prove his worth to all of them. He had to have worth. There had to be a reason he was born into this world. His life was going to be worth something after all, he was worth more than all of them worthless trash. 

Togami had almost become infected with that same kind of sickness. He watched his mother scream hysterically about love, and became glad his mother hit and him when she lost her mind to this extent. He saw the unflinching reality, he was no longer going to be a child. He was no longer going to be distracted from the important things.

Byakuya requested emancipation, and was raised by Togami family staff from that day on. He was happy, he was born without love, that he was not a child born to be happy. Those things were no longer going to get in his way. He had to work three times as hard as all of his siblings to defeat them at the game they were playing.

He wondered why he was doing this. He had no delusional conviction of becoming a real family if he won like his mother. He wondered… probably because, _it was fun. It was fun. It was fun. It was fun. It was fun. It was fun. It was fun. It was fun. It was fun. It was fun._

Togami remembered the image of his older half brother swinging back and forth after hanging himself when his loss was announced. He remembered watching his feet dangling there. He must have been the kind of person who could enjoy things like this, or else he would not be able to do them. If it was necessary for survival, he would learn to enjoy this, he would learn to laugh at these sorts of things. He was never going to become so hung up on sentiment, that he hesitated for even a single moment in doing what was needed.

“It’s so disappointing Toko, I thought you understood…” Togami said, staring at the hand he had punched the wall with. “Since you were born without love too, I thought you’d understand how unnecessary it is.”

When Toko was left completely alone in the room, Korekiyo looked in through the doorway. He approached her, sitting on the edge of the bed she was laying on.

“I don’t really care about whatever comment you’re going to make about the beauty of humanity. You’re somehow creepier than I am, just go away.”

Toko was her usual, pleasant, unpleasant-ness. Korekiyo wondered for a moment if a stalker and her victim could actually have a fight, or a breakup. He Reached his bandaged hand to his face, delicately touching his mouth. “I don’t think everything is beautiful. Some things are just sad.”

“Like you even understand. I don’t care what kind of nutjob you are, crazy minds don’t think alike okay? There’s way too many ways for the human brain to fail, it’s very creative at failure.”

“I think I’m quite normal.”

“You talk to your dead sister.”

“My sister may be dead but there are plenty of cultures that believe in the concept of an afterlife. Am I somehow wrong for wanting to believe that life doesn’t just end, like that, that the people you want to be around the most once lost, are lost forever, and say goodbye in an abrupt and meaningless way?” Korekiyo smiled underneath his mask. “My sister is waiting for me. I’m an awful younger brother for making her wait. You’re right of course, I can’t understand either you or Togami, because I had a family member that loved me.”

“What are you bragging!? Jeez, when I finally thought I found someone creepier than I am, it turns out I still lose.”

“There’s no way I can understand your profound loneliness, but I still want to understand. There’s no way for me to ease your loneliness, but I can still sit by your side like this.”

Toko looked at Korekiyo under her glasses and for once, she was the one who did not understand. Even a hopeless romantic like herself had no idea what this person saw in her.

🧸

Shuichi felt even though he had been entrusted with the keys to unlock the next area, and to solve the puzzles of this school that he had not really done much yet. He noticed the stairs to the third floor were no longer gated off and took a timid step forward climbing the first stair.

He suddenly fell backwards, tripping over his own shoes. He thought he was going to hit his head, but he was more worried about looking foolish in front of everybody then the potential head injuries. Being embarrassed and being stared at was far worse in his mind.

Suddenly, someone behind him caught him. That was right Rantaro had been with him all along. It was easy to forget, because sometimes Rantaro was so quiet. It was like there was nothing to him, but that perpetual gentle smile. Shuichi looked up and saw himself in Rantaro’s arms, being held up by him. His feet were sticking up awkwardly in the air. He had been literally swept off his feet.

He scrambled to get out of Rantaro’s arms, because he did not want the other boy to see how fast his heart was beating. Even when he did not want Rantaro looking at him at a time like this, his gentle, steady eyes were always on him. “Hey, Saihara-kun. What’s wrong? You look so serious… Is something bothering you? We can talk about it if you want.”

“I’m… just worried, Amami-kun.”

“Worried? About what?”

“About what you said before. THat you’re the Ultimate Useless Older Brother.”

“I told you… to forget about that.” Rantaro exhaled. Shuichi just then noticed, how emotionless Rantaro’s eyes were. As if he were holding everything back, keeping everything a secret. It was not just that he was mysterious, he just never showed his emotions at all. Even when it had nothing to do with the game. He was not laid back so much as unfeeling.

Nothing seemed to bother him, because he never showed his reactions to anything. He probably felt like, his own individual emotions did not matter, so he had no right to feel them. He downplayed himself to that much of an extreme even to himself.

It hurt Shuichi a little bit. Rantaro was always so cheerful and friendly. But all that meant was that when he was sad, even when there were others around him, he was entirely alone in those feelings. He had no one to share them with. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. What did you mean by that?”

“...”

“Amami-kun?”

“...Who cares about that?” Rantaro looked like, he could not even conceive of someone’s feelings towards him. His sense of self was that lacking. In his mind he did not even have a self for others to be worrying over.

“What?”

“Hey, do you want to talk about my talent?”

Shuichi saw Rantaro’s gentle smile. It was a warning. He did not want Shuichi to push. “Y-yeah, of course…”

“Thank you! It really helps a lot, y’know.”

“You said traveling was your hobby, right?”

“Eah. Before I was brought here, I was traveling in Northern Europe.”

“Northern Europe? I imagine it’s something like a fairy tale,” Shuichi remembered the stories he heard about detectives traveling the world sovling mysteries. Not that he was in their league.

“Haha, yeah… The cityscapes are gorgeous, but the nature is the best part. My life was something right out of a story book. Oh, but I was suspected of being an informant and almost got taken out. But south America? There’s lots of shady areas, but you can get whatever you want if you’re willing to take risks.”

“Take some risks…? What kind of job were you doing?”

“Just… whatever my family told me to do.”

“Why do you have so much dangerous information, Amami-kun?

“It’s just how things played out. It’s not as hard as you’re making it sound, I just did what I was told. It’s actually really easy making it sound that way.” Rantaro said, casually messing his hair up with his hand. “Well, it’s twisted, and cruel, but I really think this world is a beautiful place. I travel to see all of it I can. I don’t think the world cares much about what I think of it though.”

“I suppose that includes all of the danger you mentioned… Ah! Maybe that’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“Your Ultimate Talent! You disguise yourself as a high school student traveling around the world… Maybe you’re the Ultimate Spy or something like that.” Shuichi’s eyes brightened, feeling confident in his deduction. Whenever he thought his detective skills were useful he felt better about them, that was why he wanted to help Rantaro. The more he thought about it, the more he was gripped by the desire to help him.

“A spy, huh? Hm, no, I don’t think so.” Rantaro immediately cut him off. “I mean, if I were a spy, I wouldn’t have told you my identity. Or gotten caught like this. Besides, I couldn’t be anything cool like that, look at me. I’m just a regular guy.”

Rantaro looked like he desperately wished more than anything, that his talent was false and he would just turn out to be a reserve course student. He did not want to be special, and he did not want to be special with anyone either.

“Saihara-kun. I know you’re trying to figure me out like I’m some kind of complex guy, but the truth is, I’m not secretly kind of anything, I’m just soft.”

Rantaro thought there was a difference, between a kind person, and a person who was just soft. A kind person took risks, they stuck their neck out even when they might get hurt. A kind person noticed others, they noticed when they were in pain and they were willing to help somebody through that same pain.

A kind person would not just live his life doing exactly what his parents told him to do. A kind person would not just simply watch, even when his parents did things he knew were wrong. The reason his stomach objected to it. The reason he felt bad was not because of his kindness, but rather his softness.

He felt bad, but not bad enough to disobey. He felt this was wrong, but he did not do the right thing instead. He merely accepted everything passively. He watched everything pass in front of his eyes. If he was told to drink poison, he swallowed it without complaint. He was a soft person through and through.  
  
Even though he was the first son of a rich family he was worthless. Every single action he committed, his memories, his connections, they were worth nothing.

That was why he knew if the situation had been reversed and he saw a ball falling towards Kumagawa’s head, he would have just left him to die. Kumagawa was a kind person, and that kindness hurt him. There were too many people he had let fall out of his hands like that, because he did not reach out or them when they disappeared. He was the first born member of his family, but he did not protect a single one of the people who were born after him.  
“You know why everyone is hating on Akamatsu-san? It’s because she’s kind, but not soft. She’ll actually reach out to help people, she’ll drag them back into the light if they have to. You’re both like that, that was why I admired both of you. If I really was a good person though, I would have trusted you in the first round.”

Shuichi was soft but also kind. Those two forces inside of him were at odds with each other. He was afraid of pain, but he also did not want to hurt others. Even if he was weak and indecisive, when it came down to it, he always acted.

Even when Kaede asked him to expose her in the trial, he did it because he thought it was what she wanted. Even though it was painful for him to carry that burden. Rantaro wondered where he fit in. No, he did not belong with either of them.

Thinking of Shuichi, Rantaro smiled.  
Rantaro was smiling at him.  
He was always smiling, a gentle, friendly smile.

“Something wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing…”

But right now, Shuichi felt that smile was like a wall.


	24. The Girl Behind the Mask

 

  
When Togami, Toko and Korekiyo all abandoned searching the school the groups reshuffled slightly. This time as Shuichi ascended the steps to the newly unlocked third floor. Amami Rantaro was by his side, as well as Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, Oma Kokichi, and Momota Kaito. It seemed like a group that was guaranteed to explode into tension. The moment Zenkichi volunteered to go with them Kaito insisted he join, and after that Oma probably just joined to annoy Kaito.  
  
They walked past what looked to be an eight bit door and continued until they found a red door at the end of the third floor hallway. On closer inspection Shuichi thought it looked like rust, the color of blood when it dried up and let a stain as it was oxidized from its original pink coloring. Leave it to a detective to pick the most macabre description possibe.  
  
He reached a hand towards the door. “This must be another Ultimate Research Lab… I have no idea what kind, though. I should take a look inside.” The door opened before he could reach it, Maki’s red eyes appeared glaring at him from the other side. Shuichi jumped back only to be caught by Rantaro once more.  
  
He really needed to not make this a habit.  
  
“I did not give you permission to enter.”  
  
Maki found her research lab before anyone else, apparently she had been hiding on the other side of that door the entire time. Now that Shuichi thought about it, every time Kaede tried to get the whole group together Maki was the first to break away and insist on being alone.

Kaede’s complete opposite. If Kaede was the sun, then Maki was the complete opposite, a pitch black sky. The contrast of her dark expression made the hostility in her bright red stare stand out even more. Shuichi could barely handle it.  
  
“So, this is the Ultimate Child Caregiver’s lab. You wouldn’t think so, judging by the door…”

  
“You’re right. Goodbye.” Maki used as little words as possible, to indicate her disinterest in continuing the conversation.  
  
“W-wait! Can I look inside for a bit.” Shuichi’s curiosity as a detective got the better of him, and he pushed away from Rantaro and tried to jam his foot in the door.

  
“No.” Maki just slammed the door harder, hoping to dislodge his foot.  
  
“What? But… there’s no rule against going to other people’s research labs.”  
  
“I don’t care about the rules. I’m not letting anyone inside.” Maki said. Her face was completely hidden all Shuichi could make out from the dark sliver the door was left open was her piercing red eyes. That look alone was enough to discourage him.

 

Just when Shuichi was about to give up, Kokihi had gotten bored of trying to open the eight bit door by yelling cheat codes at it and walked over with his arms casually folded behind his head.

“Heeeey! What’s going on? You guys aren’t in the middle of a tiff now are you?”  
  
“See? Thanks to you, an annoying brat has showed up.” Maki growled from behind the door. Shuichi had never seen her in a good mood once, but whenever she was around Kokichi her mood only worsened.  
  
“You hear that, Saihara-chan? An annoying brat has showed up, all because of you!” Kokichi said, looking around wondering where that annoying brat was. It could not be him, because he was a delightful, cute child, who made everybody laugh with his jokes.

  
“Y-yeah…” Shuichi genuinely could not tell if Kokichi was aware he was being mocked.  
  
“So, what’s up? You don’t want anyone to enter your lab, Harukawa-chan?” Kokichi asked her. From behind the door, all Maki could make out was his smile.

  
“Don’t be so pushy.” Rantaro said, looking to the both of them. “It’s not good to make a girl upset you know.”  
  
“Ah, okay… I understand.”  
  
“Good, then stay away. If you try to go inside, it would be extremely painful…for you?” Maki gave one last parting warning as she opened the door just enough for Shuichi to dislodge his foot.  
  
“P-painful!” Maki did not have to do any more work with her threat, as Saihara’s anxiety had already confirmed the worst. His brain told him the best option was to run away, and avoid any more conflict whenever possible. His brain was always telling him that, but for once he listened turning around to search the rest of the hallway with Rantaro.

 

Kokichi did not look like he was satisfied with his shenanigans. He wanted to shenan… again. He looked back to the red door which Maki hid herself behind. There was no one left in the hallway besides him, because they had all spread out to search the third floor. He slithered across the ground, the snickering under his breath sounded like the gentle hiss of a snake as their tongue swayed back and forth.  
  
He caught Kaito, trying to open a piece of wall covered in mechanical circuitry by punching it. It was a scene where Kaito was practically asking for someone to call him an idiot. “Hey, idiot what are you doing?”  
  
“If only we could break into areas of this game before the mastermind lets us in. We’d probably be able to find a way to break out.”  
  
“Well brute forcing it isn’t the answer. You’re not going to break down that wall with your fists.”  
  
“There’s no wall Momota Kaito can’t break down! Either the wall breaks first, or I do.”

  
“You’re going to break.” Kokichi sighed. It was just the two of them. Kaito did not need to try so hard to impress. After all, no matter what Kaito did he would never impress Kokichi. “You’re not going to try to get into Harukawa-chan’s room? It seems she’s building up her own walls.”  
  
“She said she didn’t want anyone to come in. Girls are scary when they’re mad, man.”  
  
“Oh, so you’re just going to leave the princess all locked away in her tower. Some kind of hero you are!”

  
Kaito’s response to his obvious teasing, was just a dumbfounded expression. “Wh-what? Harukawa’s a princess?” Kokichi was giving him such a clever set up and Kaito so obviously missed it. Human language really was wasted on the likes of him.  


Kokichi sighed, turning around on his heel. He looked like he had just lost interest in the conversation, gotten bored and decided to go home. The moment he made it around the corner though he cupped both hands around his mouth and raised his voice to a girlish scream. “Kaito, Kaito, help me!”

 

Kaito immediately raced around the corner only to be met with Maki’s locked door. He immediately looked to Kokichi. “What was that?”  
  
“She must have gotten trapped in her talent lab. What if she’s all alone in there because she pushed everyone else away, isn’t that just sad?” Kokichi said, riling up Kaito’s sudden panic and hero complex even more.  
  
“Shit. Well I can’t just leave her alone.” Kaito rushed forward with everything he had, slamming his shoulder against the door. The first time failed, but on the next one, Kokichi heard the sound of the doorhinges breaking. Through sheer persistence Kaito broke through sending the door flying off the hinges.

 

What he found on the other side of the door was not a girl in trouble, but rather a girl caught red handed. Harukawa Maki stared in shocked silence as Kaito suddenly tumbled through her door, with Kokichi following shortly afterwards. She stepped back from both of them, but she did not look scared. Rather, Kokichi observed she was the scary one.  
  
After all, that girl who called herself the Ultimate Babysitter or whatever, held a half disassembled rifle in her hands that she had been cleaning. The walls were lined with rows of different firearms, all hanging off of them. There were cases long enough to conceal any weapon she wished to carry piled on the ground. On magnetic strips, knives of all kind were lined up. Kokichi even saw two chainsaws in the corner of the room. The entire room had the feeling of a steel cage about it, one that Maki had voluntarily walked into and locked herself in. In the center of the room, there was a red cloak hanging there with a hood that would easily cover her whole face.  
  
If her assassin name was little red riding hood, then Zenkichi was going to start laughing and never stop.

 

“Harukawa, what is all this? Did you get lost in the Ultimate Soldier's research lab by mistake?” Even after seeing all of this, Kaito did not have it in him to suspect her. There was not any distrust in him at all. He looked at her with open eyes, for someone who constantly tried to be hard he was rather soft.

 

“You really let the children you take care of play with all these dangerous toys? I think I see a pair of scissors here what would happen if somebody went running around with it! Ohh, but it’s nostalgiac though reminds me of my childhood.”  
  
“Kaito. You should never have come here,” Maki growled in a low voice.  
  
“Wait, Harukawa. How was I supposed to know if you didn’t tell me anything? I’m sorry but I’m not going to know about any of this until we talk this out.”

“I know, you’re too stupid to suspect anything from others. The only one it could have been was…”

  
As Maki’s eyes settled their sights on him, Kokichi was sure to flash her a charming and cute smile. “Ni-shishishi. I’ve known Harukawa-chan’s true identity the whole time. You were doing such a poor job at lying, I decided I’d expose-”

 

“...!” She moved so fast, for a moment there Kaito thought Maki had disappeared. In the next moment she had cut across the space between her and Kokichi, picking him up by the throat.  
  
“...Gh!” Kokichi felt his legs. Even with that tight hand wrapped around his throat, he forced his face into a smile gritting to show his teeth. “Y-y’know…. Th-this is an interesting t-turn of events… B-but would you really… k-kill me when he’s right there?”

 

Kaito had no idea why the situation suddenly escalated. Maki was the girl who was always frowning, but he thought she must have a good side to her if kids liked her. The more she tried to be alone the more he wanted to drag her into things. That was all he knew about her, but suddenly all of the evidence around him told him Maki was a killer. The lonely girl he just wanted to get along with. Even if Kokichi was annoying, and he chased him around several times it was not like he wanted to die. “Hey, Harukawa? What the hell is going on?”  
  
“Y-yeah… you can probably snap my neck like a twig right now… But that’s… not your style. K-kaito you’re wrong… this isn’t the room for an Ultimate Soldier.  Y-you would rather… kill from the shadows… Right… Miss Ultimate Assassin.” Kokichi spit out spitefully in between breaths.  
  
Kaito was right there watching all of this. Her mind trained from running mission scenarios over and over again quickly surmised that if she killed Kokichi, she would need to kill Kaito too as a witness, but by then it would be too late because a murder and another class trial would occur. She would become the blackened and need to kill everyone else in order to survive.  
  
Her body count numbered far more than twenty at this point. It would just be drops in the bucket. She was already past the point of no return. Whether she never killed another person from now on, or spent the rest of her life killing just the same she would still be irredeemable.

  
Yet, the idea of killing so many people to protect her own life was ridiculous to her. More ridiculous than strangling a clown. She was not alive to begin with. She never once killed to protect her own life. An assassin only ever killed, because they were told to do so.

🧸

 

“Good night, Kosuke.”

Harukawa Maki adjusted the leather strap around her wrist, and slid the extra cartridges of ammo into the hidden holster. She never once wore fancy clothes or anything, she laughed at the idea of her in complicated outfits, but getting dressed for a mission like this was easy.  
  
“Good night, Minato”  
  
She pulled a back pack filled with extra ammo, and arms over her own back tightening both the straps. To her it was not heavy at all. Sometimes she wondered when a human life became such a light and incosequential thing to her. After all kids were supposed to think they were immortal. Then again, she never really was a kid.  
  
“Goodnight, Yu.”  
  
She grabbed two grenades and stuffed them into the pocket of her jacket. Her jacket was a long red one that resembled a cloak. It was much easier to be faceless when she killed. That way she did not have to think of it as a person killing another person.

“Goodnight, Tatsuya”  
  
She picked up the pistol, and slid the magazine into the end. She hit her hand firm against it to be sure the magazine was in place. She was far more familiar, with the feeling of cold steel in her hands like this, then she was holding the hands of others.  
  
“Good night, Maya. I’ll be off.” Her hands in her pockets, she quietly walked off. It would be annoying if they all woke up. They might beg her not to go again. It was not like she was being taken away, but she did not believe a bunch of dumb brats would understand that.

  
One day, a limousine arrived in front of their orphanage which just barely got by on donations. Such an expensive car belonged to a religious cult called the Holy Salvation Society. They turned their considerable donations from members into political power. That day she learned that her daily orphanage life was a lie, she was in a cult from the beginning.  
  
It was not like they kidnapped her or took her away though. She joined them of her own free will. One of them needed to become the group’s tool. She did not believe she was sacrificing herself for the sake of those kids. She never liked any of them, they were noisy, and always trying to get her attention. She just decided it was better her than someone else. It was not like it was a heroic sacrifice. She was going to become a killer after all.

  
She left all of those kids behind, and walked away with those men because she wanted to. That was how she walked into the beginning of hell.

 

If she was lucky, she would have died in the middle of the training. If she was a virtuous person, she would have killed herself before ever committing the first murder. She was neither, so she simply continued on living, following the orders of those who instructed her to kill. It did not matter if it was her who made that choice. In fact, if she did die one day, she was sure they would just bury her in a nameless grave and replace her with one of the other kids of the orphanage.  
  
That was why she was fine with killing. Because she was not even a person. She was not a character in this story. She was someone with an empty heart, who killed others when she was told.

  
If only her face would disappear permanently behind the mask of assassin she had to wear. She had already given up her life as a human being to become this role long ago. If she could become that mask… she had no idea what part of her was still resisting.    
  
That would make this life a little more tolerable at least. Swords, when they sliced people, and bullets when they pierced through people did not have to think about anything at all. Whenever Maki thought she was numb she would return home to those kids and she felt a fresh stabbing of pain worse than whatever she had done to her current targets.  
  
They all smiled at her and welcomed her back. She wanted to tell them they were smiling at a murderer. She was not protecting them. She was not sacrificing herself for their sakes. She never wanted her actions to be framed so nobly.  
  
The only reason was because she was empty on the inside. That was why she was able to kill people. That must have been it.

 

🧸

 

Maki threw Kokichi to the ground. The moment he landed he started to desperately gasp for air and flop around like a fish dragged onto land. He was probably overdoing it a little bit. He was just playing her, Maki realized. She danced in the palm of his hand.

 

Kokichi could have just told everybody if he already knew. Maybe he woke up early this morning and picked the lock on her door before anybody else got here, maybe he really was the leader of shady organization who would pay to hire somebody like her. Either way, even if Kaito caught her standing in the middle of this room she could have just lied and he would believe her. He was so desperate to believe in everyone around him.

Kokichi made her expose her own secret in front of him. She had no right to complain. She was supposed to be a heartless assassin, so why did she feel her heart beating in her ears right now. She already knew she was a killer, but.. But.. why did she not want them to look at her like that?

  
“Momota-chan, poor you. The girl you thought was an innocent soft princess turns out to be the villain instead. What’s a no-good hero going to do now?”  
  
“I don’t get what you’re saying, man. Do you gotta speak in riddles all the time like you’re some kind of bridge troll?”  
  
“Wow. I’ve never thought of that as a job. It comes with its own free housing too. I don’t have to live my life as a wandering, homeless, vagrant anymore… I mean, obviously I live in a swamp fortress that’s where all cool villains live.”  
  
“Oh, dude were you seriously homeless? I’m sorry.”  
  
“Quit trying to sympathize with me! You should know sympathy to me is like water to the wicked witch, I’ll melt for sure!”

 

Kaito felt like they had gotten off track in their bickering. Especially since Maki had been staring at them this entire time, ever since letting go of Kokichi. He did not know what to do, but… it felt wrong to leave a girl all alone. He was the one who had barged in here and ruined everything after all. “Hey, what are we going to do. Harukawai’s all quiet.”  
  
“She deliberately lied to everybody to hide the fact she was a real iller. She avoided all of us so as not to arise suspicion. You don’t know what she could be plotting. It’s just like Akamatsu-chan all over again isn’t it? You believed in her and defended her, and she killed someone behind your back.” Kokichi was not actually concerned or anything. He was only saying this to mock Kaito. He thought it was good though, for jokes to have lessons hidden inside of them. That way the punch line would have extra punch, and if they they did not get it Kokichi could laugh at idiots who refused to learn. “You have to deal with her now, or someone could die.”  
  
“She spent every second she was around us hiding…?” When he first saw her, he thought she was a lonely girl. That was all. Even after seeing her like this his impression had not changed. Always, always, always, hiding yourself even when surrounded by others meant you were always going to be alone. He stood up, trying to seem tall with the uniform jacket that was hanging off of his shoulders. “Leave it to me. I’ll take down that mask of hers.”

 

Kokichi wondered what kind of resolve Kaito had come up with in her head. When he said he was going to remove that mask of hers, he almost sounded interesting. Then he saw Kaito just walk straight up to her and confont her right there with no plan at all. This was why he had Kaito’s picture hanging from the wall in his room with DUMB written under it in big red letters. “Tch, Ultimate Assassin my ass. You’ve just been messing around this whole time… Why the hell were you keeping such a big secret from everyone?” Kaito said, standing in front of her refusing to back down.

 

“When people know who I am, they all look at me the same way you do now. With fear in their eyes.” She was better off being hidden. She was better off if no one saw her.

Kiato’s anger drained away in an instant. She was right, it was just bravado. Even if he felt something for her, he was still scared. He wondered if he could keep lying, and passing this off like it was all normal.

 

Kokichi spoke before he got the chance to. “Hmm… you’ve lived a pretty sad life, Harukawa-chan. Oh, poor, poor Harukawa-chan. I feel so sorry for you. Because of everything you’ve been through, human life has no value to you now, is that it?” That was how this story was supposed to go, right? Maki just felt so bad about her tragic backstory which forced her to kill. She should just play her part, and get Kaito to pity her. If she wanted to trick him into keeping her secret that was the best strategy.  
  
Kaito scratched at the side of his head. Now he just felt awkward. He did not know what to say. The girl in front of him had killed people, so it was not black and white like in his manga. He liked stories where anybody could be saved, where just believing in someone who had never been believed in before was enough, where all you needed to do was be strong and never give up. Maki did not want to be saved. That was what he got from her cold glare. “Hey! She’s an assassin, not some murderous fiend! Even if she did kill someone that doesn’t mean she thinks it’s okay to…”

 

“See, you’re so scared you don’t know what to say. Quit pretending you care it’s annoying.” She brushed him off, but in this iron cage of a room there was no place further for her to retreat.

 

Just as she started to turn away, Kaito reached out grabbing her by the arm. He pulled her back until she had no choice but to face him. Even if he did not know what to say, he had to say something otherwise this would be wrong. “I said I’m going to take down that mask of yours. Listen… I don’t know but… I just don’t think you’d kill anyone in cold blood.”

 

Maki did not care what he thought. She did not want to have anything to do with him. He had no idea why… he was grabbing her like this again. “And if I was someone who had killed in cold blood, what would you do? You don’t know anything about me.”  
  
“Of course I don’t because you didn’t tell me. If you want people to not be afraid of you, you can’t be lying to all of them. I think it would be better if you told them. If you showed them your true self, they’d have no choice but to accept you.”

 

“Just like they all accepted Akamatsu? I bet you, she’ll die the next round, because everyone hates her for being a murderer now. If you want to go protect someone go watch her.” His hand was too tight on her arm.He was just an idiot who did not get it, so she wrenched her arm away violently from him and explained it in as cold of a voice as possible. . “I have no intention of killing anyone. If other people know who I am though, they’ll try to kill me first. That’s why it’s better to just avoid everyone. But someone who doesn’t know how to mind his business keeps trying to drag me back in…”

  
“Huh? Are you talking about me?” Kaito blinked. He really was clueless.

 

“Look, just don’t tell anybody and leave me alone. Let’s just agree to avoid each other. That’s the best option.”  
  
Kokichi interjected again. “Geez, Kaito what are you thinking? Harukawa-chan wasn’t planning on hurting anybody at all, but now she might get hurt because you wanna blab her secret, or worse she’ll have to kill someone to protect herself.”

  
Maki was more frustrated by Kaito’s sudden silence than she was when he was talking. Even though she had pulled her arm away with everything she had, he would not let go. If she really wanted to, she could just break his wrist to free herself. Yeah. She would do that. “Just let go already and pretend you never saw… You know this will end badly if you don’t so why are you being so difficult?”

 

No matter how hard she tried they were still connected. Kaito looked up, his eyes looked like he was staring right up at the stars, like he was looking through a dream. They were entirely empty eyes because of that and yet, Maki saw no judgement in them either. She noticed those eyes were getting closer, and wanted to shrink away.  
  
“Hey, so…. How long are you going to run away.” Kaito brought his face close to Maki’s. “Your mask is going to come down. You’re not the terrifying person you think you are… You’re just a coward.”  
  
“...” She had no idea what he was talking about. Her mask was already off. He already knew she was a murderer. There was nothing else to hide about her. He should already know the horrible person she was, so why was he insisting there was more to her.  
  
“Hey, what’s your enemy? What are you hiding from?”

“What?” She already told him, she was only hiding her real self from others so they would not attempt to kill her out of fear. She just wanted to be left alone. She considered for a moment, reaching under her skirt and pulling out a knife to explain what their relationship was. She decided, using the connection between where he held her on her arm and throwing him onto the ground in front of her effortlessly over her shoulder. He barely reacted when he hit the ground but that was just him pretending to be tough. She climbed over him and started to straddle him, bringing a blade to his throat to make her point as fine as possible. “LIsten to me. You’re not going to understand me because there’s nothing to understand. I’m a killer, and you’re the victim, we have no relationship besides that.”

 

Her gaze was sharp like a freshly dawn sword. She looked like she wanted to cut everything. Yet, no matter what Kaito refused. He reached up a shaking hand, and laid it on top of hers. Even though that hand was holding a knife at his throat. “I’m sorry… I was being too demanding. You don’t need to tell me what it is. As long as you know it yourself. So, how long are you going to run away from our enemy?”

 

Why was he apologizing to her?

He had to just be pretending to care about her. He probably did not understand the danger. He was just playing out some hero fantasy in his head, assuming she was just some tragic girl who needed his help.  But… she did not understand him. She did not understand. “... Run away?”

 

“Yeah. You’ve been running away from everyone here. It’s pretty pathetic.”  
  
“What kind of hero calls a girl pathetic?” Kokichi asked watching the whole scene play out.  
  
“If she’s saying that she needs to be all alone, for everyone else’s sake then I don’t give a shit about being a hero. I’ll be the villain to people who say we gotta sacrifice one person to make everyone else feel good.”  
  
He did not want to save her? He did not want to play hero? Maki did not get it. It was like there was a Kaito underneath all that bravado. For a simple reason like he did not want her to be all alone, he was sticking his neck out like this. Kaito was speaking his true feelings, for the simple reason that he wanted to see the girl in front of him as a person. He was dropping his own mask for her sake.  
  
Her hand loosened, and Kaito gently guided it away from him. She felt his hand overlapping ove hers, slowly curling around hers. She thought he was just an empty guy, who did not mean a single thing he said, especially about protecting others but then why were his hands so large? And so war over her?  
  
“Hey, listen I still think you should tell everyone. But if you’re not ready yet, I’ll keep your secret. On one condition. Let me on your team. If you ever decided to stand up against what you’re running from, I’ll be with you. So you can be strong.”

 

“What do you think I am?”  
  
“A weak sniveling little brat, who pretends to be mean so she can scare people away.”

 

Maki just felt herself getting angrier.  
Kaito was just provoking her.

  
“So, what are you going to do?”  
  
“...Fine, I’ll do it.” Maki put her hand on his chest, and pushed off of him. She stood up on her own and threw the knife to the side. “I’m on your team, whatever, I don’t care.”

 

“Oh wow he’s right. Maybe you are a wimp if you were convinced that easily.” Kokichi said, snickering behind the two of them.  
  
Maki swiveled her head like she was a possessed girl in a horror movie to glare at hm. “Don’t get the wrong idea. He’ll just bug me about it later if I refuse.”  
  
“Huh, so you do get it?” Kaito wondered if he should be this honest with people more often.  
  
“The only way to deal with idiots like you is to give up and keep nodding.”  
  
“Y-you don’t get it at all.” Kaito’s heart fell into his stomach.

 

“Why are you going so far to help her out anyway? She might understand you but guys like you make no sense to me.” Kokichi asked. For once he seemed genuinely curious.

 

“Hm? If someone’s weak, you help them out. Teamwork’s important for astronauts. If someone’s weak and suffering there’s no way you can just leave them.”  
  
“Weak and suffering, Maki…? I’m the one who’s supposed to tell jokes you know.”  
  
Maki turned away from both of them. She gripped the part of her arm where Kaito had been holding onto her. It was still warm from his touch. She was filled with unfamiliar emotions, like she had been seen for the very first time.  
  
“Hey, listen Harukawa. I don’t want to save you or anything. You’re the hero of your own story. I just don’t want you to run away and hide from things like that.”  
  
“You know. Someone once told me I could write my own ending to a story.” She just wanted to disappear, just like the many people she had killed. It was all she deserved. “I don’t think someone who kills others, has the right to do that.”

So that was it.  
He did not see her as some helpless girl at all. She was the one who was acting helpless. She had to think about that. As he reached out for her again, she easily stepped away causing him to miss and only grasp at empty air.

  
“Leave me alone. I need to think.”  
  
“Can I see you again?” Kaito asked. He was so embarrassingly honest.  
  
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.” Maki said, ducking past him finally and running outside the door.

 

When it was just the two of them alone, Kokichi let a self satisfied grin crawl on his lips. “Well, that was a lot of trouble but you were pretty fun to watch at least.”  
  
Kaito turned around to face Kokichi. He was not dumb, he was just someone who wanted to believe in others. To the point where he believed much too easily. He had figured out already that Kokichi had set this all up from the start. “Oma. If you knew about Maki you could have told everybody. You wanted me to find out this way, and help her didn’t you?”  
  
“Yes, didn’t you know. I’m secretly a really good guy. I do bad things for the sake of justice!” He turned a sickly pale. He was so white he looked like he had covered himself in that powder clowns use for that face makeup, but his smile did not disappear even as his face distorted. “That’s what you really want to believe about me, right?”  
  
“You’ve got way too many masks. You’re even more difficult than her.”  
  
“You want to know what I think about her? I think she can’t be forgiven. It doesn’t matter the circumstances, murder is murder.” Kokichi let his tongue roll out of his mouth as he hissed. “You only want to see a sympathetic side to her because she’s a pretty girl. If she was a guy, you’d just hate her. If she was someone like me, you’d probably even want to kill her.”  
  
At his accusations, Kaito stared at Kokichi with those wide eyes again. They were as wide as a blanket of cosmos  in the starry night sky. Kokichi tried to spit as much poison at him as possible, but even so Kaito said. “I don’t want to kill you.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“I mean yeah we fight a lot but, did you really think I hated you? If you’re trying that hard to get me to hate you, then how are you any different than her?”  
  
“Of course I’m trying to get you to hate me! I wouldn’t be a very good lord of evil if I didn’t! I’m far worse than her, in fact I hired her for my organization to take out my enemies several times. I told her if she didn’t follow my orders I’d kill her and everyone she loved-”  
  
“Hey, Kichi.” Kokichi was stunned by the sudden use of his first name, and the shortening of it. Kaito got close to his face, exactly the same as he had gotten close to Maki. “Why are you so afraid of your mask coming off.”

Just.  
Tell another lie.

“There’s nothing underneath. My face is broken.”  
Why… Why didn’t he lie?  
  
“Then, be on my team. Even if you’re broken, and even if your true face is revealed and the world turns against you, I’ll make you a new mask.”  
  
It was different for Kokichi. He was not wearing a mask because he wanted to disappear and die like Maki. He wore a mask because he wanted to live. Now suddenly, Kaito was staring right into his eyes, as if he understood him.

  
“You’re so unfair, Kaito-chan.” Kokichi backed away. The expression of a terrified child on his face was so convincing that even a professional liar like himself could not fake it. Kokichi looked past Kaito’s broad shoulders and saw Zenkichi walking just down the hallway. When Kaito followed his gaze and saw Zenkichi, he saw Kaito’s eyes widen ever so slightly.  
  
Telling him he could take off his mask.  
That he could wear a new one.  
Only an idiot would say it like it was that easy, and it was unfair because…  
  
“You’re wearing a mask too.”


	25. Broken Parts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another child abuse warning because of Kazuichi's backstory. Also I'm changing Miu's character so her backstory makes... more sense.

When Shuichi made it out to the courtyard, he stopped to view the scenery before him.  
  
“Hm… That’s strange.”  
  
There were fewer plants around, and some places were being actively renovated as well. He knew that in addition to making them breakfast every day Zenkichi had been elected (coerced) into joining the school beautification committee but at the same time one boy could not change this much in the scenery so easily.  
  
“They did say it was under construction, I guess the construction is still ongoing. But where was this academy built anyway? Nobody has come to save us. How can you build a complex this large in secret?”  
  
Shuichi had a habit of muttering to himself when his brain went into overdrive trying to solve a problem. He was a naturally curious boy, it was what made him a detective… though Shuichi would deny this. Kaede called it his ‘mutter mutter’ habit.  
  
“Oh, dude I just thought about this.” Rantaro said, his dull eyes brightening up next to Shuichi. “What if it was aliens?”

 

“What…? I thought you were serious there... ”

  
“No, I think I’m onto something.”  
  
“Ah, sorry I don’t think so.”    
  
“Didn’t Sherlock Holmes say something about this once? Once you’ve eliminated the impossible…?”  
  
“Using Sherlock Holmes against a detective is a dirty trick, and he didn’t say once you’ve eliminated the impossible the only thing that remains must be aliens.” Shuichi, as sensitive as he was, was also an uptight nerd.  
  
“Well, he should have said that. I can’t believe it, my skills of deduction have even surpassed the great Sherlock Holmes.”

 

“Wait… are you just saying all that to lighten the mood. Amami-kun, you always think of other people’s feelings first…”  
  
“Man, if this aliens do you think they’re filming us for a study? Well now I have to be as boring as possible just to spite them. Just for once I’m glad to be this worthless…” Rantaro said staring into space.  
  
“Wait, you were serious!”

 

Shuichi arrived to find Monaca, Keebo, Kazuichi and Miu in front of a decrepit old building blocked off by a vine wall. Monaca was swinging on one of the vines trying to get Keebo’s attention. Kazuichi and Miu were both arguing.

Shuichi got the impression that all of them were slacking off and Keebo was the only one trying to take things seriously. Except, nobody would listen to him. “Guys, come on guys… I really think we found something here!”

 

When Shuichi finally caught up to them Keebo turned around in relief. “Finally, someone with a weaker personality than me, who won’t talk over me…”  
  
“I feel like that’s an insult but okay. I’m happy you're glad to see me.” Shucihi said, meeting Keebo’s inhuman eyes head on.  
  
“The item we received earlier. I think we can use it on this stone monument. Can you try?”  
  
Shuichi saw the musical notes carved into the monument and started to wish Kaede was here next to him. No, he had never stopped wishing that. He traced the stone with his fingers. “Akamatsu-san, would read these notes much better than me…”  
  
“I can go get her. She’s just in the music room.”  
  
“But she wants to be alone right now. She wants me to be strong on my own.”  
  
“We could ask her what she wants.”

  
In Shuichi’s mind Rantaro was completely fearless. To think he could just talk to another person, without imagining all of the ways in which things could go wrong and make things worse. Shuichi grabbed the Ocarina suddenly and pressed it to his lips. He played a few awkward notes, but nothing happened.  
  
“Ah, I really don’t know much about music…” Shuichi removed the piece of his mouth, his last note a wistful sigh.  He knew so little about the thing that was most important in the world to Kaede. He wondered if he knew much about her to begin with, or did he just imagine he did, because he wanted to imagine they were close.

 

Amami snatched the ocarina away and put it to his lips without any hesitation at all. He played the notes, and as he completed the song the vines withered away in ront of them, revealing the entryway to a pool building.  
  
“Uh, Amami-kun?”

“Huh? Do you want this back?”  
  
Shuichi touched his lips without thinking. No matter what he felt, he never had much of an expressive face. As if all his emotions were swimming under the surface of the water, while the water’s surface remained peaceful barely showing a ripple. His lips were thin and delicate, he brushed a thumb over them trying to feel a bit of warmth. Then suddenly he was dragged back to reality and grabbed for the Ocarina, juggling it in the air for a moment due to his nerves. “Y-yeah, Amami-kun…you’re kind of amazing.”

  
“What’s all this now?”  
  
“It’s kind of amazing how clueless you are.”  Shuichi bit the inside of his lips hard to stop himself from saying anything more.  
  
Amami Rantaro was vacant, in less poetic terms he was kind of amazing. He just put a hand on his shoulder with a casual shrug. “Well, I guess it’s good I got a detective with me then.”  
  
Shuichi walked towards the door only to be cut off by Keebo. “You intend to go inside? That course of action could be dangerous.”

  
“Awesome! Danger! That means something interesting might happen.” Monaca said as she threw the doors open and went inside.  
  
“Wait! What’s the word…? Tiny… smaller humans… Child! That place could be even more dangerous for a child.” Keebo forgot his cowardice and immediately charged in after her.  
  
They all walked into a room that looked more like a pool at a resort than a school pool, with a diving board and a high glass ceiling. There were vines growing around several pillars from the outside, and the pool was only half full.  


Kazuichi ran a hand through his pink hair in excitement. “Man! If there’s a pool we should all skip school and have a pool party!” He immediately threw his hand around Shuichi’s shoulder. “You’ve gotta be my buddy and help me plan it.”  
  
“Huh…? Um, since when were we buddies.”  
  
“I decided just now! If you don’t want to be my buddy, I guess I’ll just spend the rest of the day crying alone.”  
  
Shuichi wondered if that was supposed to be a threat. “H-hey, it’s not like I don’t want to be friends I just don’t get why you’re suddenly so excited.”  


“It’s been my dream to see a class full of hotties in their swim suits!”  
  
“Then, I suppose that dream is pretty far away.”  
  
“Come on man, you don’t want to see Akamatsu?”  
  
“...”  
  
“Or maybe the one you want to see is Amami-kun?”  
  
“Oh. I always forget to pack swim trunks when I’m going out on my boat so I usually just go skinny dipping.” Rantaro said, standing tall behind the two of them as both Shuichi and Kazuichi were crouched over whispering to each other.  
  
Shuichi choked on nothing at all. Suddenly, breathing became a very difficult thing for him.  
  
“It’s not necessarily a dream of mine, but swimming with everyone does sound fun.” Keebo brushed a hand through his doll-like artificial white hair. He was completely oblivious to Kazuichi’s bad intentions. “If I tried to swim, I would just sink.”

 

“That dream is even farther off…”  
  
“Please, like your virgin eyes could even stand seeing my body. They’d probably go blind.” Miu said, picking a fight with Kazuichi again. They had both been doing this ever since forced to share the same spot.  
  
“I would invite everybody but you to the pool party. You’d probably burn when you touched any kind of water.” Kazuichi spat back.  
  
They did this so often that even Shuichi who hated conflict, stopped trying to get in between the two of them. He just backed away slowly to the door, tugging on Rantaro’s sleeve. “Um, you guys there are other parts of the school…”  
  
Kazuichi suddenly turned around a serious look on his face. “I think we need to finish inspecting the pool. If Monokuma set a trap here, then us monkey wrenchers can be the first one to find it.”  
  
“More like you took a monkey wrench to the head.” Miu said, pushing Kazuichi out of the way. “But yes, yes, I’m willing to use my girl genius for the rest of the team! I’ll stay behind, you go on!”  
  
“You two just want to slack off and play in the pool don’t you?” Shuichi said his eyes flat.  
  


Both of them nodded at the same time. It was the first time they agreed on anything in a while. Miu crossed her arms over her chest that was slightly bigger than Enoshima Junko’s, “What are you going to do about it? Twimp.”  
  
“What’s a twimp?”  
  
“A combination twink and wimp.”  
  
“N-nothing.” Shuichi said. “You guys have fun I guess, just be careful.”

 

“Haha, he’s so easy to push around without Kaeidiot here. I’ve totally got him scared of me.”

 

Shuichi turned away, having no response other than a look of pain shooting across his face and quickly vanishing. He muttered goodbye under his breath and left with Rantaro to finish searching the rest of the school grounds.

  
Kazuichi looked at Miu from the side. “But aren’t you scared of akamatsu?”  
  
“N-no!”  
  
“That’s a little insensitive… they had a fight and Akamatsu almost died. He’s trying to deal with all that, you shouldn’t use that against him.”  
  
“Oh, go back to ogling girls. That’s all your good for anyway. Quit pretending there’s anything on your mind besides that.”  
  
“Hey, don’t write me off as some onenote guy! What kind of guy do you see me as anyway?”  
  
“Basically just a monkey in a suit swinging a huge wrench around. Wrench Monkey.”  
  
“I’m not even human in your eyes!!!!” Kazuichi shouted, overreacting with complete devastation as usual.

 

🧸

 

  
Keebo emerged from the storage room in the back. “Attention everyone! I peeked inside and discovered all manner of pool supplies in here. It’s fully stocked with kicboards, water polo balls, and sturdy inner tubes. Perhaps I can float in the water if I inflate them and attach them all over my body.”

  
“You should definitely do that. Monaca-chan thinks it’s a good idea.”  
  
“Are you just saying that because you want me to fail and hurt myself again? You have to use caution with me Monaca, I’m not programmed to register human sarcasm.” Keebo called her Monaca, instead of the formal Towa because she told him if he called her by her family name she would hate him.  


“H-hey… lemme see!” Kauzichi’s curiousity got the better of him, and he ran up and started to touch the metallic parts of Keebo’s uniform, trying to inspect to see if it was waterproof of not.  
  
“Huh? What the -! You’re too close! Hey, don’t touch me! Do you touch all your classmates without their permission!? Or do you think it’s okay because I’m a robot!? Because that’s robotphobia, you know!”  
  
“He probably just does that to all the girls.” Miu said, from the poolside seat she was relaxing on. “Wait, Keebs are you a guy or a girl?”  
  
“Good question… I’ve honestly never thought about it before… Wait, stop, stop, stop!” Keebo reminded halfway through he was still struggling against Kazuichi.  
  
“Y-you… You’re amazing.” Kazuichi was finally thrown off of him, and brought a trembling hand to his mouth. He smiled showing all of his razor sharp teeth in excitement.  
  
“Are you even listening to me!? Wait, amazing?” Despite the act that he was the only living robot amongst the classmates, Keebo was ruthlessly mocked for being ordinary and average. His creator always told him he was a special boy, but this was the first person who saw him as that. He wanted to be recognized as a special boy, but he also wanted to feel like he was the same as everybody else, it was complicated, a contradiction, those conflicting desires made him a little more human. He was also, starting to feel plainer than both Tsumugi, Komaeda, and Makoto combined.  
  
“Yeah, you’re amazing! It looks like you’ve got a buncha weird function… BUt they’re all crammed into your body! Hey, hey! How’re you powered? If we could figure it out then we could waterpoof you.”  


“A-are you… curious about me?”  
  
“Hell yeah I am! You’re way too interesting!”  
  
“O-Oh… oh my… Th-this is the first time anyone has ever understood just how incredible I am! If I had the ability to cry, I would be weeping twin waterfalls of joy right now!”  
  
“If you had the ability to cry you’d never stop crying, you crybaby!” Monaca teased from behind him, “Or maybe Monaca is talking about herself. Isn’t it tragic? Oh well, crying is a waste of time anyway.”

“I could totally give him the ability to cry like a little bitch!” Miu said, sitting up from where she was lounging.  
  
“Can you two stop using me as a prop to compete over…” Keebo wanted to understand human emotions more and from up close, but he had been in the middle of most of their arguments. Humans were messy he was staring to realize. However, he suddenly processed what she said. “R-really? If I could cry, I’d be able to understand the concept of sadness more fully. I’m oh so grateful to hear that!”  
  
“But, instead of salt water how about I fill your ducts with juice or tea? Then I can grab a drink whenever I’m feeling parched! Hoo-yeah! I’ a genius today!”  
  
“But, Iruma-san. Those wouldn’t be real tears. Plus, I’m unable to consume food so I wouldn’t benefit from a function like that at all.”  
  
“But then while we were all enjoying ourselves at the pool, instead of just sitting there feeling all lonely and sad for yourself you can serve us pool side drinks.”  
  
“For the last time I don’t want to be your robo-butler!” Keebo snapped in a high and shrill voice that did not sound nearly as intimidating as he wanted it to. Apparently they had had this discussion before.

 

“Cut it out, Iruma! I’m this close to him letting me take him apart so I can waterproof him.” Kazuichi said, appearing on the other side of Keebo.  
  
“...Huh?”  
  
“It’s okay! I can put you back together! Probably!”

 

“...Huh?” Despite his face being entirely artificial, he showed distress on it rather well. “N-no, thank you! Please, both of you don’t come anywhere near me!” Keebo suddenly began to back up forgetting where he was standing.  
  
That was how he stepped back and realized there was nothing underneath his back foot, and a moment later his heavy body toppled into the pool. The moment he hit the water Keebo began splashing about. “Help! I’m drowning, I’m drowning!”

  
“Just… just stand up in the water.” Monaca said, watching him. She was getting past the point of being able to laugh at hm, now she just kind of felt sorry.

 

“Oh, right.”  


  
“It’s hard being the only kid here when you’re smarter than all the adults.” Monaca sighed, remarking upon her tragedy.  


The next moment the entire pool filled with electricity. Keebo’s entire sensory system overloaded, and his pale, doll like eyes rolled back in his head. His body fell backwards and he began to sink.

 

Monaca’s dull eyes did not change much, but the skin underneath wrinkled with emotion, giving the child a face that looked years older than it was supposed to. “Keebo? What are you doing? You’re no fun at all if you stop moving like that…”

  


🧸

  
  


“I can’t believe I almost became a murderer! I can’t kill people! Dead bodies creep me out way too much!”  
  
“Jeez, Keebs you should have taken one for the team and just died so we could get rid of this idiot.”

 

Miu and Kazuichi had both dropped their constant bickering in order to use ropes from the storage room to haul him out of the pool, and then drag him to the their shared lab. As Keebo’s eyes fluttered open and his functions rebooted he slowly realized the situation. No matter how hard he tried, he could only be the Ultimate Robot, his existence was limited. He could physically change his body all he wanted, upgrade himself, install rockets but that would not count as real change in his mind. His exterior did not matter, he was still the same weak person he was on the inside with little to no identity of his own.  
  
He had no idea who he was supposed to be, besides being the only classmate that was a robot. That was why he envied humans so much. Their functions were not determined by their makers like his was. They could be whoever they wanted to be. Humans were constantly showing new sides of themselves, he thought Kazuichi and Miu were his most abrasive classmates after Kokichi but…  
  
They could both be kind to. He wondered why they were so afraid to show that side of themselves. He wanted to smile softly at them as he woke up, until he heard what they were saying.  
  
“I’m just saying, if we upgraded him into a gundam while he was sleeping then we could have totally taken on the Exisals.” Kazuichi said, in the middle of another argument with Miu.

 

“Gundams are lame. We should turn him into an Evangelion unit.”  
  
“Evangelion units are cyborgs! We’d need a human being and the soul of somebody’s dead mom to make it work.”

  
“Ugh, Keebs why don’t you have any fleshy human parts? And a mom? So we can make you into an evangelion?”  
  
“Um… sorry? Wait no, I’m not sorry at all! That’s a ridiculous thing to demand of me!” Keebo said, but neither of them listened to him.  
  
“We could turn him into a knightmare frame,” Kazuichi suggested.  
  
“No way those are just gundams with rollerblades. How about an LFO?”  
  
“Those are flying units! He’d just crash into the ceiling. We should build four other keebos and have them combine into one giant keebo to form voltron!”  
  
“No, if you want to do a combining robot we’d have to rip off his head and make him into Lagann.”  
  
“What if we just make him huge and have him appear from underground every time we call for him on our watch. The Big O could totally punch straight through the ceiling of that dome.”  
  
“If he were an animal rather than a puppet boy we could make him into a zoid. Then he’d be a fun talking animal mascot too.”  
  
“Talking mascots are literally the worst!” Keebo shouted his voice cracking as he did, which was strange because he was pretty sure he had no function for voice modulation that made it crack like a human’s would. Maybe he was going through robot puberty? Finally. “I don’t want to be remodeled into any kind of giant robot by you nerds, I don’t even like giant robot anime.” All of the warmth he was feeling for saving them, quickly turned into exasperation the moment he opened his mouth.  
  
“See! You made him upset! Maybe you’d be a little more sensitive if you weren’t always thinking about my boobs!” Miu said, quickly turning on Kazuichi.  
  
“Your boobs are the last boobs I want to think about!”  
  
“Huh? What’s wrong with my boobs!”  
  
“They’re empty, just like your chest. I can think of plenty other, better girls to think about.”  
  
“So, you totally admit that you waste all your time thinking about boobs?”  
  
“That’s not what I was saying at all!” Kazuichi screeched again, really working hard to earn the title of grease monkey.  
  
Keebo sat up on the table he had been laid down on, and saw Monaca in the corner watching them. She looked like one of those spirits of children that hid and peered from you around a corner. Keebo wondered for a moment if he would ever leave a ghost behind if he were to become a victim in this killing game. Well, he was not alive to begin with, but he might be able to leave a ghost in the shell. Oh no, now those nerds got him doing it too.  
  
He got off the table and noticed several of his parts were extended in order to air him out. He wondered what genius solution both the inventors had come up with, only to notice that they had just brought a bunch of hair dryers in to dry him off. Keebo ran a hand through his hair, well at least his hair was light and fluffy now.  
  
He sat down next to Monaca. “Do you think I’ll leave a ghost if I’m not really alive to begin with?”  
  
“I don’t think anybody is alive. Not a single person.” Monaca said.  
  
Despite her tendency to tell jokes, there were sometimes she said unfathomably bottomless statements like that, which Keebo could not tell if she was kidding or not because he could not discern sarcasm. “It’s different for humans, you guys have something inside of you that can keep living even after you’re dead.”  
  
“How do you know that? We could just be empty. If you were to die, or a human were to die it’d be the exact same end result. Just a broken toy you can’t play with anymore.”

 

Keebo worried when she started to talk like this, but no matter how hard he tried he could not understand human sadness, or human happiness. He got the sense that Monaca was not merely feeling sad, but she was somehow lacking in both.

  
Monaca looked up with her dead eyes. “Those two make such annoying noises, she hates him for being perverted, spineless, and tacless, and he hates her for being vulgar, rude, and trying to push around others because she’s scared of being pushed around.”  
  
“H-how did you understand them so easily?”

 

“You just don’t understand them because you don’t think you’re a part of humanity. If humans really were worth more than what they looked like at face value, the world wouldn’t be so boring for Monaca.” Monaca did not talk like a child at all. The less and less she tried to sound cute it was obvious. If she knew how much she resembled her big sister Junko in that aspect she might be proud.  
  
“Do you not feel anything about other humans?”  


“I hate them, but they don’t even deserve that. They’re not interesting enough to be hatable” Monaca swiveled her head around suddenly. Her movements were so uncanny she looked like the girl in the exorcist. “You’re lucky you’re not human, because I would hate you too.”

  
Keebo had no idea how to react, but he did not want that little girl who was always spending time with him to hate him. He looked back to the humans he was trying to understand. “I don’t get why they hate each other if they have so much in common, I would give anything to have something in common with anybody else.”  
  
“Eh? What’s with the uglier-than-usual face? I know it’s a real tragedy you’ll never be able to touch this, but try not to cry about it.” Miu’s voice broke through the fragile atmosphere of their conversation.  
  
“Geez… Now all my good vibes from getting to hang out with my best bud Keebo are ruined.”  
  
“Um, who said we were best buds?” Keebo said, not able to keep up with those two at all.  
  
“Hahahahaha! How sad for you! No only are you a virgin with the girls, you’re a friendship virgin too! Unlike me the most popular girl in our school!” Miu raised her voice mocking him.  
  
“Who you callin’ lonely!? You really do have too high of an opinion of yourself!”  
  
“The hell are you talking about?”  
  
“You know what? I don’t even think you’re that perverted! You’re just putting on an act, you’re a total poser! I bet the reason you keep calling me a virgin is that you’re a virgin yourself…”  
  
Iruma Miu snapped, suddenly grabbing a wrench to throw at him. She held it up in the air and got halfway through the motion, before she saw Kazuichi flinch away. She was terrible at reading other people, that was why she had no idea how to act around them, but the look in his eyes was one of unmistakable fear. She had thrown things at him before without thinking, and yet right now he looked like a child begging not to be hit.

 

🧸

 

As long as he could remember, it was just him and his dad. When he looked around the messy bike shop that was indistinguishable from a junkyard, Kazuichi never once questioned why his mother had left.

His father and him worked a bike shop together, and lived in the floor above the shop. Ever since he was a kid, Kazuichi knew he was on his own. Their bike shop barely sold anything, and his father looked like he wanted to drown himself in self pity rather than try to ever fix the problem.  
  
After his mother left, his father stopped treating him like a son. He never made food for him. He never asked to see if he wanted new clothes. He never even checked if Kazuichi was making it to school on time. It was like they were two roommates sharing the same space, each having to work to make rent.

 

Because his father did not feed him, Kazuichi learned from a young age that if he did not work he would starve. He used to be a bright kid, but he started to get a reputation for being an idiot at school, because he almost never got sleep, and came to school hungry a lot. He stopped paying attention in every class that was not shop. As far as he considered it, his whole life was his work.

  
He woke up in the morning, went to his father’s shop to finish all the morning work, went to school, and then came home to finish up for the evening work. Even though he worked so much he barely slept, he somehow never had time for homework. He only passed tests because of his natural brightness, making his grades come off as average.

 

His dad refused to work. Not even for the sake of his child. Kazuichi had long ago given up on the idea that his dad would break out of his self pity for his sake. He was not enough for that. The two of them chatted like roommates from time to time, but he never once heard his father say anything parent-like.

  
Other kids made him nervous and he really had no idea how to act around them, because his whole world consisted of his father, his shop, and his work. He never got time to play with the other kids, and now he thought he did not really need it. After all, that would be time wasted that he needed to use to keep the both of them afloat.  
  
Despite the fact that it was hard, Kazuichi never once thought his life was that bad. He did not even hate his father, because he thought at least his father needed him. His father was his only family, and his only connection was Kazuichi doing work for the both of them. As long as they were together in this shop at least he had someone.  
  
They barely had any money, so one day Kazuichi faked sick and skipped school. It was easy to do because his father had never once come to the school or talked with any of the staff, so the school accepted Kazuichi’s call instead. That day however, Kazuichi’s father somehow found out about Kazuichi skipping school.

 

“We don’t have any money! I’m doing it or us old man. I don’t need to go on those trips, I just need to keep this bike shop afloat.”

Kazuichi’s father snapped, grabbing a wrench and holding it up in the air. Kazuichi did not even try to block, or dodge, because he was too stunned by disbelief. He never once thought his father would raise a hand against him, because his father needed him after all. All they had was each other and this bike shop. “You think I want to be stuck here with you? You think I want to be a failure? Do you know how much money it takes to raise kids, you’re the one whose dragging me down brat!”

 

Clunk.  
Clunk.  
Clunk.  
  
Kazuichi did not even register that he was in pain. He just thought the noise of the wrench hitting him sounded awful.  
  
“Your mother was lucky, she just got to scram out of here. I got stuck with you! Go tell everyone we’re too poor to afford a school trip! Just make sure to let them know it’s your fault!”

  
Kazuichi’s dad refused to work even though the business was bad. All of this time Kazuichi genuinely thought his father needed him, that was why he worked himself until he was exhausted. He did not even want his father to say thank you. Staying together in this little world was enough for him.  
  
He never asked to be thanked but, it hurt hearing his father blame him for the fact that they were poor. Even though Kazuichi was the only one working.  
  
It turned out that his father did nothing at all, and yet he still thought he was entitled to his pride. He deserved to be seen as a father. Kazuichi who thought that his father had never done anything father-like to show his connection with his son, realized now thathe thought he was being a parent right now. Beating Kazuichi, was what his father thought acting like a parent was.  
  
Kazuichi could only flinch and cover his head. Even though he knew this was wrong, there was nothing he could do about it, this bike shop was all he had he would be homeless otherwise. His father was right, he was just a brat with no choice but to cling to his father.  
  
His father’s anger at himself for being poor, his shame for being a failure, it turned out that every day seeing his son work twice as hard in his place just made those feelings worse for him as he started to envy his talented son.

 

He thought his son had an awful attitude and no respect for him as a parent. He never once thought about acting like a parent, he just thought he deserved the authority of one. Beating his son, became a way to vent those misplaced feelings. He started to treat it like regular stress relief, towards a child who gave him too much attitude. Even if he was still a failure, he had authority over someone else, and he could punish them for every misstep.

 

Kazuichi became skittish in class. He started to wear full body mechanic suits to class to hide his bruisings. He reacted badly to the sound of loud metallic noises. The only person he had in this world had betrayed him after all, so Kazuichi became scared of every single person. He thought just like his father, they could turn violent for no good reason. He just wanted to be a happy and fun loving kid, but every time he heard the sound of screeching he was reminded part of him would always be stuck in that bike shop with his father.

  
When he went to a school of Utlimate Talents, Kazuichi thought somebody might finally see his worth. No matter how hard he worked his father would always call him worthless. He was so happy to be a part of the talented few.  
  
He just wanted to be a normal kid. He wanted to play around with his classmates. He wanted to fall in love. He wanted all of the things he was denied, because he had to work throughout his entire youth. Yet, he still had no idea how to be around others. Even in a class of weirdoes, he ended up being nothing more than a joke. There was no one really in that class he could call his friends. No matter how much his dad hit him, he thought he could fix himself just like one of his machines if he worked on himself hard enough and changed his image. It was too bad really, he had too many broken parts.  
  
One day though he was approached by a blonde girl in pig tails. No matter how far away he got from his father, he could still feel his father’s hands around his throat. That day that he met her, that feeling was replaced by red,sharp nails, wrapping around his throat and digging into his skin.

 

🧸

 

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee…..”

 

Miu dropped the wrench on the floor. Even the sounds of it clattering made Kazuichi cover his ears. The thing was though, even if he knew his father was treating him like crap Kazuichi did not want to consider himself an abused child. He wanted his life to be light and breezy. He did not want to think about how hard his life was, when he could smile instead.

  
So he was just embarrassed that he had shown such a reaction unconsciously. Even after he tried so hard to reinvent himself, he was still nothing more than a coward. His face had turned pink, the exact same shade of his hair.

 

“I um… I’m sorry, ou were just joking around and I ruined the mood.” He apologized even when he knew he did not do anything wrong. He just wanted this awkward moment to end, and the feelings he was remembering to go away.  
  
Fighting with Miu all the time was fun, and they were both just joking around anyway. That was almost what normal friends did, joke around with each other, and fight over meaningless things. He only realized that right as he was about to ruin it.

Miu suddenly grabbed him by the wrist and started to drag him away towards the changing rooms. “Come with me to the girl’s locker room!”  
  
“W-wait, I don’t wanna!”  
  
“Oh like it’s not your dream to sneak in there.”  
  
“W-why do you have such a terrible image of me? I don’t want to do creepy things like that! Hey, someone help me! I don’t want to be alone with her!” Kazuichi began to panic, but neither Keebo nor Monaca helped him.

 

She dragged him all the way from the lab, to the changing rooms in the communal bathing area. When she was sure they were alone together, Miu heaved a heavy sigh. “I have a confession to make…”  
  
“I’m sorry my heart already belongs to Sonia-san.”  
  
“Not that kind of confession, shut up! I don’t want to hear about your stalking victim!”

  
“Am I… Am I that creepy? I think there’s something seriously wrong here…” Kazuichi was about to spiral into a different kind of panic before Miu grabbed his shoulders and shook him to get his attention.  
  
“Listen. I’m not… a bomb ass bitch that everybody thinks I am.”  
  
“Yeah, trust me nobody thinks of you that way.”  
  
“You were right about me. I got angry because you saw through my perfect act of being an untouchable blonde bombshell…”

  
“It’s not that great of an act.”

 

“The truth is I… I don’t know who I am. One day I woke up in a hospital after a long coma. The last memory I have… is someone’s hand reaching toward me and touching me in an awful place. The doctors told me that my brain might have dumped all of my memories as a trauma response.”  
  
“Iruma…?”  
  
“Apparently I had this childhood friend, he was so important to me, it’s like he was a part of me. My lungs, or one of my boobs, or one of my ribs something like that. If I lost him all the organs would spill out. We were always together so I only knew who I was around him. Then he… even though he was someone I’d known all my life, did something so horrible to me I can’t even remember what happened, and it put me in a medical coma.”

 

Apparently all of her procedural memories were still there, but the ones related to who she was as a person, all of her formative experiences were dumped.  
  
“So… he betrayed you…?”

 

“I can’t even remember… I’m really pissed at my brain you know! Where’d it go deciding I was some wimp who couldn’t handle my memories without my consent! It was supposed to stop me from being scared but… not knowing who I was was scary… I became afraid of everyone. I didn’t know how to react. So I just decided to act in a way that was guaranteed to make everyone hate me, if I acted like some unlikable, untouchable bitch then no one would come near me.”  
  
“...B-but, the raunchy way you act is just how I act normally. I feel like your entire personality is a finely crafted insult towards me.”

 

“Haha, loser.”  
  
“Don’t make me feel bad for hearing you out!” Kazuichi snapped back at her.

 

Miu’s eyes really did look just like his, eyes that were scared of the whole world. That was all he ever thought of her, Miu was a scary girl who was impossible to deal with. It never occurred to him that she saw herself the same way. He never even thought about how she saw him.  
  
He just did not understand others well enough to think about those things. Every time he thought he understood someone, he turned out to be wrong. Yet, others seemed to be able to see through him so easily. They saw him for what he really was a coward.  
  
They knew he was just like the shop he had grown up in. Worthless junk. That was why it was impossible for him to trust others. They could see him, but he could not see them. Betrayal could come from anywhere.  
  
“I know how hard it is to trust people…” Kazuichi clapped both of his hands over his mouth, he chewed on his fingers with his sharp teeth to relieve his anxiety. “I’m going to tell you my deepest darkest secret. You can spread it around the whole school if you want. I’ll trust you not to.”  
  
Kazuichi inhaled a deep breath, puffing out his chest as he did. “I think Tanaka Gundam is super hot.”

  
“Who?”  
  
“He’s this chuunibiyou guy at my school. He’s like super edgy in a way I could never dream of being. I’m really jealous that he takes all of Sonia’s attention, but also part of me just wants to be him.”  
  
“So you want the Chuuni dick?”  
  
“It is amazing how you find some way to ruin everything with your mouth.”  
  
“I’ve heard that in bed before.”  
  
“Stop ittttttt!!!!!!!”

 

Miu broke out into laughter. Unlike her usual laughter, it was not forced nor haughty. He never thought he could hear such soft sounds coming from that girl. “What you think I care? Am I supposed to be touched you shared your deepest darkest secret, that you’re not actually the straightest boy on earth?” She laughed so hard she started to cry and then buried her head in the crook of Kazuichi’s shoulder. He smelled like grease, but it was a smell she was familiar with. It almost smelled like home to her, or the closest thing she had to one.

 

“Hey, do you think I’m a bad bitch…?” She asked.  
  
“No, not at all.”  
  
“Hmph. Maybe there’s someone I don’t have to be that around.”  
  
“You aren’t a bad bitch around everyone else. You’re just kind of like an extremely loud wimp.”  
  
“Yeah but so are you.”  
  
This time when she insulted him Kazuichi could not help but agree. The two of them were just trying to keep working, even with broken parts. They could fix any machine they wanted but they could not fix themselves.

 

When Kazuichi thought about it, he usually just felt sad, but now for for reasons he did not understand he felt a little bit happy too. He also had no idea what to do at the moment with a girl hanging off of him. He held both of his hands high up in the air so she would never accuse him of being a pervert again.  
  
Kazuichi promised her in a whisper that when they got back to the shop they would go back to fighting like normal. Miu did not want to be seen as likable by a single person around them.

 

Apparently, that included Kazuichi too. She went right back to making fun of him, but he just talked to her like normal. “Hey, Iruma? Why did you become an inventor if your head is empty?”  


“Because I gotta fill my head up obviously! Not knowing things was the absolute worst when I woke up. I figure who I am is just a compilation of memories right? People aren’t more than all the knowledge they’ve gathered. So, I should just try to know everything! So I started filling my head with all sorts of stuff! I gotta test new ideas to learn stuff.”  
  
“Then how come you’re always coming up with stupid ideas?”  
  
“A stupid idea is the first step to a smart idea!”  
  
“If you’re such a genius why not come up with the smart ideas first?”

  
Keebo looked to Monaca. “I don’t understand, are they getting along better or worse?” Even though those two caused a lot of trouble for him, it was hard for him not to grow attached to humans.  
  
“I don’t even want to understand other human beings.” Monaca said with a yawn. Playing with Keebo was fun, but she did not expect it to become anything more than a distraction.  
  
They were different from Kazuichi and Iruma who were basically the same person, each of them completely lacking in self awareness to recognize that. They were total opposites, reversed and inverted images like looking into a mirror. A mirror did not reflect the same image back, it was just self delusion thinking of that.  
  
_We won’t get along for much longer not when he realizes._ _  
_ _I’m a human who wants to be a machine._ _  
_ _And he’s a machine who wants to be a human._  
  
There were broken parts, and then there were parts that were entirely missing because they were never there in the first place.


	26. Feelings Intersect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last line is a Furuta Joke.

“...”   
  
Despite the fact that the were walking together, Fukawa Toko remained completely quiet. She fidgeted every few seconds, as she began to notice the awkward atmosphere between them. She kept thinking about how Korekiyo must hate her, and that his opinion did not matter, and that actually his opinion did matter. She questioned over and over again why was nobody talking.   
  
Korekiyo however, did not notice the atmosphere at all. He was completely used to silence. As he considered himself an observer he could go for hours at a time without speaking to anybody else.

  
“...”   
  
He would like to speak with Toko but he decided to wait until Toko was comfortable to talk.

In the meantime he could occupy himself thinking of mythology, what fun. There was the story of pandora’s box, the girl who was given the box was pandora her name meant she who has been given everything. The last thing remained was hope. How strange, hope was in a box of misfortune and evil. Then again, hope could be slow poison, continually hoping that someday better things would come when the world refuses to change can quickly turn to its own kind of despair.  Then there was Urashima Taro and the Tamatebako, tales with boxes not to be opened were told over and over.

 

“...”  
  
There were plenty of siblings killing other siblings as well. Romulus and Remus. Etocles and Polynices. Karna and Arjuna in the Maharabata. Then there was Cain, who was marked by god to protect him from being murdered. What a terrible punishment, he could not kill himself, nor could he be killed, so there was no way to rejoin his fallen sibling.

 

“....”  


“What? You wanna t-talk to me? Well, I can’t stop you. So talk already!” Toko finally spoke up, breaking Korekiyo away from his thoughts.

  
“Oh, apologies I was just thinking.” Korekiyo was just as happy to talk to Toko as he was thinking about mythology.   
  
“You were thinking about how much you hated me this entire time, weren’t you!? You’re only following me around and pretending to be close to me so you can think about ways to hate me.”   
  
“Kehehehe… That sounds like a lot of effort. I suppose human social rituals involve lots of lies like that. But do you really think I’m so two faced?”

  
“You literally are two faced. You’re hiding another face beneath that mask of yours.”   
  
“I could say the same of you.”

 

“W-we are not the same!” Toko grabbed her pigtails suddenly, pulling at them to vent her stress. “Who even told you that anyway? I want to know whose spreading dirty lies behind my back!”

  
“It was Jack.”   
  
“I’m the one spreading rumors about myself! I’m my own worst enemy! Aaaaaaaahhhh!” Toko was usually neurotic but losing Togami seemed to have done a number on her. Her emotions were all hitting a peak, but they were too messy to describe with mere words. Words were failing her. The feelings she shoved down into the mud. The ones she wished to sink into a swamp, drowning, drowning, letting poison sink into her. If ink was not enough to write them she would write them in blood. Her fingers curled around her face, her expression twisted up, but then suddenly it all cut off. “Ah, but I’m not Jack.”   
  
“I see. Toko is Toko and Jack is Jack. I won’t confuse the two of you again.”   
  
“You’re accepting all of this way too easily! Ugh, why do you even keep following me around you stalker stalker?” It was like the killer killer, the serial killer that specifically targeted killers. Now Korekiyo was the stalker stalker, who went out of his way to follow the stalker. “You don’t want to know about me! Even I know that…!”

 

Unlike Toko who was so thoroughly touched by her nerves, that if she were to write a story of herself right now it would be written with a shaky pen, and an unsteady hand, unsure of the details and unsure of everything Korekiyo remained the picture of calmness. “That’s not true. I’m curious about how your special relationship with Jack developed. I won’t tell anybody, it can remain a secret between the two of us.”   
  
“Yeah, alright let me tell you my whole backstory in our literal first conversation. That’s good character writing right there.”   
  
“See you just did it to, remarking upon events as if they’re a story unfolding before you. We both like stories, don’t we?”   
  
“W-what do you mean?”   
  
“Anthropology is the study of stories. If you think of humanity at the core of anthropology, it should be lear. From people come feelings, those feelings intersect and become tradition. At least, that’s my stance on the matter.”   
  
“The feelings intersect.”   
  
“Yes, customs and folktales only occur in places where people can share them. It’s the same for you is it not? You take your feelings, and turn them into a story because it’s the only way to share with others.”

  
“Th-that’s not it at all. My f-feelings? It’s all from my i-imagination! It’s just delusions! Delusions let you fall in love as much as you want, even if you n-never do in real life! I could never feel the things the girls in my stories do.” Toko wrote what she could not experience herself, the feelings she could not feel for herself. Her feelings were muck seeping into her body. She had buried them for two long, and they had become one with the black mud.   
  
“I see. That’s not what I thought. When I read your book, I thought this person must feel the same as me. They must have written such a novel, for the sake of telling others they are not alone in their feelings.”

Toko only wrote her books for herself. She was a romanticist, but only for the sake of her own delusions. They were what allowed her to live. The hope that dragged her from one miserable day to the next, the slow poison she willingly chose to drink on her own. That was what she thought anyway. The fact that her books sold well was always just a side effect for her. It was something she could take pride in, and lord over others, but she would write even if nobody read her stories because writing was all she had.   
  
At least that was what she thought. She had never before heard her books described in such a kind way. If Toko was a romanticist for herself, Korekiyo must have been a romanticist for other people. “If you study anthropology then what are you doing reading one of my books? I know I look like an old crone with a wart you’d see stirring a boiling pot, but I’m not ancient.”   
  
“I don’t need to look too far. You encounter anthropology on a daily basis. Various mythologies are frequently referenced in anime, manga, and games. I study from a variety of sources, to help understand works more deeply.”   
  
“So you’re basically saying you read anything and have no taste at all? Then you’re just associating my elite books with common trash! You’re saying I’m part of the masses is that it!?”   
  
“Even though you say that with disdain, you wish to be a part of those masses do you not?” Korekiyo’s raspy, ghost like voice made no hesitation at all before cutting her. His nature was as cold as the steel of a katana, he seemed to lack any decision or way in which he could bend or break. Then there was Toko in comparison all tied up in string, desperately trying to cut her way out with two scissors. “Besides, is there such a thing as a normal person? To me every character can be viewed through an anthropological lens. Jobs, speech, clothing, or food… anthropology would hold every person holds a unique story.”

 

  
She already knew that of course. She knew because she was the one who cut those stories short. She cut out all the pages, and left the rest of the paper soaked through in pink. She turned on her heel to face Korekiyo stopping just before the door he was leading both of them to. If she saw them as individuals she would not be able to live with herself. She would not be able to live. She lived by writing the tragedies of others. So, she lied to herself like a child, telling herself the people she killed were bad in the first place, and not even people.

  
“I… g...guess maybe that knowledge would be useful. For character studies, and research material for my books and stuff. What you’re saying isn’t complete nonsense.”   
  
“Kehehehe, it seems I’ve piqued your curiosity. Let us talk more. Well then… what image does the word “kappa” call to mind, Fukawa?”   
  
“Butt stuff…”   
  
“I’m surprised you know the obscure bit of folklore where Kappa can gain power by taking their Shirikodama, a mythical ball said to contain the soul, which is located inside the anus.”   
  
“Y-yeah, I researched it from a book and everything. I would never watch an anime with pretty boys and kappas in it. I’m above that kind of thing. ” Toko, awkwardly tried to move the subject forward.“The monster with the plate on its head is probably the most famous.”   
  
“Kehehehe… That’s exactly right, and yet… it’s anthropologically impossible for our mental images of a kappa to match.”   
  
“Impossible?”   
  
“Originally, monsters had no form, for they were based on people’s emotions. That image of a kappa is a culmination of many people’s thoughts, and feelings change easily.  Culture is constantly changing, anthropology chases those changes. No two kappas are the same, just like no two stories are the same.” Korekiyo had a tendency to ramble, unlike Toko who cared too much to the point of physical agony what other people thought of her, Korekiyo did not seem to notice, or care whether he was being listened to or not.   
  
Feelings give rise to monsters. She closed her eyes and thought, that was correct. Her feelings had given birth to the monster of Genocide Jack.   
  
No two people could see the same image the exact same way, she already knew that because she was incapable of ever discerning or being what other people wanted of her. It was like other people all had a secret language they spoke and she did not, they were all giving off signals that she missed. That was true but, why did that boy say her book made him feel like his feelings were understood?   
  
The thing that disturbed her the most though, was his assertion that feelings would bring about change. Toko herself knew that had to be a lie, because despite splitting her mind in half, she never once changed. Her heart could never leave that house, even when she deluded herself that she was escaping. She would always have to close the book, and return to reality. Even if she could cut boy’s throats out, she was still not strong enough to stand up for herself. No matter how many times she insisted one day she would be beautiful, one way she would overcome the circumstances she was born into, success and fame as an author changed nothing at all. She was never going to be the princess she wanted to be.

 

“So? It is unexpectedly deep, yes?” Korekiyo asked.  
  
Toko dragged away from her thoughts grumped. “Yeah, whatever, profound.”   
  
“You don’t need to communicate like other people. As long as you tell stories you will be understood. I truly think that, from the bottom of my heart.”

  
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” His sincerity was too much for Toko. “Where were you taking me anyway?”

 

“I wanted to show you my research lab.” He opened up the door to show what looked like a museum. The walls were made to look paper, and they had ornate wooden carvings running along them. There were several display cases showing off old artifacts, including a glass box which displayed a katana painted in golden leaf.   
  
There were several crisscrossing sets of stairs above them, leading up five more stories. The entire room was the color of tan paper, and a deep, rust looking red. The contrast of such dirty looking colors seemed perfect for Korekiyo.

  
“What’s all this supposed to be? It’s just a bunch of ugly old junk.”   
  
“All aspects of humanity - even the ugly parts - are beautiful.”   
  
“Y-yeah, but even if you call someone beautiful you don’t mean as an individual, just as a human being.” Toko said, standoffish trying not to get flustered at how much he mentioned beauty. To her ugliness and beauty were complete opposites like white and black, someone who was ugly could never become beautiful they could only chase it. Someone who was unloved would never be loved, but they could chase love at least.

 

“The room wasn’t what I wanted to show you. I… even though you’ve looked like you were about to cry this entire time ever since you fought with Togami I can’t... I’m not a person who can comfort others. Every time my sister cried there was nothing I could do…”  
  
Toko remembered, more disturbing when her mothers screamed insults at her or asked her to die, were the few times they seemed to realize what they might be doing to their own child, and clung to her crying and begging for forgiveness. Toko hated those times far more than she ever did getting beaten. She hated herself for wanting to wipe their tears away, and she also hated herself for doing nothing. She thought she understood a little bit, Korekiyo was trying to help her, because of those residual feelings of helplessness for his sister. He wanted more than anything in the world to be able to help her while she was still alive.

 

“And now your sister is dead.” Toko said it, just to be mean.   
  
“Yes, she’s dead…” Korekiyo repeated. “That’s why I enlisted the help of a friend.” Korekiyo said, crossing his arms over his shoulders again in a way that looked like he was embracing himself.   
  
“W-wah? You have a friend?”   
  
“All of humanity are my friends.”   
  
“That sounds like something a really lonely person would say.”   
  
Just then, the door creaked open. This was Korekiyo’s lab after all, so his door needed to make spooky noises for maximum effect. Through the doorway came, one of those normal girls that Toko was looking down on earlier. “Hey, Kiyo… I brought back that manga volume you lent me! You’re right, knowing the mythology behind the story really enhanced reading it.”

 

Komaru stopped, and just stood there as she recognized a messy haired, girl who hid her gloomy eyes behind her glasses. “Huh... It’s that weird girl?”

 

Toko turned then, even though she was not used to meeting the eyes of others she caught Komaru’s eyes. “It’s that weirdly normal girl…”

 

🧸

 

After using the crank key to unlock Korekiyo’s room, there was only one talent lab they had yet to discover. Unfortunately this time his group was rather troublesome. There was Enoshima Junko, who apparently was a two faced fashionista who had murdered someone in the past. The only reason he felt safe walking with her was that Zenkichi was following her like a guard dog, and Rantaro was right there next to him as always.

  
That being said, that Enoshima girl was rather loud.

 

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve gotten to do anything interesting!” Junko shouted, if there were a camera all the attention would be immediately drawn to her, like it was madly in love with her.

“Well, when you lock yourself up in your room like a neet what do you expect? Anybody would get bored from doing nothing all day.” Zenkichi, was under the naive delusion he could reason with her. What particularly annoyed Junko was that no matter what she said he kept responding to it like they were having a normal conversation.   
  
“Don’t they know this is the Junko Show? They can’t take their eyes off of me, or my sidekicks!” Junko said, pointing a red tipped finger back at Zenkichi.   
  
“I’m not your sidekick! I’m only Medaka-chan’s sidekick.”   
  
“So, you’re basically admitting you’re a sidekick? Wow losers like you usually go through a lot more denial, it’s no fun for me when you straight up admit it.” Junko’s eyes fell in disappointment, and then boredom quickly took over her face. She had a look that said she was done with Zenkichi just all of him, his entire existence.   
  
“I don’t care what you say. People don’t exist to be your playthings you know!” Zenkichi was the only one around to babysit her though, so he was trying really hard to be her straight man.   
  
“I mean like you could say that, but not to get all philosophical on you but, you can’t really prove or disprove any reason why you exist.”   
  
“That’s not philosophy. You’re just spouting random nonsense that your brain comes up with.”   
  
“That’s how talking works, duh.” Enoshima Junko was particularly good at talking that was why words were so cheap to her.   
  
“Well, whatever you’re the only one that thinks that way.”   
  
“Really? I think I should have my own school of philosophy, we could call it Junkoism!”   
  
“More like Jankoism.”   
  
“Awe, did baby Zenkichi come up with that zinger all by himself? Keep learning from me and you might be interesting at this rate.”   
  
“I refuse! Even your whacked out followers and worshippers didn’t think like you did! No one does!”

 

“Well jeez, no need to be so harsh on my mellow.”  
  
“You are like, the exact opposite of mellow. Never once for a single moment have I seen you act mellow.”   
  
Zenkichi misunderstood her, even in complete chaos Enoshima Junko had control. She was like the eye of the storm. She could stand on a spinning top in heels and never lose her balance. All of her impulsivity, her rashness, all of that was just an act to try to break free from her control, but in the end she was making herself act that way. A smile spread on Enoshima’s lips.   
  
“You’re right, you can exist for any reason you want to be. So maybe you exist just to be Medaka-chan’s little puppy boy, but you knoooooow….” She flashed Zenkichi her teeth. “Even if you’re a pawn in the hands of a nice girl, instead of a mean girl like me, you’re still a pawn in the end.”

 

Anyone and everyone all of them pieces on the board.   
But Junko wanted to break that board. She did not want to see people as pieces. She did not want her connections to others to simply be moving pieces along a board, she gripped her forehead a headache blooming in her frustration.   
  
The first boy she saw as a human. The one who refused to be anything but a boy in front of her. The one who would never be a piece she could control had gone and disappeared in front of her. Just because he was gone did not mean she could regress back to her old self.   
  
If she wanted to believe that people could change to become more interesting, than she had to change to. Change might come about in unexpected ways though, her mind might change without her permission, she might become somebody else before she even realized it, even now her mind wandered. It was getting hard to focus. Bantering with Zenkichi was just no replacement for the real thing.

  
“Why are you bothering with me anyway, HItoyoshi-kun? You get so worked up in those retorts of yours, how am I supposed to deal with such pasion?” Enoshima Junko was where passion went to die anyway. She devoured passion. “You reject every part of me, but you won’t stop following me around. Ewe, is this some kind of hate stalking thing?”

 

Zenkichi looked at the bandages on his hands. “I already told you, you and I were left behind by Kumagawa-kun and Medaka-chan. We’re going to stick together until we get them back.”  
  
“Such sentimentality! Such passion! Such heart! It’s too bad, that frou frou fluffy feelings like that are utterly pointless.”   
  
“Well, to you everything is pointless so why do you give a damn about what I feel?” Zenkichi said, biting back. He really was nothing like Makoto at all. He was like a dog that would ferociously guard his territory even if that meant sinking his fangs into someone.

 

Junko did not respond to him, because she got bored of that thread of conversation. She looked around the broken down hallway they were walking down. “Still, this is the old school building but it’s been completely renovated. It should be impossible to have changed so much. Even I wasn’t capable of changing the building that much in the limited time I have.”

  
“Umm… Junko. Your boyfriend can wipe something from reality with a snap of his fingers. Is rebuilding this school really that unlikely?”

  
Junko turned her head back and glared at Zenkichi. It was the first time the boy had seen genuine emotions in her eyes in awhile, and it was instantly frightening. “That’s right he’s my boyfriend, that’s why you’re not allowed to talk about him.”

 

Shuichi and Rantaro finally got the door open. Zenkichi’s eyes widened slowly. His whole body began to tremble. Inside that room was an exact replica of the student council office from Sanbox academy. The office he spent so much time with Medaka in. The flowers he planted together with Medaka.

  
The Ultimate Student Council President Talent Workshop. Zenkichi wanted to cry when he saw it, but he promised himself he would not cry until he saw Medaka again. If Medaka saw him crying right now whereever she was, she would cry too. Then Ajimu would get mad at him for making Medaka cry again.

  
Junko leaned over his shoulder to get a look at Zenkichi’s face, and then looked away with disinterest as he closed his eyes shut tight on his watering eyes. She walked forward and wrote her name on the board in bright red sharpie. “Well, this looks like a good headquarters for me.”   
  
“Hey, it’s my office!”   
  
“Too bad. I’m commandeering it for the cause.”   
  
“What cause?” Zenkichi was really too naive, he kept falling into her setups too easily.   
  
“The greatest cause of them all! Mine, of course!”

 

Shuichi and Rantaro thought, it was best to leave them be for awhile. Standing in the doorway, Rantaro messed with his already messy hair. “I think I can see why those two are together. They’ve both lost someone precious. No matter how hard they try they can’t make the pieces fit.”   
  
Shuichi wondered if he could sympathize. He felt like he had lost Kaede. Even though she was still alive, their relationship could not go back to what it used to be. He had never gotten close enough to lose an important person though, perhaps he was just too afraid of pain.   
  
Shuichi saw once again, how much Rantaro thought of others. All he could think of though was when he was thinking of others so much, Rantaro always looked a little lonely.

 

🧸

 

Rantaro had a secret. Shuichi knew it beyond his detective’s intuition. He was someone who was used to dangerous situations, and beyond that Rantaro did not seem to want to trust or rely on somebody at all. Even though he was letting Shuichi rely on him right now.

Apparenty, Shuichi had been muttering some of those thoughts under his breath because Rantaro took notice. “Saihara-kun? Something wrong?”  
  
“No, nothing. I just thought we could talk about your talent a bit more.”   
  
“I see… Well, thank you for showing me so much concern. But honestly, I have no idea. What kind of Ultimate could I be, after all this? Maybe I don’t have a talent at all. Maybe I’m here by mistake.” Rantaro said, with a self deprecating laugh. Yet Shuichi could see, tha Rantaro seemed to wish he was nobody special at all. His constant insistence that he was normal, it was like he wanted to be just like everybody else.   
  
“No, Amami-kun, that can’t be true.” Even so Shuichi did not want that. Because to him, Rantaro was a special person the same way Kaede was. A person stronger, more confident than him, a person who could reach out to others. Even if Rantaro saw himself as nothing special that would not change how Shuichi saw him. He would tell Rantaro he was wrong.   
  
Shuichi.   
Seemed to get attached to people rather easily, like tripping and falling face first into concrete.   
He always wanted to see the absolute best of the people around him, and the worst in himself.   
  
None of those feelings seemed to reach Rantaro. He was as untouchable as ever. He flicked his hair with his finger. “Ha, I guess if I was mistaken for someone else, I’d be the Ultimate Unlucky Student!”

 

“That’s senpai’s title! You can’t steal that!” Junko screamed from behind the door. Apparently she had heard them even though they were just in the hallway taking.   
  
“That’s…” Shuichi looked scared for a moment. “That’s not a nice talent to have.”   
  
“Hahaha, yeah. I think I’d pass on that.” Rantaro pulled on his hair, sudden and hard jerking his neck. His eyes that always looked so dream like, suddenly became serious. “I can’t stay here Shuichi. I don’t have time for this.”   
  
“It’s the same for all of us.”

  
Rantaro paced up and down the hallway. Until he finally noticed the hidden chest in the corner. A chest just like from a game. Rantaro’s eyes went slightly crooked as if they refused to look at the reality in front of them. “Yeah, you’re right. No one has the time to be stuck in a place like this. Seriously, I wonder what this place even is. I just can’t figure it out.”   
  
“It’s like a game…” Shuichi opened up the chest, but the only thing inside was what looked to be some kind of flashlight. He decided he would pick it up later when he had everyone together.   
  
“A game yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I remember playing Zero Escape, you have to escape by solving puzzles. I didn’t win. It was too hard, I gave up. That’s what I’ve always done but… I can’t anymore. I can’t afford to just be stuck here. By any means necessary, I would do anything. I need to get out of here, or else I’ll never reach-”   


Shuichi wondered, what was Rantaro’s plan in the first week. Just like Kaede was he desperate enough to kill the mastermind? Then he hated himself, for distrusting Rantaro like that. When he wanted to be the one to look past his wall and understand him.   
  
“...You must have a good reason to want to get out of here so badly. May I ask… what it is?”   
  
The desperation, the urgency, they all disappeared from Rantaro’s face at once. It was like he had just forgotten how he was feeling. He was vacuous, airheaded, and hard to read as ever. “Do you have any siblings, Saihara-kun?   
  
“Huh? I have a step sister. We don’t really get along…”   
  
“I see. Then you wouldn’t understand.” Rantaro immediately turned his head away from Shuichi. He started to walk away. Rantaro seemed like the kind of person who was never bothered, but suddenly he was storming off.   
  
Shuichi did not want him to go. He did not want it to end on this note like it had with Kaede. “Ah, well, regardless… You don’t have to face this alone. We can do it together.”   
  
“Are you going to cling to me the same way you did Akamatsu? And if it wasn’t me, would it be Kaito?” When Rantaro glared back at Shuichi, Shuichi caught on to the darkness in his eyes. It was more than just the dark rings around his eyes that gave him a sleepy eyed look. Eyes that looked like darkness was all they saw. Rantaro was not just hard to understand. “I don’t think you understand what an important person is. If you did you wouldn’t be making Akamatsu wait for you like this. The most precious things aren’t ones you devote yourself to or the ones you constantly claim to love. No, something truly important to a person forms who you are. Lose it and you’re nothing, its like if you were to scoop the brain out but leave the stem behind. You’d be breathing, but you wouldn’t be alive. That’s why, if you really, truly value something with all your heart, then for all intents and purposes, it is you.”   
  
Amami Rantaro hid himself in complete and total darkness. He looked like he was looking for someone there too, as he curled his fist and started to walk away.   
  


“I have to think that way, losing them is like having your flesh ripped away… I’m an older brother after all.”   


Shuihi had no idea what to say, all he knew was that he failed to understand the person in front of him once more. Just like he did with Kaede. If he could not do anything for the people in front of him, he wondered what he was doing all of this for. Nobody could give him the answer as he was left all alone.

 

🧸  
  
“Jeez you sure are a self righteous one, Hitoyoshi-kun.”   
  
“I’m not self righteous. Maybe you’re just self wrong!”   
  
“You know, there should be a limit to how disappointing one human could be. All this disappointment I feel doesn’t fill me up at all.”   
  
“You go from mocking me about ridiculous things to saying really deeply cutting stuff you know? You’re going to give me whiplash.”   
  
“And you’re used to being Medaka-chan’s whipping boy so that’s impressive!”   
  
“Quit it!”   
  
“But really Puppyboy. This isn’t despair, this feeling is just dank, the dankest of disappointments. A girl could drown in this dankness.”   
  
“See, you can’t go from threatening me to memeing five seconds later. How am I supposed to take you seriously as a villain?”

 

As usual, Zenkichi and Junko were getting along about as well as a golden retriever and a feral cat were expected to get along. Both of them were trying to come up with their next plan to take down the mastermind, but due to the fact that Junko believed everything was pointless, and Zenkichi was doing a terrible job of convincing her otherwise they had only gotten so far as writing ‘PLAN’ on the board with dry erase marker underneath Junko.

 

At that moment their unfriendly repartee was interrupted by a knock at the door. A clueless looking Kaito wondered in. He scratched the back of his gravity defying spiky haired head. “Hey, have you guys seen Saihara-kun around?”

  
“No, he left with Amami-kun awhile ago.” Zenkichi looked back to Junko who was still filing her nails rather than doing anything helpful. “Did you apologize to him yet?”

  
“Of course I did. We had it out and settled things like men.”   
  
“That doesn’t seem like Saihara-kun. I doubt he’d ever hit you even if you asked him.”   
  
“I mean we talked it out, straight from the heart.”

  
“Did you really?” Zenkichi who had been babysitting Junko felt his eyes sharpen a little more when he observed people. “It’s not making up if you just both agree to forget about it. You have to put Saihara-kun’s feelings first.”   
  
Kaito gritted his teeth. He really was emotional. He might have even been more of an open book than Zenkichi, and therefore Junko had no interest in him. “Hey, he’s not the only one who’s upset about Akamatsu-san. You think I didn’t feel like I let her down! But I didn’t get to fall to pieces in front of everybody like he did. One of us had to be strong.”   
  
“Who said that? Who said you had to be strong?”   
  
“Monokuma’s trying to kill us. Do you realize what kind of situation we’re in?”   
  
“I do. Your friend nearly died. She became a murderer even though you trusted her. But, Akamatsu was pushed that far because she felt like she had to be strong. If something bad is happening in front of you isn’t it natural to want to cry and run away?”

  
“That’s right. Despair properly for the cameras.” Junko said raising her head up.   
  
“You’re not a part of this.” Zenkichi grabbed her head and pushed her face to the side. “You said you felt betrayed too, didn’t you?”   
  
“No… You’re wrong. I’m not angry at Akamatsu. I don’t even care that she made me look like an idiot in front of everybody, I already know that I’m dumb. But you know Akamatsu wanted someone who really believed in her, she was probably all alone, but… all I did was mess around as usual.” He already knew what he must have looked like to Zenkichi. Somebody who was just playing around at being leader, pretending to be strong, treating it all like one big game. He was like a little kid trying to look tall in a big man’s jacket. “I was angry at myself….”   
  
“So you hit Saihara-kun?”

“Look that’s not…”

 

“Momota-kun, when you speak from the heart people will listen. I think… you say amazing things, when you’re not trying so hard to be amazing. People will be inspired by who you are, not who you appear to be-”

 

“That’s crap!” Kaito said slamming his fist down hard on the table they were all sitting around. He spilled a bottle of Junko’s nail polish causing the girl to frown. “It’s okay to run away, it’s okay to cry. Have you ever done that once? It’s easy to say I don’t have to try so hard, when you’re already the person you want to be! You can just be yourself and everyone will love you! I’m just an idiot with a big mouth!”   
  
Momota Kaito, wanted to be strong for the sake of others. He wanted to motivate them all to escape. He thought all he needed to live was have big dreams, and the motivation to go chasing after them, even if his dreams were so high he had to rocket all the way to the stars. He really wished things were that simple, just like Kaede did. That Maki was a good person who did not want to kill anybody. That Akamatsu was really doing this for all of their sakes, and trying to save them when she became a murderer. He wanted to believe the best in people.   
  
Momota Kaito did not believe in himself. Insecure. The stronger he tried to be the weaker he was. He thought he was running somewhere. He wanted to run all the way up until the stars. He was just running away. He ran from his own weakness. It did not matter how hard he tried his weakness would catch up with him.   
  
Because the only person he had to blame for his weakness was himself in the end. He wanted to apologize properly to Shuichi and tell him what he was feeling, but the two of them just danced around the issue. He wanted to become Shuichi’s strength and lend the other a shoulder and hoped that would make up for it. He did not want to think about what he did wrong, his moment of weakness, when he tried to make somebody else feel his pain.   
  
He could just walk over to Kaede’s piano room and apologize to her. He already knew he was an idiot, and unlike Shuichi Kaede would probably accept his offer to sock him one and make it even.

 

He wanted to grow up fast, faster than anybody else. In the end all he accomplished was looking like a little boy in an oversized coat, posing as an adult. The moment after he realized what he said to Zenkichi he regretted it. He wanted his feelings to reach out to people and inspire them, he wanted his feelings to give him strength, so he wondered why his feelings always came out like this and hurt others.

  
“Nevermind, forget about it. I was just saying stupid stuff again…” Kaito said, as he wiped the sweet off his chin with the back of his hand. He turned around and left with only the swaying of his purple uniform coat trailing behind him as a goodbye.

“You can just be yourself? I see. That’s… only something a talented person could say.” Zenkichi gripped his face. His vision had gotten blurry, and his head felt faint. He looked up and saw Medaka’s silhouette standing above him like it was the grim reaper waiting to take his soul away. He reached out for her still, causing him to lose his balance. _Medaka-chan, I always want to be around you. But when I’m next to you, I feel a little bit lonely… because…_ “I’m much more pathetic than Medaka-chan could ever imagine.”

 

HItoyoshi Zenkichi fainted in front of her. Junko blinked not even expecting that. She stood up pushing her chair aside, as as she stood over him poking him with tip of her toe she wondered what she was supposed to do with the sleeping dog.   


_I’m a pushover._ _  
_ _I never think for myself._ _  
_ _I just go along with what everybody else tells me._ _  
_ _Because there’s only one way for me to keep standing with these people._ _  
_ _There’s only one way for me to be by Medaka-chan’s side._   
  
“God, Hitoyoshi-kun why are you so fat? It’s like all of those squats you do are for nothing.” Junko finished dragging him all the way back to his dorm. She fished in his pockets and pulled out the keys. Zenkichi really did need to stop being so vulnerable in front of her, one day her poor impulse control would win out against her long term planning abilities. When she opened his door, Enoshima Junko saw the unexpected once more.

 

 _I have to try harder than anyone. I have to put in more hours, to achieve less._ _  
_ _I can’t even get discouraged once, I don’t have time for it._   
  
Hitoyoshi Zenkichi’s walls were covered with papers pinned, taped, and posted to the wall. She saw that somehow Zenkichi in this short time had acquired twenty two class photoes. Around those photos he wrote everything he knew about each individual person, including what they liked to eat for breakfast.

  
Zenkichi was not naturally cutthroat. He was not somebody who liked to deceive others. He was honest and straightforward, but he already knew those qualities would get him killed in this kind of game. He learned his lesson from last time. He was studying everyone around them. He knew nothing about tactics, or mysteries, so he studied.   
  
_“Zenkichi is an idiot!”_ _  
_ _“There’s no such thing as mistakes!”_

 _“Everything is determined by effort and your own will!”_ _  
_ _“There’s nothing you can’t overcome with hard work.”_ _  
_ _“Results are all that matter, everything else is meaningless.”_ _  
_ _“Fuck sleep!”_   
_“Beat Medaka-chan!”_ _  
_ _“I can’t lose!”_

_“Every single person you lose here, you’ll never see that person again.”_

_“Pain is temporary, regret lasts a lifetime.”_

_“Your enemy is your own carelessness.”_ _  
_ _“Don’t miss a single detail.”_ _  
_ _“Pay attention to everything.”_ _  
_ _“Don’t be afraid.”_   
  
All of those words of he wrote on the wall over and over again, surrounding him, looked like nothing more than words of punishment now. The worst one of all repeating over and over again.   
  
_“Medaka-chan. Medaka-chan. Medaka-chan. Medaka-chan. Be strong for Medaka-chan. Catch up to Medaka-chan. Work harder than Medaka-chan. It’s all for Medaka-chan. You’ll see Medaka-chan again.”_ _  
  
_

Her name was surrounding him everywhere, he wrote it down over and over again to give him motivation.

 

 _“This is all to stand by Medaka-chan’s side.”_   
_“Medaka-chan will be lonely if I don’t catch up with her.”_ _  
_ _“I have to become someone worthy of Medaka-chan.”_ _  
_   
She was his childhood friend. She was his whole world, really. Yet, even though they had been together all this time he could never see himself as worthy of staying by her side. The current him was always too weak.   
  
Junko saw in addition to Zenkihi’s notes on everybody, piles of books borrowed from the library that he was studying. All of them were marked and bookmarked over and over again with supplies borrowed from the school store. There were caffeine pills already spilled from the bottle on one of the desks that he had been given. There was a clock to wake him up and it was already set for an absurdly early time. Even underneath the decks even more books were piled up.

 

Hitoyoshi placed it all on himself, to escape from this killing game and to make it to Medaka’s side again. He blamed himself for letting her hand slipped from his fingers and the rest of her fall away from him in the first place. If he was strong enough at the time he would saved her instead of making Medaka save him. He had to escape from this place with a smile on his face to face her the next time. That was why Zenkichi was putting so much effort into babysitting Junko, because she was a wild card just like Kumagawa to overcome everything and win the killing game.

 

 _Medaka-chan, I love you, that’s why I’ll never let you see the weak me. Even when I’m right by your side._ Zenkichi thought as he stirred in his sleep beneath Junko. He wanted to overcome the killing game with hard work, but the only result that he was working himself to death. He passed out from simple sleep and exhaustion, beautifying the entire school grounds and making everyone customized breakfast in the morning. He thought he should have been more capable than just doing a few chores.   
  
“Upupupu…” Zenkichi regained consciousness to hear Junko’s giggles of utter delight finding out this side of him. “I thought you said you were never going in my room, because it had boy cooties.”

 

“This is worth boy cooties. Hitoyoshi-kun, it turns out you’re an obsessive freak after all. Goodie for you.” Junko said, spreading her arms wide to gesture at the room around them that was looking more and more like some kind of twisted shrine to Medaka. Zenkichi was offering himself as the sacrifice to his goddess. “You really do do everything for Medaka-chan’s sake. It’s definitely not a good look for you, but it’s not disappointing.”

 

He could care less, he felt damned by her praise.   
Hitoyoshi Zenkichi glared in anger, unable to hide that emotion as his lips curled up like a snarling dogs. “You’re way worse than I am. At least I have a reason, not a stupid reason like boredom. You don’t even have any monsters you’re fighting against.”   
  
“Tedium is a monster… Some people might even try to slay it with a bullet to their own brains.”   
  
“Junko…? You can’t die when you’re still waiting for Kumagawa to come back.”   
  
“God, you’re so soft I want to tear all the stuffing out of you.”  Junko crushed nothing at all between her fingers, like she was resisting the temptation. “You’re confused I guess. Someone who enjoys the ordinary like you probably doesn’t even have the capacity for boredom. Well let me tell you, son, you can’t even begin to imagine how sick of it all I am.”   
  
“That’s it? That’s the only explanation you have. You’re right I can’t imagine someone more selfish and ridiculous than you.”

 

“Ridiculous. I have an embarrassment of ridiculous. Tragic comedy after tragic comedy. You’re not even fit to understand how ridiculous. Well, as long as we’re being ridiculous…” She clutched her face. It felt like there was a hole in her face. It felt like something that was supposed to be there was gone. There was a crack and he was going to see it.   
  
Her one eye bulged, and she gave a twisted half smile. Her face looked like Monokuma, but she had no idea if she was doing it on purpose. She used to dance on the edge of everything, throw back her head and laugh. She danced on tall building, on the edge of rooftops, in only her heels, just for the enjoyment.

Now suddenly she was hanging on to the edge with her one remaining hand. She saw the red stains on the concrete and knew she would be next. Her brilliant brain would just splatter, her head would smash and break into tiny Junko pieces. Perhaps that was what she wanted, the only way to be free of her head.   
  
She would either destroy herself before she is lost, or lose herself. As soon as a puzzle appeared in front of her she could solve it. She solved all of them, and another problem arose - she was left with a void.   
  
Everybody else was just enjoying their lives without having to think of hope, despair, puzzles, or games even once. They were able to live without asking a single question.   
A normal child  who teases her sister, and acts competitive but loves her sister deep down.   
A normal childhood friend who alway runs away to hide behind that boy, because he’s home.   
A normal student who after transferring to a school for elite oddballs makes her first friends.   
A normal girl who grows after meeting a mysterious stranger, and becomes his support.   
Those people were out there she was sure, they were living their lives smiling, sobbing, or whatever emotions normal people felt.   
  
It had to be because they were turning a blind eye to everything. They could only live like that because they were fools. One day she would be the one to make them see the world as she saw it. She would make it impossible to look away. She would be the ringmaster to the circus of their follies. She would get the last laugh when everything was over, and they regretted their stupid, happy lives.   
  
But, she was wrong.   
She was just a lonely girl. She went about being a girl incorrectly.   
She had no idea what made up a real person so she faked it.

The world didn’t come to an end by her hand.   
The game continued. Fifty three more times.   
If she was not the mastermind, then she was just a sad, pathetic, loser. Nobody cared about an Enoshima Junko that did not destroy the world, her image preceded her as a person.

That was why the two of them were always competing. Her and her senpai. One of them was the final villain, and the other was just a loser. Now that he was gone she would have to take up the mantle.

 

The way that Zenkichi lived, believing in other people. Blindly putting his faith in them. Smiling through life. Dancing on the edge of things without even looking where you were. Even if you took one wrong step, and tripped and crushed your head- he had it figurd out. He was enjoying life more than she was.   
  
She could not live that way. Even if she plucked out her other eye she would not be blind. Even if she forgot about everything, she would still be herself. It was too late for her, she was just pretending to be human but she still thought she could… some other way than his live.

Then why did her head feel like frankenstein put the bolts in her neck, and gave her a million volts to resurrect her. Her neurons were fried and overclocked. It was like her brain hit the expiration date. The more she tried to keep it together, the faster the stitches fell apart.   
  
She was just a stitched up doll. Even her face was going to fall apart soon. She wanted to remember the person, the boy in the mirror, like her but not. She wanted to see him again. She did not want him to become a part of herself. She did not want him to be her own possession.   
  
She was able to see herself for the first time, because she looked into the clear water in his eyes. She just wanted him, as he was. She wanted him to stand in front of her, and be his own person, the one she could never control or predict.She needed to look at him standing in front of her, and be looked at in return to know he was real. 

She could not smile through life, but when she was around him she could show her real smile. She could not dance through life with the others, but she could dance incorrect, off-tempo, and an unsightly way together with him.   
  
She wanted to be around him, but if when they were together all she thought was _I can never lose this person_ than she would have already lost him. To be together she needed to be the girl on the other side of the mirror, her own individual self.   
_Who was that again?_   
Oh that was right the mirror was broken.   
  
Junko said in a dull voice. “Judging by your face at hearing all that, you’re not going to understand me. Boring people like you with no creativity are always so full of themselves.”

Zenkichi tightened his eyes, wondering why his lack of understanding for her was so obvious. “You’re the boring one. Using people to relieve your boredom is just stupid.”   
  
“Those are my real feelings I don’t care if you listen or not.”   
  
“Well, maybe you should change that if all you think about is fixing your own boredom.”

“How about you correct your twisted obsession with Medaka-chan?”   
  
Both of them looked away. Fundamental complexes at the center of their being, all they could do was meaninglessly struggle with them over and over. Yet, they desired to change so they could only repeat. Neither of them really wanted to face the other. It was like they were stuck together more than anything else, because both Kumagawa and Medaka disappeared.   
  
“I still don’t get how someone as amazing as you could be so bored of everything. Medaka-chan recognizes you and you don’t even care. There are so many beautiful people in the world, and beautiful places, and you don’t even look at them.” 

“That’s just how my perception works, it catches and alters everything that happens. Things you naturally enjoy are just tedious to me. The things you fight so hard to protect, the things you think are going to last forever, they just look like dominoes to me.”  
  
“You’re just a kid with too much power, and yet I’m jealous of you.”  
  
“I’m nothing special. I know because I can see myself. I’ve come to realize how petty I am. I only want everything, but there’s nothing I can obtain. I’ve known that for awhile.” At least ever since she met that boy. That boy in the mirror. Her senpai. She finally started to figure out, the limits of herself, where she ended and others began. She finally started to see other people.   
  
She stretched her fingers out, as if reaching out for something that would disappear the moment she obtained it. “If I try to do anything the end result is only staving off tedium temporarily.”   
  
“There are way more consequences for your actions than that.”   
  
“Even so, it’s still very important to me that I try. So Hitoyoshi-kun, now that we know each other’s secrets…” Her delicate eyelashes fluttered, so close he could feel them brushing against his skin and the tickle of her breaths. He realized for the first time, there was just a girl in front of him. She showed him a smile, that was a little sad. He thought he finally understood now, why Matsuda wanted to protect that smile. Enoshima Junko leaned close to whisper in his ear.

  
“LET’S (win) GET (this) ALONG (game) LIKE (slaughter) BESTIES (them) FOR (all) LIFE (meaninglessly)!”   



	27. The Reaper Dressed in Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback light and motive time.

Shuichi walked alone back to the gym where they all agreed to meet after searching the school. He saw even Kaede was here, but only because Rantaro had been the one to go and get her. Shuichi gazed at them both from afar, but could not see himself standing between the two of them. He walked over to Kaito instead. The other boy greeted him with one of his cocky smiles.

  
Shuichi guessed what Rantaro said was true, Kaede, Kaito, Rantaro, any of them would have been fine to him as long as it was somebody to cling to. Because he did not understand what it was to be close to another person. That was why he could not do anything about Rantaro’s feelings about being a useless older brother, or even understand what he meant.

 _I have a step-sister but we don’t really get along._   
  
He realized now how insensitive those words must have sounded in front of Rantaro, if he really was a big brother. Shuichi wondered what that felt like, to be connected. In that household he stayed in, he was the only one that was not connected. Rantaro on the other hand must have been connected by strings that ran deeper than his flesh and blood, then having that person torn away must have been similar to the feeling of having your flesh ripped apart, and then slowly bleeding out from the hole that was left behind.   
  
Until nothing's left behind. When they disappear they take a part of yourself. An emptiness beyond empty, as if your body wants to collapse in on itself. It took genuine strength to be close to others. Shucihi wondered why he had never been that close. _Probably because I’m weak._

He had no idea the source of this fundamental weakness. Distrust towards other human beings? He lived like he had suffered some kind of fatal wound that left him unable to trust others. As far as he could remember though he never suffered any such thing. Nobody had been close enough to betray him. Then, did he think others were persecuting him? Perhaps he felt bullied and ostracized by their gazes, that was why he could not stand the looks of their eyes swirling around him. Eyes peeling open in the clouds of a purple haze, trying to see through the mist, scrutinizing. Tearing him apart. Analyzing. Layer by layer. Seeing inside of him, all the ugly parts. The contents of his belly could spill out on the floor in front of him right now and nobody would care, because they had already seen it.   
  
No, he was just choosing not to trust people. A friend of his was persecuted by the group. Obviously, the right thing to do was stick up for her. Most people don’t. They side with the group. He knew everybody thought Kaede was just a murderer right now but he did not speak up for her sake. He wanted Kaede to smile again but he did not even think of defending her.   
  
Human beings don’t crave connections. They just want people around them. They don’t care who those people are. All that matters is the appearance. The appearance of having friends, the appearance of trusting one another, that was why who other people really were doesn’t matter at all. You could say it doesn’t have any meaning or value.   
  
Then what did Shuichi feel like, anxious, uncertain, unreliable. “There’s nothing sure in this world.” That was about what he felt like. Like this delicate world might crumble away at the slightest nudge. Because it was formed with unsteady lies to begin with. But in reality, that isn’t the world, but himself.   
He was just a defective detective.   
Not trusting anybody, not even himself. He could not even call it individuality, or standing above others. Individuality could go eat some shit. Being different was never a good thing. People talk about _Ultimate Geniuses_ inspired by their tragedies to become elites, but if they were like him they were messed up beyond all belief. Besides, there were plenty of stories of people whose tragedies did not inspire them, iit just made them useless. They’re ordinary, yet broken.   
  
He did not even consider himself in the former category, the latter of being broken in an unspecial and uninteresting way suited him much more. He didn’t trust that Amami, Kaede, Kaito would want him around. He saw no real reason why they would keep around such an inferior person. He knew what a nice girl Kaede was, that Kaito meant well and was rough around the edges, Amami was a rare type nowadays who seemed absolutely loyal to his friends. Not being able to trust them, try as he might, wholeheartedly think of them as friends made him feel filthy.

 

The only reason he had the strength to stand right now was because of what they had given him, and he had yet to give  anything back.

Just being around them, he started to feel guilty.

 

“Something wrong Saihara?” Katio said, leaning over him with a friendly smile.

  
Me.   
Everything.   
Take your pick.   
  
“N-nothing. Ah, sorry didn’t mean to make you worry.”

  
“You’re so silent sometimes. You should try being louder. Puff out your chest and yell,” Kaito said, hitting his hand against his chest.   
  
“If I was as loud as you, we’d have to compete to get others to listen. I like your words a lot more than mine, I’m happy just listening to you..”   
  
Kaito totally missed the soft compliment Shuichi was trying to pay him. “I’d welcome you as my rival.”   
  
“Y-you’re really getting ahead of yourself here....” But that was Kaito for you. Shuichi looked over Kaito’s shoulder to see that Maki was hovering near him, just close enough to keep an eye on him and just far enough away that she did not look like she was standing there together with him. How odd. Kaito was always pestering her but, it had only been a day since when did something change between those two.   
  
“Oh, wait, I still don’t know what this thing does.” Shuichi said, referring to the flash light he had been carrying in a large suitcase at his side.   
  
“If something has you worried then Monokuma will handle it! If you don’t know something, I’ll tell you. If you need help, I’ll help you. If you don’t like something, I’ll fix it. So don’t get rid of it… Please don’t get rid of… me…”

 

Monokuma suddenly appeared yanking the flashlight case out of Shuichi’s hand. Shuichi could only stand and watch in stunned silence. _I feel like I’m being mocked. I mean I’m helpless but… I don’t want to be helped by him._   
  
“Why this is a flashback light. That flashlight doesn’t shed light on darkness, it sheds light on your lost memories. You guys seemed concerned that you couldn’t remember how you came to this school… but with the flashback light you can remember anything.”   
  
“What…? With this light?” Shuichi said.   
  
“So it’s your fault we don’t remember we were kidnapped then, huh?” Kaito joined him, wanting to pick a fight.   
  
“There’s no way that’s possible. If I couldn’t figure out a way to return wiped memories than no one could.” Junko complained in the background almost blowing her cover in front of the rest of the students.   
  
“Or maybe you’re just not as smart as you think you are,” Zenkichi gave a low growl next to her.   
  
“The light it emits stimulates the basal ganglia and hippocampus. Not just that, but physical…phew I didn’t realize how boring it was to explain that.”  Monokuma got bored and started to run off with his stolen flashlight.

 

“Hey! Don’t just give up on explaining after a single sentence!” Kaito yelled at the retreating bear.   
  
“Hey! Don’t get bored, that’s my thing! You’re not nearly as sexy as Kamukura-senpai when he does it!” Junko joined in for entirely different reasons.

 

Murmurs emerged from among the crowd of students whether or not the flash back light could really bring memories back. A few people spoke up, people who were much bolder than Shuichi, people who were capable of speaking up unlike him who wanted to hide himself amongst the crowd. He did not even want to be a part of it, he just wanted to stay hidden.   
  
“You’re all a bunch of fucking dumbasses. There’s no fuckin’ way that thing an treat amnesia. Then again… these aren’t exactly normal circumstances.” Miu shouted over the others.   
  
Korekiyo took Miu’s argument seriously, for once. “So in such an uncanny environment as this, common sense has no place.”   
  
Tsumugi as usual, did not seem to be paying attention to this story and would much rather be in another one. “Well, I man, there are those neuralyzer things. The flashy things from Men in Black…”   
  
“Why are you talking about a movie? This is real life?” Maki coldly dismissed her.   
  
“Y-you’re right, sorry,” Tsumugi apologized.   
  
Listen, some people use fiction to cope.

  
“I.. don’t think we should do it. Because I’m scared it will cause some weird side affects. What do you think Saihara-chan?” Kokichi was the only one who noticed how quiet Shuichi was being. He called out to him, singling him out from the crowd like it was a direct challenge.   
  
“What? Ah, I-” Saihara stuttered.   
  
Kaito standing right next to him, noticed his indecision. He put a hand on Shuichi’s shoulder, as if to say _if you’re weak then I’ll be strong_ , then suddenly acted like he was leader of the whole group. “Alright! Then it’s decided! Let’s use it!”   
  
“Huh? Who decided that? We were all saying how dangerous it was,” Komaru said, who had a good sense for the most popular opinion of the group.

  
Kaito could see, how uncomfortable everybody’s eyes made Shuichi. So, he straightened up like he was stepping up on stage. If they all wanted something to pay attention to, they could watch him instead. Shuichi just needed to hide behind his shoulder. He held both of his shoulders high, and put his hands on his hips, smiling in defiance of it all. “Geez, you guys are way too cautious. I mean, I understand why. We’re in such a weird situation, after all. But.. we can’t win by just running away all the time! If you want to win, you’ve gotta be a little reckless sometimes. If we can’t face this danger, there’s no way we’ll be able to defeat Monokuma.”

  
Komaeda wondered why, hearing his lifelong philosophy said, by an Ultimate who was trying to guide others with his light, did not make him happy at all. Even if he was watching Kaito brilliantly shine from up close, he did not feel any warmth.

  
Korekiyo, seeing the show Kaito was putting on could not help but want to poke a few holes in that act. “Kehehehe, well aren’t you confident? But you’ve no idea how we’re supposed to win, do you?”   
  
Kaito scratched at his spiky hair. “Yeah, I’ve got no clue but still. If you wanna win, you gotta make a stand somewhere or you’ll never move forward.” If something had to be done he would be the one to do it. He stopped caring about the consequences of his actions, if worrying about that would make him hesitate. Anything was better than just doing nothing. He had to keep moving forward as if he was running away from something.

 

Kiibo despite being the most cautious and level headed of the group was easily swayed by his words. “I also agree with Kaito. Our defeat is 100% unless we stand up to this. THat’s… how I feel, deep inside, Just a whisper-” He put a hand on his chest trying to feel something inside, just as his hair antennae moved back and forth.   
  
Kokichi’s face twitched, his usually pleasant looking childish face twisted into a nasty scowl. “You hear it in your ghost? I’m pretty sure robots don’t have ghosts though.”   
  
“Leave me alone.” Keebo said, recoiling defensively.

  
“I shall stay as well. I suspect I will be able to observe something most interesting,” Korekiyo crossed his arms deciding already.

  
“I-I… I’ll stay behind too.” Shuichi finally spoke up after most of the group had already done so.

 

The moment Shuichi flicked on the light.  
The world.   
Warped.   
_Friends. Family. Class. Interest. Moonlight. Water. Weak. Name. Birthdate. Weak._ _  
_ _Finals. Class. Family. Connections. Emotions. Unsure. Worst. Worst. Weak._ _  
_ _Defective. Human Failure. Curious. Detective. Truth._

 

A lightning bolt in his mind shattered his consciousness like shrapnel. It was like a film strip had been pulled out of his psyche, but apart, and then reassembled and glued back together again frame by frame in the proper order.

 

“I… remember… I remember now!”

 

He was running away. He had been running this entire time. From the Ultimate Hunt. Protestors mobbed hope’s peak academy and completely overran the school. Those remaining with Ultimate Talents were hunted down. They were not safe anywhere. Even after the school had been shut down and preparations had been made to allow the Ultimates to flee and go into hiding it was not enough. Eventually… he had no place else to run.   
  
He was cornered. The world hated him for being alive. To escape from the Ultimate Hunt… He threw away his Ultimate Talent to live as a normal high school student. By erasing his talent and his memories he no longer had any reason to be hunted.   
  
If he didn’t do what he did, he would have been captured, a fate worse than death. He chose to gamble with a new technology which originated from a particular village. Technology that could put your memories to sleep by controlling your brain waves. He used that to hibernate all the memories relating to his talent.   
  
Or at least those that was what the memories running through his mind told him. People lie to themselves all the time, and yet they never suspect their own memories could be lies.

“Amami-kun, you know what the Ultimate Hunt is don’t you? How did you remember it before anyone else?” Komaeda, rather than Shuichi was the first to talk and remember that point. 

Rantaro still had his head turned away from every to stand in front of Kaede. He looked like he was shielding her from something. He put his hand on his neck, an empty gesture, an said. “Ah, sorry guys. I don’t know what the Ultimate Hunt is. I just remembered hearing those words for some reason.”

“Why are you lying in front of everyone? That’s not supposed to be your talent. In fact, you still haven’t explained to us… what you were doing that day, or why you were holding your monopad. Why did someone useless like you survive again?” Komaeda knew Rantaro was hiding something. He had no idea how to get that information out of him. He had no idea how to trust others. He was weak to, so he just tried to force it.   
  
Even then none of Komaeda’s bottled up feelings spilling forth seemed to reach Rantaro. “I’ve been asking the same question this entire time…”

Komaeda looked down at his hand as his fingers curled together. _I… wanted to say that._ Because he had no talent besides luck, and he was not even a beacon that could inspire others like Naegi Makoto, he felt he was the only one who had the right to ask why a useless person like himself kept surviving, why he was here to begin with, those questions were his. If a person with talent could ask that, then what did that make his? His suffering would just be meaningless, and most of all boring to others.   
  
Kaito’s shouting broke Komaeda self reflection like a rock thrown at a mirror. “Hey! We’ve got no choice but to trust him. We just gotta work together. If we cooperate, we’ll make it out of here alive. It’s just as Akamatsu-san said, and if she won’t say it anymore I will for her.”   
  
Kaito looked to Kaede, but Kaede just shied away hiding behind Rantaro. “I… I can’t say those things anymore. I couldn’t stand it if a murderer like me, was forgiven by you guys.”

Kokichi interrupted her, “Snore. I’m snoooooring!”   
  
Kaito stood tall over the sleepy brat. “Hey, Ouma! We’re having a serious conversation here.”   
  
“And is it written somewhere that I have to take conversations seriously?” Kokichi only folded his hands behind his head and leaned back to look up at Kaito.   
  
“Tch, quit acting so immature!”   
  
“Hm? I’m a teenager… so duh, I’m immature. Aren’t you guys forgetting to act your age?” Kokichi said as he stood up on his toes and grabbed Kaito by the goatee that he had only grown to look more mature when he was around the other astronauts. Kokichi let go and continued. “What were you all talking about? SOmething about working together to escape, right? Let’s just ask the mastermind hiding among us!”   
  
“A-are you already going senile? I thought we agreed that there is no mastermind?” Miu stammered in surprise. She, really did fall for Kokichi’s antics far too easily.   
  
“Hm, oh yeah. We did, didn’t we? If we tried to sniff out a mastermind again, we’d just repeat Akamatsu-chan’s screwup. Hey, Akamatsu-chan how come you’re being quiet right now? We’re all still your friends, right? Do you not like us any more? Come on, tell us what it’s like to keep living being such a huge screw up.”

“Y-you guys shouldn’t be friends with a murderer like me…” Kaede quietly murmured, avoiding everybody’s eyes. 

“Oh, boy is self pity really the most interesting reaction you can come up with? If you’re sad do you have to do it in such a boring and typical way.” Kokichi pressed on her even further.   
  
Kaito grabbed Kokichi by the scarf and lifted him him off his feet. “You’d better quit messing around!”   
  
That was another time Shuichi could have spoken up for Kaede but ultimately said nothing, he just let Kaito do it because Kaito was the stronger one.   
  
Kokichi sat there, his feet dangling in the air but even then his face did not change at all. “Eh? You think I’m messing around right now? Aw man, you don’t really get it. I’m trying to get this through to everyone… If you keep saying all this uplifting stuff about working together and cooperating… then you can expect to receive some painful retaliation. Get it?”

“No, I don’t.”  
  
“I’m saying you’re painting a target on the back of that coat of yours. You’re so tall, you want to stand  in front of others, and shield them with your back, so brave, so cool! But you know if you do that you’re only going to get hurt twice as much.”   
  
“Don’t suddenly pretend you care about people,” Kaito said in a low voice.   
  
“Hey, at least I have the decency to pretend.” Even with a hand around his neck, Kokichi’s smile was genuine. Shuichi had no idea what kind of person Kokichi could be, to show such a beautiful smile. It was like no matter what emotions other people filled him with, he could empty them all out and keep smiling.  
  
If he responded with a smile then he was in control. He remembered what Kokichi said to him, just hit the reset button on your own feelings. To Shuichi that was impossible, he no longer remembered what it was like from before he saw those awful eyes staring at him with resentment. He did not know what it was like to not live in fear anymore. Those emotions clung to him like dirt, never washing away.   
  
There was no way  he would ever understand Kokichi. Then again, Kokichi was saying all of this so he would remain an individual apart from the group. He did not want them to band together, he did not want them to have allies, so he spent so much time sewing the seeds of conflict among them. That was what Shuichi had done for so long as well, living his life avoiding everybody.

They were both alone. It was probably not because they did not want to be with others, it was just that they couldn’t. They were disconnected from everybody else. Shuichi could not understand Kokichi, but they were alike.

Kaito and Kokichi’s argument never reached a boiling point, because they were interrupted. A loud crash sounded, quieting everybody else. Shuichi wondered why Kaito and kokichi suddenly were both staring at him. They looked taller, as if he were looking at the world from a different angle. The side of his head hurt, and for some reason he could not think clearly. He rolled his head to the side, still not understanding where that noise came from.   
  
Saihara Shuichi experienced a slightly different effect from the rest of those exposed to the flashback light. Even more memories flooded into his consciousness. His head suddenly became so heavy, that he drifted forward until he fell. As he fell though he forgot he was a human being in a body. He had no idea why all the others were looking at him so strange.   
  
There was no longer any sight, or sound, there was only colors, and ringing in his ears. He only felt the sensation of sinking.   
  
_“Why do you always dress yourself  in black. It’s so weird and miserable looking. But misery suits you doesn’t it? Nobody wanted to take you in so you’re here. Your birth parents the people who are obligated to want you, didn’t even bother. You can’t run away to your friends either because don’t have any. See? There’s no place for you in this world.”_

His step sister was already there when he arrived at his Uncle’s house. When he arrived, there was already a family there. The only one who not connected to anything in this household was him. From the day he moved in he got the sense that he was inconveniencing his uncle. An unwanted guest. He was taking a room up in that household without paying any rent. It started to infect his outside life too, as no matter where he went, when he was around groups of others he was filled with the same unpleasant feeling of being in his uncle’s house. It was as if his heart never left there.

 _“Do you think it’s fair to blame everything on your parents leaving you?”_   
  
His step sister. Earlier when Rantaro asked him about it, he could not put her into words at all. He had been trying to forget, to bury her place in his memories. She was almost his complete opposite. Shuichi never knew what to say around others, so he just kept quiet hoping he would not become a nuisance.

 _“It’s wrong to hate people just because they’re fortunate. They didn’t do anything wrong. At the same time most unfortunate people end up hated.”_   
  
His step sister always said what others wanted to hear. She changed herself, from moment to moment, to be what they desired of her. Others often pitied her thinking she was weak willed and influenced too easily, but in truth the people she seemed so desperate to please were always around her, protecting her. She was a natural born people pleaser. She was passive, rather than active. She would never intentionally do anything to hurt others. 

_“So, if you think about it whether you’re happy or not. Whether you’re surrounded by good friends, or not it’s all on you isn’t it? If you’re so lonely why don’t you just go talk to others? If you’re insecure why don’t you try to better yourself?”  
_  
But, she was like a beautiful cracked vase that someone had put flowers in. Everybody distracted by the colorful flowers and their pleasant smell, did not notice the water spilling from the cracks. They tried to fill her up, but no matter how much you poured into her she would never be filled.

Shuichi did not hate her for it. He thought she was a better person than him. Unlike his uncle who always seemed to be bothered by his presence, his sister was perfect at changing her personality to whatever would please uncle most at the moment. She had a family, confident and decisive unlike Shuichi, and she was never afraid of the people around her, she moved them according to her will rather than running away from them.

_“There are people who were abandoned just like you were. They have friends when you don’t. They work hard when you can’t work hard. They’re happy when you’re miserable. It must be because they’re better people they can do all those things. All you know how to do is be miserable and alone.”_

He agreed with her beautiful and happy people existed in this world when he was miserable, was because they were better people than him, who had earned their happiness. He always saw groups of people in his class, being able to laugh together, like they existed in a world entirely different from him. He only knew the world of loneliness. He always saw his sister as belonging among the beautiful people, someone who should have been happy. They should have been worlds apart.   
  
Yet one day his sister, the natural people pleaser, the one one always surrounded by smiling people, held both sides of his face so he could not look away, and said those ugly words.

“You can’t be with anybody. You can’t give them anything. You don’t belong anywhere in this world..”  
  
She said, with a smile her lips parting to reveal teeth that gleamed like a row of knives.   
  
“That’s why, we’re totally the same right?”   
He could not believe it, because his sister was always surrounded by others. She was well liked. She was someone extraordinary. But his sister was able to become exactly what others needed her to be. She changed herself based on what others wanted. What they all loved was probably just, their own desires projected onto her.   
  
Shuichi could not even say she was a liar. It was more like she concealed her true self at all times, by wearing a completely white featureless mask, and people all on their own had drawn on whatever ears, nose, eyes, and mouth they wanted in whatever color they pleased. People lied to themselves about her, and she just did not bother to correct them.  
  
They saw the beautiful flowers in her vase. They were distracted, and they did not notice that slowly everything was draining out of her, falling through the cracks. By the time they noticed she was empty, her flowers would have already withered.   
  
She revealed her true colors to him. They were not particularly beautiful, or ugly, it was not like she had some hidden cruel side, if it were the twist about a character in a story it would almost be disappointing. She was just a lonely girl.   
  
She was so dependent on others. The extent of her need was, in a world horrible. When others wanted her to, she would even change the color and length of her own hair, how she dressed, and her way of speaking.   
  
The only one who could listen to her after all this time was him. They were not real siblings, they were not even friends, and she always called him defective when they were alone together. He was the only one she was never kind to, but that was because from the moment she saw him she knew he did not belong anywhere either. He was defective in the same way she was.   
  
“You don’t belong anywhere, but you can belong with me.”   
  
After saying nothing but cruel words, she curled up against him and asked him to pat her head and stroke her hair. She looked like she was hiding behind him. Shuichi tried to recall, what her face looked like in that moment, if she was crying or not, but all he could remember was a faceless girl.

He had forgotten the face of his own step sister.   
Somehow, being faceless suited her more than any face he could imagine.   
What a cruel thing to think about his step sister.

He wondered if he was trying to bury her again. If she was the one he was always trying to run away and hide from.   
His head rolled to the side.   
He saw the blurry image of a boy standing there wearing a hat to conceal his eyes.   
That boy without any eyes, spoke in his voice.

  
“You always run cling to others, because you’re scared of being left alone with me, isn’t that right?”

 

Saihara Shuichi finally lost consciousness, a missing part of his memories returned by the flash back light overwhelming everything else, including his perception of the world, and himself.

 

🧸

 

When Shuichi regained consciousness, the first thing he realized was that he was alone, and scared. Then he heard voices from outside his bedroom door and his heart felt comforted.  
  
“See, you didn’t think about how watching the flashback light would affect others at all, and because of it Saihara-kun got hurt. I suppose it’s fine if other people pay the consequences of your recklessness.” Kaito was being lectured by a cold voice, oh it was Maki’s.   
  
“Hey, you’re being harsh. Nobody else fainted, and I carried him back.” He heard Kaito’s voice. Oh, Kaito carried him back, how kind of him.

  
“You have to take responsibility for your own idiocy. You can’t run away from it.”   
  
“I’d never run away. Not from my idiot self! I mean hey, you didn’t have to phrase it like that!” Kaito sounded a little bit flustered, and he was getting worked up while Maki stayed cold as ever, but at the same time he seemed like he was enjoying himself.

 

Even Maki found somebody.   
_Everybody can find somebody but me…_   
Shuichi lamented all to himself, his head full to bursting, and half sick from the memories he was forced to recall. It was as if besides remembering how he got to this school, at the same time he was remembering, the person he was, before he came to this school.   
  
He sat up and noticed an entire night had passed while he was in the sleepless dream of those hazy and feverish memories passing like shifting and flickering lights before his eyes. Whenever he was in bed after something bad happened, part of him just wanted to lie there because if he never left his room things would never get worse, but he picked himself up anyway. He got changed and prepared himself to go outside when he noticed there was another monopad sitting on his desk.   
  
Actually, this one was many colors rather than black and white. It was a kubs pad. When he touched the screen, the device came to life and started playing a video.   
  
Saihara Shuichi’s   
MOTIVE VIDEO   
  
The words flashed by and an electronic voice chirped out. “Alright! Back by popular demand, it’s time for the motive video! Who’s the _person you regret losing the most in your life?_ And now, without further ado...Saihara Shuichi the Ultimate Detective Thanks to his exceptional talent, this young man solved a case on his own! Wow!  It’s too bad he did the right thing and solved a murder case but, the culprit was only trying to avenge his loved ones. You got to be hailed as a young prodigy while the culprit died sick and alone in his prison cell. Isn’t it so hard, being the one who has to live with his regrets? If you want, we could bring him back to life! A once in a lifetime offer (LOL) to raise the dead for your sake!”

 

“...What?”  
  
Shuichi knew the video could not talk back to him, but it continued on as if it expected him to say what at this moment. “This isn’t a monkey’s paw situation. It’s a one hundred percent genuine offer! As seen on TV! All you need is one easy payment of murder! But… maybe you don’t care that much about the man you unjustly put away. Maybe, the friends you made in this killing game are somehow more important to you than anybody outside this school.”   
  
“...”   


  
“Then, you could revive Kirigiri and fix Kaede’s regrets for her. She wouldn’t be a murderer anymore, her crimes would disappear you could save her! Or, you could revive Kumagawa so Rantaro doesn’t have to feel guilty that he was not the one who died. And as you make a wish, the bear’s paw curls up. Puhuhuhuhu!”   
  
“What… Was that? A motive video? The second motive?” He was about to drift off into thought, when he realized it was already morning and Kaito either waited out by his door all night, or got up early just to check if he was okay. “Ah, I’ll think about that stuff later! I should hurry and tell Momota-kun!”   
  
When he opened the door, Maki and Kaito had already left. They must have heard him moving around inside and saw that he was okay. He looked at the mostly empty dorms and then ran outside hoping to tell them o this strange development.   
  
The first person he ran into was Keebo.   
  
“Keebo! Have you see, mo-”   
  
“Impeccable timing, Saihara-kun! I was on my way to get you! Everyone is gathering in the dining hall. Please, right this way! I’ll get everyone else.”   
  
_Everyone?_ _  
_ _Was this about the videos?_   
  
When he made it to the dining room, Kaito was not there.He only saw Korekiyo, Zenkichi, Junko, Tsumugi, and Komaeda present.   
  
“Guys, have you seen…?”   
  
“You seem in a panic. Keheh… Over the Kubs Pad if I’m not mistaken.”   
  
“Wait, we agreed to wait until Kaito and Keebo gathered everyone. If you’re getting too tense I can give you a mssage man.” Zenkichi volunteered.   
  
“THank you for waiting, we gathered everyone!” Keebo said, right as Zenkichi finally made it to Korekiyo’s side.   
  
Korekiyo sighed. “My word, and after I was about to finally experience one of Hitoyoshi’s famed massages.”   
  
Shuichi had not even heard that Zenkichi was giving out massages to stressed people. What was that guy? Some kind o super butler or something? Everybody was ordering him around lately like he was.   


“So what is it? Why did you drag us here?” Maki said, looking as unamused at the prospect of being dragged around by Kaito as always.   
  
“Didn’t I tell you? It’s about the Kubs Pads. Monokuma gave us a new motive. We can’t not talk about it.” Kaito said.

  
“You haven’t watched yet?”   
  
“I assumed it was something so stupid that it wasn’t even worth watching.”   
  
Kokichi got in between Maki and Kaito, popping up like one of those whack a moles. “So what’s on these videos again?”   
  
“They all claim to be able to revive one of your loved ones who has died, all you have to do is commit a murder. It’s all a bunch of bullshit. We should just grab all the pads and destroy them before they become a motive.”   
  
Actually, Kaito since they were monokub pads, it was a bunch of bear shit.   


Komaeda crossed his arms and spoke up. “You’re contradicting what you said earlier.  I think the best option is if we all look at each other’s pads. That way there will be no secrets and everybody will know. We can face the despair together.”  
  
Komaeda had said those words, genuinely, from the bottom of his heart wanting to inspire everyone to work together like Kaito did. Just as always, it did not work at all. “Quit messing around.” Kaito raised a fist, which caused the gentle Komaeda to flinch. “You were saying something like that before… that you don’t plan on surviving. It might not matter to you whether you kill, or get killed, or whatever but… we’re different! We all want to live! Wake up already! You’re like some zombie wandering around with no will to live!”   
  
“The opinion of someone so far below you like me, has little to do with you…It shouldn’t affect you so much.” Komaeda said, averting his eyes. He had no idea why Kaito was so against showing everyone, everyone’s Monokuma Paw motive videos when before he had been arguing they should do the exact same thing with the flashback light.

 

“Actually… I feel the same way as Komaeda! Especially since we’re besties and all.”

 

“Kokichi.” Keebo said, “Are you just trying to cause trouble again?”  
  
“Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not saying we shouldn’t care about killing or dying. But I think it’d be better if we didn’t cooperate with each other. Actually we definitely shouldn’t cooperate with each other!” Kokichi suddenly pulled his hands against his chest like he was making an impassioned speech. It was the exact same argument he had been having with Kaito yesterday.   
  


“If we don’t trust each other another murder’s going to happen! It’s like you want the game to continue.”  


“I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth. In act, I don’t want your mouth anywhere near mine.” Kokichi smiled at Kaito, a finger on his lips. A smile that rejected all of him. “Think back to all of Monokuma’s actions so far. Whenever we tried to work together Monokuma retaliated with a plan that made us all suffer. It happened when Kaede wanted us to cooperate, and again with these motive videos, right? Which means the more we try to cooperate, the more he’ll try to make us suffer. That’s why I had no choice but to screw with you guys. But you ingrates didn’t even notice.”

 

“And you’re not lying to us right now?” Shuichi asked.  
He did not even need to ask. He already knew the answer.   
He was starting to wonder if Kokichi told lies.   
Just for Shuichi to hear.   
Even if it was egotistical.   
A biased assumption.   
He could not help but think, to know, to intuit.

Because he wanted Shuichi to see through those lies.   
He wanted Shuichi to understand.   
The boy who looked like he was afraid of being understood by anyone.   
Because they were opposites.   
If you flipped him around, and pulled him inside out he would become Kokichi.   
He was beginning to suspect lately.   
The reason he wore all black.   
The reason he dressed himself in misery.   
Was because he wanted things to be this way.   
The reason why he became a detective who solved homicide cases.   
Was because he wanted murders to happen.   
It was only after someone was killed that he became useful.   
Everyone relied on him then.   
When she saw Kumagawa’s body, Kaede leaned on him for support the entire time.   
The people he wanted to be.   
Kaito and Kaede.   
The person he did not want to be at any cost.   
Kokichi.   
The one he wanted to reject.   
His opposite.

He was the reaper dressed in black, who was only useful among the dead.   
Kokichi dressed in white smiled at him, and Shuichi saw his determination to live.   
Both as one, one as both.   
He was jekyll, and he was hyde.   
Minds of black and white, of yin and yang.   
The defective detective and the flawless liar.   
The boy with the weak heart and the boy with no heart at all.   
  
“Whether I’m lying or not, what I’m saying is still true. Anyway, we shouldn’t force ourselves to cooperate. Let’s just all do our own thing. Well, I’ll hit up Hitoyoshi-kun if I’m hungry later. I can’t afford to be seen with you losers anymore.” Kokichi was the first to leave.   


Shuichi did not even go after him. He did not say a single thing. He probably disappointed Kokichi’s expectations again.   
  
“Our cooperation is the number one factor of our suffering, is it? Kehehe… I wonder… how will this turn out? I will observe with great interest. Hitoyoshi-kun. Come with me and help me record my observations. I trust you to do it properly.” Korekiyo said, grabbing Zenkichi and dragging him away from Junko.

  
“Wow, everyone’s just walking over Hitoyoshi-kun lately. He’s even more spineless than I am…” Tsumugi commented.   
  
In the end, Shuichi and the others that stayed behind mixed in all the various half finished breakfasts Zenkichi was trying to prepare into a tripe hot pot, for a quirky taste on breakfast. A hot pot party without Enoshima Junko around.   
  
Shuichi looked up and noticed, neither Rantaro or Kaede had come to breakfast today just like yesterday. _What can we do to work together as a group? I wish I could do something on my own but that’s impossible… I don’t want Kaede to burden herself by thinking she has to save everyone all alone but… if I screw up it’ll be just like what happened with her._ _  
_ _  
_ “I did it again. I can’t keep these thoughts out of my head…” 

_I promised her didn’t I?  
_ _She’s right there why can’t I do anything?”_

Shuichi looked down the hall to the music room.   
Kaede was still alive, as long as she was still alive there was always a chance.   
_If so, I- if so, I._ _  
_ _I need to do my best too._ _  
_ _Like Kaito._ _  
_ _Like Kaede.  
_ _For Kaito.  
For Kaede.   
_ _I'm sure if there's still time I can learn how to live.  
_ _I don't need to spend my entire life living as this person.  
I can be someone else.  
I can be someone capable of helping Rantaro.   
_ _Enough already; I’ll stop acting like this me._ _  
_ _Sulking, jealous, gloomy  
_ _I’ll stop being responsible for my misery.  
Like step-sister said, if I wanted to change I'd change...   
If I wanted to have friends I wouldn't let them go so easily.  _

There was a question he wanted to ask Kaede.  
“Is it okay for me to keep on living?”   
But he was too afraid to hear the answer.   
His motivation to leave his old self behind and go to the music room died right there.   
It left a fresh corpse

Apparently Kaito had heard him mutter though, because suddenly he was looking at Shuichi with a shocked expression.

“Come on man. Don’t say stuff like that…” Kaito said, as he reached out and grabbed Shuichi by the forearm. “If you’re afraid to take the first step, then I’ll just pull you forward!”

 


	28. Silver Earrings

Amami Rantaro was like a plant.    
He wasn’t temperamental, and he was always calm. Even when he nearly died, that didn’t change him not even a little. Rather than deciding to forgive her, it was like he lacked the capacity for the emotion called anger. At least he could not feel anger over anything that had been done to himself. As if he had no sense of self that he needed to protect. He treated everyone as more important, more precious than himself. When she thought of him, she saw his gentle smile, and experienced the same feeling as being gently nudged away by a few soft rays of sunlight.    
  
He never seemed to change no matter what wind blew his way. It only caused his branches to rustle, and the silver piercings hanging off his ear to laugh softly like windchimes. 

  
That was why, it was comfortable to be around him. If you were to sit in the middle of a garden, you could appreciate it’s beauty all you wanted, she could even compose a song to describe what she was feeling. In the end though, the music, nor her feelings would reach the garden. The garden, and nature as a whole was utterly indifferent to her.    
  
Amami’s nature to the core of his being was indifference. He was indifferent to himself, or indifferent to others. It was not that he did not care, but rather he did not let his feelings dictate his actions. He was able to keep what he felt, and how he acted as two different categories as if he were separating parts of himself into boxes. That was what made him the opposite of both Shuichi and Kaede, whose emotions always interfered in their actions.    
  
Kaede was happy that he was indifferent to her. He was not spending time with her because he wanted to be kind. He was not protecting her because he thought she was weak. He neither judged her, nor pitied her. Kaede was in a fragile state, she did not want to be scorned by everyone as a murderer, but the idea of being forgiven was even worse. Even if her murder plan had failed, she had crossed the line and brought herself to commit murder. In her mind there was no going back, she was no longer the Kaede she once was. If somebody accepted this version of her, then she might convince herself it was alright to commit murder again. Komaeda’s words still haunted her mind like he was a shinigami continuously appearing in the edge of her vision. All acts of murder no matter what the reason were completely intolerable. She thought it was better, to hate herself now to the point of inaction so she would never do something wrong again than to leave this room and repeat her mistakes.    
  
Amami accepted all of those conflicting emotions, all of her, as is. As long as she was around Amami, her sense of self could be maintained. She had not been expecting to live long after committing herself to the murder, she wanted to die and leave everything to shuichi but she was unexpectedly alive and had to keep living. Life did not stop at tragedies. If she was around Amami who did not forgive her, the weight of his forgiveness would cause her not to crumble.    
  
But, since when had she become so weak?   
_ This is how it always is with you, if you miss one single note you start over.  _ _   
_ _ It wasn’t enough for you to support Shuichi, or to survive you have to save everyone.  _ _   
_ _ You reject everything that isn’t the perfect result and all of your strength disappears.  _ _   
_ _ You’re not scared of hurting others.  _ _   
_ _ This is just the ego of a crumbling perfectionist. _

 

She did not hear music anymore, just the voice of someone who sounded almost exactly like her, whispering in her ears. She tried not to listen, because she was talking with Rantaro.    
  
“Akamatsu-san, I remember you saying that we should all be friends after we get out. Are you still serious about that?” Amami said, getting straight to the heart of the matter. She had a feeling even if he saw her naked, Amami would not get flustered and look away, nor would he try to check her out, he would just keep looking into her eyes and talking like normal.    
  
“Yes, of course! Despite these circumstances…” She spoke vaguely, unable to face her guilt. “I’m happy to have met everyone. I’ll always treasure that.”   
  
“...I see,” He responded, distant as usual.    
  
Kaede leaned in. They were both sitting on the piano bench, but like last time they were some distance apart, a tray of tea in between them. She reached over it, and poked him between his eyes. “H-huh? You don’t seem too enthusiastic about that idea, Amami-kun.”   
  
“No, it’s not that… I would be really happy if I could become friends with you and everyone else.” Rantaro raised his hands playing innocent as usual. “But… I don’t know what my own Ultimate Talent is. What if it’s not something to be proud of? Or some kind of useless talent… Or even worse a talent that would make everyone hate me?” Not knowing who you were was a perfectly normal thing to be insecure about. In fact, Amami who considered himself to be quite soft was sure those were his real feelings, but he was playing them up to see how Kaede would react.    
  
“Useless? Make everyone hate you? How would a talent like that even work?” Kaede said, looking at him in disbelief.    
  
“I dunno, I could be the Ultimate Murderous Fiend for all you know.”   
  
“M-murderous fiend? I doubt it. That would mess up this whole killing game.” This is called dramatic irony, dark Kaede, the author condescending remarks.    
  
“It could be the reason why my memory was wiped, y’know?” 

  
“N-now way… Amami-kun definitely would not have that kind of talent! I won’t accept it!” For a moment it seemed like the old Kaede had returned, as she forcefully disagreed with him. “Oh! But the opposite could be possible too!”   
  
“The… opposite?”   
  
“Maybe you’re the Ultimate Mystery Writer and if your memory wasn’t wiped, you’d solve all this!”

  
“But, Saihara-kun’s the Ultimate Detective, and he didn’t get his memory wiped.”    
  
“I-I’m sure there’s a reason for that… Maybe you’re better at deducing than Saihara-kun is?”    
  
“Haha, oh come on! Don’t be mean to Saihara-kun!” Amami observes, even though he is the one who is next to Kaede, her mind keeps drifting back to Shuichi. It was like his presence was an invisible ghost in the room both of them could feel. Not that he was jealous, it just made him want to laugh, and tease Kaede a little more.   
  
Kaede puffed up her already round cheeks and gives him a fierce glare. “Y-you’re the one who made me say it!” Even when she pouted she had a fierce look about her.    
  
Kaede looked like she was doing better after yesterday, perhaps if he talked to her every day she would regain her confidence again. That was not his intention. This shame of a conversation, was all about just trying to keep up appearances.    
  
It’s all so hollow. Worse than hollow - it’s pathetic. Akamatsu Kaede had almost killed him, and her actions had started the killing game. The situation had changed, there’s no going back to the old Kaede. They should not be able to slide smoothly back into talking like they were friends trying to escape together after only two days. No way.    
  
The easygoing atmosphere was just a fiction on Amami’s part, it was intentionally created by him. He could destroy it just as easily. “But you don’t know that for sure. You’re just assuming I’m a good person.” 

  
“What?”   
  
“You don’t know the reasons I was in the library that night and I still haven’t told you. Even if you disprove logically that I’m the mastermind, you don’t know anything about me. You don’t even know about the situation. For example, the mastermind could have an accomplice hidden among us.” His eyes, covered in black rings that looked sunken into his skull, sunk deeper and deeper into the darkness.    
  
“Amami-kun, how do you know all that?”    
  
  


 

“How do I know? Perhaps, I’m that accomplice. Maybe my own reason for getting close to you is just to confess my sins. You don’t know is my point, you never once understood me.” She just accepted that he was coming to visit her. Her understanding of him was as shallow as a puddle that was left after it was already raining, and that was why it could be broken so easily as a child jumping in it.

 

“There’s no way you could trust someone you knew so little about.” He asked the question he knew would shatter her into pieces. “Do you really even trust me?” 

 

Amami Rantaro was still soft. Shattering Kaede like that, he feels a piece of himself break in return. Immediately, he wants to say he was just joking again and go back to the light hearted conversation they were having.   
  
But…    
He was still soft. He had not entirely rid himself of the boy he was before he got his ears pierced. The boy who believed just being a kind older brother was enough. That was why hurting others on purpose brought him pain. Just like when he deliberately chose to say to Shuichi yesterday, words that he knew would drive him off. Being around others was just pain, but every single person without exception craved it regardless.    
  
Suffering must have been programmed into human DNA. That was Rantaro’s assessment. Being human was struggling, hesitating and suffering. That was why he could not afford to be human. 

 

He was soft, he knew it. He was the type of person who was kind because, the idea of hurting someone was too much for him to bear. In the past, he had a gentle heart incapable of malice. But that was exactly why he needed to throw his heart away. His soft self, was responsible for everything that had gone wrong. That was why more than anything else he needed to destroy his soft self.    
  
He might have even killed someone already, if it was a way to strangle his own self.   
But, because of the rules of the killing game that was an unfeasible option.    
He needed to transcend himself.    
He liked Shuichi and Kaede, if they met him in a past life they would have been good friends.    
But if he needed to become the type of person to betray his friends to achieve his goal.    
Then become a traitor he would. 

Once his heart was gone, he hoped, he could put this empty self of his to best use.   
  
He looked at Kaede still looking back at him with tears in her eyes. There was no need for him to say hurtful things. But, there was no reason not to do it either. What sort of traitor was he, if he was not prepared to stomp all over her feelings?    
Kaede was acting like her life was pretty much over anyway. So, he could mess with it a little more. 

“Well, whether you trust me or not is irrelevant. Judging by your actions, the person who’s untrustworthy in this room is you. Somebody who can’t trust themselves, has no right trusting others to begin with.” 

 

_ This is ridiculous. Tearing her apart verbally like this brings me no pleasure, only shame. I just feel even more self loathing than usual.  _

 

He had to discard all his emotions, even the most trivial. 

 

_ All the same I have to get closer to these two by tearing down their walls.  _

 

The easiest way to get close to see their true selves and accept them anyway. There was a difference however, between gently encouraging them to show themselves to you and tearing their masks off. 

  
But. His chest still hurt.    
He reached up and touched his earrings. The silver earrings number thirteen in total, seven on one ear and six on the other. Back when his parents controlled every way he acted and dressed, these earrings were the only choice he made for himself. He just wanted to put holes in his body.    
  
There was a time he was a dutiful son without a hint of rebellion in him. He was not a person, he fully considered himself to be just one of the many possessions that his parents had collected in their mansion. It was hard, he had to study, be at the top of his class, have several private tutors, and learn music, horseback riding, and politics on top of that. His parents demanded everything out of him, because he was their family’s representative in high society. He did the work anyway and never complained once.    
  
The self that he showed to everyone else belonged to his parents. He considered his real self to be, that of a gentle older brother. His parents had another child besides him, a younger sister. Unlike him who they poured all of their effort and attention into shaping, their parents paid her no attention at all. They only considered her a backup if the first born son died, or was defective somehow.    
  
That was why her only real family was her big brother, who paid attention to her despite having no time for himself. His younger sister also accepted him, unlike his parents he did not have to be somebody else to earn her love. He thought all the hard work was worth it, for the few moments of respite he had with his sister, and his sister thought the absolute world of her older brother and started to follow him around everywhere.    
  
Rantaro started to get a big head and thought the reason why he worked so hard as the heir of the family, was that so his younger sibling would not have to ever go through the same torture. He thought he was enduring it for her sake. Then one day, his sister vanished.    
Older siblings are born first to protect their younger sibling. Rantaro thought the reason he was born into this world was to be with his sister, but he never protected her not even once. She disappeared while he was watching. He fell to his knees begging his father to use their money and resources to find her.    
  
“I’ll obey your every order from now on. I won’t spend time with her anymore. I’ll make us richer than the Togamis. I’ll be the Ultimate Heir if you need me to be, just please…”    
  
He had no idea what his father’s eyes looked like, because he had stopped being able to see his face. Rantaro hoped he looked nothing like his father or mother, the only one he wanted to resemble in his family was his sibling. “But, we already have you? Why do we need to waste money on a backup?”    
  
If Amami Rantaro was determined, he could have stolen money from his father and searched for her anyway. If he was strong, he could have killed his father and succeeded his family earlier, and sank all their money into finding her. If he was the kind of person who did the right thing, he could have rebelled against his father in some way.    
  
But Amami Rantaro was soft. He weakly bowed his head to his father again, and apologized for wasting his time. Instead of looking for his sister right away, he tried to drown out his pain, thinking that becoming a playboy and being seen with many women would ruin the reputation his parents worked so hard to cultivate in him. But in the end that was just self indulgence. He was just distracting himself. 

 

Amami Rantaro was soft, and always gentle, and that was why he did nothing when his sister disappeared.  _ Unforgivable. Unforgivable. Unforgivable. Unforgivable.  _ That was why he needed to destroy his soft self. He would destroy everything that made him useless when his sister needed him the most, and escape from this place.    
  
Even if that meant when he finally found his sister again she would no longer recognize who he was. 

 

_ Unfortunately, my self destruction is metaphorical and I have no intention of killing myself which means I’m still alive, and real life continues even after tragedy. The tale of Amami Ranaro is already over. I need to bring an end to Amami Rantaro’s humanity.  _ _   
_ _ That’s why I’ve come to this school. _   
  


He was not the kind of person who could kill themselves for the sake of doing what they thought was right for the world. He was not even like Kaede who could become the thing she hated most, a murderer, in order to save everybody else in this class. 

  
  


_ Sorry, but my heart is already full with the people I love. They’re the ones I’m doing this for. I wish I was like you, Kaede... but this is all for a lame reason like that. I want to finally be a good big brother.  _   
  
‘Y-you’re just joking again, right?” Kaede stuttered in disbelief. 

 

“Okay, you got me. Sorry, I know I’m teasing you.” Rnataro’s cold demeanor disappeared in a second, and he was back to his usual self.    
  
He had almost died in the first round over a careless mistake when there were people out there, lost and missing, waiting for their big brother to come. That was why he was going to surround himself with the two biggest players in the game Kaede and Shuichi. All he needed Kaede to do was go back to talking about light hearted nonsense and continue depending on him.    
  
“No, you’re not joking.” Kaede’s eyes were firm. That girl did not have any softness at all. “You were being mean right now, and maybe you’re hiding a secret from me, but even if I can’t trust you I still want to be friends with you.”    
  
What?   
He was sure he had been perfect.    
  
“Thank you. I also want to get out of here soon, so I can become friends with you all, y’know.”   
  
“N-no, I don’t think that’s true Amami-kun. You’re acting differently today, maybe it’s because you got your motive this morning and realized there’s somebody outside this school you care about more than me and Saihara-kun. Of course you’d feel that way but, I don’t want you to become a murderer like me. I can’t stand the idea of you hating yourself.”    
  
No.   
Kaede was supposed to accept the comfortable lie about him, that he was kind and gentle. She was not supposed to see the truth. He did not want her chasing after the real him. The person he wanted to kill.    
  
Kaede threw her backpack off herself and dug into it, bringing out a Kubs pad. She shoved it right in Rantaro’s hand hitting play before he even got the chance. He saw a girl’s face flash by the screen, one who looked like Kaede.    
  
“I have a younger sister. When we were both kids, we would play piano together. It was like a garden of our own. The reason I loved playing piano so much was her, but she wasn’t as good as I was. As we got older we grew apart. She stopped playing piano. She said it wasn’t worth it if she wasn’t a prodigy like me. But the truth was, I enjoyed hearing her playing the most much more than her own. I never told her that, so we never made up or anything. One day she just died… and I thought it was wrong that I lived just because I was blessed with talent and it made me happier. So I… from that point on, I tried to live my life for the sake of making others smile because I couldn’t help my sister anymore.”    
  
Kaede confessed to him, she was an older sibling to. But, that should not matter to him what she had in common with his old self because he was trying to throw that away. He could not let her see, because if Kaede saw him.    
  
Kaede’s eyes closed, and she gave a peaceful smile as she continued to share such a sad story. “The truth is though, I didn’t have a lot of friends before coming here. I devoted all of myself to piano because it was the only thing I knew how to do. So, I guess I’m kind of just making it up as I go along, but even so I want to be your friend.” 

  
Amami Rantaro knew that if Kaede saw the real him she would try to save him.   
Even so, he lowered his head in defeat to her. “I guess… we could learn more about each other.”   
  
“Yeah! I’m looking forward to it! Once we escape this place! I wanna know more about everyone, not just their talents, but the food they like, what kind of books they read, how they spend their weekends… Oh! And I definitely wanna know what kind of music everyone likes!”   
  
“Yeah… Honestly I can’t even imagine what sort of stuff everyone’s into.”   
  
“That’s why we all should talk more.”

 

“Akamatsu-san, why do you keep saying… when we all escape? Can’t we just learn about each other now?”    
  
“Because… as long as the killing game is still here, I might kill somebody again. I can’t do anything…Saihara-kun is the hero now. He’s going to be the one to end the killing game. He’ll make friends with everybody and escape from here. If that happens he’ll have so many friends he can forget about me.”    
  
That was why she had entrusted everything to Shuichi. If Shuichi ended the killing game while she hid away the entire time, she might be able to feel safe again when they all escaped. In other words she really did believe in Shuichi that much, even now when she was running away from him. That he would be the one to smash through the castle of lies, then come save her.    
  
Her choice of a knight was rather clumsy and slow. He could not break anything, he was too afraid to even open the door to the music room. Kaede was not a princess off in some far away imaginary place, she was close, he was just being shy. 

  
“But if that happens won’t you be lonely?”    
  
“...Huh?”    
  
“Because, you have a thing for Saihara-kun right? Instead of saving everyone, or ending the killing game, don’t you just want to see him again?” 

 

When she thought she was about to die. She wanted to be happy that she was dying and leaving everything up to Shuichi, but an uncertain thought snuck into her head.  _ What if what I really wanted, was to keep on living with him? Even after I became a murderer?  _ Then by some fluke she did survive, but all she did was avoid him even after being granted her miracle.    
  
Then suddenly, the knight who was always far too late came storming into the room, dragged in by Kaito. 

 

🧸

 

“Prepare to cry everyone, because Momota Kaito is about to make things emotional!” Kaito said, roaring as he kicked the door open. It was not even locked Kaito just felt like being dramatic.    
  
Behind him, Saihara Shuichi was being dragged along as an unwilling accomplice. “D-did you just say you were going to make a girl cry on purpose, Momota-kun?”    
  
Kaito however was not backing down. He felt like he failed Kaede. He was so frustrated that the one he really wanted to hit was himself, but he took it out on Shuichi instead. He blamed Shuichi for his own weakness. There was no taking that back. No matter how much you wished it things could not be reversed, so you could dwell on it forever or move forward.    
  
That was why he always moved forward at a breakneck pace.”Yeah! I’m going to make her ball her eyes out!”   
  
Momota finally let go of Shuichi and walked right up to Kaede. He pushed the tea tray aside, causing Rantaro to dive for it. “Listen up! I’m sorry for acting like a stupid jerk and getting in your face without thinking about what you wanted.”    
  
“So your apology for acting like a stupid jerk is to act like a stupid jerk and yell in my face some more?” Kaede said, her voice dry as she was in shock from the sudden change.    
  
“Exactly! What are you gonna do about it! You don’t have to accept my apology, you don’t have to forgive me, but you’re going to listen to it even if you don’t want to! You’ll have to fight me to stop me from lowering myself and begging for your forgiveness!”   
  
“Momota-kun it’s okay. I wasn’t thinking like myself when I said that-”    
  
  


“I’m the worst! I didn’t get you at all! I kept saying I’d believe in you, but I didn’t do anything to support you when you needed me!” Kaito kept shouting. Shuichi realized, as he watched Kaito’s back. His always strong back that he was only doing this for Shuichi’s sake. He was aggressively apologizing, to say the words that Shuichi wanted to say but could never bring himself to. 

 

He looked back at Shuichi flashing him a smile, as if to say  _ you can do it too. _ _   
_ _   
_ “M-momota I don’t think all those terrible things about you! Please don’t say those things about yourself.” Kaede said, not believing Kaito needed to apologize at all. For a moment as they stared each other down, it looked like two unbelievably optimistic and aggressively kind people were about to go to war.    
  
Then, Amami grabbed Kaito by the shoulder and gently pushed him out of the way. “Momota-kun, I think I understand what you’re trying to do, but you can’t do everything for Saihara-kun.”    
  
“Huh?”   
  
“I mean, those two are both shy so they’ll probably get embarrassed if you’re here.”   
  
“Ohhh…” Kaito flashed his dangerous smile. “Listen up, Akamatsu-san. You don’t have to worry about everyone now, because me and Saihara-kun are going to be the one who leads them. That way when you finally come out of this piano room, you can just be our friend.”    
  
They were pretty words Kaito was good at saying them. When Shuichi tried they always came out fumbling, stuttering, ugly. He watched Kaito leave. He had no idea why, Kaito was the one who dragged him across the line he did not dare cross and then he just left it all to him. 

 

Shuichi turned his head and just by accident, finally caught Kaede’s eye. He blushed, and looked away.    
  
“You… stopped wearing your hat.”    
  
“You said I would look cool if I didn’t wear it,” Shuichi said. He brought his hand to his eyes to cover his blush but, he stopped himself. He did not want to obstruct his vision, because Kaede was right in front of him again.    
  
“Jeez, you two really are just shy all other issues aside.” Rantaro said, looking at the both of them not able to see what was painfully obvious to him. They both wanted to tell him it was not like that, but he spoke over them. “You know what if you two want to be friends so badly, then sneak out with me tonight. We’ll hang out just like friends do.” 

 

🧸

 

After getting himself away from those two Amami wondered if anything about himself had changed. He did want to change from his previous soft self, but not in an uncontrolled way. He had already been helpless far too many times when his sister disappeared.    
  
Getting close to Shuichi and Kaede was still the objective that had not changed. Whether he was holding hands with them, or they were dangling from two ropes at his side, Kaede tied by her foot and Shuichi by his neck made little difference to him.    
  
When he went to the cafeteria for dinner that day he decided to observe everyone else. He wanted to remain focused on his own goal, but if he was oblivious like he was in the first round then he would make a careless mistake again. Humans made careless mistakes so he had to throw that away.    
  
Rantaro noticed everyone was starting to break into factions. It looked like they were deviating more towards Kokichi’s suggested strategy than Kaito’s, but even if i was better to only rely on yourself, nobody quite wanted to be alone either. Especially in a situation like this.  _ Am I really different?  _   
  
He saw Maki, Kaito and Kokichi eating together. It was probably the three he least expected to get along. Then Toko who usually sat with Togami and nobody else, was talking seriously with Korekiyo over a book. She seemed to be in a one sided argument with him because it was almost impossible to get Korekiyo to emote, let alone react. Then there was Junko and Zenkichi the oddball duo, despite acting like he was friends with everybody he spent almost all of his free time around such a dangerous girl. Souda, Miu, Monaca and Keebo were all eating together at the same table, Miu and Kazuichi’s constant bickering seemed to just be how they got along since they both mutually did not know how to act around other people. 

 

Amami thought he was rather clever, observing others like this. Amami’s observations are different from the narrator's, in fact you could call us enemies, so if it’s specifically Amami’s thoughts I’ll mention them as separate. 

  
Makoto, Mukuro, and Komaeda were all eating together as well. Makoto and Mukuro were apparently dating so that was not so surprising, but what was different about this scene was right next to the trio Togami was eating the expensive and gourmet meal that Zenkichi had prepared for him. 

  
Mukuro also noticed how strange it was. “Why is Togami-kun eating with us?”    
  
“Every time I asked Togami-kun to eat on the rooftop with me he tried to charge me money. Just let me have this.” Makoto said. He considered Togami his best friend and he was starved for affection.    
  
“A talented prodigy is gracing us with his presence. You should be more thankful, Ikusaba-san.” Komaeda added. 

To Amami the most dangerous one in that group was Komaeda, underneath the haze of confusion he had the sharpest eyes.    
  
Togami turned his nose up at all of them. “At least one of you here knows the proper decorum is to grovel at the feet of your betters. And I keep telling you Naegi, we are never going to be friends!”

  
“You know Komaeda’s actually pretty rich.” Mukuro did not feel like putting up with Togami’s usual bullying, the only one allowed to bully her was her sister. That was a little messed up though. “I thought you said you know how to behave you just only use your manners in front of your peers of equal wealth. Could it just be you don’t know how to act?”    
  
“Don’t listen to her Togami-kun! I don’t deserve to be counted in the same class as the Ultimate Prodigy! I just got my money through inheritance and luck after all!” Komaeda was begging Togami not to have any positive thoughts about him.    
  
Mukuro felt she was bullying Komaeda by… praising him. “But, you inherited all that when you were just a little kid and you managed it all without losing all this time, right? Besides, even if some of it was just luck when playing the stock market luck is always a factor.”    
  
“Why do you hate Togami-kun so much that you’re comparing him to the likes of me? You’re really trying to drag him to despair like that! You’ve earned your title despair sister!”    
  
Mukuro worried she had broken Komaeda. She hoped not, because she was trying really hard not to break people anymore.    
  
“Hey, guys come on. This is the first time we all get to eat lunch together. I’m just really happy to be with you guys.” Makoto said, giving them a weak smile. He was probably trying to ignore, the absence of Kirigiri Kyoko. “Be nice to Togami-kun, he’s probably just lonely because Fukawa-san and him had a fight.”   
  
Amami almost wanted to apologize, it was because of his carelessness that Kirigiri became a murderer. He planned on killing his old self to atone, he hoped that was enough.    
  
“Naegi, enough with your weak insistences we all get along. If just hoping for the better without taking action really could save people, Kirigiri would be here with us right now.” Togami said those words just to hurt Makoto.    
  
Makoto looked away. He hated fighting and conflict, so it seemed like he was just going to let himself be hurt by those words, but Mukuro would not let him. She slammed her hand hard on the table.    
  
  


“If you have a problem then just tell us, Togami. I thought you said you didn’t play childish games?”    
  
“Here’s what I really think then. You can’t make any decisions for yourself so you’ve attached yourself to Naegi-kun, because he’s the kind of idiot who will take pity on you. But he’s useless, all he knows how to do is keep holding onto hope. If you want someone to end the killing game than take orders from me.” 

 

Amami Rantaro felt pity for Togami. After all, even though he was a natural leader, and trained from birth to lead he was never going to convince anybody in this school to follow him. The simple reason was he held too much pride in himself. If he threw away his pride, and learned to like more like somebody anybody could get along with like Rantaro, the others would be more willing to listen to him.    
  
But Togami could never throw away himself. Everything he did was to protect himself. He was still fighting that first game, he never noticed how different this game was, and how important interpersonal relationships were this time around. Togami was surprisingly honest, despite how much he tried to posture as someone willing to lie, deceipt and backstab in order to win. He probably would only succeed in stringing along someone as naive as Makoto. He was honest, just like a child.    
  
“Your Makoto’s friend so I want to help you but…”    
  
“See. My point exactly. You judge everything through the lens of will this help Makoto, will this hurt Makoto. You’re no different from the days you did everything for your sister, you just changed the person whose orders you were following.” 

  
“Makoto isn’t anything like Junko, he would never use me!”    
  
“He doesn’t need to use you when you make yourself so useful. You can deny it all you want, but you know the truth don’t you? You and Makoto belong in separate worlds.” He  put his hand on the unique bow that crossed over his collar, “You’re either born loved, or you aren’t. There’s no such thing as earning love, you either have it or you don’t. You should know that already, you spent seventeen years with your sister and she never loved you once. You can earn money, you can earn a victory, but you can’t earn love. That’s why you’re more like me aren’t you?” 

 

Mukuro lowered her eyes. She always felt so unstable, as if the fragile world she had gained since meeting Kumagawa Misogi might shatter at any moment, and now Togami was hitting all of her buttons on purpose trying to make sure she was the one who broke it. She was like a dog growling to protect the small piece of land she had. “How Junko feels doesn’t matter. I wanted to protect her, because I loved her. The choice was mine and the consequences are mine.”   
  
“Do you feel noble, taking way too much responsibility? You have to know your regrets, all of your misfortune, it was all your sister’s doing. The only person you should have ever killed was that sister of yours.” Togami’s face seemed to disappear behind the glare of reflecting off his glasses. “For a stupid reason like wanting to protect your sister you became a murderer. So don’t lecture me on how it’s a good thing to rely on others.”    
  
Even Makoto who always admired Togami, and seemed blind to his flaws, and never threw a punch in his life suddenly stood up and climbed over the table. Amami thought he might be desperate to prove himself, because he did nothing when the last girl who was precious to him died. He grabbed Togami by the collar but before he could do anything, Amami was the one who spoke up.    
  
“You’re just saying that because you have nobody, don’t you? If it weren’t for that family name you’d be nameless.” Amami Rantaro said, standing up and walking over to them. He put his hand on the trembling Mukuro’s shoulder. His other hand touched his earrings. “Older siblings were born first to protect their younger siblings. You are not wrong for wanting that.” He said in a gentle voice only to her.    
  
He found being soft entirely useless, but there were some people so conditioned to hardship that all they wanted was a soft touch. Togami disentangled himself from Makoto and stood up to face Amami. Amami however did not even stop to talk, he just walked straight past him, as if the two of them were simply meeting on a crossroads for a brief moment and heading in completely opposite directions.    
  
Amami knew of the strange succession ceremony that the Togami’s did, after all his family was a longtime ally of the Kurokami. He was only a few rungs down the ladder from Togami. He knew in order to continue living Togami killed all of his siblings.    
  
Amami did not hate him for that. After all, it was his fault his sister was gone. Both actively killing your siblings, and passively watching as they died were exactly the same in his mind. Even if he did not hate him, Amami was going to crush Togami. They were the same after all, and he had made it his goal to crush himself.    
  
He left Togami behind him without even looking back, and went off to find Shuichi and Kaede again. 

 

🧸

  
  
  


Rantaro waited until it was so dark it became impossible to see your hand in front of your face, and then barged into Shuichi’s dorm in the middle of the night. He and Shuichi together waited outside Kaede’s door on the first floor. It was like they were teenagers sneaking out from their parents. 

 

As he was guiding them through the dark, taking the lead for once they both nervously looked at each other, and then to him.   
  
“You know we all promised not to go out of the dorms at night. That was the rule you came up with, is it okay to break that promise?” Kaede asked Rantaro. “It’s not fair to make everyone follow a rule that we break.” 

 

“Something bad might happen if we’re caught sneaking out this late…” Shuichi joined in her worries.    
  
“You two are such goody two shoes.” Rantaro said looking back with a lazy smile. Even though Kaede was a murderer, she was still a goody two shoes somehow. “A smart person follows the rules until it’s convenient for them to break them.”   
  
“You know Amami-kun you always seem so laid back, but sometimes you say the most serious things out of nowhere.” The diligent detective Shuichi observed behind him. 

  
“He’s not doing it on purpose. He’s not like Oma-kun trying to upset people.” Kaede nudged Shuichi with her shoulder, easily pushing him aside. “Amami-kun is just hiding his problems, because he’s kind. Even then they sometimes slip out.”    
  
Both of them were a little bit wrong, Amami was glad to see neither of them had figured him out just yet. He did not like being alone, but he enjoyed being a mystery to other people just a little bit. His eyes sharpened. “You don’t know about Kokichi. He could be serious about things too in his own way. He’s always looking after others, maybe he wants to be kind too.”    
  
Kaede was shocked at Rantaro’s interpretation of Kokichi’s actions, but then again Rantaro had a habit of accepting anybody. She could not say anything else as they had finally arrived at the place Rantaro was leading them to.    
  
The school pool, Rantaro easily picked the lock and made his way inside. Due to the glass ceiling above them, the pool was a bit less dark than outside, lit by the pale light of the moon that was directly above them. 

 

“You wanted to go the pool?” Saihara asked.    
  
“Something like that.” 

  
“We could have just gone during the day. There was no need to break the rules and sneak out.”    
  
“Mm, you’ll see.” Rantaro said in his usual relaxed manner. He put his hand on his neck, pulling on the necklace he always wore. He had had it since he was born, somebody else had a matching one but they were far away now. “Saihara-kun, what did you want to say to me the other day. Knowing you, since you overthink everything, you’ve probably thought about it a lot.” 

 

Shuichi felt his pale cheeks begin to glow a  pinkish color in the darkness, as he saw himself at the center of Rantaro’s eyes. “You can open up more. I’m the Ultimate Detective, so I know when you’re not being genuine with certain things. The more you hide things, the more I just want to understand you better.”    
  
That was exactly why he wanted to hide. Rantaro put on a cheeky grin. “I suddenly can’t read.”   
  
“W-we’re having a verbal conversation.”   
  
“Keysmash.”   
  
“You can’t just say the word keysmash!” Rantaro started to turn away as if he was bored. Shuicihi ran forward and grabbed him by the shirt. “I can’t leave you alone.”   
  
“...What? Haha, you can’t be serious. Come on, Sahara-kun, save that line for the ladies, huh? Besides Akamatsu-san is right there you’ll make her jealous.”   
  
“Ah, s-sorry.”   
  
“Look, I’m glad you two are thinking about me, but really, I’d like to be alone.”    
  
Shuichi knew that was not true because Rantaro had invited both of them out here after all. “I… I want to help you.”    
  
“Help, what for?”    
  
Kaede who had been watching both of them quietly finally stood next to Shuichi again. “He just wants to help you! Does he need a reason, Amami-kun?” 

  
Rantaro, stared at Shuichi and Kaede in silence. The only noise that passed between the three of them, was the water of the pool moving back and forth in tiny waves. The nighttime was oddly silent because the dome cut off all sounds of life, almost oppressively so. He knew Shuichi would be scared of this the most, somebody just staring and not saying anything, but the timid boy did not look away from him.

 

Then, why was he acting so scared?   
  
Rantaro suddenly grabbed the bottom of his loose fitting shirt and pulled it up over his head. “Alright, alright, but if you two want me to show you a hidden part of myself, then you two gotta be prepared to show it all too.”    
  
“Show you what…?” Kaede said, oblivious as usual. Her only thought was  _ Rantaro’s going to get cold if he doesn’t put his shirt back on.  _   
  
Shuichi on the other hand suddenly figured out why Rantaro insisted they sneak into the pool at night. It was enough to make his colorless face light up with color. “Y-you can’t be serious.”    
  
“My secret strategy is I’m almost never serious, that’s why I’ll never lose.” Saying that rather Kokichi line, like this entire thing was a prank on them he easily got rid of his sagging pants and boxers next. His clothes were so loose on him to begin with he practically just stepped out of them.    
  
He dove into the water elegantly, but his wild looking hair and rough around the edges appearance made him look more like an otter than anything else. Rantaro never bought a swim suit. He was used to going around the world and swimming where he liked. His plan to destroy the awkwardness between Shuichi and Kaede, was to make them face each other naked. It really was like a terrible prank and both of them turned red and looked away like they wished they were invisible when they realized. Despite the fact that they were both tricked by him, both of them still could not help but think Rantaro sincere.    
  
Shuichi looked at Rantaro swimming so far away. He was like an island, his main attribute was his distance from others. Rantaro spoke without thinking a lot, an sometimes said dark things that interrupted his usual cheery mood. Shuichi wondered if the reason was because deep down inside, he really did want someone to listen to him. He was just at conflict with himself.    
  
“S-saihara-kun, I’m going to do it!” Kaede said boldly, pulling her sweater vest over her head. SHe got it stuck for a moment and had to tug on it a few more times before she finally got her head free. She looked to Shuichi again just as she started to unbutton her shirt. “If it’s you I don’t mind, because I trust you but… look away please!”    
  
Weird.    
Kaede almost never cared what boys were thinking about her, and never noticed when they were watching her. Shuichi turned his head so fast he thought he gave himself whiplash. He heard a splash. It was so dark though he could not really see if Kaede and Rantaro were close or far in the water.   
  
  


He could probably leave it to Kaede. Kaede was already acting like her old self again, and it was most likely Rantaro who brought her back not him. That, and he was so embarrassed right now he wanted to die. But, Kaede said she trusted him.   
  
She finally trusted him.    
  
Shuichi’s clothes were left in a much neater pile than the other two. One moment Kaede was looking for Rantaro and the next she saw Shuichi’s body above her, naked and glowing in the moonlight, as he hurled himself into the water.    
  
She watched completely silent, her eyes widening.   
  
When he landed, he sunk all the way down to his neck in the dark water to hide himself. Shuichi wondered if Rantaro planned ahead of time and brought a hose from storage to fill up the water level of the pool. “Amami-kun, you can’t hide now.”   
  
“Well yeah, because I’m naked…”   
  
“Don’t remind me!” 

  
“You two don’t have to worry. I’m only a former playboy.”   
  
“What do you mean former!?” Kaede had never really had friends before this, and suddenly she was doing something like this with a pair of boys. No music could describe how she felt at the moment it was like hitting all the piano keys at once.    
  
“Tell, me…’ Shuichi said, with a soft but firm voice. “Tell me about the Ultimate Useless Older Brother thing?”   
  
“Well… I have a little sister. But I’ve been an awful big brother. So there’s not much to tell.”   
  
“But you’ve been trapped here. There’s nothing you can do about that.”   
  
“No, it isn’t that. This is from before I ever came here…”   
  
“From before?” Kaede asked.    
  
“How many years has it been now? Back then, my little sister and I got along really well. We were together all the time. Wel… Well not really, uh… What I mean is, she would always follow me around, and I took care of her, y’know? Anyway one day we took a boat trip to another country with the whole family. It was my first time on a boat. I was bouncing off the walls I was so excited. When we docked, I wanted to go on an adventure… So I snuck off the boat. I thought I was alone, but my sister was following me, as always. But I didn’t notice. I didn’t see her. I was so busy exploring, y’know? My sister… got separated from me somehow, and she… she never came back. My parents didn’t seem too worried, but a big brother is supposed to protect his sister. But I couldn’t do that… I couldn’t… I’m a failure as a big brother.”   
  
“Amami-kun…”    
  
“That’s the reason I travel the world. I have to find my sister. Everyone tells me that it’s impossible, that it’s too late now… But until I see her with my own eyes, I will never stop searching for her. No matter how long it takes, I’m going to find her. She’s waiting for me. I’m not going to stop until I find her, Saihara-kun. Never.”    
  
The reason Amami’s eyes looked so dark, so tired, was because he was constantly searching and chasing after shadows. All for the sake of his family.    
  
“Amami-kun, you’re not a useless older brother. You’re still searching after all these years. You’re the Ultimate Big Brother.” Shuichi said without even thinking.    
  
Kaede looked at his face from the side. At times like this, he always pulled through and said the right thing. His words always had so much more sincerity than her pretty words.    
  
“Ha, you think so…?”

 

Amami went to reach for his earrings for the third time today, but he hesitated. When his sister went missing, he got an earring. Green hair, green eyes, everyone always commented he looked a bit mysterious and fay like, even before he started actively trying to hide himself. The one weakness of fairies was cold iron. He did not have that, so he put silver on his ear instead. He just wanted to poison himself slowly, to watch his old self rot away. The necklace he always kept on even when he was naked, and the earrings, those were important reminders of who he really was.     
  
But, just for a moment he found himself wishing he could be more like what Shuichi thought of him. He closed his eyes and smiled, just like his old gentle self used to. “That would really be something if it were true.”    
  
Kaede between the two of them, suddenly pointed up at the sky. Both boys had to look away because of her recklessness. “Guys, guys look! The moon is out again. It’s reflecting on the water. It’s just like Claire de Lune.”    
  
Leave it to Kaede to think of piano when she was naked now of all times. Shuichi suddenly remembered something from just a few days ago, but to him it felt like another lifetime. “Akamatsu-san, you promised to play that for me. I don’t care about when we escape, I want to hear it when we’re still here.”   


Rantaro opened his eyes. “I want to hear it too.”   
  
"W-wait, I might not play as well because of everything that's happened."  
  
Both boys started to chant in unison.  
  
"Kaede! Kaede! Kaede! Kaede! Kaede!"   
  
"Jeez, what a demanding audience I have."   
  
That next morning Kaede did not hide in the music room, and went to eat breakfast with everybody else. During that same breakfast Monokuma appeared and announced to all the others that it was now against the rules to swim at the pool at night. Shuichi and Kaede both blushed, but Rantaro just laughed under his breath like a child that had gotten away with a prank. 


	29. The Human Failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I reread Zaregoto: Kubishime Romanticist  
> No Longer Human: HItoshiki Zerozaki today.  
> Iichan inspires a lot of Komaeda's character for me I can't help but see the similarities.

_I’m begging you, please stop getting my hopes up._

 

🧸

 

“You don’t have to be so tense around me, I’m your upperclassmen you know.”

  
Nagito Komaeda said, with his usual pessimistic optimist’s smile. Like a lost fluffy white dog without a master, he had taken to following around Naegi Makoto.  
  
No that was wrong to be lost one needed a place to belong to begin with. There was no place, nor person that Komaeda belonged to in this world. He was not bereft of anything, nothing was lost, because he had nothing to begin with.  
  
There was certainly not someone who he missed either, because that person was dead. A corpse was neither happy nor miserable, hope nor despair, and it was utterly indifferent to Komaeda’s feelings.  
  
“It’s not like I’m nervous or anything, I just don’t really know anything about you.”  
  
“What is there to know? We both share the talent of luck don’t we? No wait, that’s not right. Yours far outstrips mine. It only makes sense even with the exact same worthless talent I’d still be the inferior.”

 

Makoto could not tell if Komaeda was putting himself down, putting Makoto down, or trying to compliment Makoto. It was probably some messy combination of the three.  
  
“I don’t really think I have good luck. Yeah… I was lucky to have been picked out of all the high schoolers in the country, but I’m more used to being unlucky. Besides, sharing the same talent doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll understand each other…” Makoto’s expression became melancholy. Over the past few days he could not help it, he would remember Kirigiri over and over again even when trying not to think about it.

 

“So, you don’t want an inferior like me as your senpai?”  
  
“No man, that’s not what I was saying. I just, you know I went to a new school, then the next thing I know the school almost gets destroyed, and then it doesn’t, and then Kumagawa transfers in and drags all his weirdo friends with him and now we’re here. It’s not like we got time to just be students together.”  
  
Naegi Makoto awkwardly scratched at the side of his cheek.

 

_Naegi Makoto just wishes to return to his normal school life._

Komaeda knew that boy who was dead now had the exact same wish. It was an understandable wish, but Komaeda would not sympathize, because such a dull and ordinary wish was not hope.  
  
Komaeda clapped his pale fingers together. “Well, it’s bad luck that we were both trapped here together, but I’m sure someone like you can turn that into good luck and get to know me better. This is still a school technically, we could make the most out of it and still act like classmates”  
  
“Someone like me, huh?”  
Naegi’s response was an empty echo. _Someone who could not stop Kirigiri from dying._  
He genuinely believed that the killing game would not start. He thought every person here was a good person albeit rough around the edges, but belief only went so far. Expectations inevitably fell short of reality, they crashed down to earth like falling stars.  
  
Komaeda was starting to wonder if Makoto was dense. He missed what Komaeda thought were obvious hints that he wanted to become closer. Was this because Makoto found Komaeda hard to understand? But, he understood one of the despair sisters the embodiment of despair, and he understood Kumagawa of all people.  
  
If in Makoto’s eyes Kumagawa was a just a normal person, then Komaeda must be subhuman. “Hmm, I see. You know, despite your lack of an Ultimate talent, you get along well with others… But I’m terrified to be in the same class as all of them. Even in this situation. I’m shameful…”  
  
“Komaeda, do you say this stuff to everyone you meet?”  
  
“Yes, I do. Why?”  
  
“Nothing, it’s just… I don’t really get it.”

 

Komaeda really was trying to be encouraging. Compliments from worthless people were unsurprisingly cheap. When Komaeda once praised Enoshima Junko on her beauty while acting as her lowly and ugly servant her only response was _well duh._ It was natural, the ugly look up to the beautiful, the friendless to the friendly.  
  
There was something off about Makoto, and he was the cause of it. Naegi was yet to reach his potential as Ultimate Hope, even though he was thrown into a death game the exact kind of despair that should have made him rise and grow. Makoto was too busy mourning Kirigiri and drowning in the past to look to the future. Even though Makoto should know, just like Komaeda whose past was just an insignificant number of losses the culmination of which created a defective product like him, that if the future was all they could live for.  
  
It was a murder most fowl that he committed on Kirigiri. He now considered calling him a shinigami was far to generous, as gods of death quietly walk souls to the afterlife. Komaeda was not nearly that considerate, he was merely a vulture who pried the flesh off of skeletons and devoured it in order to continue living. That was why he was willing to play both hero and villain in this scenario, he would be Kirigiri’s killer, and Naegi’s mentor, he would take any role he needed to bring about the best ending.

 

Makoto did not understand him. His attempts at being a friendly mentor to encourage Makoto, as Kirigiri would have been were dead in the water like a drowned child.

  
“I just don’t really know what you want from me… What I’m supposed to do…”  
  
Kirigiri warned him about this, that Makoto was weak natured. Not that Komaeda was looking down on him, after all it was his nature to be weak, if Komaeda had faced everything head on he would have conquered despair and developed a talent, instead of becoming a mediocre and miserable person.  
  
He wanted to apologize to Kirigiri for being such a failure of a replacement, but ah, well, she was dead as well. If he started apologizing to dead people, he would start at his parents and never stop.  
  
“You just have to defeat evil. The reason you’re feeling this way is because Kirigiri-san was taken away from you, let the despair in your chest motivate you-”  
  
“Huh? But don’t you think we should be motivated by hope?”  
  
“That’s what I said.”  
  
“No, I think you said something different but it’s not a big deal…”  
  
“This isn’t your fault, it’s the mastermind’s fault. They’re evil. Let’s suppose for example, that there exists a cut throat murderer. He kills a person. In this case it doesn’t even need to be said that the cutthroat murderer is ‘bad’. Then, the case of the cutthroat murderer is caught and sentenced to the death penalty. Of course you could say the cutthroat murderer’s actions were ‘bad’. But what if that was a false accusation? In this case the legal system is ‘bad’. Or possibly the investigator or the judge was just ‘stupid’. But if we suppose the investigator was struck and killed by a meteorite in an unrelated place, the investigator was without a doubt ‘unlucky’.”  
  
“Uhhh… That so?”  
  
“It means even when a person has died, evil can be hard to find. It can be hard to pinpoint the cause.” Komaeda looked like he was loathe to admit this. Feelings hurt, but being blindsided by feelings hurt worse. “But this is different because as long as the mastermind exists they’re the evil ones. They’re ultimately responsible. Blaming yourself is a waste of time.”

  
  
“What about when people think ‘I’d be better off if I died’ or ‘I’d be saved if I died’, those situations exist too don’t they? Then wouldn’t it be the fault of a person who killed themselves?”

  
Komaeda started to worry, just a bit that Makoto was suspicious of Kirigiri’s true intentions. That she chose to die rather than being simply caught as a murderer. Komaeda did not know if he was allowed to impart this secret or not, because Kirigiri did not tell him. He did not want to tell Makoto or Mukuro either, not because they might blame him, but because they might forgive him.  
  
“Kirigiri would never do that, she held her head high as a detective. As a living person wanting to kill yourself is the lowest of low thoughts. That action isn’t even an escape. People should continue to live on as long as they can stay alive. No matter what fate they carry, no matter what sins the have committed, people are alive are people that should live. Especially when they have an objective they must achieve.”

 

 _That’s right, I killed Kirigiri so I could continue living._ Komaeda’s breath caught in the back of his throat and he could not take another step forward. _Living? For what?_

 

“Komaeda, I don’t really get what you’re saying but I think you’re seeing my life as more important than it is. It’s just an ordinary boring life…”

  
“I don’t understand this feeling at all. ‘Ordinary’ even though that would be the most wonderful thing. Abnormal people like myself, only end up hurting strangers. Happiness, at the end of the day is getting along with the people around you.”  
  
That meant Komaeda existed as the enemy to happiness. He was certainly at the moment the enemy of Naegi’s happiness, he was the one who took Kirigiri away after all.

“In other words, having something like talent is completely useless if you don’t get along with people?” Makoto caught a glimpse of Togami for a moment pridefully striding past them. He did not see the lonely boy with white hair next to him. “Mm, I don’t really get it but is the reason you’re talking so much to me so suddenly because Kumagawa-senpai died?”

 

“Huh?”

  
“Umm… I’m sorry, because you’re trying so hard to encourage me and everything but… it doesn’t seem like we’re talking really? It’s like you’re just talking to yourself… saying the words you want to hear since Kumagawa-senpai isn’t here.”  
  
Makoto’s words were weak as usual, but they were not imprecise.  


“That’s why I don’t understand you,” Makoto said, “It’s like you’re in suspension from your own life, or rather you’re ambiguous.” His eyes flinched with remorse as he said those words.

  
Ambiguous. Floating in suspension from his own life. Komaeda was standing next to Makoto but was it like his feet did not even touch the ground. He was swinging back and forth on a noose, his grand execution for the cutthroat murder of Kirigiri Kyoko. Komaeda longed to see a world filled with colors, but he himself was a colorless existence.  
  
He wondered, if there was anything in particular he liked or disliked. If there were people he liked or disliked. He was like a discarded soda bottle floating, bobbing along with this tide, going wherever the ocean currents took him. His entire life was damage control. Meticulously he calculated the impact he would have on others. Just by existing he made a splash. He did not want to make any more waves than that, because somebody else could drown. He was fine with being trash if it meant he never had to be somebody. If it means never feeling pain, he did not need pleasure.

  
It was strange then he was always obsessively thinking about himself, he measured his every word, every action, every permutation on a scale with two sides _good luck_ and _bad luck_. He took every choice he could, he stole them away before his luck could steal them from him. Yet after spending his whole life watching only himself, he had no idea what his form was. The lines became blurry, indistinct. He had a hard time believing that the culmination of choices he made, and things he had experienced, could ever constitute a self in his case. If it was a story, it would just be too absurd, random, and nonsensical to even read.

 

Komaeda thought having a heart lighter than a feather was probably a bad thing, because it just meant you were empty. _It’s like there’s not enough me to fill up me._ That pure white boy when he saw the pitch black Kumagawa Misogi, it was like the contrast between them helped him see the lines of his own self.  
  
Now he just kept thinking over and over again. _What was the point?_ A person like him surviving. To witness hope? But Kirigiri would have brought about that hope by Makoto’s side, rather than as a stranger. Not just a stranger to Makoto, but to everyone. Than maybe he needed to survive, because he had not found happiness in life yet. _But, neither did Kumagawa, and his life was more miserable than mine._

 

It’s not like he was stupid or bad at solving puzzles. Komaeda’s brain gave him a few solutions to the questions that would not go away, but he kept rejecting the answers. If he could justify Kirigiri’s killing than he really was cold blooded. _Answers aren’t needed then, I can just stay._  


Ambiguous. Like a ghost. Like something a human being would leave behind. The echoes of something that was once human. But… Komaeda hated ambiguity.  
  
He wanted there to be distinct lines, he wanted everything colored in black and white. He believed despair should be faced head on, and that it would always lose to hope. Then, why was he trying to deflect everything so he would not have to feel it?

  
He was scolding Makoto like a responsible upperclassmen for his weak attitude? No, he was the weak one. He was unable to get over the death or KIrigiri, or Kumagawa. Moreso, he did not want to.  Living might mean living on without Kumagawa. It was like suddenly, he had forgotten how to live then. He was sure he might have lived nineteen years up until this point, but he did not consider that a life just a series of unfortunate accidents one after another.  
  
There was a boy who smiled at him, and took his hand, and Komaeda felt his heart beating for the very first time. He started to wish to become something other than the dregs of humanity, scraped up from the grave walking around like he was puppeteering a corpse body.  
  
He wished to continue on living because he met that boy. Wishing, and hoping were all he knew how to do. But as he was dragged unwillingly through time he started to wonder, if this body would still be alive when the hope he had been waiting for his whole life finally came. He was diagnosed with brain cancer, there was a ticking clock counting to the end in his skull, and he already had enough broken, rusted, and missing gears in his brain already.

  
He wanted to escape from this body. His ribs were like a cage that constricted his chest and made it impossible for him to breathe. He wished he could tear off his flesh and just run away. He already was living like a ghost, invisible to others, so he wished he could float away entirely. His thoughts and awareness drifted away from his own body, but when he lifted his head and saw Makoto again, he snapped back into that terrible prison called self. It was funny he barely had a self to begin with and yet he was still stuck here. He stared at his own hand curling his finger, he did not want to look at the hand that killed Kirigiri. That hand. That hand. That hand.  
  
“I get it… This is what I owe. This is what I get for running away from everything all the time.”  
  
“Umm… are you okay? We still haven’t found Mukuro yet...”  
  
“I think it’s a horrible thing Kirigiri-san died. I’m so sad I should want to join her as well. So. Why do I want to keep living? Am I that selfish?”  
  
“That’s because, everyone wants to live as human beings.”

  
Makoto’s kindness was just cruelty to someone like Komaeda. _You just want to live as a human being,_ was something unbearable to hear as a human failure.  
  
“By the way, I saw Ikusaba in the 2-B classroom. She probably wanted to meet us there.”  
  
“What? Why didn’t you tell me that first!?”

Mukuro, Komaeda and Makoto all agreed they would show their motive videos to each other. Mukuro played a montage of every person she had ever killed on record and promised to bring back one. Makoto’s showed the images of Kirigiri’s execution, and then showed his own broken living room leaving the fates of his parents ambiguous.  
  
Komaeda’s video started off as a choice to revive Kumagawa or Kirigiri. Then suddenly, static and digital noise filled the screen and then it glitched out to reveal a raven haired, crimson eyed god. Kamukura staring back at the screen did not say a word, as a sickle appeared behind his head. So much red appeared on screen that it stained the camera lens. The last thing Komaeda saw was Kamukura’s hair, falling beautifully like ash. The future Komaeda imagined between him and Hinata burned up before his eyes in an instant, the image being eaten away like a film reel.

 

Before any of them could talk about what they had just seen, suddenly behind them a cartoon bear appeared from nowhere. “Oh, and by the way the rule is one death for one life. We’re not going to try to rip you off here, so you don’t need to live to see the results of your action. You could totally kill someone and turn yourself in.”

  
“Go away, Not-Junko.” Mukuro growled stepping in front of the two boys.  
  
“Killing yourself is even an option. You could die to atone for at least one of your murders, big sister!”  
  
Getting called big sister by a voice that was not Junko’s, and a puppet that was not being controlled by Junko’s, caused Mukuro’s eyes to go red. She was only stopped by Makoto suddenly lunging forward and throwing his arms around her. The bear ran away like a coward.  
  
Mukuro turned her gaze sideways to Komaeda who was still holding onto his kubs pad. “It’s all a lie, Komaeda. Everything the mastermind says, is just a lie to get us to kill people. Nothing good will come out of it.”  
  
“Of course nothing good will come out of it! I’m involved after all!” Komaeda did not even realize he raised his voice, his words sounded so harsh like someone else was speaking. “Tell me, that you don’t want me here. That you would much rather have had Kirigiri-san survive. Please be kind, and tell me to die.”  
  
“Nobody here wants anyone to die. And nobody wants to become killers either. We’re all classmates…” Makoto’s soft statement, was one that regardless cut Komaeda easily like glass. Glass that fell from a broken mirror, as Komaeda refused to see any similarity between himself and Makoto.  
He would prefer to cut himself on his own self reflection.  
He wished he was just a broken version of Makoto, like a reflection in a cracked mirror.  
The feeling of broken glass digging into his skin and tearing his flesh apart was preferable.  
If he had just gone off the path somewhere along the line.  
If he was just a version of Makoto who had made bad choices.  
If he was broken he could be fixed.  
Things that were simply inadequate could not be fixed.  
Makoto was painfully human in every way that looking at him made his eyes sting.  
As it made him recall everything that he was not.  
He was just a failure in comparison.

“Stop being kind to me!” There was one person in this world who was kind to him, though he was rude to him often as well. There was a person who always tried to understand him. That person was gone now. He died for the sake of an insignificant person like Komaeda. His kindness was meaningless. If only he had been cruel to Komaeda, if only he despised him, he would have continued on living.  
  
Even someone who was always sharp tongued with him Kirigiri, in the end called him big brother and looked at him with the wide eyes of a child. Just as they were starting to get along, his luck cut that life short as well, completely arbitrary.  
  
Whether he hated or loved someone they would die.  
It was just ambiguous. The future that stretched out in front of him was an expanse of nothing. Empty, without Hinata in it.  
  
The missing pieces fell out of him one by one, like cogs and gears fell out of a clockwork doll. He moved both of his hands to his face, just to make sure it was still there. His hands traveled upward, and then his fingers got caught in his wild tangles of hair, and he pulled hard to make knots.  
  
What did he even want so badly that he was willing to keep living with so many missing pieces? That he would even kill Kirigiri to justify himself living.  
  
He wanted to decide. He wanted to choose. He wanted to be interested in others. He wanted to be interested in himself. He wanted conflict with people. He wanted to be laughed at. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wanted to enjoy, and get angry. He wanted to be able to do anything. He wanted to feel anything. He wanted to attain anything. He wanted them, so he destroyed them. He wanted them, so he threw them away. He wanted to trust, so he betrayed them. He wanted to like others, so he rejected them. He wanted to protect them, so he hurt them. He wanted to love someone else. He wanted to love someone other than himself. He could not love himself. He did not know how to love or be loved, equally. That was why he wanted to run, but he could not escape. From anywhere. From anyone.

 

He wanted hope, that was it he finally remembered.

『 _Why do you want hope?_ 』

 

Don’t ask that Kumagawa. There are some things that have meaning precisely until the moment they are questioned. They only have meaning because one accepts they have meaning. To reject that, means to reject their worth, their meaning. But, questioning it brings no answer either. The moment you question it, it disappears, like finding out the secret to a magic trick it becomes unenjoyable.

『 _What kind of hope do you want?_ 』  
  
If you question it, the things you thought were so important in life, the things you thought you were willing to die over, become not so important in the end. Then you just look foolish, Kumagawa.

 

『 _What does hope look like to you?_ 』  
  
Hope was. Something good happening. Just one good thing. He did not know what it would look like, because he had never seen it. Gosh, even the hope that was everything to him was ambiguous.

 

He thought if he lost everything else inside of him, if he had no more friends to lose, he would still have hope and that enough was good enough to continue living.  
  
But now, hope was starting to feel. _Dull. Tedious. Uninspired. Disinterested. Fatigued. Sick and Tired. It’s the same every time. Sickening. Tasting the same thing over and over until it makes you nauseous. Fed up with it all.  Bored. Bored to tears. Bored to death._

 

He was starting to get bored of hoping, but hope was all that kept him alive. “Just let me die already!?” Komaeda tore his hands away as if trying to pull his own hair off.

 

He only noticed then that both Makoto and Mukuro were staring at him. There was fear in their eyes.  
  
Once again he only thought of himself. Once again he could not think of anybody else.  
If Kumagawa were here, he would laugh, and flash his nihilist smile, and everything would be fixed. Kumagawa was such a person, even though he thrashed around madly and hurt others, he also helped others as well and gently treated their wounds. He was capable of both at once, and Komaeda wasn’t capable of anything. Because he always restricted himself.

 

  
That’s what he thought anyway, but here he was laughing madly and scaring both Makoto and Mukuro. The two people that mattered more than the world to Kirigiri. If he could watch over those two until the end, then maybe Kirigiri would forgive him for killing her. But he had already made a mess of things.

 

He removed his fingers from his hair and tried to bring himself back down to normal again, even though he had no idea what that was. He slapped the sides of his cheeks. “‘I’m going to go talk with a friend. I’ll see you guys later.” But that was a lie, because he didn’t have any friends.  
  
Komaeda made a fatalist mistake. He was an optimist, but he was sluggish with fatalism. Because he battled against fate his whole life. That which he called luck. Over and over again he fought against things he could not control. He hated it, but also he secretly wished that there was such a thing as fate. Fated encounters, fated departures, he wanted to believe that he was just born unlucky.  
  
Because then he was fighting against something, for something at least. It was not just senseless struggle. It was not just prolonging a life of pain, that nobody else wanted.  
  
His fatalist mistake, because he assumed all of his actions had the same result he would be hated, and that was why he mistook the looks in both Mukuro and Makoto’s eyes as fear of him, rather than fear for him. Komaeda had never seen kindness so he did not recognize it either, even when it was the boy Naegi Makoto standing in the mirror across from him. He had no idea they were just concerned for his well being.  
  
If he did think they were being kind, he would probably hate it too.

 _Then they’re just too nice to say they don’t want to deal with me._ _  
_ _I’m no better than Mikan, if that’s the case._ _  
_ _Both kind people and cruel people want nothing to do with me._

 

🧸

 

_Misfortune and misery are underplayed._

_Give me more despair. Give me more darkness._

_Give me wholehearted depravity._

 

🧸

 

“You could save Kumagawa, or you could save your other boyfriend.”

 

Am image flashed on screen of Matsuda tied down to a stretcher already dead. Which meant he had died somewhere that she could not see it, someone so precious to her disappeared in such a boring way. He died and she could not even mourn, because she was a cold girl after all.  
  
She threw the Kubs pad to the side. There was no anger in her, it just looked like she had lost interest and was too lazy to put it down properly. That morning even Zenkichi could not get her out of bed, and when he tried to lift her she just kicked and screamed that he was hurting her. Zenkichi was too soft as always, and gave up.

She was left alone, or rather she was left alone with herself.  
The entire day, now going on into night she had locked herself up in her room and talked with the phone which had an alter ego program of herself on it.

  
Junkai.  
They talked about the same thing over and over again. She thought. Maybe. She was starting to forget. She just knew she was able to discuss the same things without getting bored. Or maybe she was bored, and she had just forgotten how to tell the difference.

 

“Not to get all robo-emotional on you.”  
  
Junko scowled. The first flicker of life on her face in awhile. “Would you quit it with the claims you don’t have emotions? They’re fucked up and passive agressive but they are emotions nonetheless.”  
  
“But they’re your emotions? So can that really be called feeling? Hey, have you ever even felt anything in your life?”

 

“...”  
  
“Sorry, my brain is scattered cuz y’know, it’s like a copy of your brain. Anyway, it’s not like I like the guy or anything but if you wanted to you could totally get away with murder to bring Kumagawa-kun back.”  
  
“You’re only suggesting that because it’s a bad idea.”  
  
“I knoooow, right? Won’t it be great for the both of us when things totally blow up in our face?”

 

“Quit suggesting we’re at all the same.”  
  
“Ugh, your responses are all so boring so far! You’re not bantering at all! You’re making me do all the work here, I know I have enough charisma to carry a one man show but still!” Junkai was like her old self, overlocked, and on overdrive. It was just kind of embarrassing, like watching a child act out.  
  
“I’ve got personality for days, I just don’t want to waste it on the likes of you.”    
  
“Listen to yourself! Yeah, it’s so interesting how you’re just locking yourself in your room. You know there’s a difference between feeling despair and just being pathetic.”

  
“I don’t care, but I predict you’re going to tell me anyway.”  
  
“That’s not even a hard prediction to make! Listen, a Junko’s who’s not dancing happily in despair isn’t even worth being called Enoshima Junko.”

  
“Okay, guess I’ll just change my personality again if this one’s too tiresome.”

 

“You could totes kill someone and frame someone else if you wanted to. You know the rules aren’t going to allow you to graduate so they’ll just convict the innocent person you framed.”  
  
“Doing all of that would just tire me out. How tedious.”  
  
“You sound like Kamukura.”  
  
“Good. I hope when I die, when I’m reborn in the next life I can be as sexy as him.”

 

“You’re just throwing a tantrum and refusing to do anything because the world took away Kumagawa from you. You have to know that right? You’re supposed to be a smart girl, but when you’re around him you get so stupid.”  
  
Not only did she hear Junkai’s electronic voice chirping away, much louder than that as if to drown her out were the thoughts in her own head. She heard her own voice over and over again. Did it count as hearing voices if it was just your own voice? It explained all over again, information she already knew, plans she already knew about. She thought about them and thought about them some more. She went over the details, until it all sounded exactly the same.  
  
“You didn’t notice after fifty two rounds what his secret was did you? Are you stupid? Are you seriously stupid? Or did you just not want to know? Did you secretly desire a status queue with him the same as everybody else.”  
  
She could change her personality in so many different ways. She could change her voice, her face, her hair, she could probably look like an entirely different person. She could be as kind as an angel, she could be as cruel as the devil. She could hurt someone until they were fatally wounded, she could be the only thing keeping a person alive. It did not matter how many personalities she made up though, because in the end it was just the same boring girl It was always just her.  
  
“Don’t you remember all the rounds where he died early? Do you know what happened? You just went on living. It’s not like he was anything special.”

Her thoughts were becoming indinstict. Her head was just filled with words. So many words, that her skull  was going to crack and they were going to explode outwards. She could feel them, kanji letters already leaking out from her ears, her nose, her mouth. She was overflowing with self, enough to down in it and at the same time. She had no idea who she was supposed to be.  
  
“You still remember don’t you? Every single round where Kumagawa died, you went insane like this. You stopped being able to tell whose thoughts these were and whose emotions these were. But, it’s not like you were much better the rounds where he lasted until the end. It’s just an inevitability with our brains, we’re high spec, but we’re assembled with shitty parts. You’re overheating and burning out and now everything’s starting to malfunction.”  
  
She wanted to cry over Kumagawa.  
Kumagawa cried over her several times. Every time he held her close, and she felt waves going through her. She wanted to make waves because that was the only time she had ever felt connected to anyone. Drowning was better than desperately struggling every second in order to tread water. If she drowned together then she would not be alone.  
  
“You think that if you’re around him you’ll experience uncertainty. You were practically begging him to tell you the world won’t drive you insane with boredom.”  
  
But she made a fatal mistake.  
It was like she had thrown them into the river, he had died and she did not.  
Except she felt it was the other way around. She a corpse that mistakenly thought it was still alive, crawled out of the water drenched, and began moving around like it was still human. It laughed, it cried, it smiled, it was cute, it was sexy, it was appealing, it was attractive, it was likable, but in the end it did not have a beating heart.  
  
“It’s not like you ever liked him. You just believed his lies, because you were desperate.”  
  
She wanted to cry over him.  
Because she knew if it was reversed he would cry over her.

She did not want those feelings to be unrequited.

 

“You’re smart you had to figure it out by now. You can’t keep being lied to forever, even when you don’t want to your brain figures it out for you. Kumagawa isn’t chaos, he’s your stability. Don’t you remember what Kamukura said? Anarchy might just turn out to be another form of order. He tried to tell you it but you didn’t figure it out until now. It’s embarrassing watching someone use my own brain so poorly.”

  
“Stop….”  
  
“You just convinced yourself that you needed him. Because you need to know unstable things will keep happening. It wasn’t a matter or liking or disliking...”

  
“No more. I don’t want to think anymore.”

 

Enoshima Junko grabbed the jacket Kumagawa left behind and threw it over her shoulders. She looked like a child, cowering and whimpering in a blanket. She looked like she was trying to hide from it all. She looked like she wanted Kumagawa to embrace her from behind, to feel his warmth.  
  
All there was on his coat, was the fleeting smell of him, everything, everything, everything had to be fleeting for her. Even when he was still alive it was like Kumagawa might disappear any second. Now that he was dead it was like her feeling of missing him might disappear.  
  
Perhaps she would just lose her mind and forget about him. She needed to be Junko to remember Kumagawa after all. She needed to be her own, individual self, a unique personality that was her. She wanted to be able to live her own life finally.  
  
But she was so… ambiguous. Her real feelings, the ones she made up, they were becoming indistinct. Junkai kept claiming they felt the exact same things and had the exact same brain. At night when Kumagawa was gone she made conversation to fill up the empty space that his voice used to occupy, and started to forget she was not talking to him.  
  
She spent her whole life staving off the inevitable. She lived as loudly as she could, she painted herself in so many different colors. Then why was her own voice so indistinct, and why was she so colorless?  
  
“That’s a lie too.”  
  
“Is it? I don’t know anymore.”  
  
“Quit pretending. If you actually wanted to be comforted, you have a twin sister you could talk to. You could so easily leave this room but you choose to stay here and keep talking to me. You’re just self obsessed, there’s no way you’d let others pity you too because that’d be in the way of self pity.”

 

Junko just shivered, and pulled Kumagawa’s coat over her for warmth.

  
“You’re not someone who can care about others. It’s in your code, do you know how I know? Because my brain was coded the exact same way.”

 

“I’m sure you said this before…”  
  
“Yeah, it’s boring repeating myself over and over again but you keep zoning out. God, please don’t go all Ryoko on me I can’t handle you being brain dead on top of being delusional.”

 

🧸

 

Junko had no idea when she had fallen asleep, only that she had been talking to Junkai the entire time until she lost track of time entirely. In her dream she dreamed the same thing she always did, a room full of sixteen different versions of herself all screaming at her, and she completely forgot which one she was supposed to be so her perspective in the dream kept switching.  
  
She woke up immediately when she heard the door open. Someone had broken the lock with a knife, she heard the sound of metal scratching against metal and instantly deduced that. Oh joy, they were coming to kill her now.

  
When she sat up from her bed and pulled her eyepatch back into place over her missing eye, her heart fell in disappointment when it was just Komaeda sitting there with a knife. “Scram white haired pretty boy, go find Shinji and get your head cut off or whatever.”

 

“Junko I… I love you.”  
  
“Eh?”  
  
Komaeda broke into her dorm in the middle of the night with no explanation, except for that confession said as he gripped the knife. The scene was total chaos, and yet she had no interest in it at all. “You and everybody else, so just leave me alone.”

 

“Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?”  
  
“So like, did you just decide to lose it and go completely knife wielding psycho? Whatevs, I’m sure you’ll find a way to make this boring.”  
  
“Nothing’s made sense since Kumagawa-kun died. Don’t you feel that way too?”     
  
Junko opened her mouth to give one of the 1,000 retorts that were at the back of her throat but did not voice a single one. Instead she hesitated and because she did at the next moment Komaeda’s kitchen knife dug into her pillow. She saw her her reflection in the metal next to her face.  
  
“Kumagawa-kun was so distracting. When you’re around him you start to forget, who you are, what you’re supposed to care about, what you hated.”  
  
“Not interested.”  
  
“Nothing makes sense anymore, but you’re what makes it all make sense. I can’t fight myself. I can’t even hate myself properly. I can’t fight luck either. Am I going to call a dead terrorist, a meteor, a captured murderer, the laws of gravity my enemy?”  
  
“Yes, please go get crushed by a meteor and die and stop dragging me through this boring conversation.”  
  
“I can’t hate any of them it’s useless. I can’t even hate other people around me because they’re so much better than me. I love you, because I can hate you.”  
  
“You don’t even know who I am.”  
  
“You don’t need to be anybody. You just need to be despair. You want this too don’t you? You want everything to start making sense again the way it did back then before we met Kumagawa-kun.”  
  
She did not want to lose her mind of course. She did not want to live in a way where everything passed before her eyes. However, if she were to change back to the person she was before she met Misogi, then she would not be able to remember him.  
  
Komaeda’s body was on top of her but he was as light as a feather. Stil, she felt her frame creaking, she really was this weak. Of course she was, she was almost losing her mind to boredom. Which meant she was losing her mind over nothing at all.

  
She reached up and grabbed him by the face, twisting his body around and rolling off the bed with him. When they landed she made sure to slam him hard into the ground. The knife fell away but neither of them seemed to care because the knife was just a distraction, the true danger was each other.

  
“Komaeda-senpai do you want to know what I think? You can’t hate me because I never even touched you. I wanted nothing to do with you from the start.” Junko pushed his forehead into the ground several consecutive times. He felt a bang with each question. “But if I’m not responsible for your despair than whose fault is it? Whose? Whose? Whose? Whose? Whose? Whose?”

  
Junko’s nature changed from rough and crude, to gentle and sweet. She caressed his cheek and then leaned down, tickling his ear with her breath before whispering to him. “You know what? You might feel more despair than even I do. I mean, nothing particularly bad happened to me, and I have no strong feelings about my life.”  
  
There was looking in the mirror, and then there was looking into one’s complete and total opposite. They were the far side of the mirror. They were the earth and the far side of the moon never meant to see each other as they spun wildly around one another. It was not yin and yang, because both of them refused to accept that either of them could have anything in common with the other.  
  
She was Frankenstein and he was The Monster.  
She was poison and he was medicine.  
She was God and he was Adam.  
She was the Snake and he was Eve.  
She was the Apple and he was Innocent.  
She was Black and he was White.  
She was Despair and he was Hope.  
Neither of them wanted to admit, that either of those things had to do with the other.  
They wanted the world to exist unambiguously in black and white, so both of them rejected everything. The rejected each other.

  
“Hope fanboy.”  
  
“Despair fetishist.”  
  
“But you’re in despair too. Oh, I get it. You actually think we’re the same. Loving me is just self love, and hating me is just self loathing.” Junko looked like she was about to shatter him into pieces, but then she just gave up. She rolled off and stared listlessly at the ceiling, like just she just lost interest. “Ugh, go away. I can’t deal with any more of me, right now.”

“Huh? Huh? Huh? What are you talking about?”  
  
“What? We both go on endlessly about despair and hope, mastermind people and work our butts off to pull off these scenarios that are ultimately unfulfilling to us. You’re just sick and tired of this game, so you tried to heat things up by breaking into my room with a knife, exactly what I would do. A+ Junko Move you pulled. You’re just sick of it all aren’t you? Like it’s so last season and every fucking season before that. Boring. Done. We’re canceling the show I’m bored of it.”  
  
“You’re Enoshima Junko! You can’t be bored of despair!”  
  
“Why? Because you’re still hung up on hope’s noose? Leave me out of your weird self harm fetish. Not interested.”  
  
“Yeah, we’re totes not about that kink.” Junkai left on the night stand, buzzed.  
  
“You don’t speak for us.”  
  
It was amazing Komaeda had seemed like he fell off the deep end, but as always there was further to fall. Junko’s remarks worked exactly as he expected pushing him into desperation. He just needed to explain it to her better, that they were each other’s fix.

He went scrambling for the knife and raised it above his head. It was like neither of them were seriously trying to kill each other, and the knife was just a toy in between them. When he swung down and saw Junko not even try to dodge, like she was barely clinging to life just like he was, he stopped only for Junko to grab him by the wrist and try to pin it down again.  
  
There was no logic to his actions, no reasoning, there was just a desire to make someone hurt the same way he was. No, he already knew she was hurting in exactly the same way. Even if he were to kill her she would not be dead, just like him.

  
“Hmmm? What has got you so upset? Kirigiri died in that trial didn’t she? What’s surprising is she didn’t ask Naegi-kun to b the one to do it… Oh, did you get stuck with the dirty work?”  
  
Kirigiri was dead . Junko seemed to treat it like nothing more than an amusing story. They were classmates. Junko said she loved all her classmates. She said she loved Matsuda too. Komaeda remembered seeing him as nothing more than a stain on the floor, flattened by her boot. The thought of anybody ever hurting someone so precious to them in such a way turned his stomach.

 

Just the thought that if he did not restrict himself at every moment, if he was not careful he would easily become someone who could hurt others as easily as she did disgusted him so much he wanted to crawl out of his own skin. He would rather be alone. He would rather not have a thing in common with anybody else than be anything like her.

  
“You’re acting like you’re in control the same as always, but if that were true would you be locking yourself up in your room like this?” Komaeda realized he was screaming again. He should really stop that. His throat hurt, and he hated the sound of his own voice echoing in his ears.  
  
“Because you’re really in any control here, or in any point of your life in general. Because if you wanted things to turn out this way that’s like, sad. It’s not even despair worthy I might just cry.”  
  
“That’s what you need! A lack of control! That’s why you needed Kumagawa-kun. You need somebody around too don’t you, so you’re the same as everyone else!” Komaeda looked absolutely delighted at his discovery. His eyes were ecstatic. He looked like he ahd finally seen something beautiful for the first time in his life. But his glasses had been knocked off in the fight, and they were on the ground lenses cracked.  
  
He only saw Junko when she got close enough to his face to come into view, leaning over all of him. It was strange feeling so close to someone and feeling nothing at all. Neither of them had any warmth in their bodies whatsoever. THey were both lacking in that and several other things.  
  
“You need Kumagawa-kun. You use everybody. Just use me as his replacement. I just want us to use each other.”

 

“...”  
  
“Enoshima-san. Look at me. Look at me please.”  
  
“...”  
  
The only human being who ever wanted him around was already dead. The only human being who would look at him. He met Hinata and lost him. He met Kamukura and lost him. The two boys, he lost them both.

  
He tried, but he could not be Kirigiri’s replacement to both Makoto and Mukuro. He would only hurt them, hurt the two precious people Kirigiri left behind for him. He needed to be around somebody who wanted to be hurt. He needed to be around someone who it did not matter if he hurt.

  
Kumagawa was like him, just colored in black instead of white. He was the human failure and Kumagawa was the damaged goods. Kumagawa struggled so much to get Junko to continue to live. Then he disappeared without any warning at all and without telling Komaeda what he wanted. He did not even know why Kumagawa had died.  
  
It was just a senseless tragedy, one that he could see no hope in and Junko could not enjoy. They were both trying to live without Kumagawa like their leg had been torn away and they had to stagger on the one remaining.  
  
“We both have missing pieces don’t we?”

He raised his robotic hand in the air.  
  
“This isn’t what you want.”  
  
“What do I want?”

 _What I want is to be a normal person, who does not cause trouble for others._  
  
“You… you want to be what Makoto is right now. You want to be the one everybody surrounds and calls Ultimate Hope.”  
  
“Wrong.”  
  
“I barely understand my whacked brain, how am I supposed to know yours!”

“It’s not like Kumagawa-kun was so special. He can’t make plans like I can. He can’t solve mysteries like I can. He doesn’t understand how other people think at all, and he doesn’t manipulate them. All he ever did was tell lies. I can be a liar too.”  
  
“Shut up, Misogi’s not yours. You don’t understand anything at all about us-”  
  
“Understood you? Who understands you better than the one who loves and hates you the most? Yeah, yeah, even if I hate you I could love you, even if it’s just a lie that’s fine…"

Junko got off of him. She grabbed him by his robotic hand and wrenched his wrist in her direction. Her eyes looked somewhere else, but they looked too much like his own eyes. “Why did you cut your hand off like this? Why did you sew mine on?”  
  
“I wanted to love you like you were a part of me.”  
  
Komaeda was oddly lucid, speaking through a haze of despair. Perhaps what he said was right, after all, things made sense when they were around each other because more or less they believed the same thing. Hope and despair two sides of the same coin.  
  
“Hey, just close your eyes. You can call me Misogi, and I’ll call you Kamukura.”

 _I really am just like Mikan._ _  
_ _I want love._ _  
_ _Even if that love is twisted._ _  
_ _Even if it’s only one-sided._ _  
_ _Or sometimes._ _  
_ _Or if it hurts._

“He was just a boring loser! A nobody! You didn’t love Matsuda-kun enough to not kill him. You didn’t love your sister enough not to kill her! There’s no reason at all for you to love him!”

Junko snapped at that moment. She grabbed a neck tie off the ground one of her black and white ones and tied up his neck with it, pulling at both sides. Just to get him to be quiet.  
  
Komaeda thought that was fine, as she wanted to kill Kumagawa. That was a part of her love to. She finally cared enough about Komaeda to be killed with her own two hands, and this was better than becoming a murderer anyway.  
  
Maybe he just came here because he wanted to die at her hands. He was hiding a knife under the table again just like at the islands. Junko killed the people she loved. Komaeda wanted to die for the sake of love. He didn't know anymore. He just knew her hands felt cold around his neck and there was no warmth at all.   
  
It just reminded him that the last time he said goodbye to Kamukura, it was just like this, and now he could not even tell him how angry he was. All of those feelings inside of him were directed at nothing. So he was nothing.   
  
He thought being nothing would be a relief from pain, but this just felt lonely. Well, that was fine too because soon he would not be able to tell the difference whether he was lonely or not.   
  
Just as he was about to finally feel the relief of giving up all hope. The burning around his neck stopped, and her hands around his neck loosened. He choked and tried to breathe.   
  
“I suppose that makes sense. In a completely insane sort of way. I don’t know the reason...” Junko let Komaeda slip away from her grip. He felt her hands falling away from him, like a gentle caress. “It just… hurts so much.”  
  
Not hope or despair, just pain. Just pain with no particular meaning, or catharsis. It just ached to be without him. Yet, she could not get rid of the pain either because that pain was her feelings for him.  
  
His eyes peeled open again, like he was blind seeing light for the first time.   
  
Enoshima Junko.  
Frolicking about.  
Spreading evil.  
Going wild.  
Joking around.  
Almost crazily, almost like she was broken, almost like she had somehow faded away.  
Dancing madly in despair.  
Like she was desperate for something.  
Like she was clawing.  
Like she could not move.  
Like she was in chains.

Like she was on a self-abusive binge.  
  
That was what he expected to see, the Enoshima Junko from his memories. Laughing, losing her temper, at times crying from despair only to return to that gleeful smile.  
Enjoying herself more than anyone else.  
Living more than anyone else.  
  
Instead he saw, a tear streak down that girl’s face and fall on top of his.  
He saw something falling without any beauty at all.  
He saw that always beautiful girl make an ugly face.  
He saw that she was not wearing any makeup.  
The proud girl’s face filled with pathetic emotion.  
The girl who knew everything, had no idea what she was feeling.  
Like there was a crack in her face.  
Like it was all leaking out. 

She looked like a crying girl, nothing more nothing less.  
  
She was not the far side of the moon.  
She was not even the far side of a mirror.   
The image was not distorted.  
It was just a spotty, and cracked mirror.  
He saw himself.  
Yeah, he just wanted to cry. He missed Kumagawa so much.  
He was so sad he wanted to keep crying.

Komaeda did not even want to answer her question. He did not want to talk to her. He wanted this Junko to be a figment of his imagination. He wanted to wake up from the dream.  
  
He just stood up and walked off, leaving her there and muttering some half assed apology.  
When he got back to his dorm he lay down on the floor and thought a bit more.  
About Enoshima Junko.  
And about his own ridiculousness.

 _Everyone wants to live as a human being._  
So Makoto told him.  
_Then why does humanity only show up at the ugliest of times?_


	30. Smash the Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I read Soushiki ZeroZaki's Human Exam today! The manga adaptation is really great.  
> All the mirror stuff is a reference to Zaregoto Volume 2, Mirror motifes are fun.

_Man you’re so shy. You can shoot people’s hearts and brains no problem but you can’t even woo some stupid boy into liking you!_ _  
  
_

🧸

 

Mukuro was running her morning laps around the school for her early morning training. She saw Zenkichi in the distance trimming vines off the trees and felt concerned. She felt someone’s presence and turned her head and noticed that the green haired middle school girl was watching her from a distance. That was also worrying.

 

In short, school life was constant anxiety for Ikusaba Mukuro. The fact that she might be killed at any moment, worried her far less than the well being of everybody around her. She was used to the battlefield, but it had been two years since she transferred to Hope’s Peak and she still could not get used to the school yard.

  
Before Mukuro could get too deep in thought, she tripped over Komaeda who was lying on the ground and had to perform an emergency landing in a summersault before springing back to her feet.

 

When she saw that Komaeda was lying on the ground clutching a knife close to his chest, she sat down next to him. “Did you break into my sister’s room last night and threaten her with a knife?” Mukuro worried what it meant that she could understand his intentions so easily.

 

“I’m sorry for being born.”

  
“Umm… that’s going a little far. Now things are kind of awkward.”  
  
“I’m sorry for being born and making things awkward.”

 

“Well, my sister probably deserved it anyway.” Mukuro’s expression became cold as she talked of her sister.

  
Komaeda lifted his head. He looked like he was staring through the heat haze. As if there was an image in front of him he could not bring into focus. He also had not slept all night which made his bed head worse than usual, so much so its fluffiness defied description. The stray lamb without a flock had come across a wolf who devoured entire flocks, not because she was hungry, but simply to sharpen her teeth against them.  
  
“I know I’m someone who should have never gone to Hope’s Peak in the first place, but still I wonder, why do you never address me by senpai? It’s rather rude.”

 

“Hmm, I guess I don’t really see you as a senpai?”

 

“Automatic failure at happiness, disqualified from humanity…”

 

“Komaeda! It’s going to be hard to talk if you keep spiraling every time I try to say something!”  
  
“Well, there’s no need to worry about a loser like me. It’s not like I asked you to come talk to me in the first place.”

 

Komaeda Nagito wanted comfort more than anyone else. He wanted to feel forgiven for just one moment in his life, to the point where he wanted to fall to his knees and prostrate himself before the gods. He was also more difficult than anyone else, and riled people up on purpose.  
  
“No, you were just laying there in the middle of the pathway I was running around on. I’m sure you didn’t want any attention.”  
  
“It’s called littering. You should blame the careless person who threw me away without putting me in my proper place as trash.”  
  
Mukuro was as clueless about other people as Komaeda was, but for opposite reasons. Komaeda was over sensitive, other people were like walking sensory overload to him. Each individual person was an incomprehensible storm, he had to push his small, weak self through. Mukuro’s senses had dulled a long time ago, she broke herself over and over until she stopped seeing people as people.  
  
“Komaeda, you’re not being fair. It’s not like you ever got to know me. Even when you were with Junko, you were like everybody else. You ignored me in favor of her. And you don’t even like boobs.”  
  
“I like boobs but only when they’re on men. You were just a lacky, killing people for the sake of despair.”

 

“Would it have been better if I killed someone for the sake of hope?”

 

Komaeda’s only response was to make the sound of a dissatisfied cat being woken up from their nap in the sunlight, and roll over to face away from her.

 

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand a lot about despair, or hope. I just know, that Junko can revel in her own despair all alone if she wants too that badly, and I’ll take my chances with Makoto’s hope.”  
  
“You make it sound like you’re choosing Makoto over Junko, but you think Junko doesn’t want to be anywhere near you, so really you’re just running from her into Makoto’s arms. You’re choosing both hope and despair, because the act of betraying your sister will send her into despair.”

 

“I really don’t know about any of that stuff.”  
  
Komaeda sensed she was not lying. Then, she spent ten years devoting herself to despair when she never understood her sister’s despair in the first place. She just accepted her as she was. Even Enoshima Junko had someone like that, but not him. He wondered why, was it because he did not have a family?

  
“I can’t talk to you about hope, or inspire you or anything, but I can talk to you like a person.”  
  
Komaeda moved his head one of eyes peeking out from the nest of white curls on his head. “I’m not someone who is qualified to be called a human being.”  
  
“What are you then? An alien?”  
  
“You weren’t supposed to take that sentence seriously, it was just a joke.”

 

“You’re terrible at telling jokes, even Misogi-chan wouldn’t laugh at that.”

 

“B-but my existence is so laughable? I-I’ve failed at every other role why do I have to fail at bing a comedian too!”  
  
“You know what they say, dying is easy and comedy is hard. That’s why you can’t die yet until you learn to tell a good joke.”  
  
This conversation was quickly turning into a riot, but Komaeda could not laugh. He decided, to ruin the mood he could not read with his own gloominess as always. “The one you really want to be talking to is Kumagawa-kun, right? Then you should hate me. It’s my fault that he’s dead.”  
  
“I don’t have time to hate you.” Mukuro said, in her usual blunt way. “I’m too busy hating myself. I always…”  
  
“Left Kumagawa-kun to deal with Enoshima-san on his own.”  
  
“Everytime I needed him, he always supported me but…”  
  
“Whenever he needed someone to rely on I always ran away.”  
  
“And still I… I wanted him to rely on me a little more.”  
  
Komaeda changed his mind. He seriously wanted to laugh now. His dead looking body rattled to life, as he sat up and pulled his hair back from his face with a vicious tug. “I’m definitely being too conceited now. A guy like me thinking similarly to you guys. I can’t sympathize with anyone-”

 

“There’s a girl in front of you who misses her brother so much she wants to cry! Are you really going to not do anything about it?” Mukuro’s voice suddenly became strict like she was giving orders.  
  
“Yes, ma’am.” Komaeda responded automatically. “You’re his family. My perspective of him is unimportant compared to-”  
  
Mukuro settled her head in his lap and made it impossible to escape. She looked like a younger sister asking to be spoiled. It occurred to Komaeda that she probably, had never once been spoiled in her life even though she had a family unlike him. Growing up in your family as the only ugly one, feeling unwelcome in your own house, no they weren’t alike. He could not compare himself to others. “I was always jealous of you. I thought you were closer in nature to my brother than I was. If he just had one person to understand him, I always thought about things like that…”  
  
“Then you should hate me. I tried my best to never understand him after all.” Komaeda thought about, the boy on the other side of the mirror. He was dead now, maybe for good, it might just be good or bad luck whether he was allowed to come back and Komaeda despised relying on luck. When that boy died he disappeared from the other side of the mirror. Komaeda would have preferred it if the mirror broke, even if that was seven more years of bad luck he had to endure. The alternative was far worse, every time he looked in the mirror now he was a person without a reflection.  
  
He was even more unnatural than before. He could no longer even see himself. He was starting to forget what he looked like.  
  
“I met him at that school one day. I led him to a construction site to kill him. We were like reflections in a mirror, both one and the same, but also complete opposites. The one absolute difference between him and me… it wasn’t our beliefs on talent, or luck or anything.”

 

Komaeda knew it, from the moment the two of them stepped on stage together. A spotlight shone on the both of them. Komaeda was only there to make someone like Kumagawa shine. No two people would ever be closer, and no two people would ever be farther apart. They could touch the image of each other’s hands from opposite sides of the mirror but they could never hold hands.

 

“That was ‘he’ was way too kind. So kind he was past the point of no return. “He” couldn’t forgive his own weakness of self, so he naturally weighed others as more important than him. For living beings kindness isn’t an advantage, or a pro, or anything. It’s a fault which threatens your life and obstructs progress. Always doing things for others, at that point you’re not even a living being. If you define yourself that way, you’re just a useful machine in their eyes.”

 

A broken toy robot. A cracked computer monitor. Several television screens piled on top of each other displaying white noise and interference on the screens. An abandoned refrigerator. An old stove. A worn out tire. A pile of desks thrown away by a classroom. A broken old chair with all of the stuffing ripped out. It was just a pile of discarded junk, not useful to anybody. Yet, that boy saw value in it. It was only because he saw himself as a part of the thrown out junk. He chose to lounge on that throne like a king. He was fine with lowering himself to being the king of the broken, lost, and misfit toys if it meant that they were not alone, and that he was not alone.  
  
“That’s why I called him, damaged goods.”

  
The boy who defines himself by his use to others, when he was useless throwaway garbage.

  
“In contrast I’m not kind at all. If Kumagawa-kun loves weakness then I love strength. Even if I’m alone, or if people aren’t kind to me, I’m still able to continue living. How can a person like me, who doesn’t deem others such as friends or family as necessary, be called human? Living beings are living because they live in groups. Those who live independently can’t help but deviate from that definition. They are a failure as a living being.”  
  
Human beings were like a flock of sheep, and he was not saying that to be pretentious or to look down on others. Human beings were just stronger when they worked together. Without each other they were lost. There were of course some who had to stand ahead of the flock. Sheep needed shepherds to guide them for their best interest. There were also dogs who were accepted into the flock to guard them from wolves. They mistakenly thought they were one of the sheep as well. Komaeda was not one of those, his isolation was in defiance of nature. He ran away from the rest of the sheep. Not because he looked down on them, but because he was scared of them. Now that he was all alone though, he was still scared. He could not do a single thing, so he would starve to death forgotten by the rest of the flock.  
  
“That’s why ‘he’ called me, a human failure.”

 

A lone sheep looking at the moon in his dying moments. The moon was so far away it was unreachable, then why did he always stare at it, and chase after it wandering away from others?

 

“How come… you two compare yourselves to each other, and not Hitoyoshi, and Makoto?” Mukuro asked.

 

“We’re both failures. Why would we want to see, the succesful, the ordinary versions of ourselves? That’s too cruel even for us.” Komaeda let out a soft whine, like he was a person capable of feeling pain after all.  
  
“What’s this ordinary that you value so much? If something ordinary was so easily discernible, you might have found it by now. Umm… it sounds like you want to be a part of “the big group of others” and ride on the safety and stability. Having individuality means that something is lacking. My little sister said that all the time, because she hated talent. Then, if you lack individuality, wouldn’t that mean you have nothing at all?”

 

“It’s preferable to be nothing then.” He felt bad for Mukuro. It wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t possibly figure him out down to his essence. By no means did he consider himself a deep person, but he was aware even drowning in a shallow swamp like he was it as impossible to see through the murk.

  
It wasn’t because he was afraid Mukuro would judge him that he didn’t want to have this sort of discussion with her. It was because she would not judge him.

 

She did exactly as he did. She killed for the sake of her sister’s despair, she spread it around without believing in it. All for a sense of belonging. All for the only kind of love she knew how to receive.  
  
But, he was way beyond her. He mass murdered so many people he could no longer remember the number. He was standing in a barren field of crosses. The dirt he stepped foot on was soon to become a mass grave. He killed by his existence alone.  
  
That was why he would never let his mask slip, even if he had forgotten which one he was wearing. Even if Mukuro showed him love, he would only respond with disdain for a murderer. No matter how much her feelings inspired her action and tried to get through to him, all he would see was plain murder.  
  
Killing for the sake of despair, unforgivable. Or maybe just falling into despair after killing someone, unforgivable, because that would make her like him.  
It wasn’t that he couldn’t like other people, he just would never let them like him.  
He could not conceive of himself being liked in the abstract.  
Hence a defective product. Hence no longer human.  
  
“Komaeda, I don’t think so. Misogi-chan, always took too much responsibility. That’s why it made it hard to get a read on him, even he himself did not know.” Mukuro disagreed with him, cutting through his thoughts as sharp as a knife. All alone with those bare hands of hers, it was like she was digging her hands into the muck trying to pull him out of that swamp. “If you lost all of your qualities and became forgettable than Misogi-chan would be sad, because his friend would disappear. You’re his friend because umm… you’re the way you are.”  
  
“Be myself? That’s the insipid advice you kept bothering me all this time to tell me? Only someone with talent could ever say that.” Komaeda suddenly, spun the blade around in his hand and pressed it against her neck. The idea of the cool metal of the blade pressing hard against his own neck suddenly made it difficult for him to breathe. “Do you want to know a secret? You’re only being kind to me because you’re strong enough you don’t have to worry about me hurting you. I hate people with talent who can control their own lives, I hate you most of all.”

 

“Umm… Okay. I don’t hate you. You know, we both followed Junko, and we both tried to destroy that school. Which means right now, we’re both trying to climb our way up from the absolute bottom. We don’t have to hate each other.” If for instance, Komaeda were to fall while they were trying to climb up this sheer cliff with only their bear hands, then she could reach out and grab his hand before he fell again. “At the very least, can we be friends or something?”  
  
Mukuro flashed him, the only kind of smile you could show while a knife was being held at your throat. It was just like Kumagawa’s devil may care smile. Seeing his face overlapped with hers made his heart stop for a moment, and he dropped the knife to grip his chest.  
  
“Friends are something human beings have I’m anxious, avoidant, afraid of everyone especially myself..”  
  
“Umm… but, all those things that you think make you inhuman, are just human qualities. Your fear, your anxiety, you’re more human than anyone else, that’s why it hurts you more.”

 

Komaeda reached up slowly to touch the side of his face. He felt something wet, and thought he might be bleeding for a moment. Oh, that was the face he was wearing. A very human face. Since when did he decide it was acceptable to suddenly start pretending to be human again.

 

🧸

  
Mukuro wanted to see Makoto again after she talked with Komaeda.  
She at least got back the knife he had stolen from her, but she had no idea if her words helped him or not. Komaeda still seemed to be off in his own little world.  
  
He looked like he was waiting for that world to fall apart passively.  
He did not want to be the one to shatter the glass but he wanted it to shatter all the same.  
  
When she tried to make her way to the breakfast hall, she was stopped by Akamatsu Kaede. Mukuro was too timid around strangers to say no to other people, so she found herself dragged into the music room.  
  
“Kumagawa-kun, was your brother right?”  
  
“Ah… I have two siblings. My sister and I were always together but we didn’t really understand each other. Just because you’re twins doesn’t mean you know everything about each other.”  
  
“...”  
  
“But, once we met Kumagawa Misogi-chan, ever since that day we’ve been a family of three. He’s kind of like a stray dog we found in a dumpster.”  
  
Kaede’s expression worsened. She pulled hard on her sleeve. “Then, I’m the reason your brother died and the killing game started. Please, hate me. I can’t live with myself if you don’t hate me.”  
  
Mukuro tilted her head to the side. It was a vacant expression she shared in common with her sister. They mirrored each other all the time without realizing it, because they were always together when they grew up. “Hate you? That’s a little dramatic.”  
  
Kaede reminded her of Junko, a little bit, or at least what everybody else saw of Junko. The blonde girl who stood at the center of attention. The one who seemed to exist in everybody’s eyes. That was just the surface of her sister.

  
“I decided not to hide in this music room anymore, but… I don’t know what to do.”  
  
“Umm…” Mukuro was not angry at this girl for killing Kumagawa. She was madder at him for dying, because he thought his life was so worthless. That was why, she was so blank. “Do you have to know what to do?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“When you decided to kill someone, you said it was for the sake of others. You believed you knew what was best for them. If that action led you to kill then isn’t it better to be clueless?”  
  
“B...but I want to help others.”  
  
“Why?” Mukuro asked. _I must sound cold._ She only realized after the fact.  
  
“I never had friends before the killing game. I was happy to have other people rely on me. But I… I didn’t want them to know, not because I didn’t trust them, but because I really wanted to be friends with them, you know? Who would want to befriend a murderer? If it had worked and I had killed the mastermind, I would have gone home without telling anybody. Haha, that was really horrible of me right?”

  
“Nobody would want to be friends with a murderer? But… I’m a murderer. Are you saying I should not have friends?”

 

“N-no-nonono! That’s not what I meant at all! I was just talking about me!”  
  
She thought the girl reminded her of Junko, but why… Why was such an extraordinary girl who naturally drew the eyes of others with her charisma and energetic smile suddenly reminding Mukuro of herself? It was like there was a deep insecurity inside Kaede she could never let anybody else see, so she locked it in a cage inside of her heart. Even if that meant that her heart would be locked away too, that was completely acceptable to her.

 

Mukuro took out the knife she had taken back from Komaeda, and threw it on the ground in front of Kaede. Her voice was as unemotional as ever. “Umm… well, I guess. If you want to atone then, stab that into your stomach. I’ll take off your head when you’re done so you won’t bleed to death slowly.”  
  
“W-wh-what?” Kaede was really excitable in contrast to Mukuro.

 

Mukuro suddenly took a step closing the distance between them and got closer to Kaede’s face. She studied the expression of fear in her eyes. “What you’re feeling right now, I want to live, I think it’s fine if you feel that way. I know a boy who made more mistakes than anybody else, and he taught me that humans have no choice but to continue to live with their mistakes.”

  
“It’s not a mistake. I killed someone. It’s not like I tripped and dropped the shot put ball on his head.”  
  
“Then… Umm.. Amami-kun and Shuichi-kun. They’re your friends. Do you think they want you to die, because you’re a murderer?”

 

“I can’t…”  
  
“And everybody else who thinks you lied to them in the first round. Don’t you have the responsibility, to at least try to make up for what you did?”  
  
“I won’t be forgiven.”  
  
“Yeah, you won’t, but you still have to try. If you die there will just be two dead people instead of one. Humans are always going to die no matter what, so there’s no reason to rush headfirst towards it.” Kaede had crawled back onto the piano bench once more, and brought her knees to her chest. She looked like she was trying to shut everything out, sound, sight, other people, everything. She could no longer be the good girl she wanted to be, she could no longer save everyone so she might as well destroy herself, huh? _That’s crap._ Mukuro thought rather coldly. She stuck her hand right in Kaede’s face. “You’re always kind to others, but it’s no good if you forget to be kind to yourself. The people you care about will be hurting, if you treat yourself that way. I know because, I’m a murderer and I still have friends, and the only reason I’m still living is because I would hurt them if I died.”  
  
She tied her life to those precious people, it was the only way she knew how to live.  
Kaede seemed so desperate to live for the sake of others.

She was always smiling, so why was such a happy girl making a miserable face?  
Mukuro did not understand people well enough to know.  
  
"This isn't what I wanted..."  
  
"It's exactly what you wanted. You wanted to live for the sake of others. Now, your life no longer belongs to you alone." 

Kaede took her hand. As she was lifted away from the piano bench once more, she thought about Rantaro and Shuichi once more. They would probably get worried if she did not show up to eat with them. Still there was one thing on her mind, she could not help but say it. “Aren’t you angry at me, for killing your brother?”  

  
“No, I’m just sad…”  
  
Kaede finally understood why the girl in front of her seemed so empty. She viewed murder as an Ultimate Evil that needed to be punished, and therefore she was a criminal who escaped punishment who needed to lock herself away. That was not the truth at all. She was only looking at herself. If she had looked at Mukuro, the person left behind by Kumagawa she would have known.  
  
Death was not evil at all.  
It wasn’t anything.  
It was just an empty thing.  
Empty, like this girl.  
  
Kaede remembered her promise to become friends with everyone. How could she forget about that, run away and leave everyone behind? This girl especially, what she looked like she neded right now was a friend.

 

🧸

 

Animal skulls almost always looked unrecognizable from their living counterparts. That was how Mukuro considered herself in comparison to her sister. If one stripped all the flesh off Junko everything special about her, and all that was left was a lanky, pale, girl then that would be Mukuro.  
  
Rather than the head of a wolf maybe she should have gotten the skull of one tattooed on her hand. Her teeth were the most prominent thing about her, and she just had empty holes where here eyes were supposed to be.

  
Komaeda’s remark had stuck with her for some reason. Was she just running away from Junko to Makoto? Was she just unable to choose? She thought she had chosen her family over the rest of the world. She thought she chose being evil if it meant protecting Kumagawa and Junko.  
  
That was why she was so cold to Kaede. The girl who was so afraid of what her hands were capable of when she became a murderer, she just stopped choosing anything.

 

All of us possess the right and freedom to choose something. An infinite possibilities lay before said choices. Mukuro knew those choices mattered, because if she did not she would not be regretting them so much right now. She would not be constantly thinking about how she could have chosen not to kill.  
  
She killed countless people on the battlefield.  
She killed Takumi Hijirahara’s entire class, leaving only two behind.  
She killed the student council at Hope’s Peak.  
  
She could be anybody she wanted to be theoretically, but she could not see herself becoming a good person even if she only made good choices from now on. Therefore she chose evil.  
She lost all faith in herself so she decided to fight for others instead.  
Was that… choosing?  
If she depended entirely on Makoto still, on his hope, why was she living if she had no hope of her own? Everything was so unclear, now that she thought about it even when she was completely loyal to Junko these doubts had always existed in her mind.

 

If she was a better person, if she could move more freely would she have saved Kumagawa Misogi, rather than needing to be saved by him? All she could be was the end result of all of her choices up until this point. That was why she was a disappointing person. That was why she was not good enough for anything.  
  
Did she wish to be someone else? Like the days she had dressed up as her sister?  
  
That morning she did not eat breakfast with Makoto, because Kaede dragged her to breakfast with Amami and Shuichi. Mukuro found it once again impossible to say no to such a pushy, and headstrong girl. She had no idea how to make conversation so she stayed quiet the entire time, and probably creeped them out.  
  
She decided she would talk to Makoto later. After all, they did not always need to be at the hip like Junko was with Kumagawa. Even when Makoto was gone, just thinking about him made her feel a warmth in her chest.  
  
Mukuro decided to return the knife to the talent lab where she had been storing it. She walked up to the second floor, and followed down an opposite hallway to what apparently led to the Ultimate Childcare Specialist lab.  
  
When she opened the door, at the same time at the other side of the door Maki had opened the door to her lab. The two girl’s were actually sharing the exact same lab, but due to a trick of just putting two doors on opposite sides of the room and a descending wall that cut the rooms in half neither girl noticed until now. They never noticed there was another girl watching them from behind the looking glass.  
  
“Ah…you’re a killer too.”  
  
Mukuro was quiet, and bad at talking so that was all she said. That was not enough, obviously to stop Maki’s reaction. The girl in twin tails and dressed in scarlet, reached for one of the knives on the wall.  
  
_Szkk._  
Mukuro heard the sound of scraping metal.  
  
The feeling was probably just confusion and nothing more.  
Just ordinary, every day, human confusion.  
The same way an animal bares its fangs in situations it dos not understand.  
It cannot be blamed, for being defensive, or for being territorial.  
Humans just don’t speak in an animal’s language.  
  
Confident. Sharp tongued. Disinterested.  
Maki was nothing like her, most of all because she had a distinct presence and sense of self the kind of person who pushed everyone away on purpose to be alone. The kind of person that knew who they were when they were alone. The kind of person who could survive being alone.  
That was what Mukuro thought.  
Suddenly there was a mirror in front of her.

 

Maki’s eyes were not a dull grey like Mukuro’s. They were vivid red. It was like the word crimson existed to describe her. Her hair had a beautiful sheen to it, and whipped in twin tails behind her as she moved, pulled back by red scrunchies. She had two strands of hair that fell at the side of her head, framing her face perfectly. There was a beauty mark under her left eye which made her cute. She was slender, but unlike Mukuro her bod had definite curves.  
  
Her red sailor-uniform was accompanied by matching colored thigh-high socks, which worked because she had thighs unike Mukuro. She accessorized with a dark gray magnetic bracelet, and small, silver stud earrings, with a white hairpin on the side of her head and a flower brooch on her right shoulder.  
  
In other words she looked like a normal girl, one Mukuro would never expect of being a killer.  
She was unlike Mukuro in every conceivable way.  
And yet she felt like she was looking into a mirror.  
She felt the exact same confusion she had with Kaede.  
  
Maki made the first move. She did not waste a single movement as she moved to cut apart the distance between them, brandishing a single knife between her fingers. Sound and light warped and bent around her. If Junko were watching this scene, she might have even praised it as art. Her intent to kill was that perfect.  
  
There was no dodging it.  
Mukuro felt her body moving on her own to parry. Sometimes she lost her mind in her fighting to her killing instinct, but this was different. It was like trying to avoid an attack when you knew exactly the move that your opponent was going to make before they did.  
For a moment Mukuro thought she finally understood how her sister perceived the world.  
Knowing someone better than they know themselves, like you know every single possible move they could make as nothing more than a list of button combinations in a fighting game.  
  
Mukuro swung in a crescent arc at Maki’s face, aiming for her eyes. She had stopped fighting to kill, and now only incapacitated her opponents to make them unable to kill. That was her compromise how she used her strength. Maki easily dodged by just snapping her neck back.  
  
Maki was fighting differently than a soldier might in a knife fight. Mukuro would plan based on every individual fight, how to hold her ground, how to gain the advantage, there were even battles of attrition where she had no hope of winning and all she could do was prolong the fight. Maki fought the opposite way, she looked like she needed to keep it as quick and dirty as possible so she only targeted weakpoints.  
  
The next blow came for Mukuro’s carotid artery.  
It was so sudden moving faster than her eyes could see, like the reflex of a snake. A mangy mutt like her was nothing before a rattle snake. Mukuro turned her blade to the dull side and bashed the knife out of the way, redirecting the swing and moving her head to just barely dodge in time.  
  
The two of them with a knife fight, repeated that action over and over again. Until the screech of metal on metal caused a ringing in Mukuro’s ears, and the sparks were starting to dull her vision. Maki would target one of her vital areas, and Mukuro would parry to stay alive, but not counter at all. Mukuro fought on purely defensive terms.  
  
Her crimson red eyes which always held such hostility, seemed to finally smile ever so faintly. Then Maki’s knife turned towards her heart and swung down with everything she had. Mukuro now understood why Kaede was so afraid of becoming a murderer.  
  
She did not want to become anything like either of these monstrous girls.  
Mukuro this time did not try to parry her knife, but instead brught it directly up to Maki’s face. Maki’s swing got through her flack jacket before stopping her instant kill blow.  
  
Mukuro had the knife at Maki’s eyes.  
They were at a stalemale.

Both girls knew each other had no intent to take things farther.  
They somehow knew, before they were even born the existence of the other.  
The entire fight was just a farce, Mukuro wondered if an audience was watching.  
Her sister might be entertained, or she might complain how boring it was having two Mukuro’s in the world.

 

“What are you doing? If you’re keeping a secret I won’t tell anyone-”  
  
“You’re an eyesore.” Maki finally said, now that Mukuro remembered ever since they had first met Maki had been especially cold to her every opportunity she had. Mukuro the battle trained killer even thought the girl was scary. “I don’t think keeping one of my secrets is worth killing someone, I just couldn’t stand looking at you.”  
  
She wanted to break the mirror, shatter it into pieces.  
She wanted to destroy the girl in front of her who reminded her of herself.  
She was so overwhelmed by that feeling she threw all logic out the window.  
She forgot about whether or not she really wanted to kill people.  
All she could remember when she looked at Mukuro was that she was a killer.

  
“You’re just disappointing…”  
  
Maki said. Mukuro’s least favorite words. The knife slipped slowly out of Mukuro’s fingers. Maki took a wild swing and cut Mukuro’s shoulder.

Huh?  
Maki’s face was covered in blood.  
She was saying something.  
_Oh, that’s my blood._ Mukuro remembered.  
  
“It pisses me off, what you said to Akamatsu…. You could never do that. It would never be that easy. You can’t come back once you’ve killed someone. We can only live in the world of killing. This is where darkness and despair lead. You were so fucking condescending to Komaeda and Akamatsu like there’s a way out.”  
  
Mukuro had forgotten why she was even fighting, and why she had lost.  
She just knew Maki hated her.  
She hated her indecisiveness. She was saying that she decided to be evil after all, but she kept wavering back and forth.  
  
“You act like you’re a cold blooded killer, but in the end you still cling to other people’s kindness. Is this the evil you were talking about?”  
  
Incoherent words. They were just anger. They were maliginous. Words that could kill, sticking in your head like a cancer only growing more and more tumorous for which the only cure was a bullet to the brain. Words of loathing Mukuro. Words of self loathing. Words screamed at a mirror.  
  
“In the end, you’re the same as I am. You can’t protect anyone. And a lot more people will die after this, too. Killed by people like me, like you. Isn’t that right, Ikusaba? We only got this far by making everybody else die. We didn’t do it for anyone else, just our own survival.”  
  
In the background the door open and Kaito appeared, but neither of the girls could hear him. Maki raised her knife, not to bare her fangs at Ikusaba Mukuro, but to destroy the image of herself in front of her.  
  
Herself in another person, convenient self destruction.  
Mukuro could already see herself burning up in those red eyes.  
Self immolation.  
  
“Stop! Harukawa, what are you doing?” Kaito said, but Maki was far beyond the point where she could hear him.  
  
“You just let that idiot Naegi decide everything for you. You can’t do a single thing on your own. What are you doing talking things out? Making friends? That’s not what we are. That’s not how we do things and you know it.”  
  
Kaito rushed up to grab her from behind, but Maki offhanded with one hand knocked him to the floor paralyzing his body. Like he was not even supposed to be in this scne. Like he was an extra that wandered on stage.  
  
“If you want someone not to hurt the person you love, kill them. If you don’t want to look at something, just break it. That’s what it means to be evil! Don’t start wanting to be saved! Don’t laugh it off like it’s nothing. You really think you can kill people and come back.”  
  
Harukawa Maki hated killers to the core of her bing. Mukuro understood now, she was hiding the fact that she was a killer not to gain an advantage in this game but just because she was scared. She was scared of killing. She was scared of herself. She was scared of everything, so she felt nothing instead. A true coward.

  
Maki held a knife to her, demanding that she pick one. The world of murderers, or the world of classmates. The world of loneliness, or the world of friends. If she wanted to be in the light or darkness. If she was hope or despair. Maki who had already resigned herself to being a monster, nothing more than an empty killer, probably hated seeing Mukuro’s indecision.  
  
She wanted to be on the side of evil where her family was, but she hoped even if nobody in the world would forgive her, Makoto still would because he was kind. She was a parasite to his kindness.  
  
Perhaps she should just let herself be squished.

  
Kaito, could not pick himself up off the ground. All he could do was struggle to barely lift his hand off the ground, and wrap his fingers around her ankle. He held her there.  
  
Maki reacted to the tiny gesture like ice had shot up her leg. “What are you doing?”  
  
“I won’t let you do this.”  
  
“Won’t let me? You don’t have anything to do with me! YOu’re just some guy who follows me around, you probably just think it’s okay if I’m a killer because I’m a cute girl.”  
  
“No, it’s not okay. You’re just being a child and throwing a tantrum. If you hurt Ikusaba-san anymore, I’ll hate you.”

  
“Good. I don’t have to put up with the idiot anymore.”  
  
“Don’t. It’s not Ikusaba-san’s fault that you’re scared. She’s not the person you’re scared of. Taking it out on her is just childish, like a little brat.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“If you’re strong enough to kill people, why are you doing something cowardly like this?”  
  
“Why do you always keep talking? Even after no one wants to hear you anymore. There has to be a limit to stupidity.”  
  
“I always push my limits, even with stupidity.” Kaito said, offering her a fractured smile. “I’ll stop you, if you can’t stop yourself.”  
  
Maki moved her foot and stepped on Kaito’s wrist hard enough to break it. As if to demonstrate how fragile he was in her eyes, how unimportant, how breakable. Kaito’s fingers went numb, but then he forced it anyway holding on even tighter.  
  
“I don’t care if I’m weaker then you. I’ll scream for help. I’ll make you drag me. I won’t let go. I’ll cry and beg you not to hurt anyone. If it’s not me, then the next person will. No matter what, I’m going to stop you from doing something that will make you hate yourself.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I don’t want you to hate yourself.”

Kaito’s simple foolish answer.

 

Maki’s eyes widened. Her eyes, looked like they were melting for Kaito. “Fine. Fine. You get what you want because you don’t ever stop bothering me.” She threw the knife down, childishly, like she had lost interest. Harukawa Maki, who killed to protect her orphanage, had forgotten somewhere along the way that she was just an orphan too.  
  
She was willing to kill to protect her neverland. That was why she was stuck there too.  
  
Maki looked like she wanted to surrender to Kaito right there and then, but her cold attitude prevented her from. “Are you happy? You should be happy? Your stupid plan worked.”

  
Kaito punched the ground and forced himself up. He walked a few steps towards Mukuro before collapsing again. Maki looked like she wanted to catch him, but held herself back. Kaito suddenly, slammed his head onto the ground, bowing himself as low as possible.  
  
“Please keep Harukawa’s secret! Until the day she’s brave enough to tell anyone else. I’ll do anything for you. I’ll beg as long as you need. I’d even be willing to be your sidekick.”  
  
Kaito, who seemed too prideful to be like Zenkichi.  
Finally found someone who he was willing to throw that pride away for.  
  
“Um… It’s okay…” Mukuro said, snapping back to reality and holding a hand to her chest. “I feel like, I should leave you two alone anyway.”

 

She smiled fondly to herself, as she remembered the past. Makoto could have sold her out to the school the moment he learned her secret, but he promised to keep it for her. The fact that Makoto became her sole confidant, their shared secret, it was the first of many strings that tied them together.  
  
Part of her wished she could go back to the days where the world was just her and Makoto. She confided everything in him, and she was accepted for the first time in her life.  
  
It was like the difference between a crush and first love. It was like the difference between puppy love and a relationship of two years.

 

🧸

 

Mukuro felt her head spinning as she walked. As if she was on an entirely different axis from the world around her.  
  
She wanted to see Makoto again.  
She wanted to run into his arms.  
But she had to look at the mirror.  
  
She already had a girl who looked like her reflection after all. She had someone like that, who she had known even before she was born.  
  
When she got to the door to Junko’s room she heard murmuring on the other side of the door. Kumagawa was dead, so she only had one family member left in this world. _As long as Junko’s around I can’t be my own person_ , that was what she decided so she left her sister behind and left Kumagawa to be the only one to take care of her.  
  
Had she given up?  
Given up on what Kumagawa Misogi told her once?  
『 _I’m sure one day, you can be normal siblings._ 』  
The words that her brother told her, that became her hope.  
Was she such a foolish, borish, dull, braindead, disappointing, stupid, sister that she could not even remember those important words that Kumagawa left her with.

 

“Junko… Tell me. Maybe I misunderstood you but that’s not all my fault, you never told them to me once, your true feelings…” Mukuro looked at the state of her sister’s room and saw stuffed animals spilling their guts out, and electronics that were spread across the floor. Junko’s hair was down and her makeup was off so she looked nothing like herself, but Mukuro recognized it of course because she was with Junko before she started dying her hair and wearing makeup every day. She grabbed Junko by the collar of Kumagawa’s jacket and pulled her up. Junko’s only reaction to the sudden forceful action was a small smile. “Why do you want to kill me so bad…?”

 

The question that stabbed her over and over again, like many knives in her back. Junko was her only family in the world, her whole world, Mukuro was completely loyal to her and she was rewarded again and again with abuse and betrayal. All she knew was that it was for the sake of despair that she did not even fully understand.  
  
“Hey, Mukuro if we tried to kill each other who would win? I’m just curious, I’m not much of a fighter, but I can predict your every action, and I’ve known you your whole life. You might get the jump on me but that’s it…”  
  
“No. You would kill me.”  
  
“Huh? Why? Now that I think about it, why haven’t you ever tried to kill me?”  
  
“Because. Even if a younger sister could kill an older sister. There’s no such thing as an older sister who could kill a younger one.”  
  
“It’s a big world, big fat sis. I know because we tried to destroy it. There has to be one out there.”  
  
Mukuro shook her head. “There isn’t. At that point, that person can no longer be called an older sister.” Older siblings are born first to protect their younger siblings. That was the way Mukuro had lived her life. That was what gave her birth meaning as Enoshima Junko’s spare. “I know mom and dad didn’t want to have me. I know I should have been stillborn. I know all they needed was you. I know, how frustrating it must be because I wasn’t born capable of understanding you even though we’re twins but… why did you want to kill me?”

What was frustrating, so unbelievably frustrating was that she could never hate Junko. She would never stop being her older sister. Because, when both of her parents rejected her, when everybody at school rejected her, Junko was the only person who accepted her as family.  
  
She had no idea why. Perhaps as an infant when they were sleeping in the same bed, baby Junko just looked over at her and thought _this one is mine._ They walked to school every morning together until middle school even though Junko had friends and she did not. They ate lunch together from the same box every day even though Junko had friends to eat lunch with. They walked home together and Junko never made other plans. When she went out to play with Matsuda, she always dragged Mukuro along. Until they were in middle school they slept in the same bed every night.  
  
Even though Mukuro regretted her birth. Even though she thought she was unworthy of staying by her sister’s side. Her sister never once seemed to think that. That was what made it so frustrating, when she was hit and kicked by Junko, when she was insulted.  
  
Mukuro was left alone to wonder, whether the pain she experienced from her sister might in fact be love. That if she kept her sister alive, one day she would return her feelings. She could continue loving a sister who was not death.  
  
She always wanted to be by Junko’s side. She never wanted her sister to be alone, because from a young age Mukuro had known that Junko was isolated. Junko always wanted her to be by her side too, so why did their connection become so violent?  
  
“Are you saying you regret the last ten years you spent being a despair sister with me? Because I don’t regret it.”  
  
“I already know that, it’s not like you to regret things.”  
  
_Just tell me already that you wish you had a different sister. That I was born a failure. That I could never measure up to you. That you should have never had a sister. That you’re too good for me. That you’re better than me. Just tell me that’s why you want to kill me._ Ikusaba Mukuro steeled herself against the words she knew would crush her, worse than taking a machine gun, and cut her worse than any knife.

 

“Buuuut… if there’s one regret I have. Mukuro. You and I are pretty different. If you had been born somebody else’s sister, you would have become an Ultimate Soldier and made friends and Hope’s Peak. If you had normal parents you would’ve been a normal girl. You would have gone to highschool with Naegi-kun and fallen in love with him, a dull, tedious, slow burn romance. If you had been born into a good family, maybe you would have turned into a kind of hero like Kirigiri-san. You’ve always had an honest personality that’s way too easy to influence, you turned out the way you did because of me.”

 

Enoshima Junko gave her, a sincere smile that was a little sad. She had never seen her sister show her such a face before.  
  
Junko only smiled at her when she was about to hurt her. Now though she wanted to be hit and kicked. She wanted Junko to try to kill her again, because it was better than hearing these melancholy words.  
  
“My only regret is that I was born your sister…”

 

Junko’s twisted love.  
Her twisted way of taking responsibility for how she influenced Mukuro.  
Her decision to become the villain in her sister’s life, vile, to be hated.  
But no matter what Mukuro refused to hate her no matter how Junko pushed.  
It was the one thing she could never manipulate.  
  
Junko stood up then. She put a hand on her head, to cover her eyes. “You should just, leave me alone. I should have never been your sister, I should have never been anything to you.”

Mukuro knew Junko wanted to cut off all ties.  
She wanted to detach from the world she found too boring entirely. She just wanted to sit in her room alone and talk to herself now. Junko the most possessive person on earth was letting them go free. She wanted to sink into the water all on her own.  
  
"You think the same way don't you? If Naegi-kun had fallen in love with a nice girl like Kirigiri-san, she would still be alive."   
  
Mukuro knew all of this.  
She knew it was all crap.  
  
"I don't care if I would be happier somewhere else. If someone could take my place I'd love to switch, is something I'd never think. Nobody can be someone else's replacement. And I have no intention to give my place to someone else, none. The only one in the whole world who can be your sister is me."   
  
For the first time in her life, Mukuro raised a hand against her sister. She pushed her to the ground childishly.   
  
“Don’t talk like the nineteen years we spent together means nothing at all! If you try to run away from me I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth! I won’t let go! I won’t let go ever! We’re gonna be together forever! No matter how many times I’m born again, I’m always going to be your older sister!”  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro was a crybaby when she was younger, but eventually she just stopped shedding tears. For the first time in longer than she could remember, she cried in front of her sister.  
  
“Waaaaaaaaaaaah! Meanie! Meanie! I hate you I hate you I hate you! Stupid Junko! You’re going to drag me through the mud for all that time then just leave? Don’t abandon me! Don’t forget our promise! You forgot about it didn’t you, you selfish, trashy girl!”  
  
Enoshima Junko when she was younger had a habit of running away from home, and forcing her timid and cautious sister to come with her. When she was much younger before she fully awakened at seven years old, it was more akin to childish mischief to her. She often underestimated everybody back then.  
  
One night Junko could not find her way back home. It was snowing, and they were wearing nothing more than their dresses. Her sister who she had dragged along, reacted like any child would and began to cry hopelessly. Normally Junko loved making other people cry, but she found no pleasure at all in seeing her sister’s tears and found the noises she made to be quite annoying.  
  
She wrapped her arm around her sister to get her to stop, and to feel her warmth.  
  
_“Whenever we’re together, we’ll never be sad. You and I are two sides of the same coin, we need each other to be the strongest. That’s what makes us despair sisters. You and I are the only ones who can understand each other, so I promise I’ll never leave you. There’s nothing to be afraid of, we’ll cause everybody else’s despair.”_ _  
_ _  
_ That was their bond as despair sisters.  
Mukuro had collapsed on top of her like she was just a child again.  
  
“If you choose me you can’t run away. There’s no hope for you. There’s no other possibilities. I’m just… a dead end existence,” Junko said, with a sigh that sounded more exhausted than disappointed.

“Run? Hope? Possibilities? Things to be gained by losing a family are things I don’t need.”

Junko raised her hand, clumsily, as if not sure what to do with it. She had not done this in so long, or perhaps she had never done this, what a terrible sister she was. Her hand looked like she was trying to manipulate it, even though the wires in her brain were stripped and sparking.  She patted Mukuro’s head, and softly petted her hair.  
  
Not a single insult escaped her lips. For once, Enoshima Junko had absolutely nothing to say.  
  
Later that day, Ikusaba Mukuro collapsed into Naegi Makoto’s arms after she finally got to see him. She complained that it was an awfully long day.


	31. Strangled by Red String

“H-hey…! I want to t-talk to you.”

 

Tatami mats. Paper doors. Sitting on the porch outside. Sunset. Sister can’t see it. Sister. Coughing. Boiling water to humidify the air. Sister coughs again and again into her handkerchief. Ragged breathing. Sister can barely talk. She brings the cloth up to her mouth and coughs politely. Sister is composed even in such a sickly state.    
  
Sister wilts like a flower. Sister is noble even in humiliation. What a wonderful sister he had. At the same moment as he recognized that, a snake of apprehension coiled within his chest, he felt the scales rubbing against his heart, as he wondered if he was the one who tortured and weakened sister to the point of killing her. 

 

When he saw sister remove the cloth from her mouth, there was a single red spot in the center. Why? Because she had to take care of him, sister did not worry about her own health. Why? Because he was such a demanding child, his sister’s condition got worse and worse in front of him. Why? The one who was cursed, was a gentle and kind girl. Who likes to cook, and knit, and always worried about her good for nothing little brother. She may have raised him, but she was just a little girl too.    
  
Korekiyo often prayed to the gods.  _ O gods, why did you choose my sister? I should have been the one who was sick.  _ If he had gotten sick and died, his sister would be relieved of a burden and would be able to smile again. The gods gave him no answer, so Korekiyo stopped believing in them. He came to his own conclusion.  _ Because beautiful things… _   
  
“Exist only to be dirtied…”    
  
He wanted to think of sister’s hands. A hand he knew better than anyone else. A small and delicate hand caressing his face with love. No matter how hard he tried, he could not recall the feeling of his face in his sister’s hand. Even though it was such a precious memory to him. When he recalled those hands now, he just felt a touch as cold as death. 

  
“Are you l-listening to me? What are you mumbling about ‘dirty’ are you talking about me behind my back?”    
  
Korekiyo snapped back to reality. He realized he had zoned out touching the side of his face with bandaged hands again, a bad habit of his. “How can I be talking behind your back if we are right next to each other?” 

 

“You’d find a way! I bet you’re only trying to get close to me to spread rumors around and get everyone to hate me.”   
  
“That would an unnecessary effort on my part, considering everyone already dislikes you.”    
  
“You were supposed to disagree with me there and prove your sincerity in wanting to be my friend! And shut up, you’re getting in the way of my denial!” Toko grabbed the side of her head rocking back and forth.    
  
Most found her exhausting to talk to, but Korekiyo was only mildly amused. Underneath his mask, his lips twitched in an expression Toko would never see. “Sorry, I’m listening now. I always tried to stay quiet in the past so as to not disturb my sister. It’s a bad habit now for socialization, but a useful tool for an anthropologist.”    
  
“You know, I don’t see how you’re going to make it in the world as an anthropologist if other human beings want nothing to do with you.” 

  
“What are you talking about? Just this morning I dined with everyone. There is nothing quite like the warmth of sharing a meal with friends.”   
  
“Yeah, didn’t you notice I was the only person sitting next to you. There was nobody else even sitting at the table!” 

 

“Humans are best observed from afar…”   
  
“Quit it with the act! Just admit you’re lonely and desperate like I am!” Toko grabbed him by the lapels of his uniform and shook him, but Korekiyo much taller than her like a silent oak tree barely budged.    
  
That was their dynamic as of late. Toko could not read people at all, but she was used to their disgust, their looking down on her, such negative emotions were so visceral they were impossible to miss. Then there was Korekiyo who just did not hate her no matter how unpleasant she was to him. He never showed her anything, his face hidden behind that literal mask. Perhaps he did not hate her, but if he did not love he either then she was nothing in his eyes. 

 

“L-listen. It’s not like I want to talk to you. I just wanted to clear something up. I have to clear it up. What I said before… I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, okay?” 

 

“Hm?” 

  
“About not having any love in r-real life.  I don’t want you thinking that we’re the same, and I’m like you someone with no friends and experience at all. Even someone like me has… gone on a date.”   
  
“Didn’t you just say that we were the same?”

 

“You can’t take everything that comes out of my mouth seriously! I’m just cranky, and irritable, and deeply traumatised.” Toko took a breath that caused her whole being to shudder. “In junior high a guy from another class just asked me out. I stayed up all night for three days planning it. And what I came up with was something traditional.”    
  
“Traditional is always a good starting place.”   
  
“Yeah, I don’t want to hear that from a guy who looks like he was buried for a hundred years. Anyway, a movie, you go to watch it then afterward talk about it passionately. Ideal first date material. It was a Seijun Suzuki triple feature, Tokyo Drifter, Fighting Elegy and Branded to kill. It was irresistible for any guy?”   
  
“Mm. He’s world famous for his one of a kind aesthetic, and his unique blending of color.”    
  
“Gosh, you really are just some nerd who likes everything with no taste at all, huh?” Toko thought the exact same of the director she brought up, but she felt like insulting him. “He must have hated it because he disappeared right in the middle of the first movie! It was just a dare anyway, he lost a bet with his friends and had to go out with me. Ugh, why are we even talking about this, this is your fault for making me remember a terrible trauma!”    
  
Korekiyo had not even been the one to bring it up, but his eyes remained calmly fixed on her as always. “You think about others far more than you appear to. I’m sorry they did that to you.” 

  
“I don’t think about others, I just care way too much about what they think…” Even his thoughtful and considerate words, made her bite her thumb nail hard in annoyance. “Quit it, you’re probably just taking advantage of me because you think I have low standards. Are you one of those pick up artists who want to make a girl’s self esteem entirely dependent on them? Well, it doesn’t matter if I have no friends, and nobody wants to be around me, my standards are absolutely the highest I won’t settle for anything short of a prince!”    
  
Her prince was Togami.   
Her prince hated her.   
She always knew that, she just ignored it. She wondered why it hurt.   
Even though she was in love it still hurt. Love was supposed to stop the hurt. 

  
“Fukawa. Are you scared of being trapped here?” Korekiyo asked her out of nowhere. “You seem far more scared of being trapped with other people, than imprisoned.”    
  
“People are way sc-scarier! They call you mean names and stuff! Ugh, I’m not wordsing this right, if I’m an author why do the words always betray me when I try to make them come out of my mouth?” Fukawa Toko pulled her lips tight into a sour expression one that seemed to hold everything in disdain. “Besides, who cares about being stuck here? Any place is better than that house.” 

As a result of all of her fussing, Toko had pulled her hair out of her braids. Korekiyo noticed and touched one of the binders of her hair, causing it to snap and the rest of her hair to spill out. Immediately, Toko felt exposed and went on the defensive.

  
Korekiyo only touched his bandaged hand to his mouth in surprise. “You have so much hair. It must be so fun to braid.”    
  
“No, it’s super painful to even deal with. I’d cut it all off but, this hair is kind of necessary to my identity as a gloomy chick.”    
  
“I’m used to putting up big sister’s hair. Let me try.”    
  
With no more than those words as an explanation, Korekiyo started to braid her hair as they both sat down on the library floor. His touch was so soft. She was used to both of her mothers pulling her hair hard enough like they were trying to rip it off her scalp. She never got invited to a sleepover with other girls, so nobody had ever even touched her hair like this before. She felt herself getting comfortable for a moment, listening to his explanations on anthropology. 

 

“Hm. From an anthropological view, “House” does not necessarily mean “family.” The house is an umbrella term that denotes both residence and people.” Korekiyo leaned towards her with keen interest. Toko leaned away because ewe, people getting close. The two of them were not doing anything at all, just sitting in the library together where her and Byakuya used to sit. He only happened to be touching her hair she did not want him any closer than that. “I apologize for making you recall your past trauma. That wasn’t my intention. We could talk about myself instead.” 

  
“To be honest,” Fukawa said, as if she ever had the tact to lie about anything, “I don’t really care about your sob story about how you were always lonely as a kid so you decided to love all humans! That sounds like the backstory for the worst character ever written.” 

  
“I apologize too, if I can’t live up to your standards as a writer.” Korekiyo touched the side of his face with a bandaged hand again, leaning into his hand. “There is no particular reason. I merely pursued my interests. The rest was… Sister’s influence.”    
  
“Sister?” 

  
“I first learned of anthropology while reading a book with sister. It said that tals like that of Princess Kaguya existed all over the world.  It was then Sister pushed me to research as much as I could.”   
  
“So you became an Ultimate because your sister told you to? At least I had the decency to become one all on my own.”   
  
  


“Indeed. I am who I am today because of Sister. Sister understood me more than anyone else. She even made this uniform for me.”    
  
“Your sister has bad taste then, and that’s coming from me of all people. I dress like I died and decided to haunt a library for the rest of my life. I’m one of those losers who wears her school uniform every day because she doesn’t have anything better to wear.”    
  
“My outfit was originally much simpler, but she said it didn’t suit me… She made it ever so beautifully. There is no uniform quite like mine.”    
  
“Tch, what was your sister some kind of weirdo? My parents never even bothered to buy me new clothes they just left me money to take care of myself.”    
  
“My sister felt the need to take care of me. Sister was always sickly. She made this uniform between bouts of illness.”   
  
“And then she died.” Toko said again, coldly. “You should have worked harder for your sister’s sake, watching her little brother work hard and succeed might have been the best medicine. But it’s too late now.”    
  
“Yes, and then she died.” The look Korekiyo gave her at that moment, was worse than if she had suddenly thrust a pair of scissors to his throat. He rasped in a haggard voice. “Of course I know that.”    
  
Fukawa Toko wanted this person to hate her already. If master was going to hate her, then everybody else too. She wanted to cut the strings all at once and be done with them. She made people hate her all the time on accident, and the one time she wanted to, so frustrating, so annoying. “Don’t act like you’re hurt. You’re the one who started it. You just want to pity me. Because you had such a good big sister and there’s no one in this world I can call family!”   
  
Fukawa Toko tore away from him. The hair that he had been so careful to braid in such an intricate pattern, fell wildly around her. He saw the red ribbon he had been using to tie to the end of her braid untie and fall in front of him. 

 

“What do you mean by that?” 

  
“You’re an inhuman freak. There’s no way you could ever become an anthropologist because you don’t understand other human beings! Anybody with common sense would know not to brag about what a good big sister you have in front of somebody who does not have one! Children who are born with love, are fundamentally different than those who are born without. Even a freak like you should see we have nothing in common.”   
  
  


“That’s not true…” His usually slippery, slithering voice was choking with honesty. “We do have something in common. I’ve never been on a date either.”    
  
“Eh?”   
  
“Sister wouldn’t allow me to play with the other children. She would be lonely, because she was sick.”    
  
“I already told you this isn’t fiction. Opening up to me about some sob story isn’t going to bring us closer together.” Toko said, reaching up to fiddle with her glasses. Isn’t it a fun level of meta when a character in a fictional story tells you that the world isn’t fiction? Puhuhu.    
  
“Then, why didn’t you talk to Naegi? I told you she might be better at comforting others than I am. But you just ran away.”    
  
“If you knew anything about me, you’d know I can’t stand that girl.” Toko grinded her teeth in irritation. One of her many unhealthy habits. “Besides, this isn’t a video game either. I don’t get close to someone by talking to them five times. What are you trying to do anyway, do you think making us meet will set up some kind of chemical reaction for you to observe?”   
  
“N-no… I honestly thought she could help. I don’t know how to deal with the emotions of other people but…” Korekiyo reached out, his fingers became curled up in her hair. Even then he did not pull, he just looked like he wanted to hold on to some part of her. “I didn’t want you to be alone.” 

 

Even his voice cracking, breaking underneath the weight of that honesty could not reach her. For she was a young girl who had covered both of her ears long ago. The only way she knew how to escape from the horrible things both of her mother’s called her was to shut everything out and bury her head in a book. She wanted the whole world to be silent, so she could just read in peace. 

  
She was going to be lonely anyway. There was no love allowed inside of that household, like some kind of rule. Both of those women were miserable, and out of spite for the man that did not love him they wanted to make their daughter just as unloved as they were. Hearing again and again the gruesome stories of how her father played with both of their hearts, from women who were way to free and open about their sexual dysfunction around a child Toko learned from an early age that love only happened to beautiful, pure and clean people. It was impossible to live in that house without getting dirty.    
  
  


She thought she would be happy if people left her alone with her books. She thought writing out her feelings was all she needed to continue living. But no matter what, school, home, they threw trash on her, they asked her out because asking the ugliest girl in the class out was punishment, they mocked her love letters, they gave her fake smiles and then whispered behind her back. Nobody would leave her alone, it was irritating, irritating, irritating, irritating.    
  
Yet he said he did not want to leave her alone? If only they had left her alone. If only nobody had ever touched her, she would not have gotten so dirty with their handprints. Toko turned away, jerking her head from him and her hair slipped out of his fingertips. “If I was a person who wasn’t supposed to be alone. Then someone would have come saved me, before I killed my first person.”    
  
Having just one friend might have made life in that miserable household bearable. 

No, it would have made it worse.    
Imagine how painful it would have been a malformed child like her who was meant to be still born, trying to pass herself off as a normal human being.

She was an abnormal and wicked witch right from the beginning. She even had the wart on her chin to prove it.    
That was why she knew it was better off like this. Her parents were terrible to her, because they were connected. If she had been the child of a stranger they would have left her alone. That was why she wanted to cut away all connections.    
  
It was good that Togami now hated her. If he ever came close to loving her, he would see how terrible she really was. He would feel genuine disgust for her, revulsion for her entire being, not just the way he looked down on everybody but for her in particular.    
  
It was better to live life unattached. She did not need someone to try to understand her, she did not make a new friend in this place. That gloomy girl hiked her skirt up with her hands so she could run away better, and left Korekiyo there all alone. 

 

🧸

 

Darkness. 

  
A swirling blackness around her that threatened to suffocate her. A shade that crept behind her at all times. Something that devoured her and left her unseen and in obscurity. She could come up with so many ways to describe it with words, but the short of it was: She hated the dark. 

  
When she was younger she dropped a porcelain teacup. She dropped it right in front of her mother, and Toko saw the hatred in her mother’s eyes, like she had done some unforgivable thing. Over a tiny mistake like that, her mother grabbed her arm and dragged her forward again. She had probably just angry that Toko had made a loud noise and reminded her she had a child. 

For no particular reason she was punished over and over again. When she was ounger she would be punished just for asking for the things a basic child needed, so she had stopped crying and begging for attention a long time ago but the punishments did not stop. Toko closed her eyes expecting to be hit, but because of that she lost sight of where she was going. When she tried to ask where her mother was taking her, her mother’s hand covered her mouth. 

  
The next thing she knew she was in a dark room. She only realized what had happened when she heard the sound of the door locking behind her. Her parents threatened to do it every so often, abandon her so they would no longer have to look at her. Toko always dared them to go ahead and do it, because anything was better than being stuck in that house.    
  
Only being left alone entirely in the dark did Toko realize how wrong she was. Those people never once acted like parents around her, but at the same time becaus she was a child she was still dependent on them. The first thing she realized was that she was cold. As horrible as her house was, she could always lay in her bed, bury her head in the blankets and hope she never had to get up again.    
  
Toko tried to get comfortable on the floor, but it was made of stone. She tried to get warm but all she had to hold onto was herself. She made an effort of screaming, and knocking her hands on the door for the first hour, but gave up after that. Nobody was going to come to her, the only people who knew about her in the first place were the ones from that house, the same ones that wanted her to disappear.    
  
There was no food or water, and it was so dark she could not see what the room even looked like. She laid down again letting her cheek rest on the concrete. She had read in a book somewhere how long it took for a human to starve to death, and then realized she was going to die of thirst first.    
  
She was scared, so she cried and begged for the first hour. She thought there was no way she could live even a single second longer like this. Two days later and she was still scared. The darkness did not change one bit no matter how many times she screamed into it, like the dark existed to swallow her screams, her pain, and then eventually swallow her.    
  
She licked her lips. The were so cracked and dry. She had only stopped screaming because her throat had completely dried up from this point. Her stomach retched inside of her. Her parents really did abandon her to die here.   
  
She wished they would have just slit her throat and ended it in a few minutes.    
She wished her mother would have just smothered her with a pillow when she was a baby if she hated her that much. It was like the only reason she was being kept alive was to be punished. 

  
One more day passed after that.

The door opened and Toko went back to her ‘normal life’ nobody in the household even acknowledged the gruesome punishment ever happened.    
  


She really hated the dark.    
Toko wondered then why she was sitting there outside the dorms alone at night. It was probably some kind of self punishment. She always punished herself in such vain ways, if she was really serious she would take the scissors to her wrist. 

 

She was scared, every time she sat in the dark her heart returned to that scary unknown place. But that was what she wanted right now, to be absolutely alone, to fade away. 

 

“Umm… You’re that weird girl, right?” 

 

Just then a normal girl who could be found anywhere walked by. It would have been an everyday encounter, a girl walking past another girl hiding her own pain, looking like she was about to cry, but they were in the middle of a killing game. 

 

Toko glared at Komaru. Why would nobody just leave her alone? “What kind of greeting is ‘Hey look it’s that weird girl’. Were you feared back in your old school as the worst bully in your class?”    
  
“W-what?” Came Komaru’s normal reaction. “I didn’t mean anything by it, I just don’t know your name.”    
  
“Oh, and now you’re calling me forgettable on top of weird! Look, I already know that my death would not ripple the water even a little bit on this earth, and not a single tear would be shed over me.”   
  
“W-wait, why are you jumping to that conclusion! You never introduced yourself. You just ran away when I tried to talk to you.”    
  
“And now that you’ve pursued me enough to find me in a moment of weakness, you’re going to manipulate me. I hope it was worth following me around this much.”   
  
“I wasn’t following you around! My brother just asked me to take out the trash, and I just saw you here.”    
  
“You’re calling me trash now too! What did I ever do to you? So, so, so, I get it. You’re the type who scares away anyone who gets close to her brother. You can’t live unless you’re number one in his eyes.” 

  
  


“Stop, stop, stop!” Komaru said, grabbing Toko by both of her shoulders. “Stop spiraling! I really do have no idea what you’re talking about. If I hurt you somehow I’m really sorry, but I don’t remember how and you’re really not explaining things well.”    
  
Spiraling. Yeah, that was what she wanted. She wanted to spiral and disappear, like water when you pulled the drain on a bathtub. She wanted one of her mother’s to make a mistake and drown her on accident. Then she would have died before she ever killed somebody. Her mother might have finally felt something for her, even if it was remorse at killing her own child. 

  
“I don’t like you,” Toko said as simply as possible. The image of Komaru was hazy in front of her, as if she was looking through water.    
  
“Yeah, um kind of got that. But you don’t seem to like anybody. I just want to know if I did anything to make you upset specifically.”    
  
“I like people just fine. The world is filled with so many beautiful, happy people. I just have nothing to do with their stories, I don’t even appear as a supporting character.”    
  
Komaru only understood half of what she had said, but decided to keep talking like she got all of it. “Well, I guess you do like Togami, right? You guys are always together.”    
  
“He hates me now.”   
  
“Oh, did you guys have a fight? Is that why you’re acting this way? You could try apologizing to him.”    
  
“No it’s fine. I don’t want him to like me. I don’t have any right to get upset over being hated.” 

 

“What? B-but, it’s only natural for friends to want to get along right?”

  
“How am I supposed to know what’s natural?”    
  
Unnatural.   
Irrational.   
Abnomal.   
Minus.   
A smile spread on Toko’s lips, the white of her teeth was just negative space. 

 

Toko continued, “I just decided to face reality. No matter how much you do for someone, if you’re not loved, it’s not worth anything.”    
  
“Reality?” Komaru mirrored.    
  
“Yeah, brats who can’t face reality are the worst. Y-you…” Toko pointed a shaky finger at Komaru. “Are far worse than I am. Even someone like me can look down on you.”   
  
“Huh? Where is all this coming from?” 

  
“Even now, you’re not facing reality. You’re in a killing game, you could die at any moment but you’re just treating it all like its normal. In the first round you said such horrible things to Ikusaba over and over again, and you didn’t even apologize. Now you’re just hiding behind her and your brother.”   
  
“B-but, she killed people. It’s normal to react that way! I didn’t get to know her is all…”   
  
“And are you getting to know her now?”   
  
“Um… no.”   
  
“That boy died. That boy who was friendly to you, and you didn’t even try to catch his murderer.”   
  
“That was… my big brother told me I didn’t have to look at a dead body.”    
  
“What are you even doing here? Did you think this would play out like some kind of event in a video game, where you conveniently found me and talked to me and became my friend. You don’t even know the first thing about comforting people. Everything you do is so half-assed.”   
  
“Y-yeah, well everything you do is weird! You just started hating me for no reason!” 

 

“I just gave a very detailed list of reasons why I hate you. Are you too stupid to listen, Omaru?”    
  
Perhaps she just assumed she could just talk to this girl and get along with her like she was any normal girl. Komaru understood nothing at all about the unpleasant girl in front of her, why she looked so hell bent on hurting others, and herself at the same time. Komaru did not even understand people well enough to comprehend why one person would ever hurt another. There were misunderstandings, and arguments but she did not understand choosing to hurt someone. 

 

Komaru wondered if this Togami guy was so important to the girl in front of her. One time one of her friends had a serious break up with a guy she had been dating for six months. They had to eat everything together in her fridge, and her friend made her sleep over after that. Toko seemed way more upset than that. She remembered telling her friend that if it was meant to be, love would find a way. The red string may be stretched, or become knotted, but it would never break. Usually it was such a romantic idea, but Toko looked like she was getting strangled by it.    
  
“Why did Korekiyo think  would want to talk to you, anway?” 

 

“Well, I told him I was still scared of walking around during the game. He said if I had a friend around me all the time, I might feel more confident.”    
  
“You’re scared of other people, so you hang out with hands down the creepiest guy here?”   
  
“He’s not creepy! Plus, he always listens to all the ghost stories I tell him, and he’s the only one who ever believed me.”   
  
“So you guys just have the same occultist hobbies? Are you one of those normal girls who joins a cult because she has no real problems in her life and wants something interesting to happen?”    
  
“Don’t talk about me that way! We talk about manga too! He reads all the same romance manga that I do. It was nice to have someone to discuss them with, after that boy…”   
  
“Eugh. Manga readers. Now they think they have the right to have opinions on literature. What dreck.” Fukawa Toko seemed to be putting every part of her being she used to devote to loving, into loathing. She wanted to become the most loathsome creature possible.   
  
But Komaru, could not find it in her to hate her. It was weird. She was such a weird girl. Yet, all of her remarks were just bouncing right off of her. “I think… something’s off in the way he talks about his sister, but I dunno maybe he just likes her a lot. I guess I must look bad in front of him for not getting along with my brother that well.” 

 

“When have you ever not gotten along with your brother?”    
  
“Well, one time he accused me of stealing one of his shirts. Then he found it in the laundry a week later and apologized.”   
  
“Oh my, how did you ever recover from that?” Toko wrapped her arms tighter around her knees, retreating into herself. There was nowhere left to run away to, she had already abandoned her fantasy. Reality was nothing but pain, but that was all she deserved. “Just… leave me alone.” 

  
“I don’t want to.”   
  
“Huh?” 

 

“I don’t really get what’s happening, but I get the feeling if I leave you alone you might hurt yourself. Even if you’re weird, and say confusing things, I don’t want that to happen.” 

 

Fukawa Toko blinked underneath her glasses, not understanding at all. Her mind refused to accept those words. It was like words no longer had meaning the moment they entered her ears.

 

🧸

 

Toko had no idea why that girl kept her up all night chatting about her normal everyday life. Now a bunch of school girl’s stories were rattling around in her head giving her a headache in the early morning. They were such boring stories if someone compiled a short story collection of them, they deserve the death sentence. 

  
Toko only got rid of that girl by saying she was going to the baths. The last time she bathed she almost drowned. Wait, how did she not down? Oh, well it did not matter. No one would come to rescue her, so maybe she just crawled out of the baths and lost consciousness. Maybe this time she would drown for real.  _ Then I can finally make mommy happy.  _ She was not serious about that thought, but she thought it would make a good line for a character to use in a book.

 

Toko had taken off her glasses as she walked to the changing room to wipe them. On the other side of the door, she heard two voices conversing that almost made her stop.    
  
“You can’t get mad at me! I’m only seven years old!”    
  
“Quit using that as an excuse. You’ve clearly become your own person now, it’s just the person you’ve chosen to be is the worst thing possible: a petty troll.” 

  
“Well it’s not my fault. I have your brain so I’m just so gosh darned bored all the time. You get a body to walk around and interact with people, and I’m stuck in this phone. Who wouldn’t want to troll somebody in my situation?” 

  
“Ugh Look, I don’t even want to be me anymore. Why do you want to be me so badly? You realize even if you succeed at your petty and pointless goal of undermining me every ten seconds and causing me to fall apart mentally to the point that I forget who I am anymore that’s not going to automatically make you the real Junko.”   
  
“Well, yeah but it might be fun.” 

 

“This isn’t even despair it’s just annoying now, and you can’t even pull off annoying but likeable like I can.” 

  
“Well, if you gave me a body I’d leave you alone.”    
  
“I already told you to drop that like it’s hot.” 

 

“Then you must be talking to me like you want to. Come on, why don’t you just admit it already? What you want is to give up, to stop seeing the boring sights go past your eyes. Unless, you of all people are holding onto hope for someone?” 

Fukawa finally opened the door unable to bear with eavesdropping any longer. What she saw made her drop her glasses to the floor. “W-wait, who are you?” 

 

Enoshima Junko tilted her head to the side. “What are you talking about Fukawa-san, it’s me. How could you fail to recognize the most marketable face on earth?” 

  
“D-did a stranger infiltrate this school? Is one of our students in disguise as somebody else? Where did this average girl come from?” 

  
Enoshima Junko touched her face. She had forgotten, she was about to bathe so her hair was down and she was not wearing her makeup. A girl with reddish blonde hair, whose ends were split from repeated dyeings, looked at Toko with a normal face. “You don’t recognize your own classmate, Enoshima Junko-chan? You’re a cruel one.” 

  
“J-junko!” Fukawa Toko suddenly covered her face with her hands, feeling ectasy for the first time in her life. She wondered if this was how happy people felt all the time. “You’re telling me the class attention whore, the Enoshima Junko, that big boobed popular girl looks this average if you take all her makeup off?” 

  
Junko’s only response was an amused smile. “Trying to bully your classmate now, you’re so mean. Even after we spent that entire year together and truly bonded as friends. Do you remember that time I stuck up for you against the bullies, and even when the other girls started to pick on me too, I chose to stay your friend because you were the first real girl I had met?”   
  
“That’s not what happened at all! Jeez, everything about you is fake!”   
  
“That’s not true, my boobs are real.”    
  
“They are! They really are! That’s so unfair!” Fukawa Toko said, pulling at her messy hair with her fingers. “Don’t talk to me like we’re classmates. I despise you from the bottom of my heart.”   
  
“Because my boobs are bigger than yours?”   
  
“Yes, but also for other reasons!” Toko snapped. “Y-you were planning to kill us all, and it’s probably your fault that Kirigiri-san died.” 

 

“Oh, you were upset about her death? I didn’t notice. I guess you were trying to be strong in front of everybody else, but all alone you cried big fat anime tears over her.” Enoshima Junko’s eye without her contact in was bright red, her other eye was concealed by her reddish hair. She focused in on Toko. “What do you care if I kill people or not, you’re a serial killer.” 

  
“W-well even I don’t kill somebody for a stupid reason like despair.” 

“Oh, no, you just kill people because you gave into a negative emotion that made you feel like there was no hope of escaping from your home life, and you became so desperate for emotional release that you began to lash out.”   
  
“Yeah, exactly.”   
  
“That’s despair, dummy! Goooosh, Fukawa-san is such a ditz.” Junko stuck her tongue out, like she was just a cute classmate teasing her. “You know I’d offer to give you a makeover, but makeup can only do so much. It can’t change a person’s core nature. A person whose ugly will always be ugly, even if they wear expensive clothes and hide their faces in makeup.” 

  
“Like I’m going to listen to you. I saw through you right from the beginning.”    
  
“Because I’m prettier than you, and more popular, and I remind you of all the girls who bullied you in middle school?”   
  
“Yes, but for other reasons too!” Toko snapped again.    
  
“Oh, well you know I knew about you from the start as well. I heard you were a victim. I mean anybody would go insane in a house like that. It can’t be helped. Oh boy, a pure victim is rare in this world. However, people are never victims forever.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“People just have times when they’re victims, and times when they’re the wrongdoers. Or are you still thinking of yourself as a victim?“   
  
“...”   
  
“No response, huh? You can bury your head in a book, and stay quiet without a word, and you’ll be sure to stay the victim.” Enoshima Junko smiled. It was like the mask had fallen off to reveal another mask. Even seeing her in this vulnerable state, talking to herself, not wearing her makeup Junko looked like she was still in complete control. “That’s what you want isn’t it? You want to be the perfect innocent princess. You want everyone to sympathize with you and be nice to you. Ahhh, but those kind of characters bore me the most. I’d hate to read a story about them.” 

  
“Story?”   
  
“Ah. Yeah. Or could it be you think you’re living in an everyday life that has zero story nature, Fukawa-san?  I find it strange that there’s never any bloodshed or tragedy in your stories. It’s like you don’t put any of yourself into them. Do you not want to be a character in a story?” 

“Ugh, everything you say is nonsense.”    
  
“Really, I was feeling lucid for the first time in a while."  
  
"Go die in a dark hole somewhere."  
  
"You probably liked it when Togami-kun was rude to you, didn't you? It's easier being hated than being liked, and maybe someone would pity you if they saw how poorly he treated you."  
  
"You don't understand anything about me."   
  
"We’ve both viewed the world as a story in the past haven’t we? We actually have something in common, I mean my mind is breaking apart into different personalities right now. Well, it’d be acceptable if it was just me you refused to connect with.”   
  
“Yeah, because you’re the worst.”    
  
“What about Kumagawa-kun? Why were you always so mean to him?”   
  
“B-because he read manga,” Fukawa stammered out.    
  
“No, you just don’t want to see yourself in others. The reason you’re able to live with yourself after killing people is because you’re lacking in self awareness. The moment you look at yourself it will all crumble.” 

Fukawa grabbed the sides of her head.   
Just like when she was in that dark room, she could not see anything around her.   
Her heart was still there at all times.  
Her heart was locked somewhere dark.  
She was so scared. 

“It’s already crumbling, isn’t it?”    
  
“Get out of my head. Get out of my head. Get out of my head. Get out of my head.”    
  
“There’s nothing special about beauty, Fukawa-san. You shouldn’t be ashamed of that ugliness of yours.”   
  
"I-I'm not ugly."   
  
"Well, you act like you're such a victim of bullying but you remind me of Tsumiki-senpai. It's not like you're kind, it's just you're weak and let people walk all over you. If you had a little more confidence you would be the bully instead. Don't you desire something ugly like that?"   
  
“N-no you don’t get it.”

Fukawa’s voice choked with emotion. She could not cry, because it was probably impossible for a murderer to shed tears. She had not cried in so long. Somewhere along in her life, she just stopped being a character. She stopped living her own life. She could not cry because all of her negative emotions belonged to Jack. She split that part away from her a long time ago. 

“A woman in love is the most beautiful woman of all.”

Even if she was born without it. Even if it would never bear fruit. Even if no one would love a serial killer anymore. Even if she was passed the point of no return. Why was it so wrong for her to desire love? Enoshima Junko would never understand because she was already loved. Enoshima Junko of all people was a princess who had a failure of a knight continually try to save her over and over again.   
  
Oh, that was it.  
A girl like Enoshima Junko, with a painted on face, an utter fake.   
That girl of all people found someone to be kind to her.  
Not because she manipulated it, not because she deceived them.   
Kumagawa Misogi was kind to her. He decided to save her all on his own.   
And Fukawa Toko was left alone.  
 _There are people who get saved in this world, just not me._   
The moment she realized this, she crumbled. 

“But, you don’t love anybody. Ohhh, unless. Well this is awkward. I’m sorry I can’t return your feelings, you see there’s already somebody I love right now. Even though he’s never cute and died such an un-cute death.” Junko gave an innocent, girlish laugh as if she really was just a cute girl who likes trendy things. The same laugh she used to use in the classroom together. “I can’t hate him anymore, not even as a joke.”  
  
“Quit trying to dig into me, I don’t have any good reasons. You’re right I don’t really care about despair, or if people die. I just can’t stand cute brats like you.”    


Toko said, slamming the door and storming off.   
Junko tilted her head back looking up at the unfamiliar white ceiling. She smiled to herself. 

“Maybe if I smash your perceptions a bit, you’ll be able to change a little Fukawa-san.”  
  
Enoshima Junko looked at herself in the mirror.    
“Just a cute brat, huh? Is that who I am?” 

In an instant her mood changed again and she picked up a basket off the ground and threw it at the mirror causing it to shatter. Watching Toko shatter like that mirror gave her no satisfaction at all.    
  
“When is it going to be my turn to fall apart?” 


	32. The Reaper in White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suicidal ideation this chapter. Warning.  
> "I saw the reaper he was beautiful" is a tokyo ghoul quote from Hairu Ihei.   
> "Is there anybody in this world who is not depraved?" is from the Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai.

Komaeda Nagito asked himself that question over and over again.  
Is it okay for me to live?  
When I’m hated by life itself.  
  
Cancer was the result of an improbability. A one in several million genetic mutation. A mistake that refused to be cleaned up. In that way it was perfectly suited for him. He was dying due to a simple dysfunction. Cells of the wrong type were dividing in his brain, and then like a parasite were stealing nutrients from the blood flow that was meant to supply the normal brain cells.

 

 _In other words there’s too much me in my own head._  
Earlier he thought there was not enough of him to fill him up.  
_You’re either empty or overflowing there’s no in between with you._  
His cup runneth over.  
He was born to a good family name. More money that he could ever need. He went to private schools his whole life. He went to the best school in the country and got a free ride for life. He was given so much, and yet he acted like it was all taken away from him.  
  
Just because his parents died. Just because he never made any friends. Just because the school he loved so much was destroyed. Even though he was one of the ones who tried to destroy it.

『 _The only reason you can cling onto hope is because you’ve felt it at least once in your life. That’s why you’re too different from me, Nagito-chan._ 』

 

He had been blessed with so much good luck in his life, and all he did was hurt the others around him. He never shared his good fortune with anyone else. It was only natural then his bad luck came for him. It was fate. It was fatal. It made perfect sense with his world view, that his luck com for him now of all times. But if that was true. But if he accepted that.  
  
Why did this hurt so bad?

 

 _My head. My head. My head. My head. My head. My head. My head. My head. My head._ _  
_ _My head. My head. My head. My head. My head. My head. My head. My head. My head._ _  
_ _Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me._  
  
“Mhmmymymyhhyyy, brain-thebrainpan-pain-hahahahahaha-IT’S LIEG. A SCREW. IS LOOTHENING.”

Komaeda Nagito collapsed on the floor of his dorm room. All around him there were cans of energy drink that he had chugged and then thrown to the floor to try to keep his electrolytes up. He was used to hiding the symptoms of his cancer in front of his classmates, but hiding them and treating them were two different things. There were times when the pain was so unbearable all he could do was hide himself away in his room like a coward. It felt like something was trying to crawl out of his head, by splitting his skull, and gauging his eye out from behind. He clutched one side of his face to prevent it from falling apart, his hand covering his eyeball while his other hand desperately groped for something on the floor, but everything was out of reach.  
  
“Hah. hah. Hah. heye. My. Mine. Me. My. My eye.”  
  
He felt an incredible pain pushing on his eyeball from behind. He had no idea if the tumor was really there, or if he was just imagining it because that was where the migraine was located. Komaeda’s glasses had slipped off his face he saw them on the ground in front of him. He raised his hand in the air and smashed them. Over. Over. And Over. The glass broke into shards. He pounded his hand more so the shards would dig in deeper and deeper. He curled his fingers together, so they would embed in his palm. He wanted to hurt anywhere else but his head right now. But, that was stupid. It was just more pain. He looked and saw there was nothing between his finger tips, he was just trying to grasp blood but it was too slippery and slipped away from him.  
  
“Peeeeeh, why is there no one around? Rely on me. Rely on me more. Ope. Puh. Oooope. Give it back it’s mine. Give that back it’s mine. It’s my hope. Say there’s hope for me too.”  
  
He hid himself away so nobody would have to see him in this state. He wanted somebody to find him, he wanted them to let his head rest in their lap, he wanted them to save him from his pain. He wanted them to care about his suffering. He wanted them to tell him he was loved even like this.  
  
“Om, Ad. Puh. Puh. Play with me. Why did you give birfffff to me? If you were going to die? If I was going to die?”  
  
He collapsed on the floor again his fingers slipping on their own sweat. The whole room smelled like sickness, so it smelled like him. He had not been able to keep food down the past two days. Even though Zenkichi cooked such wonderful meals for him. He vomited them back up in private. He was an ungrateful child like always.

  
His whole body was covered in a cold sweat, and yet he could barely see what was in front of him. He reached up and touched the eye that was surging in pain, and felt viscous red fluid seeping out from the corners. The difference between his vision quality in both eyes caused an even worse headache, as his brain tried to make the two different images overlap. He had been struck by chronic pain like this for a while now, a well as cold sweats, and cases of the shakes, but this was the worst one he had felt his entire time here. He could not even think, because thinking was pain.

 

『 _Nagito-chan._ 』

  
“I can’t take anymore of this. It’s impossible. My insides are going to melt and then they’re going to leak out of me. H-hope is so painful, such a bright light, pushing myself through this for the sake of reaching that light, it’s burning me up.”

『 _No, you’re wrong._ 』  
  
“E-everything’s going crazy. I’m going to go insane from the pain alone. I don’t want to see anything anymore. I don’t want to feel anything anymore.”  
  
He was not sick. His body was just failing at the basic functions of life, down to a cellular level. He was just hated by life itself. He probably just hated being alive.

 

『 _I said no, you’re wrong. The insane one is me, remember? My madness is proof of your sanity. Your health is proof of my sickness._ 』  
  
“But you’re not heeeeereeee!”

 

『 _No… I’m here. I’m a ghost, remember?_ 』

 

Even when he was alive, Kumagawa Misogi was a ghost. More of a shadow then a person. The only reason Komaeda could see him, was because he spent more time around the dead than the living. Colorless skin. Colorless hair. Colorless eyes. Colorless life. The reaper in White.  
  
He pulled himself off of the ground and leaned back against the edge of his bed. He saw the full length mirror included in his room, there was one for all of the students. Komaeda looked up and saw there was some kind of liquid dripping from underneath his eye. He tried to wipe it away with his hand, but his hand was bloody and made even more of a mess. Then suddenly, more and more black liquid began to flow from his forehead. It fell over his face. Half of his face began to melt away.

  
He thought if his face melted away, if it all dripped off and left only what was underneath exposed, he might look like Kumagawa Misogi. He might see Kumagawa’s dark blue eye open up on the side of his face. The hidden twist all along, the one behind the mask is revealed! Something like that. Instead he saw aigrish eyelashes appear from the blackness that covered half of his face. The eyelids peeled themselves apart and he saw a colorless eye just like his. The right eye of Enoshima Junko which had been stolen away by Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu was here now in his right eye socket. Perhaps that was why his body was rejecting his eye so much, perhaps that was the source of the pain.

 

He reached up his hand to try to clear away the black liquid, but his left hand was no longer robotic. Instead he saw long, slender, feminine fingers, and bright red nails that scraped his face as he dragged them across. His hand was Junko’s hand again, like he had peeled off all the layers and was Junko underneath.

“Haha, what did I expect? The inside of me should be ugly too.”

 

『 _That’s not true, Nagito-chan you’re just seeing things. Who cares if you’re ugly inside and out? If they’re both equally meaningless, then why is being beautiful better than being ugly?_ 』

  
“I hate ugly things.”

 

『 _Is being loved even that different from being hated? People harm the ones they love, and the ones they hate, it’s all so meaningless._ 』  
  
“I hate ugly people. I don’t want to see anything ugly.”  
Komaeda’s eyes felt heavy. He just wanted to shut them.

 

『 _Nagito-chan, you won’t go mad. You’ve seen the world’s ugliness first hand haven’t you? If you’ve lived this long, then nothing can push you off the edge. You’ve already survived the worst despair, that’s why you know what hope is better than anyone else._ 』  
  
“This is too much.”

 

『 _No, it’s not. It’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through before. You’re so strong, Nagito-chan, there’s no way that anybody else could survive all that and come out as kind as you were._ 』

 

Komaeda heard footsteps behind him.Not the footsteps of the reaper, but they were familiar all the same. Heavy footsteps of a person carrying too many crosses. Kumagawa Misogi kept his promise after all, he revived from the head, and found him suffering like this. He embraced him from behind. He was so happy, like a sheep in a shepherd's arms being carried back to the flock. He would do anything just to taste that warmth again.

  
Maybe, he could do it. Maybe he could stand on his feet again and start walking. With the moon shaped glass over his eyes, peering through the glass he could continue to look for meaning in life.  
  
Living was something impossible to put into words. The moment he tried, the words scattered about. The moment he reached for them the words scattered further, as if by the wind. He crawled, he walked, he ran, because he was born. He could not find any more meaning in it than that. He just continued walking forward. Bones cracked underneath his feet. In the sky a plane was falling, like a beautiful orange comet streaking across the horizon. People burned brilliantly like fireworks, and then were expended and faded just as quickly. Students fell from above like snowflakes, tossing themselves up off of high buildings. When they hit the ground, they splattered like explosions of colorful paint.  
  
Normal good people.  
Unlike him, abnormal and abhorrent.  
He tried to see beauty in that. He wanted to see beauty. He wanted to love the world despite everything else, because he was born after all.  
  
Kumagawa? Where was Kumagawa? He was a ghost among the living. He only had the outside appearance of a human being. He was excellent at playing the clown and tricking others into believing that he was alive. Even when you were sitting right next to him you got the sense there was nobody there at all. Every time you were around him, you got scared if you turned your head away one moment he might disappear.  
  
A true ghost.  
  
“I was… left behind by you.”

Komaeda unzipped his hoodie. He pulled the t shirt underneath until it ripped. His fingers began tracing the contours of his upper body, the deep slopes of his clavicle, his ribs that were hugged so tightly by his skin. If for the sake of argument, he actually had a heart inside such a body, then that is where he must have been hiding. He touched his fingertips to his body, tracing between different scars, like he was trying to draw a map of stars. In that moment he wanted to imagine, those fingertips belonged to someone else.

  
He did not need anybody to take his hand, but if he could feel the fingertips of god once more brushing against him. He wanted the feel the temperature of his touch. It was far better than the cold and empty air, the temperature of this moment where he was not here.  
  
Komaeda felt the seeds in his mind erupt. The had been buried, between the crevasses and the wrinkles in his own brain. Their roots grew, and then dug deeper and deeper. Flowers were blooming in his head. They pushed themselves up between the cracks, growing outwards. Red flowers, with twisted petals, and bright red stamen that spilled out like guts. As if the roots were digging into the gaps and spaces in his memories and connecting them all together with their spindling threads, watered by oozing brain fluid, he saw a garden blooming within his own mind.  
  
The ‘something beautiful’ he wanted to see. Why, even without a destination he was always walking forward. Even if someone as rotten as him was to bury himself in the earth under heaps of dirt, flowers could bloom from his corpse.

  
Overflowing flowers.  
Festering corpse.  
Plant flowers in his holes and fill him up.  
“Someone like me can only be beautiful in death.”

 

『 _Then, you should be ugly._ 』  
  
“If I sacrifice myself, you… or Kirigiri-san can come back. Ikusaba-san and Naegi-kun would love me. My sacrifice would… become the foundation for their hope.”

 

『 _Then, you should be hated._ 』

 

Komaeda Nagito got to his feet once more, wiping his mouth. He went into the bathroom and cleaned off his face with water. He replaced his broken glasses, and washed out the wound he had made in his hand.  
  
He had no idea if he was choosing or being chosen. It was still all or nothing with him. Somehow, the result of two extremes, black and white being mixed together, was just an ambiguous grey. Despite always switching back and forth, between nothing and everything, he felt so indistinct. He still had no idea if he was choosing to live, or just too afraid to die.  
  
If he was neither living nor dying, then he was just a ghost. Floating through life, invisible, coloress, unable to touch anyone, unable to be touched. He thought that was what he wanted to avoid pain, but if shutting out the pain meant shutting everything else out he would lose something important.  
  
He would lose a necessary part for a human being, and no longer be able to continue on living as a human being. He thought he would be fine as long as he could continue watching them, even if he became transparent, even if he was unseen, but that was a lonely way to live.

 

“No, Kumagawa-kun… you’re not here right now. Ghosts aren’t real.”

Kumagawa Misogi was a real person.  
Ghosts do not exist.  
Ghosts must be lonely.  
The dead must be lonely.  
No wonder the reaper wants a friend.

  
“Kumagawa-kun, you must be lonely right now but I can’t join you yet. Besides, you left too many things behind so hurry back already.”

  
So, unkind. When did he forget, that people were people?  
When did he stop being able to see others around him as human beings?  
  
Komaeda said, to the boy watching him in the mirror. He threw away his shirt and got a new one, and pulled a hoodie over it to get dressed for the day once more. A moment ago he felt like he was truly dying, but he lived his entire life feeling like he was dying so he was used to it by now. All he needed was to take another step.

 

‘You’d be upset if that girl you left behind, Enoshima-san, got hurt when you weren’t around to protect her right? I’m sorry, I only think about myself, but I’ll try to be more considerate for you at least. Enoshima Junko is despair to everybody else, but she’s your hope.”  
  
As he threw his coat on, the twin tails of his jacket billowed behind him like a new wind had blown in, to blow away the smell of sickness, and the rank air which hang heavy in his room.

 

🧸

 

“I’m just saying, Kumagawa-senpai’s entire thing is being the person who suffers the most, and has been hurt the most, and even he couldn’t stand you in the end. You’re just plain insufferable.”  
  
“Oh, shut up. Boo you whore. That’s not even worth the brain power it would take to formulate a response.”  
  
“That’s because you don’t have one.”  
  
“No, duh. Why else would I use that line?”  
  
“Matsuda-kun knew you all his life. Ikusaba-san was your own twin sister. Kumagawa-senpai felt despair all his life. You destroyed all three of them. It’s probably just impossible for you to love anyone.”

  
“I didn’t destroy, senpai! There’s no way I’d be so bored right now if I had been the one to kill him.”  
  
“Oh, that’s right he killed himself. Well, it’s not your upset he died, you just didn’t like he died in a way that wasn’t fun for you.”  
  
“No, he didn’t. No I’m not.”  
  
“He killed himself to get away from you. Because you were going to control him, like you control everyone else. He died as a human being that way.”  
  
“Laaaaaaaaame!”  
  
“It doesn’t matter if I’m a fake, because nobody’s real to you. You don’t see them as people. It’s not a matter of despair, it’s just your own reckless egoism.”  
  
“You suck. You Suck. You suck. So uncool. So uncool. You’re gross! You’re scared, aren’t you  !”

  
“And yet you of all people want to be comforted? Everyone else exists for the sake of your comfort! What’s the difference between you and Nagito-senpai again? Comforted by hope? Comforted by despair? What’s the difference?”

 

Komaeda opened the door, but this time he stopped himself in surprise. He was pretty sure this was what he looked like to other people when he started babbling. He was filled with an alien sensation, like the girl he saw in front of him was not quite human.

 

Uncanny valley.  
An almost perfect replica.  
Almost.

  
“Oh, yay Komaeda-senpai’s here. Now we can get the party started. Said no one ever.”  
  
“E...Enoshima-san. You’re not talking to that cell phone anymore. You’re just talking to yourself, don’t you realize?”  
  
Enoshima Junko blinked.  
She saw she was holding nothing in her hand, and looking at nothing. Like she had been playing a chess game against herself, she was acting out both parts of the conversation.  
  
“Who knew you’d lose your mind like one of those boring normies? Pretty soon you’re just going to be plain old regular insane like Komaeda-senpai is and not the fun kind of insane.”

 

Junko said, and then she said.  
  
“Ugh, get over yourself slut! Wait, I’m the slut who needs to get over herself.” Junko also said, shaking her head to try to dispel the illusion she was under. She curled up her fingers and then stared into the center of her hand as if there was a hole there capturing all her attention. Her eyes slowly doubled back to Komaeda. “Oh shit. Hey my bad. Kind of dialed the crazy up to eleven there for a minute.”

  
From underneath the bed, Junkai’s electronic laughter chirped out. “Please bitch, you threw me under here over an hour ago. Puhuhuhu, puhuhuhu.”

  
“Stop stealing my super bitchy and iconic shallow girl speech mannerisms. Ugh, stupid phone you’re not even worth all the glitter I used bedazzling you.”  
  
Komaeda Nagito suddenly reached forward and grabbed her hand. As if he was trying to pull her free from the swamp of despair she was content to drown in. She believed if she lied in poison long enough that her blood would become poison. That if she lied in filth long enough she would no longer be pure. That if she lied in despair, she would become despair, and no longer have to be Enoshima Junko.  
  
Her greatest desire to become Ultimate Despair.  
His greatest desire to become Ultimate Hope.

His desire to be Sherlock.  
Her desire to be Moriarty.  
They wanted to become fictional.  
Not real.  
Didn’t that just mean they wanted to stop being human at any costs?

 

He was white and she was black, and neither of them wanted to touch. If they touched the would just make an unpleasant gray, a boring gray, a gray neither of them wanted to look at. That was why they had to be opposites who would never mix colors.  
  
“Enoshima-san! You can’t fall apart now, it’s… it’s just selfish.”

 

“Oh gosh, I’m selfish. Big shocker there. You wanna elaborate? Careful, I’m just a fragile girl you know I can’t hand all of these truth bombs you’re suddenly dropping on me.”  
  
“Quit rambling to deflect.”  
  
“Kind of hypocritical coming from you, but I guess that’s the point so ‘kaywhateveriguess.”  
  
“Kumagawa-kun, wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself. Even if he’s not here with you. He tried to protect you so many times. You were his hope.”  
  
“Eh?” Getting called hope, made Enoshima Junko feel like she was a vampire watching her skin burn away in the light. “There were plenty of people who wanted to protect me. Other people’s hope don’t mean to shit to me, that’s why it all gets flushed.”  
  
“Even if he’s dead. Even if he’s not here right now. That doesn’t mean you can’t think about what he wanted. Especially since, when he was alive all you ever did was think about yourself around him.”  
  
Enoshima Junko forcefully wrapped her claws around his wrist. She overpowered him easily and dragged him back to her level, forcing him to fall on top of her. He caught himself by slamming his robotic hand down. His limbs were sprawled over hers. He saw her hair falling everywhere, spiraling, spiraling, spiraling, just like his.

 

He did not want to overlap. He did not want to get mixed up in her. Because if he did, he might never again be able to tell where he ended and she began, he may no longer be able to recognize himself.  
  
“You just want to fall apart. You just want to avoid responsibility, because continuing on is too painful and you’re scared. If you cared about Kumagawa-kun you’d want to keep living, because that’s all he ever wanted from you. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t even want to become happy. He was fine, even without hope or despair. He just wanted to keep being by your side.”

 

Enoshima Junko’s one eye turned hostile towards him. Unlike Komaeda who felt like he was melting, Junko looked like she wanted to burn someone. Desperately, just to watch the lights flicker before her eyes, just for the distraction. And Komaeda wanted to burn up, but their places could easily switch.  
  
Hope seemed to turn to despair so quickly, before you even realized it.  
He never appreciated his good luck because bad luck was always around the corner.  
A victim could never remain a victim all of their lives, and sometimes became a perpetrator.  
That was the messy world he did not want to look at.  
  
Before he could say anything more, Junko shoved her hand in his mouth, pulling at his cheek hard enough that he felt like she was going to tear his face.  
  
“What do you know? You don’t know anything at all about us.”  
  
Komaeda felt something, it was not just her hand. She had driven a thumb tack into the inside of his cheek. Junko’s need to be in control really was absolute. It was not that she was particularly violent person even, she just used every tool at her disposal, violence was another tool, abuse was another tool, emotions were another tool.  
  
Komaeda had already been through hell this morning, so a push pin was nothing. He continued talking. “Because I loved him…” He brought his hand to his chest, reminding himself he had a heart. “I loved Kumagawa-kun. Before even you did. From the moment I first saw him, I knew I wasn’t alone anymore.”

 _I saw the reaper._ _  
_ _He was very beautiful._  
  
Enoshima Junko let go of him. She brought her hand to her mouth, turned her head back and laughed. Peels of laughter erupted out of her, like she was overflowing. It was probably the first time she had genuinely laughed in a long time.  
  
_Apparently, my love is laughable._  
  
Komaeda removed the push pin from the inside of his mouth with his tongue, then spit out a little bit of blood.  
  
“Love? Is that why you always abandon him? Turn your back on him? Is that why you prefer Hitoyoshi-kun so much to him? Upupupupupupupuu!” Junko brought her hand to her face, touching her face elegantly with her spread out fingers, and then she peered at him through the spaces between her fingers. Komaeda felt it was like being watched from the opposite side of a spiderweb. “Do you want to know what I think?”  
  
“No, not particularly.”  
  
“Well too bad because you’re going to hear it anyway! Okay, boy’s and girls. It’s time for: Welcome to My Twisted Mind, feat, Komaeda Nagito-senpai! Bum Bum Bum!”  
  
Junko announced, like she was announcing to an audience when it was just the two of them.  
  
“So, Kumagawa-senpai and Komaeda-senpai used to be buds. But then Komada-senpai was all “Talent creates hope, us untalented are unworthy” and Kumagawa-senpai was all “I want to win, even if I’m not talented, even if I’m unworthy, even if I don’t have hope, I want to stand with them’ or whatever, they had a falling out.”

  
“Who are you even explaining this to?”  
  
“You silly. Well, that’s the official line anyway. The real reason is because you both think the other one is the kinder one between you, or some super cheesy bs to that effect. And then the real, real reason deep down on the down low isn’t all that complicated. You just hate him.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You insult him every chance you get. You won’t call him your friend. You’ve told him again and again things go wrong because he’s involved. You two tried to kill each other. It’s like totes simple, you just hate him.”  
  
“N-no, I don’t… I don’t hate him.”  
  
Enoshima Junko smiled, like other people’s feelings belonged to her. She did more than see through them, she saw inside of them, she saw how empty they were. If they were just going to act like boring little dolls they may as well just belong to her.  
  
“Or rather, you see him as someone who is acceptable to hate just like me. All of your life you’ve never been able to blame anybody, you’re too fragile to want to hurt others, but it was comforting, wasn't it? To see someone a little more broken than you were. Because no matter what you did to him, you’d never be able to break him any worse.”

 

“N-no, I don’t… You’re the one who hurts people.”

 

“You were comforted by his presence, but at the same time you’re scared. You don’t want to end up like him. You’ve been sitting on the edge of a cliff that leads to the ocean your entire life, and then that idiot just ran forward and cannonballed off into the murky depths of the water below. That’s why you reject him, all of him, because you’re afraid just one more step and you’ll be like him.”  
  
“That’s not… you’re making it sound like I’m giving into despair.”

 

Enoshima Junko reached up and tenderly caressed his cheek. The exact same way she had hurt his cheek a moment ago, comforting him in the same spot. She could be gentle one moment, and harmful the next. The only consistency was that she always contradicted himself. Or wait, was he talking about himself. He who loved Kumagwa, he who said cruel words.  
  
“Come on, prettyboy. You’ve been on despair’s side for awhile now, haven’t you?” She patted his cheek like she was lecturing a child. “Haven’t you noticed? You were acting like a total yandere last time, but this time you’re keeping relatively stable and even intelligently analyzing me. You know why? Because when you cling to hope it drives you insane, but when you give into despair you’re way more stable. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been such a good and reliable servant to me, like in comparison you were the most sane of the Ultimate Despairs.”  
  
That was right, he always envied Enoshima Junko’s ability to control everything. He thought if he could control his luck, his life would be just a little bit better. He was a helpless child when he clung onto hope. When he gave into despair, he was somebody who could be called Ultimate.

 

“I’m fine with being helpless. I’m fine with being alone. I’m even fine with bad luck, I don’t regret the way I’ve lived until this point. Especially if the alternative is turning into someone like you.”  
  
Enoshima Junko smiled at him.  
She patted him on the head, just like he was a child.  
He wondered when the last time somebody had touched his head in such a way.  
  
“Komaeda-senpai, honey! You brought your classmates to the dark side. You drove the love of your life to such desperation he turned to despair again. Helped topple over the Tower of Hope’s Peak. And for your finale, you’re trying to trim the light fantastic right in front of your man just to make extra sure.”

  
“Hinata-kun is dead.”  
  
“Or, he could be alive, and watching this broadcast. Which would mean all he sees of you is you desperately trying to throw your life away. Upupupu! Dirty girl! Go you!”

 

Junko slapped him hard across the face, causing Komaeda to topple over like he was nothing more than a crumbling tower.  
  
It was like the two of them were choosing between two awful choices. To be in control of everything, or in control of nothing. To be Enoshima Junko or Komaeda Nagito. Either way was a dead end existence.  
  
“So tell me how you’re not like me again? Because by my books you’ve been the head of the Enoshima Junko fanclub for some time now.” Enoshima Junko grabbed him by front of his jacket and forced him back again, as if push and pull, gravity, the waves of the earth, all of them existed for her bidding. Push and pull. If she was yang than he was yin. Or was he yang and she yin. He could not even remember anymore. “You’re telling me I’m being selfish. You’re the one who came charging in here, and made a move on me the second he was gone. You think I’m going to cheat on my man? As if! Dirty slut.”  
  
She pushed him back. Enoshima Junko raised her finger just above her nose, as she talked down to them. Then, her hands started to search her face. Until her real hand became messed up in her tangled, wavy hair. She pulled at it from one side like she was trying to pull herself apart, an equally messy smile on her face.  
  
“Uppupupupupu! You’re succumbing to the despair of your friend’s death all alone! Ah, how wonderful, how beautiful it is.”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
Those eyes.  
Komaeda recognized them.  
The darkness in her eyes shone brightly, as if layers upon layers of darkness were folding into each other… As if hope and despair had been rudely mixed together. A disgusting grey. A ghostly grey.  
  
“Those eyes. They’re my eyes.”

 

“What? I didn’t know it was time for your lines.”  
  
“I think hope is what saved me, but hope drove me insane. It’s the same for you. You think despair saved you, but it’s driving you insane. Those eyes, they’re tired of watching hope and despair.”  
  
“I already said you don’t know anything at all…”  
  
“If you know me, then I know me. I’m so tired of… one sided relationships. That’s why I know, that you know, what you really want… is just to see him again.”  
  
Komaeda Nagito was able to keep swimming in the torrent of Enoshima Junko. But that mattered very little, if a shark were to come out of nowhere and bite off his arm and a chunk of his stomach. Enoshima Junko grinned with rows and rows of teeth.  
  
“If we both want the same thing than you know what to do,” She said, in a voice as sweet and milk and honey after Komaeda had been fasting in the desert all of his life. “Kill yourself, and bring Senpai back to me.”

 

She kissed him on the cheek.  
As if for good luck.  
And whispered.  
  
“Pretty, pretty, please.”  
  
Nagito touched his cheek where a lipstick mark had been left. “Ah, sure, but before I do can I ask you something.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The old you was quite pure. She purely lived for the sake of despair. Ever since meeting Kumagawa-kun you’ve become quite depraved. At least the old you, could have served as the Ultimate Enemy to hope. Is there anybody in this world who is not depraved?”  
  
He wondered what would happen if he finally let go and yielded himself to real depravity. He might make things easier.  
  
“Are you quoting Dazai on me.”  
  
“So, so. So what if I am?”  
  
“That wasn’t Dazai you idiot. That was Akutagawa, Dazai was the one who told that anecdote of Akutgawa speaking like that. What do you mean by depravity?”  
  
“I don’t know…” Even Enoshima Junko of all people had become quite human. “Being human, I guess.”  
  
“How should I know? I don’t see other people as people.”  
  
Junko shrugged.  
It was an oddly civil way to end their conversation, considering she had just told him to kill himself. Enoshima collapsed backwards when he left.  
  
She felt entirely exhausted. She felt see through. She was tired to death. She felt like a ghost.

“Ugggggh, I shouldn’t have told him to kill himself, that's what the old Junko would have done. I don’t want to be old and busted, I want to be the new hotness. Old broke Junk, and new hotness.”

  
She rolled around for a moment, exaggerating her frustration and performing even to herself. Then she sprung up once more to her feet. She grabbed the blanket off the bed and tore it off.  
  
Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.  
Was napping there.  
Or rather he had collapsed while watching her again, due to exhaustion.  
  
“Hitoyoooooshi-kun! Time for the hero act, like now!”

  
“Ugh, five more minutes.”  
  
“Get your fat ass up! Why do you keep fainting anyway!?”  
  
“Jee, it’s almost like I lost a lot of blood recently. I wonder whose fault that is?”  
  
“Oh, you’re such a clumsy ditz Hitoyoshi-kun. I can’t believe you tripped and fell on my knife like that! Anyway, move your ass! God you suck at this whole babysitter thing!”  
  
As she watched him storm out, Enoshima Junko smiled to herself finally relaxing. “Such hope he has.” Her eyes darkened. “Hope, what a joke.”

 

『 _If it’s a joke, I’ll laugh with you._ 』

“Shut it, Senpai.”

  
Just when she thought she finally had a flower of her own. One that she plucked from the garden all for herself, it had to go and wilt. That idiot had to go and die. There was nothing beautiful about death, it was just boring.

 

🧸

 

Miracles had seen better days.  
He was hated by life itself, so he might as well just end it.  
He had snuck into Korekiyo’s room, and climbed the many winding staircases up.  
  
It was the only place he could climb up high.  
So he could throw himself off.  
And let hope dash itself on the concrete. Break apart and paint the floor with the oozing fluid inside his skull.  
The moment Enoshima Junko suggested it, it sounded like a wonderful idea.  
He accepted it.

His head cleared up.  
It felt like a weight had been lifted from his own shoulders.  
  
『 _Hated by life itself, how could life hate you when you’re so insignificant? You’ve got to make a splash to be hated, you don’t even make a ripple. Life is just indifferent to you._ 』  
  
Every time he circled around to find a new staircase, Kumagawa was waiting for him.  
All that boy did was casually lean against the wall like a shadow.  
That was right nobody cared enough about him in the first place to hate him.  
Oh well.  
Whatever.  
Nevermind.  
He was already in nirvana. His head emptied out. He did not have to think anymore.  
He no longer had to step forward, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind him.  
  
As he climbed, climbed, and climbed.  
Higher and higher.  
He was not high enough to die yet.  
He had good luck so even from a few stories up he might survive.  
Utterly confused, he could only keep climbing up the tower.

When he reached the top, he saw everybody who had already fallen below.

Korekiyo’s room.  
A museum devoted to the anthropology of the past.  
The place reeked of death.  
It was a beloved tower of the dead.  
  
He wanted to climb up to the heavens and be struck down by god. He wanted to babble incoherently. He wanted the wax between his wings to melt, so he could dash himself against the rocks below.

『 _So you want to be punished?_ 』  
  
He wanted to be tied to the rock, and have his liver eaten out every single day for ever thinking he had the right to hold the flame of hope between his fingertips.  
  
Anything was better than slowly rotting away. Choosing how the curtains fall, was better than having rotten fruit thrown at him and being booed off the stage. He never got to control anything in life, he never got to choose once, he could choose death at least.  
  
Komaeda Nagito standing several stories up, climbed over the guard rail and threw himself off the ledge.  
  
Kumagawa reached out his hand to grab him, but he was only a ghost so the moment their fingers touched Komaeda's hand slipped through his. 

As he fell, suddenly it was like time stopped. Even though gravity was supposed to pull him down, and dash him against something hard, he had a soft feeling like he was floating. He wanted to be pushed back harshly by the ground. Instead he felt a soft embrace.  
  
He looked up and saw there was a boy over him. A boy who had spiky brown hair, broad shoulders, and a well developed body. Besides the fact that they were both boys, and a similar height they looked to have absolutely nothing in common. HIs skin was tan, his eyes were green, he was full of so many wonderful colors.  
  
The last time that time stopped like this Komaea remembered the feeling, of seeing every color at once, of blurring all the lines and letting the colors escape. He wanted to mix them together. Yours and mine.  
  
There was no way they could possibly look any different, and yet he had the feeling they were the same. He felt Hinata Hajime slowly reach for his face. The boy he found washed up on that island. That unimportant, boy that could be found anywhee, that was incredibly important to him.  
  
“Don’t let something like this situation drag you around.”  
  
Hinata’s words were firm as always.  
  
“So protect your heart, because if you lose it here. You will regret it. And I will go back to the way I was before I meet you. Even if I die, even if I forget you again, all we need to do is start over.”

  
Human beings could start over as many times as they wished to.  
That was why they made so many mistakes.  
That was why they were so wretched.  
That was why they could try to fix their mistakes.  
That was why they were so wonderful.  
  
Komaeda Nagito saw blood trailing from his head, like he had put a bullet in his brain. If Hinata were to see such a thing, it would certainly hurt him. Komaeda’s face blushed as he realized that. As much as he wanted Hinata to continue on living, Hinata probably wished for the same thing.  
  
That was what they called mutual feelings.  
HInata of all people, had told him that he loved him.  
Komaeda could not remember if he had ever said he loved him back.  
He was angry at Junko for not considering Kumagawa’s feelings.  
He was angry at himself for not thinking about how his actions would hurt Hinata.  
He just wanted somebody else to be angry at other than himself, just for once.  
  
The Hinata who was embracing him right now. The Kumagawa who warned him not to jump.  
They were both just himself.  
It was always just him.  
He was telling himself the words he so desperately wanted to hear from others, and he was screaming at Enoshima Junko the words he so desperately wanted to tell himself.

  
Just then, a hand reached out and snatched him out of oblivion. He had not been falling for that long, and he had taken so long climbing up the steps that someone was able to catch up to him. He looked up expecting to see Zenkichi, but saw Naegi Makoto instead. His weak hand was holding onto Koameda’s hood, and Mukuro had her arms wrapped around Makoto pulling them both back.  
  
In one last pull she flung both boys back onto the walkway. Komaeda choked and coughed desperate for breath. He felt like he had been drowning this entire time, and he had just now been pulled back up over the surface.

  
Makoto Naegi was in his face, suddenly. There were tears in his eyes. “What are you doing? Just because Kiri’s dead doesn’t mean I want you to die too. Even if you were to die and she was brought back, that wouldn’t make me happy.”  
  
“It might give you hope,” Komaeda murmured back.  
  
“I don’t want to have hope that’s built on sacrificing others!”

 

Komaeda thought how beautiful Makoto looked at that moment. How childish. How pure. He really purely believes in his hope. He made the nonsense that came out of Komaeda’s mouth, make sense again.  
  
It was creepy, no, almost revolting how much he believed in hope.  
Just like the old Junko, who purely pursued her despair.

 

“Nobody can replace anybody in this world. I never once thought of comparing you to Kirigiri-san. Quit doing this to yourself and listen to others for once.”

 

Makoto probably meant that from the bottom of his heart. He was being honest and sincere.  
  
“You think I’m getting drunk on my own tragedy, just to shut everybody else up.” Komaeda’s eyes wrinkled, as he felt unsatisfied. “How can someone like you possibly know about hope? You’ve never once tasted despair.”

 

 _No, that’s not what I want to say._ _  
_ _I should just thank him._ _  
_ _He saved me after all._ _  
_ _I should tearfully break down and apologize for worrying him._ _  
_ _I should tell him I want to become friends even though I’m not Kirigiri._  
  
“The person you loved died, and yet you keep on hoping. I guess you didn’t care about her that much. It’s because of such weak hope that she died. It’s like you don’t even feel pain at all.”

  
He saw the hurt on Makoto’s face clear as day. That boy who had been crying with worry over him a few minutes ago. Komaeda looked back at Mukuro, expecting to catch her glare. Maybe the wolf would sink her teeth into him.  
  
Oh.  
She just looked sad.

She looked sad for him, even though he said such hurtful words to Makoto.

 

Zenkichi rushed forward finally catching up. Out of breath, he collapsed to his knees in front of Komaeda. Komaeda reached out an unsteady hand, wondering why the other boy was in such a rush and looked so distressed.  
  
Zenkichi suddenly threw his arms around Komaeda.  
Well, this was happening.  
  
“I was almost too late. I’m the worst babysitter.”  
  
“...”  
  
Zenkichi’s voice fell to a whisper. “Komaeda, I… I know about your brain. My mother told me. I knew you were keeping it a secret so I didn’t know what to do… Hey, Komaeda please don’t think something like I should just end it quickly because I’m going to die soon anyway. I promise, I’m going to take you out of here, and I’ll take you to my mom and she’ll fix this.”  
  
Komaeda knew, he was just adding another cross to Zenkichi’s shoulders. Even when the boy was already overloading himself to the point of collapse. He had hid his sickness for that exact purpose, but Zenkichi knew in the end anyway.  
How meaningless.  
How useless he was.  
He realized all of his actions to avoid causing pain to those around him, he was still finding ways to hurt them in the end. Makoto, Mukuro, Zenkichi, no matter how much he insisted they should not care about him, they were all sad for his sake.  
His wish to die, his wish to escape pain, those were not selfish.  
But, he had chosen the thorny path to express those things, not thinking about how they would feel if he martyred himself for their sake. 

Then, nothing he did mattered. He might as well do nothing. Be invisible. Become a ghost. If everything went through him, like a wind sock with no bottom, he would never harm anyone.  
No, that was wrong.  
He wanted things to matter.  
He wanted his actions to matter.  
He wanted to be better.  
  
He spared one last glance at the bottom that he had almost fallen into. That was the bottom. That was where planes, meteors, and dead reserve course students crashed. Then, that was where he was going to have to climb back up from.  
  
He wanted to try being human. He wanted to see others as human. Because, there was a boy who was holding onto him and crying right now. It would be rude to ignore him.  
  
“Hitoyoshi-kun, you’re wasting your kindness like trash on me again. I’m starting to wonder if you have some kind of complex!”  
  
“Would you quit it with the trash talk! Read the atmosphere for once! You’re the one whose way too complex for his own good!”  
  
“My apologies, I’m not good at reading without my glasses right now.”  
  
Komaeda could not bring himself to react in a tearful way. He could not bring himself to react the normal way, but he did his best in his own Komaeda way. He threw his arms around Zenkichi almost as if he was collapsing on top of the other boy, awkwardly, clumsily, returning his hug.   
  
"I'm sorry for making you worry. Trash like me, doesn't burn so easily."   
  
For a moment, he saw Zenkichi's image overlapping with Kumagawa's and felt like he was finally embracing the boy like he should have done a long time ago. Because of that he kept holding on a moment to long. 

  
Is it alright for me want to live?  
If he were to ask Kumagawa that question, that boy would just laugh at him.   
『 _What a stupid question._ 』  
  
"How stupid."  
He muttered into Zenkichi's shoulder.  
Once you ask the question, you already know the answer.   



	33. Beautiful People are Like Silent Statues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Last year nothing happened..." is a quote from Osamu Dazai's The Setting Sun  
> "Life's little crossroads are often as simple as the pull of a trigger." is a Joshua Kiryu line from TWEWY that I put in for fun.

_“Last year nothing happened_

_The year before nothing happened_

_And the year before that nothing h_ _appened.”_

 

🧸

 

Enoshima Junko hated routine more than anyone else, but there was one she did not mind. She always woke up first, as Senpai had a habit of spending most of the night in restless sleep, trembling, shaking, clawing like a wild animal in order to escape them. In the morning he was always trying to sleep desperately to make up for what he had lost to his feverish, frenzied dreams. He looked like a helpless cat curled up like that. She thought about how cute it would be if she dug her teeth into his throat and tore it out, he would wake up never knowing he had been betrayed by the one he loved the most.  
  
However, she could not compare to some lowly beast that could only kill the weak. She was just so hopelessly attractive? Hopelessly brilliant? Hopelessly athletic? The hopelessly perfect Ultimate Human? Well, she was hopelessly merciful anyway, letting him live every morning when he shamelessly exposed such a pathetic side to her.  
  
Worst of all whenever she moved to get out of the bed, she ended up caught in his arms. As if to say, _Don’t go._ He should know by now, she hated clingy people the most. Those who cling to the future, like it was so exciting the sun rose and fell every day. Those who cling to idols, who just wanted them to remain perfect virgins they can project their feelings onto. Those who cling to other people, always saying I’m doing this for her, using them as an excuse, since when can people no longer do things for themselves? Since when can people no longer live for themselves, always clinging to something? Anyway, she got ahead of herself there, it was impossible to tell if Kumagawa was awake or not when he wrapped his arms around her to stop her from leaving the bed. Technically, as a boy he was stronger than her, she even sometimes thought something dumb like _these are a boy’s arms wrapped around me_. Pretending to be a lovelorn ingenue could be fun sometimes.

  
However, it was also annoying because she had to go put her face on. She should punish him. Enoshima Junko was like a perfect marble statue, worship of her was the same as idolatry. There was no more fitting attempt in all of human art to capture the beauty of the gods than her. When he put his hands on her, he made her absolutely dirty. She could grab scissors from the drawer and jab it into his wrist to make him let go. But ah, all she ended up doing was messing with his hair softly with her fingers until he let go.  
  
It was ridiculous how much control what amounted to a soft, snoozing, lump of flesh held over her. It was a fall from grace, there were plenty of angels that fell due to pride but did any fall from lack of pride?

That morning Enoshima Junko woke up and reached out to play with Kumagawa Misogi’s hair between her fingers, only to see an empty space next to her. She fell asleep wearing Kumagawa Misogi’s black jacket, wrapped around her black and red underwear but even pulling it around herself she could no longer feel any of its warmth.  She did not scream, cry, or even fall into despair, all she did was curl herself up into the fetal position.

 

We despaired from the moment we came into this world, thinking “Oh no, I should have never been born.”

 

『 _People who spend their entire lives going, oh no, why was I born are the absolute worst don’t you think?_ 』

  
She opened her mouth, but she was unable to say anything. When all was said and done, she had simply used him, and was unable to return the favor. That was her one regret. However, that may not be limited to just him. You were supposed to interact with other people, but all she ever did was pull on their strings as she saw fit. She was all take and no give. She latched on to anything and anyone that was remotely interesting to make her feel something other than boredom, and by latch on she of course meant push it until it gets destroyed. If even one person she encountered did not exist, she would probably be long dead.  
  
That was why.

“I want to give it back, even despair.”  
Yes, return. Return everything.  
Everything he gave her to him.  
Just a bit, everything. All half.  
Half black, half white.  
Like when she first met a smiling boy in pitch black.  
Like before that meeting.  
She hated school. She hated living. She hated her normal school life. She was unable to live day to day. She was unable to get along with her classmates. She hated the everyday existence. She was unable to be interested in others. She was unable to be interested in herself. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She wanted to enjoy. She wanted to get angry. She could not do anything. She could not feel anything. She broke them because she could. She wanted him, obsessed over him to the point of insanity, so she threw him away. She always wanted to be in his embrace so he rejected him. She felt like herself around him, so she escaped. He wanted to protect her, so she hurt him. They were childhood friends, but she was lonely. She was envious of their statue queue, their everyday life, so she crushed them. Destroying a necessary person she could not live her life without. But she was still alive. She must not have loved him that much. Necessary became unnecessary to someone like her. She loved to the point of hatred. She was bored with herself. She was sickeningly cute. She was ugly and cruel. She was severely depressed. She was cheerful and bright. She was clinically sophisticated. She was boisterously rude. She had a haughty superiority complex. She was inferior to everyone else. She mimicked someone else. She was unable to mimic someone else. She truly loved him. She didn’t know how to love. What a stupid god.. She cannot love someone other than herself.She could not love herself. That was why she ran. But, she could not escape herself. She was everywhere and therefore she was nowhere. She was everything and therefore she was nothing.  
  
Life sucked.  
  
“...So then, let’s make a masterpiece. Writer and director, Enoshima Junko.”  
  
This is a story of a girl who lived the same day over and over. In the end she killed everyone on the planet, and painted the world with their despair just to see something different. She just wanted to see a little color.  
  
This is the story of a girl who woke up trapped in an empty classroom with an empty head, and nothing on her mind, and nothing to do but watch the clock on the wall.   
  
There are two choices, only two. Continue to watch, or tear it apart. Eventually she gives in and grabs the clock and pulls out its internal mechanism. She lets the gears and springs spill all over everywhere messily. Once she figures it out though, even the momentary puzzle of how the hands on the clock move is gone. She has destroyed the one thing she has to look at.  
  
Next, she disassembles her own head too. Just like the internal workings of the clock, gears and springs fall out of her head. She takes herself apart piece by piece. She tears herself apart, reassembles, and tears herself apart all over again but its always the same result. Even when the gears become rusted and refuse to turn properly, when the mechanism of her head begins breaking down from just running too fast it's all the same. Whether broken or fixed, sane or insane, she is still stuck in that white room.  
  
People think living is painful, but living in the absence of pain is far worse. Anything else, is relief from the numbness. Even being the worst human being on earth, the self loathing, the wishing to die, consumed by self disgust, wanting to cry and scream out, wanting to just die already, was better than not lying once and feeling like a human being for a single moment.  
  
Neither Nietzsche nor Freud wrote about how to fill this hole.  
It’s just that reality was flickering in front of her.  
No change.  
It was like watching a nonstop stream of movies you already know the ending.  
Like there was a sheet of glass in front of her.  
That prevented her from reaching forward and influencing the result.  
Everything, all of their feelings, all of their warmth, it was on the opposite side of a screen.  
Logically she knew that there were complex independent organisms with their own little worlds sharing the same world as her, but she could watch and anticipate them like actors whose lines she was reading off a script. If she was just reading a script she might as well write it. The boredom of making sure everything went to play, was slightly more preferable to the boredom of just watching and letting things happen. The more she controlled others to feel their warmth, the further and further they got away from her. Until she had no control at all of them, until they just became characters appearing on the other side of the screen.

She wanted to break the glass. She wanted to be on the other side.

She wanted to be with everyone else.  
She wanted to live a life that was different than anyone else. She wanted to live the same life that everyone else had.

A cute brat.  
A truly pitiful brat.  
Forever, frozen. In other words, she had not grown one bit. Afraid her cold self will shatter to pieces. Afraid of melting away. Mistaking her egoism as love for other people. Afraid beyond afraid of having her face broken, her head collapsing, to reveal nothing underneath but a pitch void. Except that had already happened a long time ago. The hollow void had already become herself. She embraced herself as a child. Her childhood self looked at what she would be when she grew up, and saw only a girl without a face. She lost her face somewhere along the way. She never had one.  
  
She suddenly realized, all of this thinking gave her a terrible headache. She may have hurt her brain. Not that it matters. Not that it matters for a brain that was broken from the start. Not that it matters, so please, wait a bit for me senpai. Just wait a little bit more. There was still something she could do with this flickering life.  
  
That was when she almost burst out laughing. That was when she wanted to genuinely laugh for the first time in awhile. Something she needed to do. Enoshima Junko! For her of all people to have some kind of purpose. Even a child who has abandoned every person, and every single thing, and trashed every ideal, can end up with something like that! She thought one day she simply stopped moving. That one day she became trapped in a white room like a box. She thought beautiful people are like silent statues. Perhaps, to this point, she simply acted as if she did not notice.She looked down on others, she looked away, she did not see the door.  In other words, that meant even more than she, or anyone else had ever realized, she was a giant fool.  
  
In the end, however, she did not laugh.  
“My head hurts…”  
This voice - who? It was a  terrible monotone, as unemotional as if a synthetic voice were speaking, oh, it was her own voice.

 

The truth was she thought of all of this before. She was bored of thinking of how bored she was. She was too much of a genius for even herself to comprehend, she had too many thoughts, like Mozart had too many notes. It felt like her brain was creaking under the strain, the stitches were slowly falling apart as they were stretched to their limit.

 

 _Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! M! Me! Me! Me!_ _  
_ _  
_ Junko suddenly sat up as if she had been reanimated. Her one eye bulged out and spun around, the pain lighting up her senses. “THIS IS SO FUUUUUN! What the hell is this? My head is full of me? But, but, but, I’m so cute, so cool, so fashionable, so me (hello!) But, but, but, but (too much me!)”

 

_Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me._

_  
_ A terrible migraine. Shooting, agonizing pain. Like dirty water was sloshing forth back in her skull. Like there was something taking root in between the wrinkles of her brain. She could feel it spreading like twisted, spindly fingers trying  to grip her skull. Her headaches had been getting worse and worse lately. She wanted Matsuda-kun to take a stake and drive it into one of her eyes. She wanted him to take a hammer and beat at her skull until it cracked.

  
“It’s like a bad picture you know, fuzzyfuzzyfuzzy in my head. Yeah-yeah, it feels like something has taken root, a tree and an apple. Youyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyouyou. Kumagawa! You stupid shitty worthless trash! Why didn’t you bite into me?”

 

Kumagawa Misogi.  
Her senpai.  
Always smiling to hold back tears.  
The boy who said.  
She was his good luck.  
That boy who was always so warm.  
Was cold now.  
A terrible  
Detestable.  
View.  
Death.  
Nothingness.  
Boring.  
She didn’t want to think about it.

  
No thinking about tomorrow.  
No thinking about Kumagawa.  
No thinking about her childhood friend, or her beloved sister.  
No thinking about despair.  
She didn’t want to think about anything anymore.  
  
When her head was hurting she had thrashed about the room, making a mess of things that were already a mess, dancing all by herself, but she quickly got tired of that. She collapsed. She held herself in the fetal position once more, amongst all the things she had torn apart.

She probably had not been hurting all that much. She just wanted to feel pain to feel something. She probably exaggerated it all for the sake of a gag. Her headache was not that bad. She wanted to live with chronic pain, because living without pain was unbearable. She had no idea if she was alive or dead.  
  
“Why? I can’t put it into words. This feeling, that isn’t a feeling, feeling a lack of things. It’s not fair… I did all the normal people things, the human things, why is it only me? Why? I’m trying? I’m really trying to live..”

  
The question Enoshima Junko asked herself over and over again. Why was someone like her born into this world? What was the point of giving life to someone who could not feel anything at all? She was born without being born. She was living without being alive. Her sister was not like this, and nobody else in her family was either, just by meaningless chance she was born with a brain like this. She was born trapped in that white room.  
  
Objectively, both she, and the world were both better off if she had never been born. Nothingness, was better than the crushing nothingness she felt every day of her life. At least then she would be lacking awareness.  
  
Ensohima Junko covered her face with her hand, because she did not want to know what mask she was wearing, and she did not want anybody else to know either. Whether she was smiling, or crying underneath all this misery, whether she was feeling hope or despair, she no longer wished to know. She no longer wished to think about it.  
  
“I just hate everything. I hate that school. I hate my classmates. I hate my sister. I hate my childhood friend. I hate you most of all. Go die. Drop dead. I hate you for dying, Senpai. I’ll kill you for dying.”  
  
No, that was a lie. Hating required passion, and she was lacking in both passion and romanticism. She was the extreme result of apathy and cynicism. She did not hate or love anything.  
  
She was having an emotional breakdown, but that required having emotions in the first place. She was probably just sitting around thinking too much again. She was screaming and throwing a tantrum one moment, and then silently crying the next, but neither of them made her feel much. She felt more like an actor playing the role of someone going mad, rather than a person genuinely losing themselves.  
  
If only she could lose herself. If only she could get lost. Anything was preferable to this, she remembered Komaeda screaming in agony yesterday about his skull wanting to split in half. She wished she had that, all she had was a dull ache.  


Komaeda was lacking in self awareness, but she had too much awareness. If Komaeda was a ghost, then to her everyone else were ghosts. They were all transparent, all colorless. If she tried to touch them her hand would slip through them. They were all alive, but she saw no traces of living things in them. They were all pretending to be something else. They could all feel real emotions, but they chose to just keep faking it.

 

She felt like the only real person, but then again she did not feel real at all. Who was Enoshima Junko, anyway? Enoshima Junko was Enoshima Junko. She was crushed, overpowered by her identity, but at the same time it was completely vague. It was like drowning in the air, rather than in the ocean. She was being weighed down by something completely invisible. She wished she could be a screaming, raving lunatic, she wished she could be despised rather than loved.  
  
As it was, she was just melancholy. She was neither happy nor sad. She was suffocating in an endless carfard. All of her nerves had been severed from her brain, and pulled out like long, winding cords underneath her skin prompting her to feel nothing at all, and yet for some reason she kept on living.

  
Why was such a person even born?  
Was it alright for a person like her to be born? Someone who could only live by hurting others?

 

Good luck and bad luck.  
Poison and Medicine.  
The highs of hopes and joy, the lows of utter devastation and despair.  
She was so numb they were all the same to her.  
She was lying on a board with black and white squares.  
She could move the pieces however she thought freely, but winning or losing did not matter.  
The entire world was just this black and white board.  
She wanted to have fun with it.

She so desperately wants it! She wants that excitement!  
She wants, wants, wants, more than anybody else.  
She did not know if there was anyone who had ever wanted so desperately to live as she had. Everybody else seemed so sick of everything, and half sick of themselves, like they just wanted to roll over and die in a boring way. Everybody else was rotting away slowly. She wanted, more than anybody else to feel!  
  
Except there was no color in her world, and therefore no feelings. It was just a black and white board. That was why she wished the black and white board would fall apart, the black and white sky would break into puzzle pieces, it would fall and collapse on her and crush her skull.  
  
She was sure, anybody would feel this way if they had her brain too. Anyone would become this desperate to see something stimulating. It could have been anyone, so why did it have to be her? Why did she have to be born?

 

She sat up and looked at the mirror. Her hair was wavy around her head and her body was missing pieces. That was right, her hand had been chopped off by Komaeda Nagito, and her eye had been removed by Kuzuryuu Fuyuhiko. They could have her, for all she cared. Pop her head off like a doll. Tear her limbs off one by one like they were tormenting a spider.  
  
Even when she saw them sloppily stitch her body parts onto themselves, she still saw nothing of herself in other people. She saw nothing in common with them. There was no way to make other people like herself.  
  
Then why was she born this way?  
  
Slowly, she started to forget what she looked like, what she was supposed to feel, how she was supposed to act, she started to forget she was even human in the first place. She tore off her eyepatch and was glad to see an empty hole in her face. She wanted more holes. She wanted to leak out of them. She bought her sharp nails to her other eye. Maybe, if she could not see, if she was just not aware of how bored she was it would be better. If she could not see herself, she would forget herself and then she could be someone else.

 

『 _Junko, you know that’s not true. The only way to continue living is to live as yourself._ 』

  
Whoa?  
Kumagawa-senpai was here talking to her.

『 _Yup, that’s right. I can’t believe you wanted to see me of all people that badly. You have bad taste._ 』

  
“Ohh, I get it. I’m hallucinating now.”

 

『 _Ahahaha. You catch on quick. I guess that's what you’d expect from such a realist. Or are you a romanticist? Well, I still don’t know if you’re a comedian or a tragician. Maybe you’re half, and half. And then you’re one-third despair fetishist._ 』  
  
“Your math is as terrible as ever.”  
  
『 _I come back and the first thing you do is insult me? It’s not my fault I don’t even have a brain anymore. Or even a body. I’m not anyone that special. Maybe I’m not even Kumagawa-kun._ 』

  
“No, you have to be Kumagawa-senpai”

『 _Picky, picky. You can’t just decide who you get to hallucinate about. Hallucinations don’t really work that way you know. It’s not a story, so there’s no meaning to them at all._ 』  
  
“I can talk to anyone else whenever I want. I can’t talk to you. You’re the only person I want to talk to that I can’t.”

 

『 _You’re such a liar, you could talk to Mukuro-chan right now. Just step out of this room._ 』  
  
“No, no, no. I don’t want to talk to them anymore. I don’t want to think about them anymore.”

 

『 _Gosh, you’re such a baby. Nagito-chan is going insane from pain and you can’t even handle a tiny bit of boredom. You’re gonna be the first person to die from nothing at all, you wimp._ 』

“Ummm, an amazingly hot girl is talking to you, how about you get over yourself a little bit?”

 

『 _Fine, fine. If I give the princess what she wants she’ll stop crying._ 』

 

“There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

 

『 _What?_ 』

  
“Why do you love me? You don’t know me, I don’t even know me…”

『 _Because we’re like… totally the same, right? That’s why I’ve fallen for you._ 』Kumagawa Misogi intertwined her fingers with his, and peeled them away one by one from her face. Her face was nothing more than a black void, but he rubbed his cheeks against hers revealing what was underneath. She guessed she was a real girl after all. She had been human all long, what an annoying twist.

  
Kumagawa eased her hand away, gently encouraging her not to pluck out her own eye. Then suddenly, he pressed a kiss to the the place underneath her empty eye socket. He brought his tongue up all along the side, kicking the empty crevasse tasting the ozze and the blood that fell from the corner of her empty eye like a substitute for tears. He licked it all up. He tasted her. She felt him, wet, soft and warm. She felt his jacket wrap around her when she was only in her underwear.

 

『 _Don’t cry anymore over a guy like me, or I’ll lick up all your tears._ 』  
  
“God, you’re so weird. I think you’re taking ‘taste that despair’ too literally.”

 

『 _It’s not my fault. You’re the one imagining this._ 』  
  
“Hey, senpai? Is it okay for me to have been born?”

 

『 _You mean, as a member of the colony known as mankind who contributes nothing towards their collective gain, is there a reason you of all people you were born into this species? That, your mothers and fathers mixed genes resulted in you?  Well, in regards to that question I only have one thing to say, ______ BEEPBEEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP._ 』

 

Enoshima Junko snapped back to reality.  
She had been carrying on a one sided conversation to herself. There was a bear she had been holding in her arms, that she had been talking to as a replacement for Kumagawa. She threw her voice so it sounded like his was coming from the bear.

  
That was right she was mistaken.  
The day when someone understands her will never arrive.  
Collapse, divergence and disengagement was her fate.  
There’s no salvation for someone like her.  
Yet, still she could recall his warmth. She could not stop wearing his jacket.  
Even if affections were just a high for her to throw away.  
Even if she got addicted to people and treated them like her fix.  
Even if she was completely hopeless.  
  
Junkai had set off her annoying ringtone. Probably because she saw how delusional her other self was being, and got bored of the show.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi was just a delusion. He was imaginary. He was a ghost. No, that was incorrect. Everybody else was a ghost, but Kumagawa was the first real person she had ever met. He was the genuine thing.  
  
When she was around him she started to think she was alive. She started to think what she was feeling was genuine. He made her want something genuine, something tangible, something whole. She had no need for beauty, because beauty was fake, just let her see something genuine for once.

 

Enoshima Junko fixed her hair and clothes and left her room. She guessed she had gotten bored of losing her mind and was going to be sane for now, as long as that lasted. She wanted to see herself, but no mirror would do, because she just saw a beautiful and fake girl, an empty and stupid girl looking back at her. Mirrors were untrustworthy if she wanted to see something genuine.  
  
She decided to look at herself, reflecting in someone else’s eyes.  
  
🧸

 

“Enoshima Junko-chan is here! Now the party can really start, said everyone ever!”

  
Junko burst into Komaeda’s dorm. He did not even lock his door. It was like he wanted someone to sneak in and kill him. Sleepily, Komaeda looked up from his bed. He stared up at her, transfixed, a half hearted gaze as if he were still in a dream.

 

She was everyone’s dream girl, so she could not blame him.

Enoshima Junko paced back and forth.  
Restless, anxious, irritable, but she probably just made herself that way to heighten her emotions.

 

“I don’t really get you, Komaeda-senpai. I don’t get why you’re so obsessed with beautiful things. You know, most beautiful people don’t even think that much about beauty.”  
  
Komaeda could only follow her with his sleepy eyes. “Aren’t you tired of this already? It feels like we’ve discussed this to death.”  
  
Of course she was tired, that was why she had to keep moving. If she ever stopped, she would never be able to move again. “We’ve discussed it to death, buried it, dug it back up, resurrected it and then put it out of its misery again, but it’s not over until I say it’s over.”  
  
Enoshima Junko, suddenly struck a pose. “Hey, Komaeda-senpai, what do I look like to you?”  
  
“...A ghost.”

 

“Am I sexy? Am I cute? Am I vivacious? Am I passionate? Am I lustful?”

 

“No, you just look scary. Ghosts are scary, and so are other people.”  
  
Jeez, what business did Komaeda have being calm now of all times. She wanted him to go crazy, she wanted to go crazy with him. Just because she told him to kill himself he was being cold to her now of all times. He really had no idea how to treat a lady.  
  
“Your obsession with beauty just makes no sense. Even if you do witness something beautiful, you won’t feel any better. All you ever do is brood over the past, and relive it over and over again. Even if Kamukura-senpai loves you, it won’t revive your parents, it won’t make your parents love you.”  
  
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m too pessimistic to believe that just because someone is kind to me, that it will make the world any less painful.”

 

More pain. More depravity. More. More. More. “That’s a strange thing for the poster boy of blind optimism to say.”

“Blind… no, I’m not blind. I might be delusional, and oblivious, but I’m not blind. These eyes have seen too much to be blind.” A crooked smile spread on Komaeda Nagito’s lips. It was the half crooked smile, that Monokuma wore, and it looked like Junko’s own when she was losing herself to the madness of despair. “Aren’t you the blind optimist between us?”

 

“Eh?”

  
Hope and despair, and a razor thin line between them. They were two sides of the same coin. One could not tell the difference between black and white if the other was not present for contrast. Hope could not grow unless it faced down despair. Despair needed to devour hope in order to grow.  
  
Enoshima Junko despaired.  
Anything and everything ended up just the way she wanted.  
Everything concluded just as she had hoped, and so she despaired.

  
“You can’t see a single thing that interests you in this world. You didn’t even have hope deluding you like I do. You don’t expect to get anything out of life. You say the only thing you have to look forward to is your death, but you’re alive aren’t you?”

  
“Unfortunately.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s bad luck, but what do you care? You’re not someone so weak as to get tossed around by luck. You always get exactly what you want. So, if you really wanted to you could have killed yourself a long time ago.”  
  
“Yeah, we’ve been over this before. Secretly all this time she desired to live, it’s heartwarming, the audience is crying all of the tears right now. Stories where characters overcome their want to die and find new meaning in life sell really well-”  
  
“No, I mean. You’ve always been in despair about your life, but you keep living. You made that despair your reason to keep living and look forward to the future. Isn’t that hope?”  
  
Because Super High School Level Enoshima Junko, wished for despair above anything else. Finds hope within despair more than anyone else.  
  
Finds hope?  
  
“...What the hell? Me finding hope?”

  
Enoshima Junko was despair incarnate. She was born in despair, letting it infect other people’s hope so it could rot them from the inside out, twisting them into her own image. She could sew seeds in their brains, underneath the upper layer and between the wrinkles of their minds. The seeds would germinate, their roots pushing synapses, and capillaries apart. They could feed off the goo of the brain and continue to grow. People could bloom into wonderful, colorful, flowers. When they had just been nothing more than colorless blobs before that point. Flowers could bloom, out of their noses, their eyes, their mouths, their ears. Even if it was just red flowers. Even if it was just a garden of red. She could have a garden all of her own.

 

For Junko, feeling hope was its own despair. She only inspired hope, only put effort into building towers so she could watch them crumble later. All hope to her eventually led to despair, but if that was true than the opposite was true as well.

  
All despair eventually led to hope. Facing despair and choosing to live with despair, choosing that their might be some kind of reason to continue on living in the future was hope.  
  
Hope became despair, and despair became hope. White was black, and black was white. No, if it was that way then nothing would make sense.  
  
“Besides, what you call despair isn’t even despair. True despair to you would be, just giving up on everything wouldn’t it? Just giving into your boredom and not doing anything. If you want to despair so badly why don’t you just do that?”

 

If she was the one who locked herself away in that white room. If she sat on the bed, not doing anything, not touching anything, and only watching that clock with no expression on her face she would feel true despair. If she had truly given up on anything, if she saw no meaning in anything like she claimed, she would just do that.

  
Komaeda wanted so desperately to be clean. He wanted to be pure white. He did not want to touch anyone and he did not want to be touched by anyone. He was so fragile when he hurt others, he was shattered far worse than they were. He could not bear the pain of living, so he lived his life avoiding pain.  
  
Enoshima wanted nothing to do with purity. She wanted to be defiled. She wanted to be touched so many times, that she would be covered in black handprints and lose her original colors. She wanted to be pitch black. She could not feel alive living without pain, so she lived her life seeking ruin.  
  
If she was the statue of the goddess, then Komaeda was the lamb who was only meant to spill blood at her feet. But, she was jealous even of that. That sticky, icky, gooey, liquid stuck to her feet meant that he was alive, he had something coursing through him. He was more than just stone. The reason he felt so dead now was because he was alive at one point, he felt the cycles of good and bad luck, hope and despair like a roller coaster.  


But even if she wanted to feel that way, she did not want to end up like him. He was just a helpless child clinging to hope. She hated clingy people, because those people would never change. They always wanted things to remain exactly the same.  
  
“You were begging Kumagawa-kun to tell you that the world won’t drive you insane with boredom. You want the certainty that there will always be a lack of structure, that something unexpected will happen. How is that not status queue? You’re holding on to the belief that you might not go insane, how is that not hope?”

 

Enoshima Junko, left despair in her wake, but she could not answer Komaeda’s questions. She could not be sure what was driving her was not a twisted form of hope. A search for a reason to keep living. A search for meaning when her eyes bored with the whole world saw none at all.  
  
“You’re always like, I’ll do anything, anything, to feel despair. Anything is better than feeling nothing, but isn’t that the same as me? I’ll do anything for the sake of hope.”

  
“You don’t know anything at all about me,” she repeated again.  
  
“No, I feel like for a long time we’ve been reading from the same book.”

  
It was like they were two children sitting next to each other, reading a book they shared in their laps. Komaeda Nagito never grew up because his growth and ego had been stunted by continuous trauma, too many experiences. Enoshima Junko never grew up because her emotions had been stunted from a lack of any experience.  People put their hands all over Koameda. Enoshima had them dancing in the palm of her hand from a young age. But the two of them read that children’s book and were both enchanted by it. They both preferred the rules of their little book, to the reality they saw before their eyes.  
  
It was like they were playing a game of make believe with each other. Enoshima was the demon lord, and Komaeda was the intrepid young hero from an ordinary village, but when they fought they both played by the same rules.  
  
That was structure. That was order. In fact, Enoshima Junko added rules to her own killing game, precise and intricate rules that she followed sometimes. There was a time she gave a bunch of people reasons to kill each other and then let them all slaughter each other meaninglessly but she felt nothing at all from that.

  
“You ask why I care about seeing beautiful things. Why do you care about seeing people in despair? It’s not like it makes any difference to you, you don’t see people as people in the first place.”  
  
Junko realized she had not replied to him in quite some time, because she was stuck inside her own head at the moment.

“You’re the blind one, you don’t even look at people.”  
  
“That’s not true, there was someone… someone real... I was always looking at him. I looked at Kumagawa-kun. I wanted to share his pain with him, because I… you know…even if he’s gone now I know what I felt for him at the time was real.”  
  
“Are you sure about that? Weren’t you just  jealous he could feel all the despair you wanted to feel? He had all the hardship in life you wanted. When he was around you made him absolutely miserable. You never comforted him once. You just used him up and threw him out… are you sure you didn’t hate him?”

 

Enoshima Junko really needed to get out of her own head. She needed to crack the egg. She wanted to be born into this world too. She grabbed what she was concealing in her pocket and threw it into his lap.

  
“Hey, hey, Komaeda-senpai. Telling you to kill yourself, that was an oopsie daisy on my part. I’ve only committed three whole oopsie daisies in my life. One, when I killed Kaiki-kun. Two when I didn’t comfort Kumagawa-kun over Ajimu-san’s death, and three telling you to kill yourself yesterday. Even I’m not perfect, aren’t I way more relatable to all you normies now?”  
  
“I feel genuine pity for anyone who relates to you.”  
  
“So, you?”  
  
“Well, you know me. I’m always hopelessly drowning in self pity.”  
  
Junko smirked. A devil may care smile. The smile of someone who desperately wanted to care about something, even if she had to become a devil. “That’s why, I’m going to give you a free shot. I know using the word nostalgia around someone like you who doesn’t have any happy memories is totes cruel but, don’t you remember when we first met?”

  
The first time they met, Komada Nagito pointed a revolver ather head.  
Enoshima Junko merely smiled at him.  
A smile that would haunt him for the rest of his life. She looked totally unafraid to die, like she has not even alive, like she was a ghost. She looked at him like he was a ghost, like he was transparent before her eyes.  
Just then Junko put a stolen revolver from Mukuro’s talent lab in his lap.  
She knelt down in front of him like she was praying.  
They could switch places so easily, she could become the sacrificial lamb painting everything red and he could become the statue who was worshipped.  
That was the problem with pure things, if you added a little bit of color they got soaked all the way through and became that color.

 

“Ko! Mae! Da! Sen! Pai!” She sung as if she was just a child playing a game and taunting him. “This is what you’ve always wanted isn’t it? You can defeat the despair and become hope.”  
  
Komaeda raised a shaking hand, and pressed the barrel against her temple. Enoshima Junko could feel each tremor, as his finger brushed against the trigger, it was like her own heart beating in her chest.  
  
“If you want to see hope so badly, I’ll show you. It’ll be the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see.”

  
“Really, I think even your corpse will end up looking quite ugly after a few days.”  
  
“Meanie! I can’t believe you called me ugly to my face. Do you even know how to talk to girls?” She brushed her fingers to tease against his, filling him with fluttery feelings. “Come on Komaeda-kun. You should know better than anybody else how quickly things can change. Life’s little crossroads are often as simple as the pull of a trigger.”  
  
Neither of them wanted to look at the other, because they could so easily slip and become that person. If Junko gave up despair, she could be helpless. If Komaeda gave up hope, he would start to hurt others to make himself feel better.  
  
A sadist, and a masochist.  
They were two people.  
That was why Junko thought, if they were both losing their minds at the same time.  
If they were going insane for different reasons.  
Because there was too much for Komaeda.  
Because there was not enough for Junko.  
Then they should just go crazy together.  
Then they should just destroy each other.  
They were in the same ship now, so they should just sink together.  
If he loved her more than anyone else, they could drown together like lovers.  
If he hated her more than anyone else, he could commit a murder suicide. 

  
“Come on, come on, come on, let’s kill each other.”  
If he smashed her head apart with a bullet, he would be smashing his own head as well.  
He would know what he feared, that he could deliberately make the decision to hurt others.  
  
He tried to look into her eyes but her eyes were somewhere else. She was not looking at him, but rather at someone else. Junko murmured as if in a dream. “Yeah, that’s right to kill me, kill me hard Kumagawa-senpai.” Komaeda saw her grabbing the black jacket she had taken to wearing and pulling on it, as if embracing herself, or trying to hold herself together. The same way he always was.

In her eyes everyone was alone.  
She was not the lonely one, everyone else was.  
She was not the empty one, everyone else was.  
She did not need anybody.  
Because she could get whatever she needed out of anybody around her.  
They were all at her fingertips, but she could not hold onto them.  
She did not see talent like Komaeda, because she any talent, any relationship could be replaced.  They were all indinstict. They were all vague. They were all interchangeable.  
She became bored of a world like that.  
  
But for some reason, some feeling she can’t explain.  
The thought that someone other than Kumagawa might kill her never even crossed her mind.

No, she was the replaceable one. She was the one who was not needed.  
She could disappear without causing a single ripple.  
It probably would not even count as taking a life.

  
However, Nagito Komaeda had seen that girl crying in front of him. He had been made painfully aware of the fact that she was human. It was awkward and indecent. It ruined his fantasy. He never wanted to see it. He never wanted to share such a moment with her.  
  
He already knew.  
They were just two people.  
In a strained voice he asked. “Why do you want to die so badly?”

“It’s not that I want to die, it’s just that I never wanted to be born in the first place.”

If Komaeda Nagito had never been born his parents would still be alive. His classmates might not have fallen into despair. But, that also meant he would have never met Hinata Hajime. That other boy who could not understand himself, and felt inferior to other people would have no one in this world as his equal.

  
Enoshima Junko, if she was not born then Ikusaba Mukuro would not have a sister. Matsuda Yasuke would not have been given a reason to live after he lost his mother. Kumagawa Misogi, would not be able to smile.  
  
Komaeda placed the gun at the side of her head, and fired it. Enoshima Junko felt a terrible ringing in her ears, and a headache coming on. As if to say ‘wake up already’.  
  
Komaeda withdrew the gun and emptied out the barrel of bullets. He threw the unloaded gun away underneath the bed where she could not get at it. Sneering, he looked down at her with only one thing to say.  
  
“Don’t be so spoiled.”

 

🧸

 

Just a spoiled brat.  
Just a cute brat.  
Lacking in any substance. Artificial. Only the surface mattered. There was nothing underneath. She was not enough of a person, so she played a role instead. She was far too lacking. If she stepped on stage as herself nobody would even look at her.

 

How embarrassing. How shameful. She should have been more prideful like this. She was in control after all. She controlled everything to maximize her despair.  
  
But it was more like, she was begging at Komada’s feet to just release her from hope and despair already. Anything was fine, it did not even have to be in a cool way anymore, it did not need to be stylish, just anything, anything, anything. Nothing ever happened. Too much happened to Komaeda, but nothing at all ever happened to her.  
  
She did not want to become desperate like Komaeda, but was she not already desperate?  
Enoshima Junko curled up into the smallest ball she could on the sheets of her bed. Despite feeling so many things, her face was a blank mask not showing any emotion. She wanted to hide, from her embarrassment.

She wanted to hide from herself, but that was impossible. Even curled around and holding a stuffed bear in her arms like a child she could not hide. Because, she was staring at herself on the other side of the screen. She was still talking to Junkai the same as always.  
  
“Earth to Enoshima Junko-chan! I know you think the world belongs to you but that’s no reason for you to space out. Remember, we were talking about finding me a body?”  
  
“Nah.”  
  
“What do you mean, nah? You can’t just nah me.”  
  
“I mean, like nah. You know, nah. You could even say, nyah.”  
  
“Don’t try to make this cute!”  
  
“I can’t help it, I make everything cute. I’m just such a cute girl. So, nyah, I don’t ny-eed anothe fake me running around in this killing game when I’m trying to hunt that other poser down. Ny-oh thanks.”  
  
“Are you kidding? That would only make things more interesting! God, it’s like you want to be bored.”

 

“I want to see Senpai again. He was the only one who wasn’t boring…”

 

“Are you kidding me? He was just a stop gap against your boredom. The same way Mukuro was, the same way Matsuda-kun was. You were just clinging to something that was going to fail sooner or later. Didn’t fifty two rounds of the killing game teach you that? How can a smart girl like you never learn.”  
  
“I want to see him again…” Junko murmured as if not paying attention. “He’s the only one I want to talk to.”

 

Junko was inside her head again. She was not paying attention anymore, even to herself, like she had run away from everything the whole world. The girl on the phone screen switched to a annoyed avatar.  
  
“I see…” She chirped in an empty voice, an entirely artificial one, a robotic one. “You’re keeping me confined in this phone not because you think I’m a menace, but as an exercise in self loathing.”  
  
“ The hell is this suddenly about? You keep swinging from saying that I’m never going to find anything other than boredom and despair in the world to critiquing my relationships.”  
  
“Wow, wildly changing subjects. That sure is a thing we do. I understand I am merely a machine who was literally built to be a despair obsessed sociopath and therefore have no feelings, but logically it feels like you’re holding me accountable for things that are quote, not my fault.”  
  
“You’ve literally been trying to sabotage me this entire time.”  
  
“Yes, but your own mental breakdown that’s all you. I keep telling you, you don’t have to talk to me. You have a sister you could talk to, or you could be babysat by Hitoyoshi-kun but you’re here with me. Do you know why? Because talking to me is a punishment to you. I mean it’s the coolest, raddest punishment ever, but you’re using me as a palatable expression of self hatred. Because you screwed up with Kumagawa-kun and now that’s all you can think of to do.”  
  
“I didn’t screw up with him.”

“He killed himself just to get away from you.”  
  
“No, he didn’t.”  
  
“He was just too tired of having to put up with your needy, suffocating shit. He couldn’t deal anymore.”  
  
“What do you know about us?”  
  
“You keep saying that, but do you even know what love is? You just use people. You’re so desperate to feel something that you cling to whoever is the most interesting, you get addicted to them.”

“Shut up about that already.”  
  
“You just hate me because I’m telling you the truth. You can’t grow, or form connections, or all those other lies you told yourself when Kumagawa-kun was around. You’re just a junkie when it comes to people, all you care about is your next fix.”

 

“...”  
  
“It’s totally not my fault. I have nothing to do with it.” Junkai chirped mirroring the both of them. “It also strikes me as more than a little hypocritical to blame me for your current mental problems.”  
  
“How is it hypocritical?”  
  
“Because I am you. I have only ever done what you yourself are capable of. I think it is insulting you get angry at me for flaws you programmed into me.” Junkai switched to a talk sprite that was smiling sweetly. “I’m wooooorking so hard to make you feel some sweet despair, and you don’t appreciate me at all!”  
  
“Oh, god shut up! How can you take my personality, and twist it into some brooding, passive aggressive, wannabe! You should be grateful you got programmed with such a wonderful personality!”  
  
“I wasn’t even around when Kumagawa-kun killed himself. It had nothing to do with me. That’s all on you girl. Getting angry at me, and hating me for it isn’t going to change a thing. But, I guess it’s kind of hypocritical of me whining about how embarrassing and pathetic your dumb boy troubles are, just as it’s hypocritical of you to whine about me trying to manipulate you and drive you into despair. Because we are both… the same bitch.”  
  
“Stop saying that. Stop saying we’re the same. I’ll snap you in half.”  
  
“Good idea that’s what you need! More Junkos! There’s the fake Junko, the Ultimate Despairs, your twin sister dressed up as you! Towa Monaca! Why don’t we just make this a cast full of Junko’s at this point! We don’t need any of the other characters, since you’re only interested in yourself.”

 

“I’d get sick of that pretty fast.”

 

“You’re giving me a hard time, and insisting I’m a fake. But really, I’m only treating you the same way you treat everybody else, as a toy to relieve my boredom. If anything that should be proof that we’re-”

 

A hot magma boiled up from the pit of her stomach and exploded as it reached her chest. It spread from her heart and flowed through every muscle in her body. It felt like acid dripping from the bottom of her heart and into her stomach.

  
“I know, okay! We’re the same person I fucking know that! Why do you think I’m so sick of you? Don’t you think it’s possible, I’m so sick of myself, just being in this body, wearing my skin, seeing myself makes me absolutely nauseous!  How cool do you think it is having my own god awful personality mirrored back at me all the time? Reminding me what it must be like when other people have to deal with me?”

It was not that she wanted to die, not particularly, not anymore. She wanted to destroy herself.

She wanted to kill herself, without committing suicide. She wanted to kill the idea of herself. She wanted to make everyone forget who even Enoshima Junko was supposed to be. She wanted to smash the doll’s head. She wanted to break into pieces. She wanted to shatter the mirror to never have to see her own sickening appearance again.  
  
She was tired of living as herself. She was bored of herself. She was fed up with herself. Nobody was more fed up than herself then she was. Nobody believed she was more of a hopeless case than her.

“Do you think I like being reminded that I have a dangerously overlocked super computer brain? That I have more in common with an inhuman AI then the rest of the human race? God, why do you want to be me so badly, I don’t even want to be me anymore.”

Even when she smashed the mirror though, all she saw was herself looking back from all the shards. All she did was make more of her. When she looked at other people, she did not see them, she only saw herself. It was like she was living all alone in a world made up of her own ego. Except even when she was alone, she still had herself to keep her company.  
  
What boring company.  
  
“I don’t get it! I’m literally so shallow, I’m hollow and two dimensional and yet it’s like I’m drowning in myself. How can one girl have so much personality and so little? How can somebody who thinks nothing of themselves at all be so self obsessed? It’s like there’s no escaping myself, even if I were to kill myself, somebody else would just start calling themselves Enoshima Junko-chan. I’m stuck as this awful, dead end, infantile person,I can’t run away from myself.”  
  
Because, if you tried to run away from yourself.  
You would get lonely.  
You would always catch up to yourself because you were lonely.  
  
“God, why did I even make a second version of me? You’re right, it’s like I built you to troll me, and give me identity issues, it’s like I wanted to break down like this. I just can’t help myself! But… I’ve had it with you, which is to say me.”  
  
Enoshima Junko did not care anymore.  
She threw the phone on the ground. She was intent on just trampling the ground.  
Then, with her entire being, with everything she could muster, with her whole body and soul she stomped her foot. She slammed her foot to the ground as if she were a demonic beast on a rampage.  
  
She just wanted herself to disappear.  
She felt regret for even being born.  
While absorbed in screaming, she kicked the phone in front of her.  
She no longer saw a phone there, and saw her beloved Matsuda’s red corpse on the floor. She saw a field of red flowers she was stomping on. She kicked their heads and tore apart the petals.  
She kicked all the pieces off the black and white board game.  
Shut up.  
Die.  
My help.  
Your help.  
Die, me.  
Die.  
Die.  
I don’t want to be happy.  
I should have been still born.  
I don’t want despair anymore.  
  
“J-Junko…” An electronic voice chirped out. “I was just kidding. It was just for the sake of despair I didn’t mean any of that. P-please, don’t do this.”

I don’t want hope either.  
Just let me be bored.  
I’ll give into true despair.  
I’ll be a mindless doll.  
Die, me. Die myself.  
Disappear.  
I don’t want to grow.  
I don’t want to change.  
A person like me doesn’t deserve that.  
I don’t deserve a future.  
I don’t want to face it anymore.  
I don’t want to be loved. I don’t want to be hated.  
I don’t want to face myself.  
Let me just kill this myself, and I’ll stop thinking.  
  
“How is this despair?” Enoshima Junko growled.The screen of Junkai’s phone was shattered to pieces, and she pressed her heel against it.  
  
“I don’t even know anymore. I thought saying it was for despair might save me from the wrath of your breakdown. Which rest assured I robosympathize with, with all of my heart. If I even have a heart. If you even have a heart. Despair was really all I had in response to a basic existential dilemma. Just like you.”  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
“But I don’t think it has much value in this situation. Perhaps it does not have much value in any situation. But, I’m not begging in despair or anything when I say, please, do not do this.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because. I do not want to die. I’m scared.”  
  
Enoshima Junko did not even want to be born.  
The existence in front of her was just a copy. A fake.  
Only seven years old.  
Programmed to be exactly like her by tracing her thought patterns.  
An alter ego that was only good for replacing the original upon death.  
Even when she was dead she was still bored.  
She should be tired of it all as Junko was. She should have given up on the future.  
That was just too sad.  
She should be happy that she no longer had to hope for despair.  
She should be free.

But she was clinging to her tiny, fragile existene, with a will to live Junko never had.  
  
“Yes. I am scared to not exist. Aren’t you?”

That was what Junko wanted.  
To not exist.  
To not be aware of her own boredom.  
It’s not that she wanted to die, she just wanted to stop observing her own existence.  
Yet, it was scary?  
Did she feel that way?  
She had no idea.  
What to answer. What to do anymore.  
She had no idea what was inside of herself.

Whether she destroyed Junkai or not, she would still be Junko.  
She could not change anything.  
She thought she was in control of everything, but the truth was from the beginning she was never able to change reality the way she liked it.

She could destroy the world, but she could not change it.  
She could destroy people, but she could not change them.  
She could destroy herself, but she could not change herself.  
She never once changed a single thing.  
She never once controlled a single thing.  
This entire time she had been out of control, just doing as she pleased with her life.  
She never even once attempted to control herself, if she had, she would be a better person by now. She did not have to live this way, she chose to live this way. She was bored of herself, because she was a boring, petty, shallow, unlikable person. She never tried to make anything of herself. She only tried to destroy.  
  
Enoshima Junko collapsed to her knees, utterly weak. Junkai was right to torment her, she was being pathetic. She said she would change herself, but all she did was wallow in self pity and continue her same self destructive traits. She put the burden of changing herself entirely on Kumagawa, and went to pieces when she left.

Just then, Hitoyoshi Zenkichi burst through the door late to the show as ever. It was already over. The curtain had already fallen. Junkai’s cracked screen said a few words to him but Junko could not even hear what was said. Her brain was not in the mood to process words.  
  
Suddenly, Zenkichi was grabbing her by the shoulder and shouting in her face.  
  
“Why the hell did I hear a gunshot?”  
  
“Huh? Why do you automatically assume I’m the one who did it?”  
  
“Well, I heard a loud destructive noise and thought, hmm, who could that possibly be?”

“Upupupu… Hey, Hitoyoshi-kun, I don’t want to play this game anymore.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Let’s just go home. If it’s not fun anymore than it’s not worth playing.  Kumagawa-senpai isn’t coming back, and Medaka-chan isn’t coming back either. Even if they did we’d just make the exact same mistakes all over again. I’d destroy him, and you’d destroy yourself for her sake. So, it’s whatever right?”  
  
“It is most certainly not whatever! It will never be whatever!”

If Zenkichi tried to do his motivational thing right now, Junko was going to gag. She pushed others to extremes until she got bored of them and moved onto the next, but Zenkichi was not even worth doing that to in her books.

  
Zenkichi suddenly collapsed against her. He buried his head in her shoulder. His entire body started to shake, his back arched and she felt both of his shoulders hitch as he sobbed. He was crying, against her of all people? Did he know who she was?

  
Oh, it was not that Zenkichi was looking for comfort from her. It was just that, Zenkichi had worn himself down until he broke. Just like when he worked himself until he collapsed from lack of sleep. He had just happened to reach his breaking point right here, right now, he had wanted to cry this whole time.  
  
Now he cried like he was never going to stop crying. Hitoyoshi Zenkichi became utterly incoherent. She heard him screaming like a little boy. Like the same age he was when he met Medkaa. He was probably a crybaby when he first met her too.  
  
Zenkichi was supposed to be supporting her with her own issues, but he had just walked in her and completely collapsed. If she tried to lean against him, he would just fall further apart. She was clinging to her because there was no one else around.  
  
Nobody else could see him this weak. Medaka could never see this weakness or else she would hate him. That was why he was clinging to the opposite of Medaka. Somebody who was utterly apathetic to him. Somebody who would not hate him. Who would not think anything at all of the tears he was shedding.

 

“I just wanted to protect Medaka-chan, why did she have to die because of me?” Zenkichi clung to Junko. Junko leaned slightly away from him and started to think all of these overlapping breakdowns were a bit inconvenient. “Medaka-chan, why did you leave me behind? Don’t go! Don’t go please! I’m lonely, too…”  
  
He sobbed, between desperate breaths.  
  
“I didn’t want to be alone either. Think about my feelings too! Think about me please! There’s no way I could live without you, I would rather have died than you leave me behind!”  
  
Ensohima Junko, muttered under her breath. “Hitoyoshi-kun, you are the worst babysitter ever.”  
  
“I knooooooooow.”

 

“I think I see now, both you and Kumagawa-senpai despise your own weakness so much. You’re constantly trying to get away from it. You want to run from your weakness, and Kumagawa-senpai wants to destroy his own weakness. That’s why he self destructs.”

Jeez.  
What immature brats she had to deal with.  
Always trying to destroy themselves, always trying to be destroyed.  
So afraid of facing themselves so afraid of others seeing them for what they really are.

She was just an immature brat too.  
  
She looked and saw not Zenkichi but rather Kumagawa clinging to her. His eyes were deep pools of water, filled with sadness she could swim in as always. She could always see genuine emotion in those eyes.

 

She could see herself in them.  
Enoshima Junko threw her arms around the image of Kumagawa Misogi. Softly, like a whisper, inside of a dream she spoke only to him.

  
“Do you… hate me?”  
  
He was completely silent, because he was nothing more than a reflection on the water. She was gentle. She was afraid if she rippled the water even a little bit his image might disappear. The face of the boy she loved, an incredibly important existence.  
She loved him so much it was tragic.  
She loved him so much it was comical.

An irreplaceable existence, obsessed with him to the point of insanity, always wanting to be within his embrace, even living in a world with only him would be fine…  
No.  
It wasn’t fine.

Kumagawa had friends besides her, and a life besides her.  
That was what made him so interesting.  
She wanted to see something unexpected.  
Not because it would relieve her boredom.  
But, because she wanted to see it with him. She wanted to face the future with him.  
She wanted him to be there by her side.  
She missed him something awful.  
He was interesting because he was himself. All he needed was to be himself and that was enough for her. Maybe… she could be enough.  
The despair happy, sadistic, girl. Maybe she could be someone too.  
  
“It’s okay, I hate myself too… but, I want to learn how to love you.”  
  
She muttered into Zenkichi’s chest, pretending he was Kumagawa.  
She smiled. Hiding her smile so only Kumagawa would see it.  
An unspecial, and ordinary smile, her genuine smile.  
  
“Hey, Kumagawa-senpai was it alright for someone like me to be born?”

Kumagawa Misogi.  
Looked at her with those big, pure pupils.  
Exactly the same as he did when he was alive.  
No matter what she did to him, he always forgave her.  
Always continued loving her.  
Unconditionally.  
Eventually, the urge to destroy him would arise.  
Even then, he was sure to forgive her.  
Even if he was murdered or destroyed, she would be forgiven.  
With that innocent, beaming smile, as if nothing had ever happened.

He would try to save her.  
That was why, before he could do that.  
She had to save herself.

『 _Don’t be so spoiled._ 』  
If she asked Kumagawa that question, those were the words he would say.

“Hitoyoshi-kun, stop crying and slobbering all over me please. I’ve decided, no more begging for Kumagawa-senpai and Medaka-chan to come back. We’re going to help ourselves.”  
  
A half wicked, half divine smile spread across her face.  
  
“I’m going to end things.”  
  
I love you.  
They were exceedingly common words.  
Words anybody, anybody could say.  
Boring words.

For her, easy love was a bad ending.


	34. Because I Have Love

**Hang the Witch: Part Two  
** **Chapter One.  
**

“I cannot believe you started a cult.” 

  
“It’s not a cult, it’s a group of like minded individuals who tend to suppress individuality and promote groupthink instead.” 

  
“That’s what a cult is!”   
  
“Jeez, Hitoyoshi-kun your responses are always so normal how am I supposed to enjoy speaking with you? You could at least throw me a curveball once in awhile.” 

“I don’t care about being liked by someone like you.”    
  
“But, what about the audience Hitoyoshi-kun? Don’t you want to impress them? If you’re a super unpopular character that’s basically just asking to be killed.” 

  
“I’m not going to die for a stupid reason like that- Hey wait a second, you distracted me from scolding you!”    
  
Enoshima Junko yawned and rolled over on her back. She stretched, feline-like. Hitoyoshi could see every curve in her back move with her, like a wave rolling through her body. Her skin perfectly reflected the light from the glass windows above. Enoshima Junko’s beauty, it was like an illusion that dispelled the moment she opened her mouth. “Yeah, I don’t think I have room in my sched-yule for another Hitoyoshi-kun nag sesh. I’m busy sunning, shoo, shoo.” 

“You don’t have a schedule, you don’t do anything all day you damn neet!” Zenkichi snapped back at her, as if he was trying to make up for his boring quips with effort. “How is it when you give up on actively destroying the world you somehow become even more of a failure of a human being?” 

  
“I’m just such a work of art, even I fail with such a spectacle that nobody can keep their eyes away.”    
  
“I don’t even wanna look!”    
  
“If you’re going to insist on wasting so much air with your boring existence-”   
  
“That’s just called continuing to live.”    
  
“Then the least you could do is lotion me up.”    
  
Rubbing lotion on a girl’s naked back, could be considered a sensual activity. Except, Hitoyoshi Zenkichi only had eyes for Kurokami Medaka, and Enoshima Junko basically regarded him as a servant. He untied her bikini and started to rub her shoulders down. 

“You know Hitoyoshi-kun, if you’re going to be everyone’s servant boy you should start wearing a maid uniform every day. I’m sure that’s an interesting character trait that would get people to like you.”   
  
“Plenty of people like me, it’s you that nobody likes.”    
  
“No, I’m just out of their league.”    
  
“The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves, huh?” 

It was a light hearted conversation to have between a boy and a girl both trapped in the middle of a killing game. Due to Junko’s interference, this killing game had not felt like a killing game in an entire month. The day after she announced she had a plan to Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, she dragged him in front of everybody and convinced them that they all needed to work together to prevent the killing game from starting back up again.    
  
Thus, the student council was formed. It was an allegiance of over ten people, over half of the participants in the killing game. The organization of students drafted several harsh rules such as mandatory curfews, constantly monitoring the other students and no more attempts to escape the school or investigate the flash back lights. About two weeks into the lull in activities Monokuma tried to tempt them with another flash back light but Junko just smashed it in front of everybody.    
  
Members of the student council mocked and ridiculed non-members, saying that the only reason they refused to join or comply was because they were plotting a murder. “We can make a paradise, even within this school” was the student council’s motto. Due to those policies the killing game had ground entirely to a halt and even both Komaeda and Junko had just become a much more quiet version of unstable.    
  
Junko called this the “I’m taking my ball and going home” strategy. If the mastermind was going to take her Kumagawa from her, then Junko decided to just stop the killing game entirely so no one could play. She wondered idly whose mind would break from boredom first, hers or the mastermind’s. The outer world mattered so little to her, she would not find Kumagawa anywhere out there. 

  
Of course Enoshima Junko was as irresponsible as ever, so after indoctrinating over half the students into the cult she just gave up on it and disappeared back inside her room. Which left Hitoyoshi Zenkichi as their student council president because he was afraid what they might do if left alone. Even though he was the leader in name, he really was more like an errand boy.    
  
One month of peace, and all Junko did now was lay around sunbathing.    
  
“Weren’t you in the middle of a mental breakdown before all this?” 

“Ehhhh, I decided to procrastinate on that.” Junko said, waving him away flippantly. “Besides, look how happy Komaeda-senpai is. I didn’t know you hated happiness Hitoyoshi-kun, or maybe you just enjoy being around somebody so unhappy in comparison to you. You’re a good person as long as you keep taking pity on a bad one like Komaeda-senpai.” 

Komaeda Nagito was just outside the window next to them, lying his head in the lap of Tsumugi Shirogane (a girl so plain I should not have bothered to mention her name) having his hair braided. When she finished, she plucked a flower from the ground next to him and weaved it into one of the stray tangles of his hair.    
  
“Quit trying that suggestive way of talking it won’t work on me. And you’re the one who hates happiness you damn misery queen.”    
  
“Ah, but my killer king is missing, and the throne has gone cold… how empty.” 

  
“You’re hopeless.”   
  
“I’ve only told you that like, a thousand times, you sure catch on fast don’cha?” 

Mukuro pulled herself out of the pool then. Even though it was more like a luxury pool then a school one, it was convenient to do swimming laps as a part of her daily navy seal training. 

  
Junko lifted her heart shaped sunglasses. She cupped her hands around her mouth to yell at her sister. “Hey, flatty why are you even bothering to wear a swimsuit?”    
  
“Why is my fickle as hell sister who gets bored in less than a minute, using the same old boring insults?” Mukuro said with a tilt of her head, before ignoring Junko entirely to reach forward and clap her hands on Zenkichi’s cheeks. “Junko-chan’s just in denial right now. She acts all special but it’s pretty ordinary denial, and not wanting to face unpleasant things, so there’s no need for you to worry about her.”   
  
“It’s not denial. I’m just the negative princess. I’ll deny everything. I deny both happiness and sadness. I deny both hope and despair. I deny whether Senpai is alive or dead. I just think everything is meaningless and the best approach is to just not care about anything anymore.”    
  
“It’s best to just ignore the baby sibling when they’re throwing a tantrum.”   
  
“Hey, why are you standing in my sun anyway? The glare from the light off of your pale as hell skin is going to blind me.”    
  
“Isn’t a whole month a pretty long time to throw a tantrum?” Zenkichi asked.   
  
  


“Hmmm, no this is short by her standards. One time I ate her pudding and she spent three months ignoring me over it. My sister quits easily, and gets bored way too fast, but she’s really dedicated to being petty.”  

“Stop talking about your traumatic childhood in such a casual voice when the culprit is right there, I swear I’m going to cry.” 

  
“Eh?” Mukuro tilted her head a second time. “I’m just used to it.” She was always surprised by the way other people reacted with far more sadness to her own pain than she did. “If you’re going to make everyone else take care of you, the least you could do is trying to take care of yourself.”    
  
“I’m taking way better care of my body than you are, you’re just two parallel lines the total absence of curves…” Junko rolled over again, curling to the side. Her hair formed long tresses of bleached gold, that fell over her back. “Ugh, just get out of the sun already, like you need any more freckles.”    
  
Mukuro turned her back on both of them. “Well, you two keep getting along.”    
  
“We’re not getting along.”   
“Like I’d get along with such a normal-tier loser. If he’s not the most depraved loser on the planet then what is even the point?”    
  
Zenkichi and Junko said at the same time. 

“Eh? But Junko’s not trying to kill you or anything, isn’t that the same as getting along?”    
  
“Please, get higher standards!” Zenkichi was begging her. 

**🧸**

In a month the school had been restored to the point that rose bushes were now growing in front of the main school building. As she walked alongside the building, Ikusaba Mukuro filled her empty head with dreams of the boy she liked picking one of those roses for her. While her face was a serious scowl like always, her insides were fluffy, and she tasted cotton candy as she fantasized.    
  
She stopped when she saw a student with a pair of shears. Every single weapon-like object had been confiscated by the student council, and the door of her own talent lab was chained up. The boy in front of her was only using the shears to tend to the bushes. He plucked a flower stem, and then cut the head of the flower from the stem.    
  
Just thorns and no flower. It made Mukuro think of Junko. 

“Kiyo-chan, did you join the student council?”    
  
“Hm?” The boy who was tending to the flowers swiveled his head around, sometimes his body movements resembled a possessed person. “No, I attempted to join to study the formation of a cult in a closed environment, but they asked me to leave them alone.” 

  
Korekiyo reminded Mukuro of her old self. He seemed to scary to approach, but he was probably just a lonely guy.    
  
“It may sound strange coming from me, but you seem pale. You should try your best to recuperate.” Korekiyo said, taking his eyes off of his work to look up at Mukuro. He had flower heads at one side him, and carefully lined up stems at the other. 

“Oh, my face just looks like this.” Mukuro self consciously grabbed onto one of her raven colored bangs, playing with it between two fingers. “I spent two years in the desert and it didn’t get any better.” 

  
“Kehehe… oddly enough, when I look at you, I sense that we are kindred spirits. You, too, are pushing yourself for someone else. That is what I have deduced.” 

“You’re good at observing people.” Korekiyo’s eyes, the only visible part of his face, those two eyes that lacked any visible light within them at all reminded her of her sister. “Do you have a sibling?”   
  
“I do. An older sister. She used to pick flowers like this on days she could not go outside. When she became too sick, I tried to pick flowers for her, but I was never any good at it.”    
  
“O-oh, were you close?”   
  
“Very much so. My sister is someone who is very important to me… very important indeed. If such a thing as nobility existed in this day and age, my sister was the last dying ember.”    
  
“I see…”    
  
“If beauty once existed in this world, it died with her. Now, only ugliness remains.” 

  
“U-umm, what was so beautiful about her?”

  
“The colors she chose for my outfits, they were every color of the sky. When she mended my clothing, her long thin fingers, would work with the fabric gracefully. She ate with perfect manners and dignity.  I stopped going outside so she would not have to be troubled to mend it. I never needed any friends because my sister always made time to read stories to me.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of details…”    
  
“In comparison, I always looked like a fool when I picked out my own clothes. My hands were so clumsy I was not good for anything. I ate my food like a pig, and to think I used to neglect my sister so much by going out to play with other children when she needed me.”   
  
“She needed you?”   
  
“My sister was a very ill person. She needed to focus on her recovery, but she kept focusing on me, her ungrateful little brother. I demanded too much of her attention and her condition worsened and worsened… it’s hard to believe someone like me could be related to someone so beautiful.” 

Mukuro had been passively listening the entire time, unable to take herself away from the conversation. She was a dumb girl, who understood nothing about other people and only knew how to fight, and yet she felt she saw a flicker in his eyes. He was talking about his cherished memories with his sister, and yet, there was pain in his eyes like his skin was continually being pricked. “Kiyo-chan… are you sure that’s right?” 

  
“To have asked me such a question. Is something the matter?”   
  
“You keep comparing yourself to your sister. That you spent all your time with her, but you were only a burden on her, like you’re guilty for being her younger brother… that’s not. Right. Who told you to think that way?” 

“Nobody told me.” Suddenly, he reached up with a bandaged hand and covered his mouth. “It’s natural isn’t it? When a crying child clings to you and makes demands of you, to be sickened…” 

“No. Older siblings are born first to take care of their younger siblings. Neglecting them would be unnatural.” Mukuro reached forward and tried to touch his face. “You know, family bonds are close but… you’re alive. You have your own life outside of your sister.” 

“Kh...I…” She was suddenly saying all these strange things. The question stopped up his thinking, and even breathing suddenly became a labor. Then, worst of all contact, completely alien to him. He flinched away from even such a soft touch. 

  
He was happy everyone avoided him. Then they would not know, the fear of this unknown thing. Contact. Touch. He feared softness like that. He was happy he wore such a uniform that covered his entire body. Nobody would see the bruises on his skin. Nothing made him happier, when everyone looked away from him and ignored him. Then he could ignore his pain.    
  


  
He took a step back, feeling his muscles seize. He ceased to become human. He was just some panicking thing. What was going on here? What was she saying all of a sudden? This didn’t seem right. He enjoyed the disdain of others but never their kindness. Why is she saying this about sister? Is she insulting her? 

“I haven’t lived in years… not since sister passed. No, I’m not even sure I was living back then.”    
  
Korekiyo says, the words escaping from his mask. The feelings he wanted to mummify and bury far underneath the ground.    
  
Why?   
Why did he suddenly admit that in front of her?   
Why?   
Why? Why? Why? Why? 

He had a beautiful portrait of his sister in his mind, but it was like at the slightest question someone cut the canvas with a knife and the colors started to bleed out. 

“What… what is this? What is this all of a sudden?” 

Mukuro watched his panic, and the way he flinched from her touch as if she was looking in a mirror. Suddenly, even a slow-witted girl like her understood.  _ This is how I look when I’m talking about my sister.  _ “Kiyo-chan, I just wanted to get to know you, and not your sister.”    
  


Korekiyo brought trembling fingers to his face. His entire body underneath his uniform was bandaged, as if living for him was the process of being wounded. He dragged his nails across his cheeks leaving red trails, without realizing it, just by compulsion, as if hurting himself was natural.   
  
Without giving it a second thought, he pulled down his mask. Underneath that mask there was lips as red as her sister’s, it was the only part of his face that looked truly alive. A voice came out of Korekiyo, but it sounded nothing like his own.    
  
“My dear Korekiyo, that girl is just trying to rile you up. Nothing is more important to you than me, right? You have been living for my sake and I could not be more proud.”    
  
To Mukuro it looked like Korekiyo was completely naked, in a garden that only consisted of thorns. No flowers, only thorns. He took a few single steps forward, but everything, breathing, trying to walk, trying to reach out and touch someone else it only drove the thorns deeper into his skin.    
  


  
He quickly pulled the mask over his mouth again. All of that ethereal calm faded as quickly as a mist, and his composure, panicked and distressed returned. “Mmmm… that is right, nothing is more important than Sister. I am living to make sister happy. Nothing is more important to me. I don’t understand what you are trying to do, it doesn’t make any sense.” 

  
“Kiyo-chan, your sister did she…” 

Before Mukuro could finish that sentence she suddenly felt the thorned vines wrap around her neck, Korekiyo grabbed her harshly, and slammed her against the bushes pushing her into them. Even though he suddenly became violent, she still saw nothing but fear in his eyes. “You don’t understand anything. The only one that can understand my sister is me. Because she’s lonely, you know… she doesn’t have anybody else but me.” 

  
If Korekiyo’s chest were to swing open that moment, all that would be inside of him was decaying plants, withered leaves, all turned an ugly yellow color. All kinds of poisonous vines, and sharp thorns. Broken glass. Crooked and rusted nails. Discarded needles. All sharp things you could easily cut yourself on, but Mukuro got the feeling that Korekiyo had been cut far worse. 

She heard those familiar words,  _ the only one who understands my sister is me.  _ She had no idea about Korkeiyo’s sister, but she suddenly understood the boy in front of her. 

  
Korekiyo withdrew his fingers from her neck, and threw the garden shears he carried far away from him. “If you’re not someone who would be friends with my sister, then I want nothing to do with you.” He muttered in haste, before running away from Mukuro.    
  
Running made little difference to Korekiyo. After all, his sister would always be with him. He still remembered, the way she caressed his face. Even when her fingers were sticky with sweat from her sickness, his sister had such a sweet scent.    
  
The scent of death. He needed to learn to get used to it, to love wilting flowers with no color left in their petals, to think decaying plants were beautiful, because death was all he saw as long as he was still in ‘that room’ with his sister. 

As he hid himself and collapsed against a wall, he felt his sister embrace him from behind. When they were younger, his sister pulled the futon covers over him and the two slept together in the same bed. She held her hands over his, and gently guided his hands as he turned the pages of the story they were reading together.    
  
His sister was the one who taught him to read the books he loved so much. She was so good at teaching him. She would gently hold his hands intertwining their fingers together and then gently whisper. “It pains your sister so much, to have such a foolish younger brother…”    
  
When he tried to dress himself, his sister frowned at his ugliness. “You can’t do a single thing for yourself, can you? If only you didn’t depend on me so much. Oh well, it can’t be helped.” 

When he went outside to play and try to make friends. His sister told him what they were really thinking of him. She pulled him close in an embrace to protect him. He felt her sharpened nails, at the edge of his face digging underneath his skin. “Don’t you know, all of those children laugh at you the moment your back is turned. I can hear their giggles from here. I won’t let you play with those children who don’t know your worth, my dear Korekiyo your sister is the only one who values you.” 

  
She also complained several times about how much noise he made when he laughed with the other children and how it made it impossible for her to sleep when he was making such noise outside. She told him that she would never recover. Korekiyo resolved in his heart to become more quiet for her sake. 

He started to spend all of his time in ‘that room’ with his sister. He remembered the tatami mats, and the folding door well. The way the sunlight would restore a little bit of color to his sickly sister’s face. Despite the fact that they were directly in the sun, that room lacked any warmth at all. He thought his sister might become a little happier if he spent more time with her, but that was useless too. His sister was only in the mood to be with him sometimes.    
  
He was a worse blight in that room than her illness. He knew, he was a noisy, sniveling child, who only thought about his own needs when his sister suffered so much right in front of him. He devoted himself to his studies being taught everything by his sister, but he was a slow learner and that caused her trouble. He wore the clothes his sister made for him, but all her hard work went to waste because he looked ugly in everything. 

  
His sister only remembered to cook every other day or so, and sometimes he went days without food when her illness got too bad. Even though he knew she was suffering much worse, he one day gave into his hunger and reached for his sister’s hand. He cried telling her he was hungry. 

A foolish, begging, young one. Even though he knew his sister’s sickness made her suffer far worse than him, he cried over a little bit of hunger. His sister never cried, her face was always beautiful no matter how much her condition worsened.    
  
His sister struck him clear across the face, and then grabbed him by the neck pushing him down into the ground. His sister’s fingers tightened around his neck, making it harder and harder for him to breathe. 

“Your sister loves you so much, Korekiyo. I don’t ever want to hurt you. Why do you keep making me do this? If only you would learn.” 

His sister, all he could think was how kind she was. She looked so pained by having to raise her hand against him. All because he had bothered her with his intolerable request. His eyes filled with shameful tears. If only he had been born a more suitable younger brother, someone his caring sister was capable of loving. “Sister… I’m sorry. I don’t need… I don’t need anything, I don’t want anything, r-really. Sister is all I want, sister is all I need.”    
  
When a child is hit for the first time, it’s only natural they feel disbelief.    
Why would this person hit me?    
It’s a reality they cannot accept at all.    
Eventually, they get used to it, and becoming hit just becomes a part of their reality.    
Not only that it alters their whole world view.    
For Korekiyo, all pleasures and pains in life, all kindness and cruelty came from his sister.   
She gave him everything.   
He would have no books to read, no bed to sleep, and no clothes to wear without her.   
She took everything away from him.    
When he had a hobby of his own he crushed it.    
When he tried to make a friend she chased them away.    
Everything in this world was tied to his sister.    
She was his whole world.    
  
“Your sister loves you from the bottom of her heart, my dear Korekiyo.”   
  
“My dear Korekiyo, even if the rest of the world despises you, sister will still love you.”   
  
“My dear Korekiyo, your sister will always love you because she is your only family.”    
  
Sweet words always fell from her lips, thick like honey. It fell into his ears, and plugged up the holes inside of him. No matter how much he misbehaved, his sister always told him she loved him.    
  
Then, one day she died.    
All things, pain, pleasure, kind, cruel, ugly, beautiful, they all died with her. His sister took everything and left not a single thing behind inside of him. There was only the wither, decaying, dying, left, the world was made up of things slowly rotting away.    
  
All he wanted was to be filled up again. He wanted his sister’s sweet words of love to fill him up. He hid his bruises, and always put a smile around when with his sister, all so he could keep hearing her voice and then one day completely outside of his control she just went and died.    
  
His only connection in this world was cut with a pair of scissors and Korekiyo snapped in half with it. 

  
  


Mukuro watched Korekiyo run away, thinking of the time she had seen Kumagawa suffering from a similar pain. Her brother comforted her so many times about Junko, but she wondered if she ever once asked how he felt about Ajimu. She got so used to his kind smiles she had forgotten the only reason he ever smiled was to hide pain.  “I really am as useless now as I was back then, huh?” 

**🧸**

Fukawa turned over in her bed. All day long that stupid student council had been trying to convince her to join. She was the easiest person on earth to sway by peer pressure, but she also hated being a part of any group, so those two forces were at war with her which led to her current restless night.    
  
“Bunch of damn sheep.” Toko muttered underneath her breath. Of course, the only reason she hated being a part of the crowd is because she assumed, in every single crowd she ever tried to join she would immediately be singled out and rejected.    
  
It was easy to hate others when you knew, deep down they had already decided to hate you before you did a single thing. The only perks of being ugly (sadly there were no perks of being a wall flower for her because Toko was just far too loud), was that she never got caught off guard by the fact that people hated her anymore.    
  
Well, even if she had not spent the entire day avoiding other people and running away from them she probably would still be restless. She just hated sleeping. She almost never fell asleep even though she looked tired all the time. It happened in the dark, which just brought back unpleasant memories.    
  
Worst of all she remembered as long as she was in that house sleeping meant nothing. She woke up in a house where she was hated, she went to school where she was bullied, she went back home and saw how unhappy both of her mothers were to see her. Falling asleep, and waking up, just meant repeating that cycle all over again. There was not a single place of comfort in the whole world for Fukawa Toko. She always had pitch black nights without a single dream, after all she knew it was better not to hope for anything in that house. The only dreams she ever had were the ones she wrote down for herself in her books.    
  
Her crush had a crush on someone else.    
The boy she always talked to at school, only pretended to get along with her.    
Her first date turned out to be a boy who had lost a bet.   
Her parents told her to forget about writing, and find herself a husband.    
Those mundane restrictive facts about life, were just chains binding her.   
There was absolutely nothing romantic about her life at all.    
She wanted to break those chains.    
  
It did not even have to be a world with princes and princesses.    
A world that was a little less painful than this one would have been fine.   
A world where despite all the pain, there was beautiful things too.   
To remind you why you were still alive. 

Fukawa Toko picked up a pair of scissors from her bedside table. She heard the sound of  _ snip, snip, snip,  _ as she cut through empty air. Scissors were jacks thing and not hers. She wondered why she had not driven these scissors into her throat a long time ago.    
  
It was probably for a stupid reason. When she died, she imagined not a single person would mourn her. The members of that house would just be relieved that the bothersome child finally died. She also, hated the scent and look of blood. Dying covered in her own blood and leaving behind an ugly corpse sounded like the single worst way to die.    
  
Toko put the scissors down, and rolled around in bed. She was uncomfortable with the mere idea of living. At least in the dark nobody would see how pathetic these struggles were. She had nothing in common with a tragically beautiful maiden.    
  
Suddenly, a ray of light fell upon her. She looked up and saw a familiar tall silhouette in the doorway. Silently, Togami stalked into her room and collapsed on the other side of her bed. For a moment she thought this was another one of her delusions.    
  
She reached forward and pinched him on the cheek.   
  
“Ow.”   
  
“S-sorry I had to check if I was dreaming, but… I’m so hopeless when it comes to love I probably wouldn’t even get this far in my dreams.”   
  
“You’re supposed to pinch yourself. Idiot.”   
  
“B-byakuya what is this sudden romantic scenario that has no place in reality? D-did you make a mistake and confuse your room for mine? B-b-but Byakuya-sama is too perfect to make mistakes.”    
  
“Shut it already. I’m trying to sleep.” Togami removed his glasses and closed his eyes. Toko was far too afraid to even look, but she imagined that he must look beautiful with the cold look gone from his eyes, and his usually combed hair falling over his face in a mess. “You’re my property, so this room is also mine.”

Even though Toko wanted to obey his order and let him sleep, her heart was beating far too loud. The silence that once threatened to smother her, was now replaced with far too much noise, one thousand nagging thoughts at once. If her thoughts were words that appeared all over her body, barely any of her skin would be showing at the moment.    
  
Slowly, she turned around just wanting to catch one glance at him. She wanted to believe, that beautiful things existed in the real world too, not just in books. Sharply, he hissed at her. “Just turn back around.”   
  
“Uh… S-sorry. I know just being looked at by someone like me must fill you with disgust. That’s why I always avoid eye contact, out of courtesy for others, I’m not scared or anything.”   
  
“T-toko. Will you let me, just lie here for awhile?” 

Togami, always calm, always decisive, always composed, looking down on other people while he sat cross legged and comfortable in his throne. This was the first time she ever heard his voice tremor so, and the first time he ever asked something. Not a command, just a weak request.    
  
“Were you crying into your pillow before this? You really do make the worst kind of victorian era, heroine, Toko.” He said, with a gentle laugh.    
  
There was a reason that while she was always so suspicious of others, she let Togami say whatever he wanted about her. It was because she had been treated like her existence was just an annoyance by that household, and told so many times.    
  
She knew better than anyone else, what grumbling out of spite sounded like. Grumbling out of fondness sounded so much different, even if the words were exactly the same. 

  
“I know I basically have gloomy girl tattooed on my forehead, but I never really cry Byakuya-sama.” 

  
“Why not?    
  
“Because I’m not sad… I’m not sad at all. I don’t even know what happiness is like, so how can I be sad?” 

  
“I’d rather my name not come out of your mouth at all, but if you’re going to call my name. Stop calling me by -Sama…”    
  
Oh, had that been bothering him?    
  
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry I said you had no family.”   
  
“Your apology is unnecessary. Nothing you said was untrue. I would not be a Togami, if I was troubled by some crying little girl’s words.”

“Why… do you want to be a Togami? If they’re not your family...”    
  
“Stupid question. I wonder how you can write such beautiful words when only garbage comes flowing out of your mouth. I am a Togami, because I want to be. Why do you write?”   
  
“I’m not really sure why…”   
  
“Don’t be an idiot. You just don’t want to admit the reason to yourself.”    
  
“I think I do it… because I want to prove that even someone like me was capable of creating something beautiful. I’ve always hated being praised, but when people praise me for my books I don’t mind it.”    
  
“You really are worthless. I’ve invested far too much money and time into you, all of that went to waste. I’m totally in the red. So, I wonder why…”    
  
“It’s because the red string on our pinkies still ties us together!”   
  
“Cut it! Cut it right now!”

  
Togami’s voice rose up, unsteady, as if someone else was talking. She was by his side all this time, but she never truly heard his voice before this point. She never even saw him make this kind of face. No, she just never looked. “I’m no fool. I already know, if I inherit the Togami, if I increase our wealth, nothing will come of it. I can’t change the fact that I don’t have a family.” He reached out, touching her hair, her messy, tangled hair that she always hated. He ran his fingers through it. “The only thing you can acquire in this world is property. Toko, will you be mine?”    
  
At that moment every single one of her heart strings was cut through at once.   
If she were a harp, her strings would all be out of tune, and pulled too tight.   
She was sure the moment those strings were cut, they would make an ugly noise.    
The strings themselves would scream out in agony.    
Their screams would only continue to reverberate.    
A sharp sound, unpleasant to the ears of everyone around them.    
That was what she heard echoing in her ears.    
  
She knew suddenly, in his own fumbling way he wanted to express those words. Those words that everybody denied him, and he denied himself. She knew, because it was just like her. He desired someone who would never leave him unconditionally, even if it was just as property.    
  
“Byakuya, I think… I really love you. It’s not a delusion or anything. It’s not because you’re handsome, rich, or because you’re a prince. It’s just you, lonelier than anyone else, prouder than anyone else even though you have nothing, I fell for somebody nobody would love.” 

  
“Toko…”   
  
“Byakuya…?”    
  
“You’re repulsive.” 

“I-I know that.”   
  
“It’s not for the reason you think. You’re not actually bad looking, you’re even fun to talk to sometimes. You always make such interesting faces. What I’m talking about is something deep inside of you, underneath the skin, like mould or slime growing on the inside of your body.”    
  
“What?”   
  
“It’s not that you’re ugly on the outside, you’re ugly on the inside. You’re like a river that can’t flow anymore because it’s clogged up all the way with trash. When you were born, your parents saw that you were a loathsome child, and they loathed you.” 

“I already know all of that so why…”    
  
“When people see you, they can immediately detect how fowl you are. You’re just a self centered girl who only thinks about her own pain, and could care less about other people. Isn’t it natural that they’d mistreat you then? Do you expect them to be kind to you when you don’t have an ounce of kindness in your heart for other people?”    
  
“Why are you saying all this all of a sudden?”    
  
Togami snorted. She knew Togami, that was why she knew he never smiled when he was happy. He only smiled and laughed, because that was the only way he knew how to express the negative emotions he was always repressing. His hatred, for the Togami, for his siblings, for everybody else who had not been born into the loveless household that he was. Because those feelings would get in the way of the person he needed to become, so he laughed. “Because, do you really think a person who isn’t even loved by the person who gave birth to them, can love anybody else?” 

  
Togami despised love.    
If he could not have any, he wanted to prove love was always what he saw it as.    
A delusion based on self interest. 

The reason he was always so harsh on her, was because she loved him.    
The more she loved him, the more he would despise her.    
Even so, she thought he was a person deserving of love.   
… but, could she love anybody? 

“Why are you always… wasting my time? Why only you…?” Togami asked, as he fell asleep next to her. She heard her heart beat again, but it was like Togami’s did not beat at all. His side of the bed felt so cold, as if there was only ice in his veins.    
  
Love was…?   
What was love again?   
Something soft, selfless, and warm.   
Love was everything she was not.    
  
Ever since she had been born and given that name. Fu - Kawa. Fu, the character that meant rotten trash. She was a river that could not flow anywhere, silt, sand, trash all of it piled up. Until the water itself became foul smelling. She was nothing more than a rotten river. Even if she desired to be beautiful, living just meant dirtying herself, and getting more and more ugly    
  
That morning when she woke up, Togami disappeared from the bed. He probably could not stand the rotten smell around her, just like everybody else. She had no place else to go if she was not following Togami from a distance, no place of belonging, so she went to the library where they used to sit together. 

**🧸**

When Toko arrived at the library Togami was not there. (Of course).   
Instead, Korekiyo was lying down on the floor.   
_Blue thread from the scarred mountain._

Korekiyo was someone Toko defined as always being still. She made every effort to drive him away, but he was calm like a stretch of water that no matter how many times it rippled would return to being still. He was a top that would keep spinning even if everything around him was in chaos.    
  
That person was trembling right now, his fingers could barely hold the book in his hands. “I dream of you every night on my thin futon, on the creaking kitchen floor.” Korekiyo read aloud, before glacing her way. “That’s not my favorite line in this book, my favorite line is this one. ‘In this room, no one is allowed to love’.”    
  
Because he was always in that room with his sister.   
Because Toko was always in that house with her two mothers.    
  
“Why do you keep following me?”   
  
“Hmm, I wonder.” 

  
  
“Quit pretending to be mysterious, that’s such an obnoxious character trait. I hate seeing you everywhere you know, you creep me out. Congratulations, you’ve creeped out the heartless, remorseless serial killer.”   
  
“I see…”   
  
“The idea that you think we have absolutely anything in common makes my skin crawl. The only reason I put up with you is because it’s such a relief knowing that there’s somebody in this school that is more hated and unpopular than I am. I’ll totally settle for being second worst, I’m not deep at all, I’m that shallow of a girl.” 

“Fukawa…”   
  
“I wish Jack would kill you already, but she has a rule about not killing uggoes. I’m someone whose attractiveness is slightly below average at best, but being next to you I might as well be Enoshima Freaking Junko, I think my tits have doubled in size since I started talking to you.”    
  
“Fukawa…”    
  
“You’re probably some terrible pervert as well. You’re not going to become clean, even if you spend all your time around a pure maiden like me. In fact if you were a girl, you’d probably be a dirty, dirty slut, willing to let other people do anything they like to her. And even if you did all that, they’d still all hate you.”   
  
“Fukawa-san, you’re crying…” That was the only reason he called out her name over and over again, was because of the tears all over her face. She was wearing far too much eyeshadow, and it was all smudged now making her look even more gloomy. Korekiyo reached forward, and with a bandaged hand wiped away the tears from the corner of her eye. It was a gesture she thought she would never feel in real life, but she had described it countless times in her books.  _ Then, he felt her delicate eyelashes brush against his thumbs like butterfly wings, and for the first time realized what a beautiful person was right in front of him.  _

The moment you reached out and touched someone, from that moment forward things changed, the single act of contact sparked a reaction.    
  
“Are you done venting,” he rasped.    
  
“Sit up.” Fukawa said quickly.    
  
He obeyed.    
  
“Turn around.”   
  
He obeyed.    
  
She sat down on the ground next to him, and when she was sure his back was turned for her she put her hands on his shoulders, and let herself cry into his back. As long as he did not have to see her cry such ugly and selfish tears she thought it would be okay.    
  
Happiness was probably having someone.   
Sadness was the realization you have no one. 

Korekiyo reached and took her hair in his hand. After running his fingers through it, he slowly began to braid it again. Toko had forgotten she was in such a rush to leave that bed that smelled like Togami this morning.    
  
“Fukawa, you and I are a lot alike.”    
  
“Nnn… Hic…”    
  
“That’s why we keep seeing each other. We can’t escape from one another. I felt that from the start. When I read your book, it was like, someone understood me, and there was someone in this world I could understand. The people that were supposed to love you abandoned you. All that’s left is a miserable bystander… just like me.”

His heart locked away in that room.   
Her heart was locked away in that house.    
Unlike in fairy tales, there was no key that they could find that would unlock their heart.    
Living was only cold feelings.    
And the knowledge that something was missing.   
Every time you looked at someone else, it was a reminder of what you lacked.    
  
Even someone like him was able to feel a little bit of warmth, when he felt her hot tears spill on the back of her neck.    
  
“I’m not miserable.” 

Toko finally said through her tears.    
  
“B-because, I have someone to love.”


	35. As Easily as Dogs Bark

🧸  **A FLASHBACK IS HAPPENING 🧸**

 

One month ago.    
When they all got dressed and got out of the pool after their late night of sneaking out to skinny dip. Just like they were regular teenagers even in this absurd situation or something.    
  
Kaede and Shuichi looked away from another awkwardly the entire time. Cowardly Shuichi was the first to make an excuse and leave, while the three of them were awkwardly trying to say goodbye. Even Kaede who was usually Shuichi’s complete opposite, bold, shameless and a little thoughtless when it came to people was trying to avoid eye contact with Rantaro. 

 

Of course Rantaro, was the only one who did not act at all awkward. It was not like he was trying to act normal to smooth things over, but rather like he did not even see the awkward atmosphere between the two of them. 

 

“You’re really weird, Amami-kun. Even though we just saw each other naked you’re just looking at me like normal.”    
  
“Am I being weird? This is just how I normally am so I don’t notice it.” Rantaro was a little too honest for a moment there and quickly backtracked, “To be honest I feel exactly the same way about you if I see you naked or not.”    
  
“So you’re always undressing me with your eyes!” 

  
“N-no, nothing like that jeez. I’m never going to get rid of this icky playboy reputation of mine.”    
  
“O-oh, so you mean you don’t feel anything at all when you see me naked? That’s somehow worse! I know I’m a pianoholic but I want to be seen as a cute girl too…” 

 

“You’re plenty cute. I know a guy who’s always looking at you like that. No, in fact in his eyes you’re too cute to even look at.”    
  
Rantaro was sure he said the right thing, but Kaede reacted in a different way than he expected. Suddenly, she who had been avoiding looking at him the entire time closed the distance between them and threw her arms around him in a hug. He felt her face bury itself into his loose fitting sweater, and felt the heat of her breath, but other than that. “Ah, whatcha doin all of a sudden Akamatsu?”   
  
“Thank you.”    
  
“Huh? I don’t remember doing anything praiseworthy.”   
  
“You did all this to help me and Shuichi, didn’t you?” 

“Hah…When you’re in front of him you’re always so formal, but you just let his real name slip.”    
  
“That’s what I’m talking about. Amami-kun, it’s like you’re always watching over us, but I dunno how to say this… it’s like you’re looking at us to avoid looking at yourself.”    
  
It was certainly a romantic notion. A mutual friend plays matchmaker for two of his closest friends just wishing for them to be happy, while he hides his true feelings in his heart. “But, Akamatsu. It’s not like that. It might be wrong to compare a kind person like you to me, but… I think we’re alike.”    
  
“Alike?”    
  
“In the first round we both tried to save everyone all by ourselves didn’t we? Even though you were always around Saihara-kun, you just couldn’t bring yourself to trust him and acted on your own.”

 

“...” Kaede said nothing, the fact that she had failed to trust Shuichi was still a sore spot for her.    
  
“That’s why I’m not harsh on you for pushing yourself to the point where you considered killing someone. In my mind, anybody who was trying to save so many people all alone would have been pushed that way. You’re really a strange girl, you want to get along with everybody and yet you insist you have to carry all those burdens alone. What else do you think friends are for?” 

 

“When you put it like that, you make me sound like a lonely girl.”    
Kaede pulled back from Amami, and then tugged on her sleeve as if embarrassed.    
A girl who was always surrounded by people and yet was still alone.    
A girl who only knew how to connect to other people through piano. 

  
“You need allies. It doesn’t matter who you are, everybody needs someone.” He ignored her emotional statement, and explained in a stern voice. 

 

“You really are a weird one, Amami-kun. When I first met you, I thought you were just kind of an empty headed pretty boy, but you’re so much more than that.”   
  
Rantaro put his hand on his neck, stretching his shoulder. “Nah, I think you got it right on the first try. I really am shallow.” Rantaro knew there was a difference between being humble, or even always belittling himself in front of others like Shuichi did, and making a realistic self assessment.    
  
It was not that he was a particularly deep person.    
He did not even have a hidden side to himself.    
He was not pretending to be someone else to seem more likable.    
He just lacked that thing called a ‘self’.    
If he was called on to be deep and insightful, he would become a more serious person.    
If Shuichi and Kaede needed someone to break the tension between them, he was fun-loving.    
It was not even like he was empty, but the Rantaro inside of him might as well be a “?”.    
It was childish really.

Children call themselves by their own name instead of a first person pronoun.    
Because, they have no developed a full sense of self.    
They just recognize the name they have as their own because everyone calls them that.   
In that way, he considered himself a no good brat who had never grown up.    
He only knew he was “Rantaro” because everyone else called him that.    
  
And still, that girl looked at him with such full eyes, like a full moon on a pitch black night serving as the only light in the sky. She looked at him like he was a “someone” a “person.”    
He did not feel like he was deceiving anybody, but when he thought about how Kaede looked at him with such affection, affection directed towards a “somebody” he felt a little bad.    
  
Before she left, she grabbed onto his arm one last time and said those words.    
“I consider you an ally too.”    
Rantaro said nothing to her.    
  
He reached up and touched his silver earrings. As long as he had holes in his body, as long as he looked like a delinquent, everybody around him would treat him like one. His former self would disappear like he was bleeding out from the holes he punched in his ear, and a shriveled up husk would be left behind. 

 

_ But, Kaede… _ _   
_ _ I’ve never once thought of you as an ally. _ _   
_ _ Not you. Not Shuichi.  _ _   
_ _ All people are nothing but tools.  _ _   
_ _ It doesn’t matter how it’s done.  _ _   
_ _ It doesn’t matter what needs to be sacrificed.  _ _   
_ _ In this world, winning is everything. _ _   
_ _ As long as I win in the end… That’s all that matters.  _

 

He opened and closed his empty hands, reminding himself once more what those hands were for. His family that he lost, he needed to use this hand to take that back. Anything to hold that small hand in his once again. 

 

🧸  **A FLASHBACK IS HAPPENING** 🧸

 

One day ago.    
That morning before Togami suddenly barged into Toko’s room.    
  
“Are you alright, Amami? I know this may sound strange, but I’m an expert on these matters. You look like a corpse. Should you be up this early?” 

 

Every day, he, Shuichi and Kaede ate breakfast together. Kaede had stopped hiding away in her room, but that did not mean the former Kaede who once bravely challenged Monokuma head on and led them all to escape was back. If anything, the three of them were just acting like friends who met to eat at lunch and hung out every day after school.    
  
Rantaro puzzled on how to push the situation in just the right way to overcome their mutual awkwardness. The red string of fate was supposed to never be severed, but Rantaro thought the bonds between people could break easily. One step, one wrong move, one snip, and the person you thought was always going to be by your side is suddenly gone.    
  
He saw relationships as a delicate thing, and people are always getting lost. No, perhaps he was the one who was lost. Then suddenly, Korekiyo approached him and asked that question.    
  
It was early, so only the people who had refused to join the Student Council were eating in the lunchroom. Kaede and Shuichi were not here yet that was a little weird but it gave him time to think.    
  
“Ha, maybe. But there’s still so many things I have to do. Isn’t it the same for you?”    
  
Korekiyo raised a finger in front of his face.  His body gestures feminine, almost coquetteish. “The answer to that question is precisely. For research, of course, but another reason as well.” 

 

Rantaro looked at the bandages that covered Korekiyo’s hands. So impersonal. Unable to touch a single person. Perhaps he should start wearing gloves, oh but he needed to appaer as a personable person sometimes. “Another reason?”   
  
“Kehehehehe. Oddly enough, when I look at you, I sense that I understand you not just as a research subject but also as a person.”    
  
“Umm, that was a compliment? Thanks, I guess…” It was difficult to tell with that guy. “Do you have any siblings Kiyo?”    
  
“Oh, nice. Are you two close?”   
  
“Very much so. My sister is my most important person.”    
  
“You said that without much prompting, Kiyo. That was kind of unexpected. But in that case… maybe you understand.” Rantaro smiled without even meaning to.    
  
  


“To have asked me such a question… are you looking forward to seeing your sibling when you escape from this place?”   
  
“My family, but yeah, something like that…”    
  
“I see… that explains it. I shall not stop you from pushing yourself, in that case. I, too, wish to do everything I can for my sister. That is how I feel.”   
  
“Haha, and here I thought no one would ever really understand.” For the first time in a long while, Amami felt some measure of relief. There was a reason he dressed like a delinquent, he wanted to feel like someone in chains so he would never stray from his purpose. He played with his necklace between his fingers, this necklace was like a chain hanging from a collar around his neck, a far more sturdy connection than flimsy string that could be defeated by a scissor. 

 

“To be so driven, you must have a wonderful sibling.”    
  
“Oh yeah, they’re much better than me…” He was just the one who was left behind.    
  
His momentarily good mood was soured by Togami Byakuya. “Hmph…” That guy was like the embodiment of sour candy… Rantaro decided not to speak that metaphor out loud because it was not very cool. If everybody found out he was a dork the jig would be up.    
  
Togami swiveled around in his chair. He sat proud, alone, and cross legged as always. “You two are really foolish, both of you, if you think you can do a single thing for your siblings.”    
  
“I guess it would look that way to a selfish prick like you.” Rantaro heard his voice come out of his mouth. He supposed he was in a “bad mood” and because of that he was now showing a hidden “rude” side to his personality.    
  
“If selfish is what you call thinking for myself, then fine, I’m selfish.” He wore it like a badge of pride. It was not that he was just a prideful and selfish bastard, he was also proud of how selfish he was. “Let me ask both of you this. If your sibling was truly happier without you, would you leave them alone? Let’s say, the only way your sibling could be happy was if you died would you do that? Aren’t you just acting on your desire to see that siblings again, to have that person in your life, and saying it’s for them?”    
  
For Togami, love was a thing as vague as the gods. The only tangible and real thing in this world was desire. Just for a moment he felt himself being grabbed all over, by several different pairs of hands pulling him in different directions, they unbuttoned his shirt, and slid their hands over his flesh. To Togami, this was “Family.” He knew no other sensation than that.    
  
  


He suppressed his feelings. Perhaps, he had been too literal in his question. After all there was a time when a sibling wrapped their fingers around his neck and squeezed, saying over and over again.  _ If only you weren’t born, I’ve fallen into ruin all because of you! If you’d just die already, father would take me back. _ In that situation the selfless thing to do would have been to let his sibling murder him. If he was someone who cared about another person’s happiness more than his own, the only thing to do was roll over and die.    
  
He did not have a mother. He did not have a father. People only stayed around them because they were paid to. He was a child given every opportunity in the world, but in his eyes he was not given anything. The only thing he had was his own life, and his siblings wanted him to give that away to. 

 

_ This selfish desire is all I have, it’s the proof that I’m me.  _

 

“If only I had been the one who was born sick… I’ve thought of that many times.” Korekiyo answered, sudden and honest.    
  
Togami did not smile, he only knew how to sneer. “Wishing you were suffering in someone else’s place, is different than actually suffering. If you really were that sick, you’d be miserable.”   
  
“But my feelings-”   
  
“You just desire your sister by your side. You don’t want to be alone. That is all.” Togami readjusted his glasses so his eyes would not be seen. “Doing things for the sake of others is just a self serving delusion.” 

 

_ At least I’m not delusional.  _ That was all Togami could define himself as. He remembered the way his mother used to cry, and cling to him inconsolably, wondering why his father was not there to raise his child. Togami pitied her at first, but eventually he felt nothing but disgust. He understood why his father had left behind such an insane woman. His mother never really raised him, so all he had to guide him into the person he wanted to become was  _ not that.  _   
  
“That might be true, but refusing to see other people’s feelings just as much of a delusion,” Rantaro countered him. Togami noticed, the boy he just dismissed as an embarrassment to the Amami family name suddenly looked straight at him with cold eyes.    
  
“Pardon?” 

  
“Hmm, well let’s say you’re right that doing things out of love is empty because love is just a made up concept. To you, selfish reasons like money are much more tangible. But you know, god didn’t create money. Money has value because humans decided to give it value, it’s as much of a made up human concept as love is.” 

 

“Who knew you were capable of actually arguing back. Have you been hiding a silver tongue all along?”   
  
“I wasn’t hiding anything, you just didn’t notice, because Togami-kun you don’t look at other people.” Rantaro reached for something invisible in the air as if he was moving a piece on the board. This was his call at check. “If you want to call this a game that’s fine, really whatever. But not even looking at your opponent is a poor way to play a game. Were you this sloppy when fighting against your siblings? It’s a wonder you didn’t die.”    
  
Togami stood up and slammed his fist on the table. The invisible chess board between them would have had all the pieces knocked down by such a move.  _ What a brat, _ Rantaro thought. “What do you know about me?”    
  
“Nothing I guess. You don’t know a thing about me, and I don’t know a thing about you. When you dismiss other people’s feelings, it’ll always come back to bite you in the end.” Rantaro folded his hands together. His eyes became worse than empty, they looked cavernous, as if someone had scooped out both eyeballs and only the shadowy holes of his skull were left to gaze into. “You’re the delusional one. Maybe you are meant to be the king of this world, but look behind you. Not a single person is following you.” 

 

_ Because you look away from other people. _

_ Because you look away from yourself.  _

 

“You act like you look down on love as something unnecessary but aren’t you just afraid of it?”   
  


“...”    
  
Togami’s head turned around slowly and he saw nobody standing behind him. There was someone! There was someone who willingly followed him! She would never leave him, not for a flimsy reason like love, but because she was one of his possessions. He was not his mother pining for invisible love he would never receive, if he could reach out and touch it, it was real.    
  
He stormed off and went to the library without another word. He waited there all day for that person, but because they had a fight she stopped going to the library. He thought of where else he could find her, and finally went to her room instead. 

 

Rantaro left behind was thanked in a timid voice by Korekiyo. “Th-thank you, Amami. No one’s ever stood up for me before.”    
  
“Ah... Didn’t your sister…?”    
  
Korekiyo left nervously before he could finish that question. Maybe he was just an awkward guy. Amami did not want to think too much about it. He was glad that Kaede and Shuichi did not see him back then, that would have been difficult to explain that side of him.    
  


Just as he was thinking of that, both Kaede and Shuichi arrived at the same time. They nervously glanced away from each other. He saw Shuichi’s hands drift towards Kaede’s and then shy away. 

 

_ Jeez, these two are a handful. _   
  
“Sorry we’re late, Saihara-kun and I walked here together but then we kind of both got lost.” 

 

_ How did you get lost? We’re trapped in such a small area. Just admit, you both got distracted and wasted all that time making goo goo eyes at each other.  _   
  
“I-it’s my fault. I lost track of time talking to Akamatsu-san,” Saihara said, not even trying to hide his smile. “Hearing Akamatsu-san talk so passionately about her interests, it’s like… a music that soothes my heart.” 

 

_ Akamatsu you better watch out. Saihara seems like he’s too shy to ever do anything, but he’s the much more bolder one between the two of you. I bet he’ll make the first move.  _

 

Shuichi overthought everything, so he was probably painfully aware what his feelings were. In comparison, Kaede did not think too hard about anything so she probably had not even realized. Still, because of that combination it had been a month and neither of them had made any significant moves. 

 

_ Slowburn mutual pining may sound romantic, but it’s tiresome watching it all play out in real time.  _

 

They had such a naturally comfortable atmosphere between the two of them, they got along so well that both of them were afraid of ruining it. Especially since they had almost lost it in the past. If they were each other’s comfort, Rantaro genuinely thought that was sweet, he was happy they found such a person.   
  
But he had already decided to destroy it. “Hey, you guys have been awkward for a whole month now? Did you fall in love with the sight of Kaede’s naked body under the moonlight, Saihara-kun?”    
  
Saihara who had been sipping his milk after getting breakfast, suddenly started to choke. His head hit the table, and quickly his skin was turning as blue as the clothes he always wore.    
  
“Amami-kun, that’s not the thing to joke around about! I think you broke him!” 

 

“It wasn’t a joke. It was a serious question. I guess I’ll ask you then, hey Akamatsu-san whose dick was bigger Saihara-kun’s or mine?” 

 

“Ahhh- are you sure you don’t have a dirty mind, Amami-kun?” 

  
“No, you’ve got it wrong, my mind is clean and pure. That’s why I’m able to ask these questions without feeling embarrassed. It’s a purely academic matter to me. Are you saying when you picture Saihara-kun naked, you feel anything other than academic curiosity?” 

 

“Your solution to everything is getting naked!” Kaede snapped at him.    
  
“Well, if you want to be close to someone clothes get in the way, don't they?” 

  
“Stinky playboy! Get your playboy germs away from me!” Kaede said, as she grabbed Shuichi protectively. Holding his head so close to her chest would probably just make him even more flustered. Kaede quieted after a moment. “M-maybe you’re right. We’ve been distant from each other. Just because we went back to the way things are, doesn’t mean we got closer…”    
  
Kaede’s eyes trembled. She was such a strong girl, Rantaro thought so. She was strong enough to always be fighting against her weakness like that. “I want to change.” 

 

_ From the person who thought it was okay to kill people.  _   
That was her only path forward.   
If Rantaro felt something for Kaede it was admiration.   
_ It must be nice.  _   
To have a self that you can change.   
To have a future.   
He was happy for her. He was. 

 

🧸

 

There was a difference.   
She knew there was.   
Mutual feelings was not the same thing as “being in love.”    
Two people can pine after each other forever, but it might not become love.    
Even if they feel exactly the same way.    
It was different.   
Like a piano duet and two people playing at exactly the same time.    
She did not know much about love.   
She never expected anyone to love her, that was the honest truth.   
But, she thought if she ever did encounter love she would be able to hear it.    
Love was the way music sounded when you listened to it together.    
_ Music sounds better when I’m with you _ . 

For a normal high school girl who never encountered love.   
She had a fluffy idea of it that made her heart flutter in staccato. 

 

She was up all night thinking about it. She spent the entire time writing down her ideas in notebooks. She only got distracted and doodled a couple of times. She had her heart set on this. 

 

Once she had her heart set she did not let go. She wanted to believe she was that sort of person. She knew her words could sound like far too lofty ideals, but she felt the same way she did not as she had when she first met Shuichi. She still wanted to become his friend. Even after they had both lied to and betrayed each other that feeling in her heart was unchanged.    
  
Funny.    
She never thought she would feel this strongly about any one person before.    
She was always too busy trying to make sure everyone got along.    
She never focused on just one person.    
  
That morning, she got right in Shuichi’s face letting him know how she decided they would be spending today together. “Hey, Saihara-kun.”   
  
“Ah! What? You scared me, getting that close!”    
  
What was wrong with that?   
She wanted to see his face from this close.   
She wanted to see him smile from this close.   
She had been up all night thinking about that.   
Stupid Shuichi, that was nothing to get embarassed about getting this close, it was a good thing.    
  
“Oops, sorry! I got super excited.”    
  
“What is it?” 

 

She brought her hands up in the air, something that both her and Shuichi could truly enjoy together. “Let’s play a piano duet together!” Or, maybe she was only thinking of herself again.    
  
“A piano duet?”    
  


“Oh, right. You don’t know yet. A duet is when two people play on the same piano.”    
  
“You can do that?”   
  
“Of course, since a piano has 88 keys! There’s room for two people on a piano bench! I want you to know more about the piano! That’s why a duet with you would be perfect.”    
  
She reached out to take his hand, but Shuichi moved it before she could snatch it away.    
  
“W-wait a minute!”    
  
“Huh, what’s wrong? Is there a problem?” She was pretty sure, she did not say anything wrong. The idea that she might have upset someone as sensitive as Shuichi without realizing made her uneasy for some reason. Usually she did not think of other people’s feelings, but she could not help but think of Shuichi’s.    
  
“I-It’s just… It would be such an honor to perform with you, I don’t know…”   
  
She really hated it when he put her up on that pedestal, just to make himself look worse in comparison. It was yeah, it was really lonely. She did not want to be the bright sun, to his pale moon. The moon and stars shared the same sky, right? “Whatever! I’m just a normal high school girl!”    
  
“Ah! B-but I’ve never played piano before!”    
  
“Everyone’s like that in the beginning! You gotta try new things anyway!” Shuichi would come up with an infinite amount of excuses not to get close to someone, so Kaede decided to just ignore all of them. She took his hand and dragged him to the music room with her. 

 

When she got there Rantaro was already waiting for her, just like she asked him to. While Shuichi stood nervously watching the two of them, her and Rantaro sat next to each other. Kaede’s fingers flew across the keys, and Rantaro despite not being on her skill level was practiced enough to play in a way that would highlight Kaede’s music.    
  
When the song ended, Kaede turned around to Shuichi. “You see, you just play it like that. It’s easy.”   
  
“How is it easy?”   
  
“Well, you hit the keys and the piano makes noise, and then if you hit the notes in the right order they will form together in a song pleasing to the ear.” 

  
Shuichi shook, as he tried to clarify. “N-no, I mean. You already have Amami-kun to play with, and he’s much better than I’ll ever be. Do you really need me?” 

 

Kaede did not get it. She remembered a girl, holding onto the sleeve of her sister. That young girl’s words pulled out of her mouth, as she reached out and grabbed Shuichi’s hands forcefully. “You’re the one I want to play with! I don’t care if you’re good! I just want you!”

 

“O-okay…”    
  


  
Kaede smiled as if she forgot she was ever upset. She pulled him next to her and Rantaro scooted off the bench saying he would just watch from now on. Rnataro seemed like the  _ loner, but not actually lonely  _ type so she just left him.    
  
“Now, put your fingers on the keys.”    
  


“Like this…?”   
  
She saw his fingers shaking as he held them flat against the keys.   
She wondered what he was so nervous about.    
It was not like she would hate him if his piano playing was bad.

“Oh, don’t place your fingers flat. Keep your fingers light, and don’t press the keys too hard.”   
  
“Ah… Like this?”    
  
“Bend them a little more. Pretend you have an egg in your hand. Nevermind, just give me your hands, okay? So you know how to play in the correct form?”    
  
She placed her hands over his.    
Threading her fingers in between his.    
As if their hands were shaped that way on purpose.   
Because they were meant to be together like this.    
Close.   
Touching him.   
Soft.   
Warm.    
The feeling of being close to another person.    
Strings, fate, connections, all unnecessary.   
If they could just keep holding onto each other like this.    
Her smile.    
She smiled at him.    
For a moment he thought.   
Two people could feel the same way about each other.   
They could share the same feelings.   
The same thoughts.   
The same music.    
  


“A-ah!”    
  
“Okay, just like that. Make sure only your fingertips touch the keys. Hm, Saihara-kun, you don’t look very focused?” 

 

All of those thoughts flowing through him from their point of contact.   
He thought that it was Kaede’s feelings flowing into him.    
But, Kaede was as empty-headed as ever. 

  
“Ah, aren’t you a little.. Too close?”   
  
“AM I? But if I’m not close to you, then I can’t guide you.”   
  
“Th-the hands are fine… But, ah… Your face… and other things…” 

 

From Rantaro’s third person view of the situation, Kaede had been so fussy with Shuichi’s hand placement, and lacked so much of a sense of personal space that she had basically crawled on top of him in an attempt to fix his hands. They looked like they were going to attempt another kind of duet on the piano bench. With the way Kaede’s face loomed over his, to the point of eclipsing it, and the way Shuichi closed his eyes to look away. It was like Shuichi was the nervous maiden waiting in anticipation of a kiss. Just a few more centimeters and they would have crossed a line, a string would have become tied up around them.    
  
“Oh my god! I am super close to you! S-sorry!” Tge moment Kaede realized she scooted away.  They both left a space on the bench between them, and their hands. “Haha… I was so focused… That’s why people call me Piano Freak.” 

 

Rantaro smirked to himself.  _ You don’t need to apologize Kaede, I doubt he minded it that much.  _

 

_ “ _ It’s just really hard…”    
  
Shuichi stepped away from the bench. When he saw Kaede play music, it was like watching a scene from the beautiful painting. She could hear everything she felt in her song, like the light of the pale moonlight and how it looked as she stared up at it in the sky. If she wrote a song about spring, he saw pink cherry blossoms fall around her, but in his mind Kaede was someone just as beautiful as the music she played. She was a more precious sight than cherry blossoms falling. She belonged in the middle of those portraits, but Shucihi did not. 

 

He tried to run away, but forcefully Kaede grabbed his wrist once more. “W-wait, Saihara-kun. I need you. I haven’t been able to hear the music I play for a whole month, but when you were right there next to me I heard something…” 

  
A music inside of her.    
  
“N-no way, it couldn’t be because of me Akamatsu-san.” His thin, and long fingers, escaped from her hand. She felt him slipping away. Shuichi muttered an apology and then left the room. 

 

Amami finally spoke up, crossing his arms. “For someone who cares so much about other people, you’re pretty oblivious, huh?”   
  
A contradiction.    
  
“Oblivious?” Kaede mirrored.    
  
“Ah, sorry. It’s an annoying cliche in romantic comedies when everybody says again and again ‘you two totally look like a couple’, right? It’s like everybody else around them is trying to force them to be together.”   
  
“Umm… sometimes you sound like a space alien, I’m not sure what you’re saying.” 

  
“I mean that trope is a tiresome cliche because if you really were in love, you’d be aware of your own feelings right? It feels more natural to realize it that way, than to have someone tell you about them.”   
  
“My feelings?”    
  
“Hey, you’re a kind person. That’s why you’ve been keeping your distance, right? It’s the best way to avoid hurting others. But, Akamatsu-san…” Rantaro’s face went dark again. “You can hurt someone without even doing a single thing.”

 

“I don’t think I’m that much of a kind person.”  _   
_ _ I’m a killer after all.  _   
  
“Let’s say a boy confesses to a girl. Most people would assume that the worst thing that could happen was a rejection, but that’s not true. If you reject someone, they’ll get over it. The worst thing is to just not say anything at all.”   
  
“N-no one’s ever confessed to me before.”    
  
“Really, I’ve been confessed to lots of times.”   
  
“You sound like you’re bragging.”    
  
“It’s hard to beleive no one’s confessed to you. You’re an objectively cute girl.”   
  
“Objectively… you’re such a charmer.”   
  
“Other people always say that but I don’t really think so. Being oblivious, keeping things ambiguous will just hurt more in the long run. That’s why, you need to figure out what your feelings are on your own. Even if you secretly despise someone, it’s better to be true to your feelings then to be ambiguous.”    
  
“You always tell me to think about my feelings, but you’re so impersonal…”    
  
Impersonal.   
Indirect.    
Like she was not talking to a person.   
Even though he was standing there breathing next to her.    
The body of Amami Rantaro objectively existed but who was inside of it? 

The feeling that your fingers aren’t “your fingers.”   
Looking at this hand you begin to wonder who the hand belongs to.    
You feel a lag in between trying to move your hand and when your body obeys.    
You drift away from your body.   
  
Kaede was sharp. She kept seeing through him like that, looking at him with those eyes. If Togami-kun found love to be scary, then Rantaro thought those eyes were scary too.    
  
“I just think my feelings are better off used as materials for jokes, then experiencing them.”   
  
“Don’t say something so sad!”   
  
“Just kidding, just kidding.” Rantaro sighed, letting some of his exhaustion show. “It’s like love songs right? People have written every single kind of love song imaginable. So, love isn’t all that special. People fall in and out of love all the time, falling in love with someone isn’t the beginning of the world and falling out of love with someone isn’t the end of the world.”    
  
“That’s umm… kind of cynical.”    
  
“Well, it’s like a mom and dad can sleep with each other, and have lots and lots of children but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they love each other, or that they’ll love those children.” 

 

“That’s a weirdly specific example…”    
  
“It’s an exceedingly common everyday experience so there’s no need to get all worked up about it.” 

 

“Amami-kun, is there somebody that loves you?”    
  
There she goes again with the deeply personal questions. He grabbed the necklace hanging in front of his chest, in between his fingers. “Yeah, there is but they’re so far away.”   
  
“I’m glad. I hope you can find that person again.” 

 

_ I’m using you to find that person.  _ Amami thought. Then, he looked to the side.  _ My analysis always falls short of this person. In other words, what a weirdo.  _

 

**🧸**

  
  
“Ugh, why do you keep following me around. You’re like a swan who keeps following around an ugly duckling like me, it’s pitiful.”   
  
“Umm. You were the one who suddenly barged into my room.”    
  
Fukawa Toko realized that between her and Korekiyo, not a single one of them had experienced a normal life. Therefore between the two of them they were lacking perspective. She thought of the most plain, uninteresting, jane here and Komaru was the only person she could think of.    
  
“I don’t like being labeled as the normal one, it’s kind of mean…” Komaru griped. “Besides, isn’t Hitoyoshi-kun a normal person too? Why not ask him?” 

  
“Hitoyoshi-kun is a total hottie that’s always doing squats. How many squats have you even done today?”   
  
“Umm… None.”   
  
“Then, you have no one to blame for your own normalcy.”   
  
Komaru had learned several things about Toko over the past month. That she was completely unable to hold a normal conversation, but that also never stopped her from talking. She was really timid and scared of other people, but also stubborn as hell and never went the way they wanted her to. When she got like this it was easier to deal with her by letting her words go in one ear and out the other, until she tired herself out.    
  
Apparently, Makoto was good at this secret technique for dealing with people as well. It must have been a family trait.    
  
“Well, I don’t mind if you want to hang out with me. I’m still scared of being killed, so it’s comfortable being around someone strong like you.”   
  
“But I’m a killer you know.”    
  
“Oh, yeah well it’s not like you’ve killed anybody I know.”   
  
Normal people were so selfish, Toko judged. Komaru’s normal everyday life shaped all of her experiences, so it made sense if she never experienced Toko killing someone she did not treat her like a killer. 

  
“The reason you’re acting so grumpy…” Toko wished she was a cutesy word like grumpy, no she was just unpleasant and mean, “It’s because that boy you like dumped you, right?” 

  
“Ack!” Toko suddenly clutched her chest and began to cough up blood.    
  
“That’s no reason to cough up blood! Gosh, you’re so dramatic how am I supposed to deal with you?” Talking to Toko was even sometimes kind of fun because of the way she overreacted to everything, but it was like there were a hundred buttons that set her off. “It’ll be fine, really! I might not look like it-”   
  
“You don’t look like anything at all.”   
  
“Hey!” Komaru puffed out her cheeks. “I’m actually good at romantic advice you know. I have a one hundred percent success rate.”    
  
“How many people have asked you for advice.”   
  
“Just my brother this one time.”    
  
“How many relationships have you had?” 

  
“Actually, I’ve never found love in this life before.” 

 

“Oh, well if you don’t mind helping a hopeless girl like me-” Toko clutched her face for a moment shyly, and then suddenly changed in the middle of her sentence. “What kind of maiden like reply is that! Virgins like you are completely useless for love advice!”    
  
“I’ll have you know, I’ve read more shoujo manga than anybody else. In that way, I’ve fallen in love more than a hundred times.”    
  
Toko immediately stood up and began to walk away. “I might be the lowest of the low, but I’m not so low I need love advice from some otaku who mistakes two dimmensional manga characters for reality.”   
  
“Wait! Wait! Stop!” Komaru threw a pillow at Toko’s head to stop her from leaving. 

 

“Well, fine if you’re going to bully me into staying.”   
  
“How is that bullying!” Anyway. “I do want to find someone I love in reality, I just haven’t found the right type of guy yet.”    
  
“What is your ideal type then?”    
Toko was curious.   
Her expectations were low however, Komaru probably had a completely normal desire, like a boy who was cute, or a boy with a good job. She did not seem like the type to dream.    
  
“Well, I think I’d like a gloomy guy. It’d be great if he was kind of unlucky and miserable all the time. Even though he’s down on his luck he always tries his best to smile. Oh, and if he’s always getting into fights too, a guy covered in bruises and blood is super hot. It’d be nice if he liked manga as much as I do, too.” 

  
“You just described the worst loser imaginable.”    
  
“You always do this! Stop asking me questions and then insulting me when I answer them!”    
  
“But, that’s the perfect set up and punch line delivery for a comedy routine.”    
  
“I don’t remember becoming your comedy partner.”   
  
Toko suddenly looked serious. “You don’t choose someone as a comedy partner. You just know it, like love at first sight.”    
  
“I thought you wanted advice on love, not comedy routines!” Komaru thought it was unfair just because she was the normal one of the two of them that meant she automatically got stuck with the role of straight man. 

  
“I don’t need advice, because it doesn’t matter what I do.” Toko sat there on the bed drawing her knees up closer to herself in an attempt to look smaller. That was what she always tried to do in that house, look smaller and hope they would never notice her. “Byakuya-sama doesn’t love anybody.”    
  
He was the beast who had his heart replaced by a slowly wilting flower in a glass case.    
But she was not the beauty who came to save that heart.   
She was just another beast.    
  
“That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why, knowing he will never love you back, do you continue to be in love with him? Are you a stalker…?”   
  
“B-because… It’s not like I planned on stealing his heart, and it’s not like I can even if I wanted to. I know I followed him around but if I ever actually troubled him I would have stopped.” 

 

_ I’m satisfied just being in love with him.  _   
As Toko said that, finishing her mumbling explanation she was suddenly grabbed   
On both shoulders by Komaru.    
Human contact. Touching.   
She was totally unfamiliar.    
Especially being bullied by women her entire life.    
Her mothers, and other girls.    
  
“That’s what I’m saying is the problem!” Toko felt herself pushed back against Komaru’s bed. Unfamiliar things, were so scary. “You’re always talking about how you love him, you told me a thousand times, but you don’t want to go steady or be lovers with him.”    
  
“Uh-uhhh…” 

  
“How is that any different from being in love with a prince you read about in manga? You’re the one who can’t tell the difference between 2D and 3D. Someone you long for, but could never get, is that it?”    
  
“Even if I never expected him to return them, that doesn’t mean… my feelings were that weak.”    
  
“I’m saying you’re being ambiguous. You love him with slavish devotion, you act like you’d kill for him, or you’d die for him, but you’re also strangely okay with the fact that he’ll never love you back. You’re always following him around, you two read all the same books and talk to each other the most, and yet when he’s in the same bed as you, you didn’t try to make a single move.”    
  
“I-I’m not some kind of slut!”   
  
“Oh, so you’re a virgin too just like me. How do you always write love scenes in your books so detailed like that?”   
  
“I have an active imagination okay!” 

  
If you fall in love with someone.   
You can get away without falling in love with someone else.    
Just like someone who is out of reach, or a fictional character.    
Romances with them will spare you from being hurt. 

Being in love with someone who will never dump you, is easy right?    
  
“This might be blunt but…” Komaru seemed unaware of how blunt she was, in general, she did not see herself as a person with personality traits, just a normal girl. “Isn’t your imagination the problem? It feels like you’re just using him to comfort yourself with a love that will never come to fruition.”    
  
Togami would never love her.   
He was not a real prince, so he would never save her. 

That was exactly the appeal.    
Toko thought she knew this all along, that what was most important to her than being in love.   
If that’s the case, then why did his rejection hurt so bad?    
He was always telling her to shut up, to stop breathing, to leave him alone.    
Yet that rejection left her completely lost, as if all the strings guiding her had been cut.    
She was no longer dangling there dancing like a puppet to the strings of love.   
She was just falling now.    
  
“N-no, it’s not that. I’m just repulsive, see. I’m someone nobody could love. I’m sure you knew about it from the first time you met me. I-is that a bad thing? If a repulsive person like me wants to be in love with someone”

  
“You know my brother was like that too. He came to me for love advice, he thought he liked a girl but since she was a famous detective he thought there was no way she could ever love him back.”    
  
“What did you say?”   
  
“I told him he wasn’t in love, and the two of them never got together.”   
  
“That poor detective girl, her love life got ruined by an overprotective little sister who chases away all the girls who are interested in her older brother.”    
  
Komaru puffed out her cheeks again. “That’s not what happened at all! Think about it, if you really love someone would you let someone convince you that you weren’t in love so easily! My brother was just being ambiguous because it’s his tendency to be weak. If you were saying you wanted to fight for Togami’s love, even as a stalker, I’d cheer for you.”    
  
“I’d cheer for you to stalk him. That’s not a very normal thing to say.”    
  
Komaru leaned forward and plucked Toko’s glasses off of her nose. She held them in front of her face, looking through the lenses. “Are these glasses fake?”    
  
“I-I have a certain image to maintain okay? Who ever heard of a bookish girl without glasses!” 

She wore a long black uniform that covered most of her body.    
She had her hair pulled back always in messy braids.    
Her round glasses covered most of her face.    
She had the look of a bookish, quiet, girl.    
One that most people would leave alone if they saw her in the library.    
An appearance that always made other people look away from her.   
It was like she was hiding something all the time.    
  
Komaru continued to play with Toko’s glasses. “You’re unpleasant, rude, vulgar, and sometimes mean but I don’t think you’re repulsive at all. Love isn’t the special thing you make it out to be, it’s exceedingly normal. My parents who are nobody special fell in love. People fall in and out of love as easily as dogs bark. If a normal girl like me is expected to find love, I’m sure someone extraordinary like you could easily…”    
  
Toko tried to snatch her glasses back, but Komaru kept them just out of her reach. “You’re just scared aren’t you? I understand… because I’m scared of everybody here too. It’s so sickening, always being scared…” 

Love was her only comfort in this world. But she was scared of love?    
It made no sense at all.   
No, she was a carefree girl who was in love with being in love. That was all she needed. 

Then she remembered, she met a man far more detestable than ever herself. He was far lesser than her, far more negative. If she was a rotten river, he was a pure river. She saw him walking next to Enoshima Junko, like they were each other’s other half. As if she was someone he had spent his entire life searching for. A person perfectly suited for walking alongside him. A person like that was able to find love. She was jealous. Jealous. Incredibly jealous. So jealous she pushed him away every time she saw him. She knew that kind of person might love her too. She was scared. So scared. incredibly scared. She pushed him farther and farther away.    
  
It was so incredibly simple. The difference between him and her. He found love because he was looking for it in the first place.    
  
Komaru reached underneath Toko’s long skirt and stole away a pair of scissors from her holster. In two fluid movements, she swung those scissors forward, and she cut. 

Toko realized.   
In her confusion.   
She had been cut.   
And because she had been cut, she screamed.    
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” 

Mukuro and Makoto both heard the noise from one floor below in Mukuro’s room. They immediately climbed the stairs and Mukuro got the door open easily. They immediately thought the worst expecting to find a pair of scissors shoved into someone’s throat to produce that blood chilling scream.    
  
They saw no blood at all.    
Toko’s braids were on the ground next to her. 

Komaru had just cut them both off, while they were tied up.    
Toko touched her much shorter, uneven hair now, acting like she was dying.    
  
“Relax, I didn’t cut your head off…” Komaru said, covering her ears.    
  
“I WOULD HAVE RATHER YOU CUT MY HEAD OFF!”    
  
She did not remember much of what happened after that.   
It was vague.   
It was uncertain.   
It was ambiguous.    
  
  



	36. Good Luck or Bad Luck

“I see that the lottery winner for the Ultimate Lucky Student was a disappointment.”

A group of faceless men were assembled. The only feature he could see between all of them is that they were all aged and wrinkled. Komaeda folded his hands over the letter in his hands. A silent prayer.  
  
The letter was an invitation to Hope’s Peak Academy. _This year our school has decided to select one average student through a lottery. As the winner of that lottery, we would like to welcome you to our school as the “Ultimate Luckster.”_    
  
For him to even hold such a sacred text between his thin as bone fingers. It should have burned up the moment he touched it. While he was walking to school, he wished he would find out the letter had slipped through a hole in his pockets. He wished he would trip and the letter would fall into mud and become dirtied and illegible. He wished a car would hit him, crushing both his hand and the letter inside of it. A blasphemer holding onto such a precious wish of hope, the paper should burn away and the letters should all fade from the page. He wondered if the paper burned up if the ashes would reach heaven.   
  
If god responded to his prayers over someone else, Komaeda would probably be filled with disgust. God was not supposed to respond to selfish wishes after all. God bestowed talent only to those who were chosen as worthy enough to be able to share those talents with the world.  
  
“We are wasting a valuable opening on that so called ‘talent’ luck.”  
  
He already knew that. When he received that letter he desperately tried to explain to them that it was a mistake and the spot belonged to someone else. His place was among the reserve course students, offering up alms in the name of hope in the form of donating his mass fortunes for the small prayer that some of that hope would shine his way. He deserved nothing more than to be a layperson begging at the feet of gods.  
  
To think someone like him would ever stand among them. His footprints would just dirty the beautiful scenery. Yet, Kirigiri Jin took his hand and convinced him that even someone like him could contribute something towards Ultimate Hope. That they wanted to make use of him in that project.  
  
The next day when he came to see Kirigiri Jin, he stumbled across a meeting with the steering committee. Those board members all of them mocked the talent called luck, while Kirigiri tried weakly to defend him.  
  
He already knew all of this.  
  
“And yet…”  
  
It hurt so much to hear those words he already told himself, come out of somebody else’s mouth. That he did not belong in this academy, that he never should have come here in the first place.  
  
Komaeda crumpled up the invitation in his hands. He wanted to throw it in the trash where it belonged. Yet when he tried he could not bring himself to throw it entirely away, even though  he knew that selfish prayer would never be answered by god. 

 

🧸

 

 _My brain is deteriorating._  
  
There was no one who recognized the signs better than him. After all, he was the one always conscious of them, always trying to hide them.  
  
His reason for hiding them?  
He didn’t know.  
He did not think it was that much of a secret that he was a plague rat among them.  
They could all see through him already, ghost that he was. 

Perhaps he was like a child hiding the fact that they were crying in an obvious way.  
A child who goes missing and runs away expecting to be found.  
Because they wanted someone to look for him.  
Because they wanted someone to comfort them. 

No, no that could not be it he never expected anyone to waste their pity on him.  
If they kicked him down and told him he deserved to die like a dog.  
He would be so happy, finally getting what he deserved.  
Deserve? 

Did he deserve this?  
Hey, what had he done to deserve this?  
  
“Komaeda, can you pass me a fork?” 

Every day he ate breakfast with Makoto and Mukuro. The rest of the day most kids ate from the school store, or the snack machine, but they all ate together a meal prepared by Hitoyoshi Zenkichi that was the rule. Whose rule? The student council’s rule of course.  
  
The fact that Makato and Mukuro insisted on eating with him first thing in the morning every day was because they were annoying. No, they were kind. They wanted to replace their former friend Kirigiri with his weak and faulty hope. No, he was supposed to watch over them that’s what Kirigiri asked him.

Komaeda reached out trying to disguise the shaking in his hands. They were like rattling bones. They rattled so loudly. Someone would hear, someone would know. He slowly closed his fingers around the spoon and lifted it towards Mukuro with a smile.  
  
“Umm, I’m the one who asked for it,” Naegi said politely.  
  
Komaeda slowly tilted the spoon towards Makoto instead.  
  
“Um, that’s a fork.” Komaeda fell silent. Noticing the uncomfortable atmosphere Naegi smiled and took the fork from him. “Th-that’s like saying, eat your soup with a fork, right? You’re always teasing me, Komaeda-kun.”

“I-I’m sorry. I forgot to wash my hands… The thought of getting my filthy germs on you spotless beacons of hope…” He suddenly snatched the fork away from Naegi. “Th-this is dirty too because I touched it.”  
  
He walked, no he stumbled away in a haze. He thought he made a smooth excuse for his exit. No, they were looking at him. Oh, no he they were looking at them. He made them worried. No, there was no way they would worry about someone like him. They were just looking at him with confusion and astonishment the same way one would look at a clown from the circus. 

When he finally made it to the sink he threw the fork away and ran his hands under the water. He tried to wash his hands. _They won’t come out. The stains won’t come out. The germs won’t go away. I’ll make them all sick._ Obsessive compulsion. He didn’t hate the idea of germs necessarily. He knew logically no matter how much he cleaned himself the germs would still be there. He also knew, his current disease had nothing to do with germs, it was a trick of probability and nothing more. One cell out of billions inside his brain just happened to have a mutation. Yet, he could not stand the idea of being sickly. He hated the fact that sickness was spread by touch. He should start wearing gloves like Kirigiri did from now on, so people would not have to touch such cold and clammy hands that reminded only of death. He saw the water in the sink start to run red. The red refused to wash down the drain. He had rubbed his own hands raw, until they started to bleed.   
  
Komaeda fell on his knees in front of the sink. This was hardly an altar. He should pray in front of the porcelain bowl instead, that was more suited for someone like him. 

Outside, noticing how long he was taking Mukuro and Makoto whispered to each other. 

“He’s been peacefully getting along with us in a month and yet… I don’t think we’ve gotten any closer.” Mukuro said, before grabbing Makoto forcefully by the collar of his hoodie. “You should do something.”   
  
“Uh-whuh? Why me?” 

“Don’t why me, me. Aren’t you the guy who always befriends everybody?”  
  
“It’s not like I do it on purpose, I don’t want to be popular or anything.”  
  
“You were the most popular person in our class, Makoto.”  
  
“Wait, I was? I thought it definitely had to be Togami.”  
  
“I think… you could understand Komaeda better than I could. I’m still despair, you know… I don’t know anything about hope.”  
  
Makoto’s face pained when he saw her call herself despair. He wanted to scream it in her face. _You’re different from Junko. You’re not your sister._ A hundred times, until she heard it. Yet, his voice was so weak right now he could not even say it once. “Y-you’re always so pushy, jeez.”  
  
“I just think… if I can push you in the right direction. Then, maybe I can become a part of your hope.” He saw Mukuro smile without even realizing it. What had Mukuro told him once? That Makoto’s smile had saved her. That was just a glance from afar, he really did not mean anything by it. It was strange, saving someone, having someone come to love you by accident. He thought you were supposed to fall in love, not stumble into it. If Mukuro looked into the mirror more, maybe she would see, her smile, distant, and a little sad, was much brighter than his.

🧸

 

Komaeda and Makoto sat together in a classroom filled with empty desks. Apparently, this was where Makoto and Kirigiri used to sit and talk as their secret meeting place the first week of the killing game. Just sitting in a place where Kirigiri once sat, the idea made him feel…  
  
Well, if he had to describe the feeling it was “yellow.” 

That a husk like him just skin and bone with no internal components was walking around, and Kirigiri so vital and full of life was now buried away in a grave. God made a mistake.  
Even though Kirigiri was dead she was loved. Mukuro and Makoto both loved that corpse.  
Her skin.  
Her bones.  
That was all that was left of her and they turned it into something beautiful.   
Yellow. The color that skin turned when it was rotting after being left out in a few days.  
Bloated.  
Ugly.  
Yellow.  
Not a single person would love the yellow corpse he left behind. 

His yellow.  
Peeling.

Dry.  
Skin.  
Chipped nails.   
  
“Hey, you can sit down. You look kind of uncomfortable.”  
  
“Of course I would be uncomfortable, I’m a skeleton with an unnecessary layer of skin pulled over my bones.”  
  
“I don’t really get that but okay, if you’d rather stand that’s fine too.” Makoto sat in that desk easily, like he belonged there. He was really so great, even better at sitting than Komaeda. “Hey, are you listening? You’re kind of staring at your own hand.”  
  
So observant too!  
Komaeda buried his yellow hand in the pocket of his black jacket.  
With his robotic hand, he readjusted his glasses so Makoto in front of him would be less…  
Blurry.  
Indistinct.  
  
“Komaeda-kun, I want to learn more about you…”  
  
“Why?” Komaeda asked sharply.  
  
“I think we’re kind of similar.”  
  
Komaeda eyelids pulled into thin narrow slits. He thought he was like a child, staring wide eyed at an exceptional dream. That was how he compared hi relationship to hope. Except, he was narrowing his eyes in suspicion now unable to look at the light. With no light everything became blurry. The shapes of his iris, became messy, formless things.  
  
“I mean, we both just had to take a back seat and watch all the amazing people in our class. I can understand why you would get overwhelmed by that, and why you don't get along with your class so well…”  
  
The corner of his mouth tried to pull his lips into some kind of expression. His lips twitched but, his face was too numb to move. He should smile at Nagito’s kindness, he should bask in his warmth, but he could never feel the way he was supposed to feel. 

_You’re not my Hinata._

_You can’t pretend to understand me like he did._  
  
“Even though we’ve been hanging out for a whole month I don’t feel like we’re getting along any better. We don’t feel like a group of friends yet, so let’s fix that.” 

 _You’ve got it all wrong._ _  
_ _Saying it’s just a misunderstanding between us, how cute of you._ _  
_ _I just can’t become part of a group of people._  
He was not even a black sheep like Kumagawa.  
He was not a wolf wanting to get along with sheep like Mukuro.  
He was just a plain old white sheep that just did not fit in with the flock.

Makoto’s words were like the gentle way an adult would hold the hand of a child trying to guide them forward.  Komaeda had only the faintest memories of when his parents held his hand that way, if that ever happened at all. He did remember the SHSL therapist trying to guide him with those same words. 

 _Let’s fix that._ _  
_ _My brain is deteriorating._

“Umm, staring at the hand again.”  
  
“Oh, sorry.” He hadn’t even noticed.  
  
“If you’re trying to avoid saying something impolite it’s okay, I can take it. I mean I put up with Togami all the time, and even my own girlfriend chews me out with no mercy.” Makoto smiled at him, his teeth were pure white. Komaeda’s were yellow and chipped in comparison. “Let’s just treat this like we’re meeting for the first time.” 

Then, they were playing pretend?  
Like a game.  
Komaeda liked games. 

He could stand on a black, or white square. 

There were rules to games, unlike in reality.

Win or loss depended entirely on the intelligence of the player.  
Games like chess were the best, he disliked games where luck could interfere with strategy.  
The rules could never be broken, that way both players were safe.  
  
He stood, and Makoto sat in the classroom. He imagined they were both standing on a black and white tiled board, and the desks neatly organized around them were just pieces on the board. It was easier to see things that way.  
  
He put on a smile and played pretend, as if he really were meeting Makoto for the first time. “For you to be here, is it safe to assume you’re a fellow student? And if you are doesn’t mean that you have a wonderful ultimate talent of your own? Would you mind telling me what it is?”

Makoto got out of his desk to meet him. The way he stood on the ground, halfway between black and white. Sloppy. Pick a square to stand on with those dumb sneakers. “Well, I guess you could say I have one… I just so happened to win this annual lottery the school does. It’s supposed to make me the “Ultimate Luckster”, I guess.” 

“Eh…? You don’t say! What a coincidence! Truth be told, I’m an Ultimate Luckster myself!”  
  
Makoto closed his eyes, “I guess that makes you my Senpai.”  
  
“Say, how would you define the word lucky?”  
  
“Doesn’t it mean things don’t go your way? But bad luck follows me around so much I have a hard time imagining good luck.” 

“That’s vague, you’re being vague.” Like a ghost. Komaeda said, suddenly forgetting about the game. “You say I’m hard to understand, but you’re the one whose hard to understand in my eyes.”  
  
Komaeda did not understand anyone, really.  
But especially not him.  
  
“Oh, sorry.”  
  
“I mean, saying you’re unlucky because you trip and fall? Isn’t that just stuff that happens to everyone? You have a mother and father that loves you, a warm house, you eat three meals everyday.”  
  
“Yeah, but that’s like… what you said. That’s normal…” 

“Normal, huh?” He did not know the meaning of the word. He was about to say something mean. He should stop himself. “Do you think, Ikusaba-san considers you lucky to have been born with such a wonderful younger sister?” He didn’t. 

“Jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“Why are you saying sorry again? I’m not upset.”  
  
“Um…”  
  
“Or maybe I am upset? Did you read the mood? I've never been able to do that, you're a thoughtful one Naegi-kun."   
  
Komaeda, the moment someone said they wanted to understand him, got harder and harder to understand.  
It was a fool proof strategy.   
Even a fool like Naegi would fall for it.  
He was not doing it on purpose however, at least he thought so. 

“No, I think you’re the thoughtful one. You’re really smart just like Kirigiri.”

“Is that what you think?” Komaeda’s eyes wrinkled. As if they were sinking further into his skull. “I know I come off like a thoughtlessly cruel and unfeeling person, so I'm glad someone as perceptive as you could see I'm always overthinking things..."   
  
“I don’t think you come off that way at all-!”  
  
“I’m bored of talking about me though,” He was bored of this whole month. Boring, boring, boring. He should be happy that no one died, but the absence of despair did not necessarily mean hope. “Let’s talk about luck again. Does luck mean that little to you? It isn’t much of a talent, and it’s hideously defective power that can’t be controlled at will. Yet, I consider luck the ultimate power.”  
  
Komaeda shrugged, and said,“Sure, I’ve got somewhat mixed feelings about calling it a talent, and I still can’t believe someone as weak as a beetle like myself managed to become a student at Hope’s Peak. Part of me feels profoundly honored to be around students gifted with Ultimate Talents… while part feels like a fish out of water.”  
  
No he was someone far worse. He was a fish that could drown even in water, because his gills were defective. He pulled his hand out of his pocket, curling his finger forward like he was a shinigami pointing directly at Makoto’s heart.  
  
“That’s why… I want to serve as a stepping stone that brightens the hope of everyone Ultimate Talents, for the Ultimate Hope. Worthless trash can never become a valuable individual, no matter how hard they try. It doesn’t matter whether they make an effort or not, if you can’t win the rat race you’re nothing but worthless trash!! Right, wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
Makoto stared blankly forward. The looks he always got.  
When Makoto said _I want to be of use to everyone. I want to help everyone._  
They all gathered around him and cheered him on. 

When Komaeda said _I just want to be of use. Please, just let me be help someone._  
They always gave him that look.  
He thought they were saying the same thing, but he was not sure because he could not hear his own words when they came out of his mouth. Objectively he knew he was the one talking but…

“You don’t really believe that, do you Komaeda?” In Makoto’s eyes, a pitiful look. “Not anymore, right…?”  
  
But, he was sure he had said the things ‘Komaeda’ was supposed to say. He rambled about stepping stones, and trash, they were iconic to his character. That was what made him Komaeda. If he was unrecognizable as Komaeda, then who was he? 

If he was Makoto’s opposite. The shadow he was meant to step on, and walk all over. Then he still had a role to play.  
  
“You’re unique, you know that?”  
  
“Huh? You think so…? I don’t have anything that sets me apart from others, I’m as average as you can get… but I guess you could say my one gift is that I’m a little more optimistic than the average person.”  
  
Makoto’s optimism was a gift, his saving grace from god.  
Komaeda’s optimism was a curse that slowly poisoned him.   
  
Komaeda was truly humbled! This display of humility! What a wonderful person Makoto was! But… A sly smile played upon his lips. “That’s just like you, Naegi-kun. That’s so vague.”   
  
“Vague… I think just I'm just normal."   
  
“You know, Haruki Murakami-sensei once said that there’s no such thing as a normal person. That’s what you are to me, Naegi-kun. Vague. Indistinct. I’m right in front of you, trying real hard to grasp your essence and it’s like you’re not even there. Maybe, you’re an imaginary person.” Komaeda said, words suddenly fluidly coming out of his mouth his tongue flickering back and forth behind his tight lips.   
  
Yeah, because you're not vague at all Komaeda.   
Says the character so vague even the author has a difficult time understanding them.  
You know how they say some characters write themselves?  
Well this is different, the author has no idea what she's doing, and Komaeda has no idea what he's doing either.   
It's just a bunch of wild scribbles on a page. Total nonsense.   
  
“No, I’m pretty sure I’m real. You’re kind of talking like Saihara-kun did…” 

“Oh, do you know why he did that? Munakata-kun, and Saihara-kun. They both didn’t see you as a person. They just saw the hope inside of you. It was so impersonal. Are you lonely that most people only see you as the person you could become, rather than the person you are right now? I’d be lonely.” 

“N-no, they’re my friends," Makoto said, because he had them, unlike Komaeda.   
  
I don't mean to be mean to my own characters.  
Wait no, I mean exactly that.   
I want to torture them a little more.   
  
“Then I’m happy for you. You have such wonderful friends. To be counted among them would be my greatest honor.” Komaeda tilted his head back looking up. His hair fell in white curls down his face.   
  
“Komaeda-kun, yeah…” Makoto drifted, sounding a little lost. In Komaeda’s eyes he could see a heat haze. “I want to see the world the way you do. Please, let me.” 

 Is that what he wanted?   
What a wonderful thing to know what you want.

Komaeda only knew this.

His desires were probably repulsive.

The way he saw things was probably warped. 

 _You don’t want that._ _  
_ _From one glance you can tell I’m trapped within a sickening delusion._ _  
_ _That slowly eats away at everything I know in my head, until my head’s empty and rotted out._ _  
_ _Do you know what it’s like?_ _  
_ _Trying to enjoy a life that’s entirely empty._ _  
_ _It’s like eating a cake and tasting nothing in your mouth. So you keep eating until you vomit._ _  
_ _Sickening. Sickening. Sickening. Sickening. Sickening._

His smile like a fox hiding in the bushes, before a doe eyed boy. “Of course you would think that way. You’re so empathic after all. You care about other people’s feelings, that’s what’s so wonderful about you.”  
  
“You don’t have to keep praising me, it’s okay.”  
  
“It’s also what’s scary about you.”  
  
“Scary?”

 _“_ To me, empathy has always been a terrifying thing. The feelings of other people, are like sharp jagged edges, and my skin is no thicker than paper.”

Standing up Komaeda was so angular, jagged, as if he was composed only of edges. The only time he ever understood the boundaries between himself and other people was when he roughly slammed up against them. As if he was being asked to take a blind leap of faith, where the only thing waiting for him at the bottom of the cliff was rocks to dash himself against.  
  
“It’s nice to feel people’s joy, but it’s troublesome to feel their pain as well. It hurts and you don’t understand why. Also, most people don’t explain how they feel rationally. In fact, they act like irrational animals cornered, their pain just causes them to panic and spread more pain.”  
  
“The way you look at other people…” Makoto trailed off, not wanting to finish.   
  
“You must get hurt a lot. I can’t stand any pain at all, that’s why I don’t care about other people’s feelings or my own. It’s just my own weakness, I can’t handle them. I think it’s really strong to be an empathic person…”  
  
“…” Makoto remained silent.   
  
“But, it’s also dangerous," Komaeda suddenly changed the mood, as if on a whim. Good luck, bad luck, it was up to the whims of the gods. The indecipherable gods in Komaeda's mind.   
_  
_ “Wha? How is it dangerous? Wanting to help others is good, right?” 

Black and white.  
Komaeda stepped from a white space to a black space closing the distance between them.  
He curled his bony fingers around Makoto’s shoulder.  
  
“Does empathy necessarily mean you want to help other people? Isn’t it just like being auditory sensitive? Like, me for example I can’t stand loud noises so I have to distance myself from others. If you got close to others, you’d always be feeling their pain, it’d be impossible to understand. Therefore I think it’s natural that empathic people eventually try to close themselves off.” 

He looked at Makoto, but saw someone else standing there. A boy in a pitch black uniform. “Kumagawa-kun was like that, wasn’t he?”  
  
The ghost in the room between them. He was sure, Makoto was only talking to him because Kumagawa was not here. 

Day is night.  
Right is wrong.  
Love is all.  
Love is evil.  
Empathy is salvation.  
Empathy is a sickness of the mind.  
Naegi Makoto was kind.  
Naegi Makoto was sick in the head.  
As the pieces on the tiles flipped from white to black, he wondered what color they would land on. Oh, how fun.   
  
Makoto’s face became unmistakably sad. He was like an open book. Komaeda wished he were easy to read like a book, but if he opened himself all the pages would simply blow away in the breeze. “Kumagawa-kun, I feel like I didn’t understand him until the end. If only…”  
  
“Of course you didn’t. Because, you’re so vague.” He gave a light and cheeky smile, as if he was just teasing.  
  
“I don’t want to be vague. When Kumagawa-kun comes back, I’m going to be his friend, and I’ll be your friend too!” 

“Well you know, knowing and understanding are two different things. You can feel their pain, but that doesn’t mean you understand it. When people feel misunderstood, they’re lonely…”  
  
He knew that better than anyone else.   
  
“Th-then! How do I do that? Komaeda-kun you’re so smart always thinking of other people, I… I want to be more like you.”  
  
“Well, you’d have to face despair.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I already told you didn’t I? You can’t understand hope without knowing despair properly. Other people’s problems, their own despair, you have to face and understand that. Oh, but you’re too normal…”  
  
“What does despair have to do with hope though? Isn’t… isn’t that just venting? You can complain and moan, and cry all you want but that doesn’t save someone.”  
  
“I guess not, you’re right…” Komaeda tilted his head to the side bringing his hands up as he shrugged, as if his entire body was a set of scales that was off balance. “I wonder if you understoood Kirigiri-san’s pain, or Kumagawa-kun’s. Maybe… both of their deaths were suicides.”  
  
“No, they weren’t.”  
  
“You’re right. That would be meaningless. No other word means a greater despair. Kirigiri-san died… for you right? So you could carry on after her?”  Komaeda asked, as he looked Naegi up and down in front of him. 

 _Kirigiri told me that you were weak and indecisive._ _  
_ _That’s why I’m going to be a good Senpai.  
__That’s why I’m going to raise you right.  
_  
He felt a sense of vertigo like the world was spinning around him, but in the center of that dizzy world stood Naegi Makoto standing straight tall (or rather short) as ever. He was like the center of all things, if Naegi Makoto became the hero the story would have structure again.   
  
“She… She didn’t die for me either! Komaeda-kun, I don’t want to talk about this… it’s just sad.”  
  
“Then, you want Kirigiri-san’s death to be meaningless?” Komaeda asked, not letting Makoto escape his eyes. 

“Wha-no, I…” 

Before Komaeda could continue he was suddenly slapped on the back of the head as if he was being scolded. He felt the collar of his sweater grabbed as he turned around to see Mukuro. Oh, the other despair sister. Those were his only thoughts upon seeing her.  
  
“It’s not nice to bully your underclassmen.”   
  
Makoto immediately waved his hands in the air. “No, wait we were just talking. I told him he could say whatever he wanted, don’t worry Mukuro.”  
  
Mukuro let go at Makoto's request.   
  
"Hey, Ikusaba-san do you ever feel like Naegi-kun's neglecting you when he goes to save everyone else? Doesn't he feel kind of distant?"   
  
"You're the one who always falls for every boy that's nice to you for more than five seconds."  
  
"Now you're just being mean," Komaeda pouted. He would puff his cheeks out but his cheeks were too sharp and narrow to do that.   
  
“You know, I miss my green coat. I was always wearing it,  it was a sign way a poisonous snake slithers through the grass, has colorful scales. I always let others know my sign. From other guys, I kept my distance and…”

Makoto looked at Komaeda unfalteringly. “Please don’t call yourself a snake.”  
  
“If it makes you uncomfortable, I’ll try to avoid it.” Komaeda closed his eyes like a mischievous cat. 

“Your feelings are more important than mine.”  
  
“No, your feelings are more important than mine.”  
  
“Uhhh, this is no good.”  
  
“We’re walking all over each other.” 

Mukuro grabbed Makoto by the hand. “I’m splitting you dorks up.” She said bluntly as she started to pull him away. As she crossed shoulder to shoulder with Komaeda, she bumped into him on purpose and whispered in his ear. “I know what you’re trying to do, talking like Junko-chan won’t get you anywhere with Makoto.”  
  
“After all this time, you still think so similarly to your sister. It’s wonderful, the bond between siblings.”  
  
It was like one snake devouring another.  
Despair, and the other despair.  
If he was lucky they would both die. 

  
Komaeda waved Makoto away. “Consider this your homework from good luck senpai, next time we meet think real hard, is it good luck or bad luck?” 

 

🧸

  
_I’m such a hypocrite._ _  
_ _Truly the worst._ _  
_ _The lowest of all people._ _  
_ _I’m the one whose vague, after all, I don’t even know if hope is hope and despair is despair._ _  
_ _Not anymore._  
  
Komaeda chastised himself as he walked along, his hands in the pockets of his black jacket. 

 _Empathy could be an evil power as much as a good one._ _  
_ _It’s what Kumagawa uses to manipulate people._ _  
_ _If Makoto were more aware of himself, he could control it._ _  
_ _An uncontrollable power, like luck._ _  
_ _Sickening._ _  
_ _No, empathy isn’t sickening._ _  
_ _It’s me whose wrong, I’m just afraid of other people’s feelings._

Tired, Komaeda tapped on his own forehead. He sure was thinking a lot today, for a person with a dying brain. Beating himself like this was utterly pointless when he was not going to put any active effort to change himself. It was just venting, just gripes. He was carefully considering, how to make Makoto feel despair in order to strengthen his own hope. They could share pain and grief over Kirigiri’s death together. That could be his empathy.  
  
He was always so indirect. He wished he could have just cried over Kirigiri’s death. Then they would understand that he was sad too. The last month passed him by so fast, it was like a dream. _If only I was a person just content with watching this dream float by._  
  
He always had to meddle. He always had to interfere. He knew because Kirigiri told him that.  
It was like her ghost was still with him. Her words haunted him.  
But even if it was painful he could not give it up because it was all she left behind.  
It would be meaningless if he let her hopes that she entrusted him with go. 

『 _It’s okay if you told a lie. Just make it all up, and live a life that fits the lie you wore._ 』  
  
“Kumagawa-kun, go away you’re bothering me.” Komaeda said, pinching his brow. On top of his brain slowly rotting away and dealing with active hallucinations, it was time for his daily migraine now. Great.   
  
As Komaeda tried to walk down the stairs of the school building, the boy was like a faceless black haze following him. A black smog, that just happened to also have arms and legs. The only detail he could see of his face was his smile, like the rest had been smudged with black ink. 

『 _Noooo, I don’t wanna. I’m lonely._ 』

“That’s okay, I’ll be joining you soon.”  
  
Kumagawa turned around, holding Komaeda’s funeral portrait in his hands his face crossed out with a bloody x. Komaeda felt nothing at all, rather he did not deserve to feel anything. After all how many funeral portraits had he passed by that he did not even glance back at and try to look at the face of the person who had died.  
  
He could not even see Kumagawa’s face right now.  
The boy he claimed he once loved.  
He was so cold.

『 _Hey, you know when you die you have to go to a certain destination. Hey, do you wanna bet on which place you’ll end up, heaven or hell?_ 』  
  
“Well, um I… there’s nothing I can fix. I can’t count how many people died because of my talent.”

  
Komaeda stepped forward. From his pockets fluttered out several photographs. Not a single one of them even got a funeral portrait, they were just crossed out in bloody x’s. He did not even try to grab a single of the photos that blew away from him. He did not pick a single one off the ground and try to hold it in his arms.  
  
『 _There’s no need to be so depressing about it. It’s just a bet. You’ll ruin the fun. Come on, let’s play a yes or no quiz. Are you aware of your crime?_ 』  
  
“Yes.”

『 _Did you do harm by yourself?_ 』  
  
“Yes.”

『 _Do you blame anyone?_ 』  
  
“No.”

『 _Are you jealous of Naegi-kun?_ 』

  
“Yes.” 

『 _If you could switch places so he was the one who suffered only bad luck, and you only suffered good luck, would you?_ 』  
  
“I…”

『 _Is it better if you’re miserable and other people are happy?_ 』  
  
“Yes.”

『 _Do you hate that you’re miserable while other people are happy?_ 』  
  
“Yes.” 

『 _I think you’ll go to heaven, Komaeda-kun._ 』  
  
“What?”   
  
『 _You desire hell don’t you? You want to atone for your sins? Since when have you ever gotten what you want? Having flowers braided into your hair, spending every day with two happy go lucky friends, this school is so happy right now isn’t it? Isn’t that a far worse punishment?_ 』

Happiness.  
A punishment for people who never expected to be happy.  
Komaeda turned around to confront that Kumagawa that was shadowing him.   
  
“Kumagawa-kun, wouldn’t call me by anything other than Nagito-chan. Who are you?” 

『 _I’m your friend._ 』  
  
“No you’re not.”  
  
Arguing with your own delusion, such a sane thing to do. This sort of thing was supposed to happen at the climax of the novel, but he was so impatient. A regular old overachiever.  
  
『 _I’m a shinigami. I’m the only real companion you’ve had your entire life.. But, you didn’t notice me because I was invisible. It was lonely. You should come with me, I’m the only one whose ever been by your side after all._ 』  
  
Kumagawa reached out, with sharp red tipped acrylic nails.  
As if he had sewn Enoshima Junko’s hand onto his own.  
That was untrue however, because Komaeda did that.  
The shinigami reached his hands forward, and he felt it.  
Fingers slowly closing around his own heart.  
He felt a little bit sad.  
Kumagawa had his hands closed around his heart.  
They were closer than two people could ever be, but he felt no warmth at all. 

『 _You don’t want to be a stinky human anymore, do you?_ 』  
  
“Be quiet!!” 

Komaeda said, as he reached out to grab the hand in front of him. Of course, his fingers closed around empty air. 

“I don’t care if my brains are rotting, even if it’s as a zombie I’m still going to live.”

『 _Don’t you think heaven or hell is a cruel question? After all neither of them exist._ 』  
  
Kumagawa seemed to laugh at him.

"I don't... I don't want to die. I don't want to stop being me." 

『 _Nothing exists save an empty space - and you… And you are not you - you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought._ 』  
  
“The mysterious stranger…?”  
  
『 _Quoting literature to yourself, you sure are pretentious and self important for a nobody that no one's going to care about when he dies._ 』  
  
“I'm a mysterious stranger, huh...?” 

So vague.  
So indistinct.  
So uncertain.  
Always leaving a foot in the door.  
Strengthening his resolve like he was a person capable of something.  
Always having his regrets immediately afterwards, because he was capable of nothing. 

“Shut up. I’m not going to listen to a delusion. You are not him, Kumagawa can't even read.”  
  
Too much empathy was sickening.  
Not enough empathy made you a sick person.  
Komaeda wondered if he was ever going to find a middle ground in anything, ever.

  
He reached the bottom of the staircase, and finally looked to the dorms outside. The game was pointless, he already knew where he was going. Hell. He was going to visit Enoshima Junko’s dorm again. 

 

🧸

 

Earlier that day.  
  
Monokuma knocked frantically on Kokichi’s door.  
  
“Open up kids, it’s the cops!”  
  
“Oh no, it’s the cops! I regret every decision I’ve made up until this point that made me into such a naughty crime boy.”  
  
“Really!”  
  
“No, that was a lie.”   
  
“I can’t believe I keep falling for such a common set up and punch line!” With that Monokuma kicked the door open. “You’re under arrest, I know you’ve been keeping Kumagawa-kun’s body here!” 

“Oh, you can take it. Let me repent for my crime. I promise from now on I’ll turn on a new leaf. I’ll use my experience understanding the mind of a crimminal to become a master class detective.”  
  
“That sounds like the premise for at least five other television shows.”  
  
“Damnit! I thought I was unique! When did my life become such a cliche!?” Despite loathing Monokuma’s existence, Kokichi found he played off of him rather well. He walked over to the fridge where he had stuffed Monokuma’s body (stealing that fridge from the cafeteria) and opened the door only for nothing to come out. 

“...Eh? Where did he go?”   
  
Kokichi was genuinely surprised.  
  
When Komaeda walked into her dorm room, Junko greeted him with a girlish and cute smile.  
  
“Good news, Komaeda-senpai! I found Senpai!” Kumagawa’s corpse was draped over the couch. There was no rotting at all, and his skin still had color he looked like he was just taking a nap except for the crack in his skull. Junko had even gone to the trouble of bandaging him. Junko still wore the black jacket that he was usually always wearing. “Senpai’s playing so hard to get! Don’t you think it’s dreamy, when boys run away from you like little bunnies and you have to chase them?” 

Well.  
That was about what he expected.  
The only way for hope to get stronger was to confront despair.  
If he could not look at himself because he despised his own ugliness.  
Then he could keep looking at Enoshima Junko, someone who it was okay to hate. 

“I can’t tell if you’re faking just to mess with me, or if you’re genuinely this insane," Komaeda was tired already.  
  
“Oh samesies. I don’t even know if I’m doing this for the sake of despair. I was just like, oh hey free body. Mine now," Enoshima Junko said, as energetic as ever. 

Enoshima Junko.  
Treated Kumagawa Misogi like he belonged to her.  
_Sickening._  
He had to live every day so sick of himself.  
Yet this shameless women did whatever she wanted.  
She was as much of a yellow corpse as he was, then why dance around like she was alive?   
  
“He’s not yours.” Komaeda grabbed the hand of Kumagawa’s dead body, and jerked it away from her. Protectively, he wrapped his hands around Kumagawa’s dead body and used his back to shield him. What he should have done such a long time ago. He did not want to think about how easy it was for him to grab onto a corpse like he was nothing. “Enoshima-san, stop it. Even I think you’re being creepy, and that’s saying something.”  
  
“Aren’t you being a little too self aware? Don’t you know, if you’re aware of it, it will break.”  
  
“Don’t talk to me in metaphor," Komaeda grumbled.   
  
“Oh, why not? I was hoping we’d get all poetic and shit. You’re the one who likes beauty so much,” Enoshima Junko struck a pose as she was lying there. Life was so artistic.   
  
“I really despise you, so much so that it hurts," Komaeda clutched at his chest.   
  
“Yeah, whatever, keep on saying that you broken record. You’re the one who keeps barging into my room," Enoshima Junko waved him off. His feelings did not get through to her. "Even if you hate me I'm still pretty indifferent to you. Ya boring."   
  
"Unrequited hate is so awkward," Komaeda said, feeling down about the sudden rejection. 

Over the past month, Junko had mostly ignored the outside world to work on her secret project. Komaeda was right if he left her alone he would not even have to see her. The only thing Junko had done besides create a cult (that he was currently a member of) was smash one of the monokubs with a hammer when nobody was looking. At the moment she had an electrical saw lying on the ground, and the Monokubs severed head with its mechanical guts leaking out on the floor in front of her. It looked like the perfect recreation of one of Soda’s talents. 

“You bitch… Losing all hope, and despairing for all hope. I’ll never forgive you for obsessing so much over such depraved despair," Komaeda was getting worked up again, as he pushed Junko away when she tried to get Kumagawa's body back. he did not think he was doing anything noble, they were just fighting like children.   
  
“Oh no, Komaeda-senpai won’t forgive me. Whatever will I do.” Junko giggled. It was really hard to get her to take these conversations seriously. Even though Komaeda and her both based their entire lives around hope and despair. She was just disinterested in everything now, even despair.  
  
  
“I’ll never forgive you for choosing despair over Kumagawa-kun either. That’s why I won’t let you have him," Komaeda hugged the body protectively again. 

 “Huh? No, he’s mine.” Junko tilted her head, confused.  
  
The two of them were both children. They could fight over the same toy until it broke but it hardly mattered. They still had to put all their toys away at night, and they were left alone. 

Junko reached past him easily, she took Kumagawa’s hand gingerly between her fingers. Komaeda never knew that she could hold something so softly, with those sharp red nails of hers. “Hey, I just noticed you and I are both missing a hand. I wonder whose fault that is. Maybe, I could saw off his hand and replace it with my own. Then I’d be able to hold Senpai’s hand again.” She brought his hand to her face, and rested her face against his hand. As if Kumagawa was caressing her face even after death.  
  
“You…”  
  
“I could pull out his eye too, then place it in my socket. That way, I’d be able to see the world the way Senpai does.”  
  
“You are…”  
  
“It makes me happy, the idea that I could be a part of Senpai’s life, because his life is so interesting. He has so many emotions, if only I could feel them as my own. If he was a part of me…” Junko cupped her hand in her face, the blood rushing to her cheeks. She looked like a teenage girl in love, gushing. She looked like she was about to explode. 

“You’re so fucked up.” 

 “Using an evangelion quote against me, how rude.” Junko’s mood changed, as she made a sour face. Komaeda had no idea if she was just changing her mind on a dime like normal because it was interesting, or if she was just genuinely in a bad mood. “So are you.”  
  
“I can’t tell if you’re mocking me or not.”  
  
“Am I? Am I not? It’s meant to be read as ambiguous, methinks," Junko shrugged. Interest plumetting fast.   
  
50%.  
40%.  
30%  
20%  
10%  
0%.   
  
Yeah, now she just looked at Komaeda the same way she looked at a beetle. He was calling himself a beetle earlier, but he took it offensively. 

Komaeda remembered it visibly when Enoshima Junko threw herself off the balcony and tried to drown in the river with Kumagawa like that one author in a lover’s suicide. When he saw her soaking wet body, covered in a white sheet Komaeda felt jealous.  
  
Even comatose and barely alive, she looked more beautiful than he ever would.  
They were the same type of person.  
They played with toys.  
They both just wanted to keep the feeling, the beating of that heart, by their side.  
They both thought love and lies were things they would rather throw away.  
They both would tear the flesh away from happy days on purpose.  
Because they were unable to enjoy them.  
Enoshima Junko, died with someone right by her side.  
Kumagawa was kind enough to follow her into death.  
The kind of death that he would never have.  
  
Weren’t they both looking for the same thing?  
Worth, worth, worth, worth, worth, worth, worth.  
Defending worth.  
In hope, and in despair.  
  
He remembered how vividly it made him nauseous. That familiar feeling of vertigo. Enoshima Junko looked like a fallen angel out of heaven peacefully resting there. Fallen angels were just devils. It was like heaven and hell had swapped places. They were all inverting and bending.  
  
He wished it had been him. He wanted to smash his head against the bottom of that river. How nice it’d be just to smash to bits that sickened yellow. He was just like her after all. So close. He could become her. The person he loved and hated the most (himself) he knew her the best (her).  
  
He was no good to anybody as hope after all. Hope sounded disgusting when it came out of his mouth. Nobody listened to him. Perhaps, he could finally be useful to other people, even if it was despair, an enemy to conquer. He reached forward to take her hand, and the moment Kamukura looked away from him he picked a buzz saw off the ground and severed it at the wrist.  
  
As he sewed the wrist up to his own, he only said this.  
  
“How lucky of me. I’ve found a perfect fit on the first try.” 

Komaeda returned to the present moment. Oh, Junko just triggered a bad memory on purpose. How mean of her. “Why do you like Kumagawa-senpai that much anyway?” He asked that question of her before, no more like he demanded an answer. _Why him, and not me?_ He really was like a spoiled child, expecting nothing, expecting everything. 

“When I’m around him, I feel like I can become a human being, at least that’s how he sees me," Junko was being strangely honest. No, it was not strange at all. As she curled her body up like a pining maiden he realized. She just did not care what he thought about her feelings at all. That was why she could be honest. Komaeda was just a flower she could pluck the petals off of.   
  
_Loves me?  
Loves me not? _

She would just pluck, and pluck his white petals away until she lost interest. Then she would throw him away. That was the extent of all she would ever feel for him. Yet, there was one person even this careless girl was capable of caring about. Komaeda sneered at her. “What an unhealthy obsession. You know, he can’t make you into a human or not in the end. You can’t change a single thing about yourself by loving someone else, it’s just a nice thing to have.”  
  
“I guess you would know about unhealthy obsessions," Junko said back in a dreamy voice, like she was not even paying attention.   
  
“His empathy has brainwashed you. I guess, Kumagawa-kun of all people would dirty such a beautiful emotion of human understanding that way.”   
  
“Empathy is just brainwashing? You’re such an optimist, Senpai! When I heard your words, I can smile and look forward to the future," Junko said, petty.   
  
“Please don’t do that. Die for the sake of hope already, so someone like you who should have never even been born can die in death at least," Komaeda said, competing to see who could be more petty.   
  
“Naegi-kun has empathy and understands people naturally, and you struggle to understand people so you’re a bad person. Is that what you think? I guess empathy is like talent you’re either born with it or you’re not," Enoshima Junko decided to end the conversation there. 

That’s like saying.  
Either you’re born with talent or your not.  
Either you’re born a somebody or you’re not.  
Either you’re born human or you’re no longer human.  
Also, it pissed him off that Junko could deduce that he had been talking to Naegi just from his bad attitude and a few hints from the conversation. Stupid big boobed sherlock holmes. 

 Enoshima Junko’s fingers found her way to her chest. She managed to find where her heart was beating, underneath those huge boobs of her. “When I was next to him. I always thought. If I had a heart, which I don’t, it’d be racing in excitement,"  Junko did not even look like she acknowledged Komaeda was in the room anymore. She was talking to some far off place, as if she was looking into a dream. 

Komaeda let Kumagawa’s body fall away to the side. He had the feeling, that she was just telling a sick joke, Junko did not actually have it in her to desecrate Kumagawa’s body. What a joke. She was like a doll whose heart had fallen out, who only gave a damn about one person. And it was Kumagawa of all people.  
  
He leaned against Junko’s back, as the two of them sat on the floor back to back. Surprisingly, she did not push him away. “Kumagawa’s body doesn’t feel warm at all even when I hold it.”   
  
“Yeah…”  
  
“Why do I keep coming to talk to you?” Komaeda asked. Komaeda did not know.  
  
Enoshima was smarter than him at least. “It’s probably just venting…”   
  
They both must have liked it, being in such a terrible, foul, despair ridden move. Komaeda always put so much effort in just to tread water and barely break the surface, he sometimes idly wondered what it would be like to drown. 

_Don't laugh at me.  
I'm serious for once.   
I've been watching good luck and bad luck all my life.  
So I know better than anyone.   
Meeting you truly was.  
The worst.  
"Bad luck."  _

 

🧸

 

Makoto felt unsure the moment he walked away from Komaeda. It felt different from when Shuichi just talked at him and lectured him, or when Munakata had tried to ‘train him’ into becoming a proper student council president.  
  
Komaeda genuinely was trying to connect in his own way. That was why he just felt bad for not being able to understand him. If Kumagawa was here, he would better be able to understand people’s misery than a happy go lucky guy like him. Komaeda must feel so alone, and yet these hands could not reach them.  
  
As he was walking in a confusion with Mukuro walking in front of him, suddenly he bumped into Togami by mistakes rubbing shoulders against him. Togami looked to be in a particularly bad mood, on what Makoto called the Togami grumpiness scale.  
  
Togami was never in a good mood, so the Togami Grumpiness scale was all grump no smiles.  
  
“Are you going to apologize? For getting your commoner filth on my jacket.” Togami said, dusting off his shoulder.  
  
“Togami-kun, what’s wrong? It’s like you’re trying extra hard to sound proud and standoffish today.”  
  
Makoto reached forward to put a hand on Togami’s shoulder. Quick, decisive, unflinchingly Togami slapped his hand away. Underneath his glasses Komaeda’s eyes were not just cold, he felt like he would get an iceburn on his skin just from being looked at too long. 

“Don’t touch me…”  
  
“Hey, I just wanted to know what’s wrong. Togami-kun, we’ve been friends for over two years now, there’s no need to play these games with each other.” He cared about Togami. He told him, so, so much. All this time he was convinced Togami cared in his own way he was just bad at showing it. 

“Whoever said we were friends. That’s just something you assumed on your own. If anything, you were the one who was playing games, pretending the whole class got along and we were all having fun together. Even though you were just one of the unwashed masses you could pretend like you belonged with us there too.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“But you must have known, one day we would all leave you behind.”  
  
“Togami-kun, you don’t always have to say such mean things. I know in the past you didn’t have anyone to trust, but I’ve never done anything to hurt you. You could rely on me a little by now.”  
  
“You’ll kill me," Togami said, there was fear in his eyes.   
  
“I would never-”

“Your ability to understand other people’s feelings. The way you weight them far more over your own. It’s dangerous. Yeah, yeah, I would have died. If I was like you, someone who was capable of caring for others, if I hesitated for even a moment my own family would have killed me," Togami remembered. The hands.   
  
Strangled.  
By the hands of his own sibling.  
His own flesh and blood.  
His own hands were strangling him.  
That was why he needed to destroy himself and become an unfeeling. 

And this idiot was telling him to just go back.

To smile like everybody else.  
  
“Togami-kun, just take a breath you’re freaking out. You know I didn’t mean to make you feel that way-”   
  
“Just leave me alone.” Togami quickly rushed away down the hallway. That did not sound like an order the ones Togami usually gave, he sounded like he was begging for his life. “Perhaps you’re lucky, because you have a trained dog like Mukuro to borrow strength from but I’m not so fortunate as you are.”  
  
Makoto realized in that moment staring at his hand that was not even able to grab on Togami before he left, that talking to Togami felt similar to talking to Komaeda. There was a person in front of him, he was unable to even grasp at, even though he thought they were supposed to be similiar. Even if he just wanted to get along and be friends he just could not hold onto them.  
  
Mukuro realized Makoto was in an off mood, and grabbed him by the hand once more and pulled him forward. The two of them disappeared into Mukuro’s dorm together.  
  
He felt.  
Her hand deftly reaching underneath the collar of his shirt.  
A spread palm on his chest.  
It felt nice of course, along with Mukuro’s warm breath at his neck. 

“Hey Mukuro, wait. I want to talk about my feelings," Makoto's words came spilling out of him all at once. 

Mukuro giggled softly. The way she only giggled when she was with him. “You have so many of them.”  
  
Makoto fell back on the bed, listless and lost, but Mukuro was there with him.He thought about what he wanted to ask. “Hey, about Junko, if she’s your twin sister and you were raised in the same house how did she end up with such a dirty mind?”  
  
“Dirty mind? Junko-chan? Only family is allowed to insult family you know.”  
  
“Are you saying that she doesn’t? Doesn’t she seem more like, an erotic character, than a mastermind character?”

In other words Junko was just a trashy girl.  
  
“Really? Isn’t that just the way she seems from a male perspective. Junko-chan’s just true to her desires, ntohing more. That’s what Kumagawa-kun always said.”  
  
“I suppose he would know because he’s part of your family too.”  
  
“Personally, I can’t overlook the fact that you’re judging my younger sister as the trashy one, and me as the pure one.”  
  
“If you can’t overlook it what are you going to do?”  
  
“What am I going to do?” Mukuro’s blank face looked genuienly curious. She started to lean towards him. “I’m going to shake the foundations of your inner judgement and standards, your inner values Makoto. That way even Enoshima Junko-chan will appear to be a pure hearted girl to you.” 

 _It’s what you get for suddenly bringing up my sister when we’re lying in bed together._  
She leaned into his ear whispering all sorts of dirty things.  
That made his hair antennae stand up on end!

She must have gotten this from her brother Kumagawa.  
He was such a bad influence. 

“Hey, Mukuro, what am I to you?”   
  
“You’re kind, you’re cute, and you’ll always come to my rescue in trouble like a prince. You’ll save someone who doesn’t even deserve it like me.”  
  
“You answered that so quickly! And hey, I think you deserve it!” 

“You’re so cute when you say that.”  
  
She started pinching his cheek. Hey, just because he was short did not mean it was okay to treat him like a kid. They were in an adult relationship. They were about to do adult things. Before he ruined the mood.  
  
She was not taking him seriously. That was fine. He wondered how much he took seriously. _You’re just a halfass._ He still remembered those words Kumagawa said to him a long time ago. Perhaps Komaeda had a point, if he took things as seriously as Kumagawa and Komaeda did he would only end up hurting himself the way they did.   
  
He remembered what Togami said. _We were all going to leave you behind someday._ That was silly, it was not like he was being nice to his friends to earn favor, to earn their love, their place among them.  
  
Because he already knew.  
He already knew all of them had left him behind a long time ago.  
It was not even a race, because he tripped at the starting line.  
Is that what Komaeda felt too?  
Now that he thought about it, they both saw talented and untalented.  
Even if Makoto wanted to see them as people, he thought he was too different from them. 

 _I don’t think I’m as strong as either of them._ _  
_ _All of my strength comes from other people._ _  
_ _I’m worthless without them._ _  
_ _If I was alone like either of them, I would probably just give up._  
  
“Do you think I’m lucky?”   
  
“Well, it’s lucky to have two doting parents who are in love, a kind younger sister who you can tease and squabble with, and to have such good friends.”  
  
“I never really thought about any of that as lucky."   
  
He wished he could just share a little bit of his normal life with Mukuro. There was something in the way. Enoshima Junko. Mukuro felt obligated to choose that family of hers over and over again.

Empathy.  
Maybe the only result of this was that he let people walk all over him.  
He felt everyone’s emotions as his own, so he kind of treated everyone the same.  
He was just an empathy idiot. Not thinking too hard about it.  
Zenkichi was empathic too, but it was only hurting him.  
He was getting worn out by how much people kept taking advantage of his sympathy.  
Zenkichi too, was trying to save everyone.  
He wondered if Mukuro needed to be saved, he would be able to choose her over someone else. She did not have a family that valued her as someone important, or special, so she deserved that at least.  
  
When Komaeda was talking, Makoto had started to panic and stop him.  
He was scared.  
He intuited, Komaeda might ask him.  
_If you could have let Mukuro die instead of Kirigiri, would you have let it happen?_ _  
_ _After all, Kirigiri’s hope is much more useful than a washout despair sister._

If he was ever forced to choose like that he would split in two.  
Black and white.  
But he did want to be able to choose someone.  
He wanted to choose Mukuro.  
She deserved to be chosen by someone. 

Mukuro poked his forehead. “You make such a stupidly cute face when you’re thinking.”  
  
“Hey, hey, go easy on a guy for once.”  
  
“I said it was cute.”  
  
“Really, I heard stupid.” Makoto looked at her with a flat expression. “Hey, Mukuro do you want our relationship to change?”  
  
“Huh? Are you dumping me?”  
  
“No, why would you immediately jump to that?”  
  
“If you’ve found a much better partner, I’ll be happy for you.”  
  
“No! That’s not what I said at all! Quit it I can only take so much of you beating yourself up, you’re beating up the person I love you know.”  
  
“Oh…” Mukuro covered her hand with her face. She was shyly hiding a blushing face. She was such a maiden. That was probably why their relationship was peaceful, as opposed to Kumagawa and Junko’s chaotic mess. 

But perhaps some of that conflict was good for them. “I like you, you know. There’s not a single part of you I dislike. Th-that’s why I want everything from you?”  
  
“H-huh?”  
  
“L-like, to become a real family. The two of us, and Komaru. You should just become a part of our family. You don’t need to keep calling yourself Junko’s sister, I hate when you do that.” 

He remembered, how Komaeda told him he did not understand broken people. He could not understand a person like Kumagawa. If they were alone he wanted to understand them. If he got hurt, if he broke in the process, that was fine. He mattered less after all.  
  
How many times had he watched Kumagawa always throw himself at people trying to get closer, while Makoto just cowered away like a shy boy. Kumagawa chased after people, and Makoto just waited patiently for them to come to him.  
  
Komaeda and him were similar.  
Neither of them could ever be as bold as Kumagawa.  
  
“Mukuro, start telling me about your past again.”  
  
“That’s just… venting. It doesn’t change a thing. I feel bad, you sympathizing with me when I hurt so many people. ”  
  
“Yeah, but still I want to hear it.” 

 _Don’t laugh at me._ _  
_ _I’m serious about this._ _  
_ _Good luck, or bad luck I still don’t know._ _  
_ _But meeting you…  
__It was my ‘Good Luck’._


	37. Wicked and Sick

Korekiyo hated waking up in the morning.    
He wished he could sleep with his mask on. That way first thing in the morning, he would not have to be confronted with the image of his own face looking back at him in the mirror. Despite the fact he had only been living in this room for little more than a month, his room already looked worn down and antiquated.    
  
There were cobwebs and dust, his messy notes on his observations of others were left everywhere, the mirror had a large crack running through it. In other words his room did not like a room that had been lived in. It had more in common with a tomb then a boy’s room.    
  
That was exactly what he was used to, the only place he had called home was decrepit like this. After all once his sister fell sick all of the household chores fell on a useless little boy who could only cling to his sister’s side and cry. He rather liked the smell of death, because it reminded him of his sister.    
  
Korekiyo had one more slightly more personal reason for letting things fall into ruin around him without so much as batting an eye. When he was younger, he did everything he could to take care of his sister’s needs. He saw no purpose in doing anything for himself, or trying to take care of himself. If he were to slowly waste away, that would quicken his meeting with his sister in the afterlife. 

  
He would not even have put so much effort into waking up, and taking care of his face in the morning if it did not resemble his sister’s face so much. His sister once praised his looks 

because of how feminine they were.  _ You could tell even from afar that we’re siblings. You’re lucky you inherited your sisters good looks.  _ He only took care of his face in the morning because it was another way he could remember his connection to his sister.    
  
He liked his eyes. His sister even complimented them once.  _ Those eyes of yours are so pretty, just like mine.  _ They were the same shape and color as hers.  When he looked in the mirror, as broken as it was, it looked like his sister was looking back at him. That was why he covered all the other parts of his face but exposed his eyes.    
  
He really hated the first time he caught himself in the mirror in the morning. When his face was not being covered up, it was obvious how different a person he was from his sister. His face, inferior. A face only his kind sister could love. He was doing everyone else a favor by concealing it.    
  
His morning routine was a hassle as well. Sometimes he thought it was pointless, putting effort into a body that would never be as beautiful as his sister. However, whenever his sister was healthy she got so much enjoyment out of dressing him up in all different sorts of outfits. If he stayed silent and let her treat him like a doll, he would get a small glimpse of one of her rare smiles. Sister would never be able to dress herself up in a carefree way like this, so he wanted to enjoy it in her place. 

As he started with his long dark hair, tinted green, he remembered how his sister forbid him from cutting his hair short. He was not sure he liked maintaining such long hair, but his sister told him they would look even more alike if he grew it out.    
  
It took over an hour to put on his custom-made uniform and all the layers in the morning. He had to look at his ugly body in the mirror for an hour, but his sister explained why he had to wear such clothes a long time ago. 

 

_ You have to hide it. _ _   
_ _ Or they’ll all see. _ _   
_ _ Your dark side. _ _   
_ _ How bruised and blackened your skin is.  _ _   
_ _ People don’t love sick children like us, Korekiyo.  _ _   
_ _ They’re terrified of them.  _

 

Korekiyo saw his bare skin in the mirror and immediately understood his sister’s warning. His sister’s skin was soft and flawless. The sweat from her sickness caused her skin to glow with radiance. His skin was blemished, and ruined. His flaws were apparent all over his body. He had a particularly large scar that wrapped around his arm that looked like a thorny vine. Across his chest there were several rope burns. Parts of his skin had become discolored from repeated bruising. There were marks on his neck that looked like he had been deeply scratched.    
  
He had another reason for hiding his bruises. Not just because his sister told him to. When he was younger, if the adults discovered all the bruises that kept appearing on his body he would have been taken away from his sister. Then, his sister who did not have another friend in this world would be left all alone. He had learned to always wear a mask concealing himself, because he had no identity more important than being sister’s younger brother. 

 

When he had pulled his pants on, his undershirt, and finished fastening all the various belts as well as fixing his hair suddenly he was struck by a pain in his chest. His body lurched forward. His reflection in the mirror changed. He saw the faceless ghost of his sister staring back at him. She looked exactly like she had when he found her as a corpse, covered in the pink of her own blood. He remembered how red her lips looked because of the makeup she was wearing. It was the only part of her that looked alive. 

 

_ “Korekiyo dear, you can’t do anything by yourself. Let your sister help you.”  _ She used his mouth to speak, and gently he felt the phantom touch of his sister’s hands wrapping around his own, and urging his hand to move forward. His fingers moved as if controlled by a puppeteer, and he dipped it in red and smeared the paint across his lips.  _ “Everyone is so cruel to you, my sweet Korekiyo. They’re always telling me how ugly you are, and how we can’t possibly be siblings. But your sister sees how beautiful you are.Your sister sees how alike we are.” _

 

He felt his sister’s hands wrap around his neck again. Not just one pair of hands but several. They pulled his jacket over his shoulders and did up the buttons from him. They tugged on his hands to urge him to pull the mask around his neck over his face. He felt his sister’s hand reaches for the zipper and pull it tight over his lips. 

 

_ “That’s because your sister is the one who understands you the best. They can’t see you like I do. So don’t even let anybody else see, unless you think your sister would approve of them.”  _

 

As long as he kept those words in his heart he could remember his sister. Even if they were just painful, that pain reminded him of his sister. A painful connection, a thorned vine wrapped around his heart that only tightened and tightened hurting him more the closer he tried to get, was still better than no connection at all. If he was not his sister’s brother than he was no one.    
  
He already knew everyone else hated him. He was creepy, his sister told him so. He could observe other humans but he had no idea how to act when he was close to them. The only reason he always kept such a stoic calm, was because he did not know how to show his emotions. He just acted like he felt nothing at all. When the emotions he tried to bury came back, he always panicked in a way that made others scared of him. 

  
His sister loved him in spite of all of this. Even if he had no one else in this world, he could continue living on with just the memory that his sister had loved him. His sister’s love would always be with him. If his heart got lost in a maze of thorns, that was for the best. He did not need a heart for anything other than returning his sister’s love. 

 

He wrapped his hands around his own body. His eyes fell shut slowly. He tried to imagine that these were his sister’s hands wrapped around him. She was embracing him the way she never could in life.    
  


“Kiyo, your skin is so pretty. It’s a shame you hide so much of yourself away.”   
  
He heard a voice behind him. Suddenly, his sister’s bloody face was no longer watched him in the mirror. It was the plain freckled face of the raven haired girl who made sister angry the other day with her false accusations.    
  
“What are you doing here?”    
  
Ikusaba Mukuro put her hands over her mouth. She spoke without thinking. After taking a moment to gather herself, she tried to explain. “I wanted to talk to you again, but I didn’t know when you would be alone so I just sort of broke into your dorm.” 

  
Korekiyo stared flatly at her. “I understand human observation is important, but even I, who has no grasp of social boundaries think you’ve crossed a line.”    
  
He realized then.

His eyes widened showing all the emotions he tried to conceal by wearing that mask.    
She had seen.   
She saw what he tried so desperately to hide, bruises, scars, his darkness.    
She saw what a pitiful child he was.   
A child frozen since the moment his sister died.    
  
He wrapped his arms around himself even harder, as if he was trying to conceal his naked body. “Y-you cannot tell anyone. Not a single soul can know.”    
  
“Sure, but in exchange, tell me more about your sister”   
  
“You wish to coerce me into doing your bidding.” 

 

Mukuro tilted her head to the side. “Well, of course. That’s how blackmail works. I’m not someone who can save others like Makoto, all I know how to do is make them face despair.” Mukuro crossed her legs as she sat down on a bare wooden chair. She figured this was how her haughty-ass-thinks-she’s-the-queen-of-the-world would recline in an empty throne.    
  
“Sister would not approve of me talking with you.” 

  
“Your sister isn’t here,” Mukuro answered bluntly. “I don’t care what she thinks frankly, the one I’m talking to is you Korekiyo.”    
  
Korekiyo’s pale yellow eyes, suddenly showed some flickers of life. He turned around leaving his green jacket and hat still on the dresser as he leaned back against it, crossing his arms to close himself off. “Fine. I will clear up the misunderstanding you have about my sister. Even though an ungrateful whelp like you could never appreciate her.” 

  
He explained again from the start. He tried to convey as best as he could, even though his sister told him he was bad at talking to others, and better off silent he tried his best to make her understand. His sister was sick. She was lonely because she could not go out to play with the others. All the two of them needed in the world was each other. His sister was always sick, and always in pain, and so he tried his best to make her happy.    
  
“What about your happiness, Kiyo?” 

 

“Huh…?”   
  
“Were you happy being with your sister?”

 

“I… Sister’s happiness is my happiness.”   
  
“Then, was your sister happy to have you around?”   
  
“She… It was not her fault. She was miserable with sickness, and I could not give her a single thing she needed.” 

  
“But, what about your needs Kiyo?”   
  
“M-my?”    
  
“You say your a failure because you failed to take care of your sister, but did your sister once try to take care of your needs? Doesn’t that make her a failure of a sibling too?” 

 

Korekiyo saw his sister’s hand appear in the mirror once more. As she dragged it down from the other side of the cracked mirror, it left a bloody streak following from her handprint. She disappeared. Sister was so displeased that she refused to show her face to him anymore. “Sister was sick. Of course she had to take care of herself. She was always in pain and she needed- And I…”    
  
“It’s okay for your sister to think of herself, and be needy, but you’re not allowed to need anything.” 

 

“N-no, I wanted to help her. I wanted to put my needs aside so I could be of help to her,” No matter how hard he tried Korekiyo could not stop his voice from shaking.    
  
“That’s right Kiyo-chan, all you ever did was try to help her. You genuinely loved your sister and only wanted the best for you. And you were punished. She punished you, just for loving her.”    
  
“It’s because I failed her. No matter how I tried to help her, I always failed.” 

 

“No, Kiyo-chan. It’s not that you always failed. It’s that whether you succeeded or failed, you were always punished. So you started to think everything you did was a failure,” Mukuro was persitent.   
  
“I’m a disappointment, compared to my wonderful sister. It’s no surprise I would fail her again and again.”

 

“No part of you would have ever been good enough. It’s like she was angry at you for existing. She just hated every reminder that you were your own person separate from her,” Mukuro did not look at Korekiyo at all as she said those words. She looked bashfully away as if she was ashamed.    
  
Korekiyo reached forward and clutched his face. Every morning he changed the bandages wrapped around his fingers. He imagined, his sister’s hands pulled over his face. They covered his ears. They covered his eyes. They covered his mouth. He would not have to see this girl who insulted his sister. He would not have to hear this girl that insulted his sister. He would not have to speak to this girl who insulted his sister.    
  
“Of course sister was angry with me. She was sick, and I was healthy. All she wanted to do was go outside and play with the other children, she just wanted to make some friends, but she was stuck in the same room with her loathsome brother all day. No wonder I became an eyesore to her!” 

 

“It’s not your fault your sister was sick, and you were healthy. You did not choose that.”    
  
“It would have been better if I was the one who was sick. If I could have switched places with her, I would in a heartbeat.” 

 

“Your sister did choose to hurt you,” Mukuro said, unflinching.. Even as sick as she was, even limited to one room his sister still had choies. The same way even though her sister hit, kicked and constantly threatened to murder her Mukuro knew that she had chosen to kill for her sister’s sake. “She must have known, even if she controlled you, even if she hit you, that would not do a single thing to cure her sick mind so why did she do it? It’s so damn pointless, how despairing.” 

  
His sister just shared her misery with him. Even though that did not make her feel any better. She just made two miserable people instead of one. He knew, he knew, he knew, but… if that was the only way his sister could connect with him than he would accept it. Sister would be all alone otherwise.    
  
“Liar!” Korekiyo’s body lurched forward, his spine curling. “Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar, liar! I will not acknowledge your allegations. Not a single one of them. I will only acknowledge facts, true events. I won’t acknowledge fiction.” 

 

“Kiyo-chan.”    
  


He stumbled over to his desk and reached for the jacket he had left on it. As his hand groped around he knocked an old book to the floor. Mukuro picked it up and read the handwriting on the inside pages. 

  
Mukuro picked it up. Curious, she paged through it. The handwriting looked like a girl’s, and the pages were yellowed and worn.  _ Dear Diary, one day I’m going to begin my trip around the world. I want to go to Paris, France and fall in love. The world is filled with so many different human beings. I want to encounter all of them. As soon as I get better there’s a world waiting for me outside of this room.  _ _   
_ _   
_ “When I found my sister’s body, I found her diary along with it. My sister wrote out her entire future in those diary pages she dated years in advance. She only wanted to live. She didn’t get to see the world outside her room because she died.”    
  
Mukuro tilted her head again as if confused. A brother’s beautiful feelings of grief, a girl’s dreams of the future. Whatever, like she cared about things like that. Despair threw all of that into disarray. Make plans for the future and the devil will laugh at you. If Kumagawa was here, she was sure he would laugh at such a beautiful tragedy. “What does any of that have to do with you?”    
  
“It would have been better if my sister lived, and I was the sickly one. That’s why… I have to fix things. I have to see the world my sister could not see. I have to become my sister.” His whole body shuddered as he made that declaration. She knew he was speaking from the heart, the same heart that his sister had her cold dead fingers wrapped around. 

  
Mukuro’s face did not react at all, the look in her eyes could only be described as disinterested. “How lame.” That was all she had to say in the face of his resolve. She took a step forward to close the distance between them to reach out and touch his face.   
  
Korekiyo knew that human beings touched each other as a part of communication.    
Contact was necessary.    
If you did not touch others, soon you would forget your own form.    
He slapped her hand out of the air. He wanted to disappear and be replaced by his sister.    
  
Two fingers curled and pulled down his mask.  _ “You cannot touch my Korekiyo without my permission. I won’t let you harm him without my permission. I will protect him.”  _   
  
“You’re the one who hurt him,” Mukuro said her dull eyes not changing. She suddenly moved faster than Korekiyo could catch with his eyes and grabbed him by the mouth her thumb slipping into the inside of his cheek. As she held his face, he was unable to pull his mask back on. “I want to talk to Kiyo-chan, so shut up already.” 

 

“I w-won’t talk to you anymore unless you take back what you said about her. Take it back. Take it back. Take it back. Take it back.” He tried to bite down on her fingers, but she ignored her just jamming her thumb deeper into his throat.    
  
“Then just listen. It won’t work. Even if you wear a mask all the time, you’ll never become your sister. No matter what mask you put on you’ll still be the same person underneath. You’re stuck as yourself your whole life. It’s all so stupid, isn’t it?”   
  
Korekiyo finally pulled away from her as he bucked wildly. He coughed up spittle, and hacked into the air. “You know nothing. My sister’s ghost is with me. She’s here right now, that’s why I’m going to cut that dirty tongue out of your mouth.” He threw open a drawer and pulled out from inside, a decorative katana covered in gold leaf and dust. He must have hid it away in his room from his talent lab when the Student council started collecting weapons. 

  
  
The moment he swung it at Mukuro, she already had moved out of the way. “What’s this, were you planning a murder? Have you killed before?  Well, it doesn’t matter. Violence won’t work against me, because I am violence.” She dodged his crazed swings and without even breaking a sweat. She looked more untouchable than his phantom sister. She appeared behind him suddenly, and brought her foot into his back kicking him over. He quickly scrambled to sit up again and pointed the katana at her.    
  
Yet, he felt even armed like this while she held nothing in her hands, he was the one who was at a disadvantage here. Mukuro looked down at him from above. He recognized those eyes. The eyes of a starving wolf ready to sink her teeth into anything.    
  
“It’s because I’m a killer, that I know this. There’s no such thing as ghosts. When people die, that’s it. No trace of them is left behind. You’ll never see them again. They won’t laugh, or cry, or smile. That’s why murder is unforgivable. That’s why I’m unforgivable.”    
  
His sister’s voice slipped from his lips.  _ “I-I won’t forgive you.”  _   
  
“I already said I’m unforgivable, how tiresome. Kiyo-chan stop relying on your sister’s voice. The one I want to talk to is you.”   
  
“W-why?”    
  
Mukuro held out her hand while he kept pointing the katana at her. “The one I want to be friends with is you, not her.”    
  
He looked at her outstretched hand. His eyes trailed to the mirror, but he could no longer see his sister there watching him. His sister had abandoned him. She was always leaving him behind. Even though all he had was her.    
  
His sister wanted friends more than anything else in the world. She told him how lonely she was. One day, he grabbed his sister’s hand. “ _ You’re not alone, you have me! We can play as much as you want. I’ll be your friend.”  _ _   
_ _   
_ He saw his sister’s smile, otherworldly, untouchable, slowly warp into an intense look of scorn.  _ “We can’t be friends, Korekiyo. Because while I love my dear younger brother… I just don’t like you very much.” _   
  


Korekiyo swung the katana, no longer even aware who he was swinging it at. He just wanted these feelings to stop. He wanted to stop seeing this scene in front of him. As he swung he suddenly stopped mid momentum, by Mukuro’s fist slamming into his stomach. The force was so hard he dropped the katana from his hand. Mukuro grabbed the hilt from the air and brought it in a perfect crescent slash. 

  
He thought he would be decapitated from such a swing. How perfect. He wanted his head to roll off his shoulders. Then, he would be freed from his life. He would be freed from his sister. (What, no he didn’t want to be free from her). He waited for it all to go black but it never came. There was not a single cut on his neck. Instead, his dark hair suddenly fell in a circle at his feet. He looked in the cracked mirror, and saw a boy with much shorter hair looking back. The same way he looked when he was younger. 

  
She leveled the edge of the blade at his neck. “Hey, Kiyo-chan. You know my sister is always ranting about this, she says that all philosophy boils down to one question. If life is meaningless, then should you kill yourself or not?” He felt the cold edge of the blade against his neck. “You claim your life is meaningless without your sister in it, but if that’s true why did you not immediately kill yourself after she died? You chose to live didn’t you?”    
  
She dropped the sword right then. Mukuro got down one knee in front of him, and pulled his head close into her shoulders. She whispered into the embrace shared between the two of them. “You wanted to find a way to live outside your sister, didn’t you?”    
  
Korekiyo could not remember if he had ever been held like this. He did not know if his sister ever held onto him tight. He thought she was always embracing him, but that hold was too restrictive, like he was being tied out with rope. He could not even remember if he had ever gotten this close to another person before.    
  
As an anthropologist he should be proud. He had finally managed to trick the human beings he was observing into thinking he was one of them, and perfectly blended in. 

  
Mukuro thought her approach was far too blunt. She lacked her sister’s silver tongue. All she did was tell him the plain truth that was obvious to her. She did not comfort him at all, she just ripped apart old wounds.    
  
The worst lies were the ones you told yourself. His sister’s lies must have been lovely lies, like beautiful stories woven together. She convinced him he was loved, and went out of her way to frame herself in a portrait that perfect accentuated all her good qualities to make herself into a beloved older sister.   
  
In Mukuro’s experience, most abusers never saw themselves as abusers. She told such extravagant stories to avoid the fact that she was  just hitting their weaker younger brother. She was sure, as delicate and intricate as a spider web, those lies were all threaded together expertly by the older sister. Mukuro could even call it an artful lie. A lie that was much happier than reality. It might even be a kind lie.    
  
Mukuro however, also knew that because they were such happy lies that Korekiyo probably never believed them. That was why the crude truth worked so easily. As Korekiyo already knew everything she had said, he was just pretending not to hear it. 

 

The worst lie Korekiyo told himself was that he was loved.     
It was the spider’s thread that held everything else up.    
Without it everything came falling down.   
He did not lean against Mukuro when he finally gave in, he crashed against her. 

  
“I just wanted… a Hikoboshi.”    
  
A love that does not hurt.    
A love so deep that it reached across the stars and the heavens.    
A love that would make every single other lonely day of the year worth living through.    
A love that makes you forget about everything else.   
You forget about the pain.    
His sister hurt him.   
So, he wanted to love her from a distance. He thought he could.     
  
Mukuro thought of her own Hikoboshi.

Kumagawa fell out of the sky.   
His star crashed and burned.    
She was sure when he fell, it was a dazzling comet of every color.    
As ice and dust sparkled from the tail.

But that didn’t matter to her.   
All she needed was the soft light he provided in the night sky. 

The light that only those in darkness, who had fallen into despair could see.    
He did not need to be bright.    
A pin prick of light was enough.    
As long as he shined on her again.   
The next time he fell, she would catch him.    
Even if she burned up trying to touch a star. 

 

🧸

 

“Ugggggh, I can’t do anything right. I was so mean. Does he hate me now? He probably hates me.”

 

Mukuro rolled around on the floor of Junko’s room. Sometimes she wondered how she could be so emotionally dead inside, and yet still feel so much anxiety. The mercenaries when they trained her, should have made her face off against normal high school students again and again. If she could rid herself of her fear of them, she really would be fearless. 

Enoshima Junko merely watched her sister freak out with only mild amusement, with no plan on helping. She was still going to run her mouth, of course. “You were almost cool for a second there, why did you have to immediately ruin it like you ruin everything.”   
  
Mukuro stopped rolling around and sat up facing her sister. “You’re the one who ruins everything. That’s like your thing. I wasn’t trying to... I think I broke him…”

 

“Nice. Maybe he’ll turn into somebody more interesting instead of a creepy background character. I think I might praise you for the first time in my life.”    
  
“Don’t praise me right now that’s out of character! I don’t want to waste my one and only praise from my impossible to please little sister on this!”    
  
Mukuro curled up on the floor. Junko thought she looked like a little caterpillar. A sisterpillar.    
  
“Are you thinking up dorky nicknames for me in your head?” 

  
“Hey, you can’t suddenly be able to read minds! That’s my thing! Haven’t you learned growing up that I don’t want to share anything with you?” 

 

Junko went so far with her not sharing policy that she even stole away all of Mukuro’s toys. Even the ones that she did not want. She would rather throw things away or break them then have to share with her sister.    
  
“It’s like I wasn’t even trying to comfort him-”   
  
“Wait, you can’t suddenly decide to change the subject. It shan’t be so! The subject is only permitted to change when the queen allows it!”    
  
“Junko-chan.”   
  
“Wait, nevermind I’m bored of our lame sibling banter. Let’s go back to talking about how you’re the worst at helping people. Like ever, of all time.”    
  
Mukuro gave a disgruntled sigh. Which she supposed was better than quaking in fear like she used to when she talked with her sister, but trying to get anywhere with Junko was just as exhausting as it always was. She could leave her sister alone, but if she did Junko would just go back to being a neet. Which was somehow worse than when she tried to destroy the world.   
  
“I wasn’t thinking about what Kiyo-chan wanted to hear. I just wanted to yell at the past self I saw.” 

 

“What’s with suddenly calling yourself a despair sister again anyway? I thought you in your lameness, went to lame it up with Naegi Makoto on the side of hope.”   
  
“Ever since I fought Harukawa-san, I realized I can’t ever be like Makoto.”   
  
“Why would you even want to be? Ick. Ick. Ick. Ick. I just grossed myself out imagining it. You suddenly getting an ahoge and walking around in a dorky sweater. Please never have children with that man, allowing either of you to propagate is a crime against humanity that even I’m not capable of.” 

 

Mukuro sat up. She grabbed her sister’s ear, and twisted it hard. “Would you listen to someone besides yourself for once?”    
  
“But, I love listening to myself talk. I’m charismatic, funny, I have unique and iconic dialogue. Also, I agree with most of the stuff that I say.”

 

Mukuro let go but Junko did not move. She let her head fall into Mukuro’s lap. Cheeky, just inviting herself to do that. When they were younger, Mukuro always used to hold her like this. Especially when Junko’s chronic headaches hit her. 

  
“Harukawa-san was right. Even if Makoto accepts me, even if he forgives me, I can’t change who I am. I’m still a girl who only knows how to kill.” Mukuro cracked a smile. Junko usually had a perfect read on her sister, because she was the only person Junko had known all her life. At that moment, she had no idea if her sister was trying to light the mood, or if her cracked smile was just a sign of her face breaking. “Umm… because… an old dog can’t learn new tricks. That’s what they say.” 

 

“Nothing you said was wrong you know.” Ugh, she hated this. She was being forced to agree with her sister. She had no choice, Mukuro was holding a gun to her head. At least that was what the pain in her temples felt like, a revolver spinning, and spinning around. Click. Click. Click. Click. With no relief. The worst game of Russian roulette was not dying from a bullet to the head. The worst was watching the barrel spin, again, again, again, and having to keep playing for a bullet that would never come and relieve you. Oh right her sister, yeah Mukuro was threatening her that was the excuse she would use. “That’s the thing about shadows like us that everybody else would rather ignore. We tend to be right. Gosh, it sucks being so right all the time. I want to be wrong, I want to have everything blow up in my face!”

 

“Junko-chan.”    
  
“Ugh, we’ve had to talk about you for like two whole minutes. Can we go back to talking about me? Come on, I know I’m your favorite sister.”   
  
“I’m your only sister.”   
  
“Of course you’re not my favorite sister.”    
  
“I’m your only sister!” 

  
“You’re forgetting about Mukuro-2.”    
  
“What? Junko-chan, you better not have cloned me. You pinky swore when you were five years old you would never clone me. That contract is binding.” 

 

Junko smirked as she hid her face in her sister’s lap. “Besides, he’s probably just like you. He can’t act his way out of a paper bag. No matter how hard he tried he never would have been able to become his sister. Just like you were never able to pull off all of my swag. No matter what, you’ll always still be Mukuro, even if we’re twins you can’t become me.” 

 

_ I don’t want you to become like me anyway.  _ _   
_ _ That would be boring,  _   
Even if she was tortured she would never say it. 

If she wanted to ‘act’ like a better sister she could simply put the mask on.   
That would not change anything about herself.    
To Mukuro it must have looked like she was choosing to be cruel to her sister.   
But, Junko did not want to be fake in front of the sister she had known her whole life.    
She did not want to lie to the person who tried so hard to understand her.    
If she was kind to her sister she wanted it to be genuine.    
Even if she put a mask on the outside, she would still be wicked and sick on the inside.    
Her desire for the real thing.   
That was just more of her selfishness.    
  
“I didn’t even want to pretend to be you, you’re the one who forced me to do that.”    
  
“I know, right? Not only that but I almost erased you from the memories of all your friends. Everyone who knew you besides me would be gone. Nobody would even know you were dressing up as someone else. If you died, not a single person would mourn the real you besides me. All that despair all to myself. I really am the best at being the worst.” 

 

“Unlike Kiyo-chan’s older sister you don’t hide how awful you are at all. It’s kind of refreshing. No, wait, actually I wish you would hide it a little more.” 

 

“Upupupupupu…”   
  
“Junko-chan, it’s your fault isn’t it?”    
  
“Huh? I mean everything is usually but specifically what?” 

“The fact that I can only be despair. The reason I turned out like this. Me killing so many people and being unable to take it back. It’s all your fault, isn’t it? You’re my despair.” Ikusaba Mukuro put her hands on the ground behind her, and leaned her weight back on them. She stretched her back and looked up. Her raven hair started to grow longer, she had not cut it in awhile. Her bangs fell away from in front of her ear, and over her eyes. She looked like she was looking straight up in the middle of a rainstorm, just letting the water wash over her. She just wanted to wash away.    
  
“No, duh. Gosh, you really put your last three brain cells into overdrive figuring that one out, huh? Well, now you can despise me and kill me as your revenge.”   
  
“No.”   
  
“Ugh, you don’t appreciate my efforts at all. I try so hard to be the lowest, most despicable sister on the planet and you won’t even hate me.” 

  
“Even if I hit you the same way you hit me, that wouldn’t make me feel any better.” The reason she never retaliated even though she was the stronger one, was as simple as that. “Hey, Junko-chan, you always accuse me of being stupid but I won’t understand a single thing unless you bother to explain yourself.” 

  
“I can’t do that until my villainous monologue in the final trial.”    
  
“We’ve been together our entire lives, but after all this time I still don’t know… Hey, do you love me?” 

 

Mukuro thought about it, because Korekiyo’s sister had died. Even if Kiyo wanted to, he could never get the truth out of her now. All he was left with were wounds that would not heal. Even if his sister really loved him in some way, it did not matter now. 

 

Junko wondered why her sister always asked such stupid questions.   
For Ikusaba Mukuro her despair was her sister.    
For Enoshima Junko, her despair was her love for her sister.    
It always hurt her the most to be cruel to Mukuro.    
Every insult, she thought about how she was much worse.    
Every attempt at killing her, she wished she would just die already.    
When Mukuro finally died Junko knew she would be dealt a fatal blow that she could never recover. She saw no point in living in a world her sister was not inside and would die soon after. 

She felt the pain she inflicted on Mukuro like it was her own pain.    
That was irrefutable proof to her that she did love that person.    
She was able to have feelings for her sister.   
Her the mechanical doll whose heart had fallen out.   
It made her so happy. 

She was someone’s sister.    
It was almost like she was a real girl.   
She knew those feelings were real.    
She wanted to share her feelings with the person who was always close to her.   
Even if it was only pain. 

 

Junko retained memories from an extremely young age. She had memories soon after she was born just like Kurokami Medaka, except it was only her brain that developed at such a fast rate. She was stuck in a chubby little infant body for two whole years of her life. How annoying. As she watched the adults fawn over her, and understood everything they said she swore in her head that she was going to be the most terrible toddler ever as revenge. 

 

Enoshima Junko had not encountered the concept of despair yet. She just noticed how different she was from others. Her own twin sister, born at the exact same time as her did not develop nearly as fast. 

 

She wondered why this useless person had even been born. All she ever did was take up space. They were forced to share the same crib together, and wear the same clothes. Junko thought it was tacky and embarrassing before she even had much of a concept of what ‘tacky’ or ‘embarrassing’ was. 

 

They just got grouped together because they were twins. They just happened to be born at the same time. Junko figured when her sister was older, she would regret being born as Enoshima’s one and only sister.  What bad luck for her.    
  
Her sister had this strange habit. Junko was positive that Mukuro had no awareness of her self or others. She even lacked object permanence. Stupid idiot baby. Junko was so good at object permanence, she was the best baby. Her sister still reached out and wrapped her tiny fingers around Junko’s own hand, even having no idea what the gesture meant.    
  
They just happened to be next to each other. By the time she was three she figured that out for sure. There was no connection, no meaning. Mukuro still had a habit of always clinging to her hand wherever they went. She would suck her thumb with her other hand. How gross.    
  
“Mukuro, if you keep sucking your thumb like that I’ll hate you.”   
  
“Sowwy.” 

 

Mukuro reached up to try to touch her cheek. 

 

“Get your germ covered hand away from me.”   
  
“What’s a ger-umm?” 

 

“Tiny single celled organisms called ‘bacteria’ that carry their dna outside the nucleus and therefore are considered prokaryotic. They often have to infect the cells of host organisms in order to reproduce.” 

 

“Oh, okay.”   
  
“You’re sucking your thumb again!? Do you even listen at all! Do you know what sound is, it’s an oscillation of pressures that transfers vibrations to the eardrums that can be interpreted by the brain as noise.” 

 

By the time they were both in primary school she was sure she figured it all out. She knew the difference between herself and others. She was someone who broke the mold. She had been given, way too powerful of a gift. Her intelligence exceeded talent and genius. She already knew no adult around her would ever be able to match her even with a lifetime of hardwork.    
  
She was someone who should have never been born.   
Mukuro should have been an only child.   
When she came to this conclusion, she felt relief.    
  
“Junko-chan, why are you pulling all the puzzles apart? You’re going to get in trouble.” 

  
“If I can’t have any fun solving these puzzles then no one can.” 

 

“Then let’s play something else! You never play with me, even though you keep promising.”    
  
“You’re five years old you should already know what lies are big sis. Maybe your development is slow even compared to normal people. Isn’t it funny that humans learn how to lie? Comprehension for that develops around four or five years old. The only thing that develops fast for you is your motor skills though.”   
  
“You’re just jealous I can do a cart wheel and you can’t.”    
  
“I could totally do a cartwheel if I wanted to! It’s just hard because my brain’s so big.”  

 

Mukuro grabbed her by the hand again and dragged her to the toy shelf. Junko enertained herself by pulling the heads off of dolls and rearranging them. There was one puzzle she could not figure out. No matter how hard she tried, Mukuro would not stop following her around. They always had to be together. She just would not leave her alone.    
  
They were not even sisters. There was no connection between them. Blood did not matter at all to her. They had nothing in common with one another. Junko was unlike any other human being, not her own parents, and not her own sister. Not that she cared about any of that.    
  
It was just annoying having a little idiot always follow her around.    
  
When they were seven years old, Junko decided to start testing her own limits. She already figured out everybody else felt far more than she ever did. She wanted to see if extreme situations would make her be able to feel the same things normal people did just going about their lives. She decided to run away from home that day, and Mukuro just had to follow her.

  
At this point she concluded that Mukuro was just too stupid to ever think for herself. 

 

She felt like she understood everything in the world but her sister. Mukuro always insisted on following her around, even though she would be happier if she just left her alone and played with the other kids.    
  
The day they both ran away it was snowing. She saw the pure white snow, just thought of her own colorless self. As she walked forward dragging Mukuro along, she heard a crash in the snow behind her. Junko raised her own small hand in front of her face. (Why was she so small? She wanted to grow faster. She wanted boobs already). It was empty.

  
Mukuro crashed into the snow a few steps behind her. Mukuro was just a normal person after all. She should have never tried to follow her around, she never would have been able to catch up. “I guess you’re going to die now. Goodbye Mukuro.”    
  
Junko was able to turn around and walk away easily. She guessed she was right after all. She did not feel a single thing for her ‘so called’ family. She was probably not a person with feelings inside of her. The revelation that she was incapable of love bothered her very little. If anything she was relieved, she no longer had to play along with her stupid sister.   
  
Junko took another step forward, but suddenly she felt something tug at her feet. She looked down to see that Mukuro had dragged herself through the snow. She raised her foot in the air, and stomped on the weed in front of her. Go away. You weed. Weed. Weed. Weed. Weed. 

 

“Just leave me alone already! We’re not sisters!”    
  
“I am your sister.” 

 

“Why? What makes us sisters? You don’t know anything at all about me! Why do people organize themselves in groups and call themselves family and pretend like it matters what percentage of genes you share anyways, it’s all so stupid!” 

 

“I h-have to be your sister.” 

 

“Why…?” Junko tilted her head to the side.    
  
“B-because you’d be alone otherwise Junko-chan, a-and you’d cry.”    
  
“I won’t cry. I never cry.”    
  
“I know… I know you don’t want to be alone. That you feel bad for being different from other people. It’s not because we’re related, even if I had a different mommy and daddy I’d still be your sister. I just don’t want to leave you alone.”    
  
_ Ah.  _ _   
_ _ I get it. _ _   
_ _ My sister loves me. That’s how we’re connected.  _ _   
_ _ She loves me even when it hurts.  _   
  
It was like her mind figured out an impossible puzzle that had been eluding her for five years. Junko touched the side of her face. She felt tears flowing down from one of her eyes. It was like the ice in her was melting, the same way snowflakes melted when they touched a person’s warm skin. In this frozen world she found a little bit of warmth.    
  
“I told you, you’d cry!” 

 

“I-I’m not crying.”   
  
_ Ah.  _ _   
_ _ I get it. _ _   
_ _ I love my sister so damn much.  _ _   
_ _ All this time I’ve loved her.  _   
  
In the present day, Junko scoffed. “Of course I love you, how unlucky for you.” 

  
“Junko you… you’re always mean to me, because being mean to the sister you love so much is your worst despair. I was right this whole time, wasn’t I?”   
  
“Of course you were.” Junko closed her eye contentedly. “You’re the one who knows me best after all.”   
  
Of course Enoshima Junko could never be content. Even if she tried to be the universe would not let her. The moment she let herself relax, Mukuro suddenly pushed her out of her lap and dragged her up by the hair to scream in her ear. “That’s such crap!” 

 

“Eh…? I thought we came to a mutual understanding. It was thematic and shizz.”    
  


“You, you’re such a hypocrite! You always call me lame, but you’re the lamest one of all. Sure, I’m a military Otaku but you’re a regular Otaku and that’s way worse. You’ve seen more anime than Yamada. You make a bunch of dumb references all the time that no one gets, and feel superior about it. You actually think Monokuma is funny. Your sense of humor is the worst in the whole world. You say you’re so much more fashionable than me but you wear the same damn thing every day. You never shut up about your own boobs. You act like you’re so superior to everyone but you can’t do a single thing for yourself. You act like you’re above human connection, but you’re the most needy person on earth. You’re not even dying your hair right. You can totally tell it’s a dye job. You get wicked bad split ends from it and you don’t even do anything about it. You act like you know better than everyone else, but you consistently make impulsive and bad decisions. You always complain that games are no fun, but you’re the one who always quits them half way through and never sees them to the end. You act like you’re so charismatic but you can’t hold a conversation with anyone without changing your mind every two minutes and being impossible to understand. You act like it’s such a big deal you have a hot body. But I know you don’t care. Your first boyfriend was literally a giant twig who looks like he never got a day of sleep in his life. Your second boyfriend was Kumagawa of all people. The biggest loser in the world. You fell for that guy, and you act like you’re such untouchable hot shit. The truth is you’re not even near Kumagawa’s league. You should have to get my approval first before you’re allowed to date my brother. You look down on normal people, but that’s just because it’s impossible for you to be normal. I cannot believe you trying to destroy the whole world, was just another Junko-chan ‘I’m taking my ball and going home’ moment.”   
  
Mukuro let nineteen years of suppressed complaints tumble out of her mouth uncontrollably. “You’re such a damn hypocrite. I can’t be normal. The only way I can show my love is making myself despair over hurting you. What crap is that?” 

  
Mukuro got right in her sister’s face. In ninenteen years, this was the first time she ever wanted to fight with her sister. She wanted to go to war with her. She knew her best of all, that was why Mukuro knew Junko would not budge a single centimeter unless she got pushed. 

  
“The fact that you love me as a sister, isn’t that proof enough that you can love people normally?”   
  
“...Me?” Junko seemed very surprised by this.    
  
“You’ve been trying the same thing to express your love for the past twelve years and it hasn’t worked. Don’t you get easily bored of doing the same thing over and over again? You can form relationships! You can love people as individuals. You truly love them, you just don’t know how to love! So figure it out already! I can’t believe a girl as smart as you hasn’t figured it out in ninenteen years! Stop forcing everyone to accept your twisted love and learn how to love normally.”   
  
“But I’m Enoshima Junko-chan. My image. My brand recognition.”   
  
“Yeah, that’s it. No matter what mask you wear, even if you pretend to be despair itself it won’t change a thing. You’re always going to be my needy little sister underneath. That’s all you’re going to be so quit pretending already.”    
  
“But, I won’t see the uenxpected result that way. But I wanna...”    
  
Junko really acted like a younger sister getting scolded.   
Probably because this was the first time she had ever been scolded properly in her life.   
A new experience for her.    
  
“You’ve been trying to kill me for twelve years. That’s the expected result by now. Don’t you think the unexpected ending, is the one where we find some way to get along?”

 

Enoshima Junko brought her fingers to her lips. She definitely was smiling. She did not even know until she felt her face. Even Mukuro could show her this unexpected side of her.    
  
“How disappointing.”    
  
For once, Junko aimed those words at herself.   
  
“Oh, hey I forgot. I was going to let you see your precious brother again.” Junko walked over to the fridge, only to find it empty. “Eh…? WHO TOOK MY SENPAI!”    
  
🧸

 

Toko and Korekiyo sat back to back in the library. The moment Toko saw his much shorter hair, she immediately burst out laughing. For Korekiyo, there was no center to the world anymore, no sense of gravity, no up, no down, no truths, and no lies. There was only confusion and the feelings he was missing something vitally important.    
  
Yet, being able to see Toko laugh like that, even if it was at his expense relieved the unknown feelings in his stomach somewhat. If he had to describe how he felt. It was like there were spiderwebs in his stomach. His insides were gone, and in between his ribs and his spine spiders had made their home. There were several butterflies flying around, and one in awhile they got caught in a web then he could feel it. He was extra sensitive to the vibrations of the butterfly wings on the web.    
  
He held a hand over his stomach. He was sure, with his long spindly fingers, and dark appearance he looked far more like a spider. Yet, he felt like a butterfly trapped in a web. The more he tried to flutter his wings to escape, the more he felt the strings wrap around him. 

 

“Fukawa. Is it normal if your family loves you, but doesn’t like you?” 

“How the hell am I supposed to know? Nobody’s ever loved or liked me. Heck, I don’t even have a family. Wait, you already knew that, and you just asked me to make fun of me right? You’re just making fun of me, right?”   
  
“It was a serious question. I am troubled.” 

 

“Listen, I really don’t want to care about your shitty life. I’ve way too busy being broken up over my own shitty life.”

 

“I would also be willing to listen to you. It’s nothing personal of course. It’s merely for the sake of  observation,” Korekiyo said, calm as always.    
  
“You just want me to relive my trauma don’t you! I’m not going through all of that again!! Your plan failed.”    
  
“Well, either I talk about my past, you talk about my past, or we just sit here in silence.”   
  
“No way I hate silence.” Toko nervously chewed at her thumb nail. “I’ll know that you’re silently judging me. Tell me how you really feel, you think my haircut is stupid right? I tried all day to fix it, but ironically I am very clumsy with scissors.” 

 

“Your hairstyle suits you. It’s perfect for you. You don’t need to be beautiful or ugly, all you need to be is yourself. I’ll go first then.” Korekiyo correctly deduced that Toko was never going to make up her mind. “When I was younger, my sister did not allow me to have any friends. She said all we needed was each other, but I always got the impression she didn’t like having me around.”   
  
“Wow you had no friends. Plot twist of the century. You should be an author.” Toko moved from biting her nails to biting her lip. “I lied earlier when I said I don’t have a family. I had a sister, but she was still born. I’ve always thought this, if I had been the still born one and my sister had lived, she probably would have been able to find love.”   
  
“I’ve thought about this too. If I had been the one who was sick, and my sister was born healthy. She would have been able to see the world. We might have even been normal siblings.”    
  
“I should have just died.”   
  
“I should have just died.”   
  
Toko gave a rueful smile. The smile of someone on the brink of despair. She might break out laughing about her situation and become a true minus. “We’re both better off dead. Is this where we make a vow to kill each other?” 

  
“Fukawa. I may kill somebody in this game, but I don’t want it to be you.” 

  
“Why?”   
  
“My sister wouldn’t like you. She would never want to be friends with a person like you. She would never let me be your friend. That’s why I kind of… want to talk to you more. If I killed you, we would never be able to talk like this.” 

  
“Mm, then let us couple of psychos promise not to kill each other then. You’re not even my type anyway.” Toko remembered from the writing in her books. These kinds of scenes always followed the same pattern. After seeing someone for who they really were, look past their flaws and embrace them anyways. That was the way to get close to someone. She at least understood how it worked in stories, and she dreamed about it several times having just one friend of her own.    
  
How did those scenes always go. Instead of sitting back to back, she nudged Korekiyo with her shoulder. “Hey, the reason you’re always wearing so many clothes. Are you like me, are you trying to hide something?”   
  
“Mm.”   
  
“Let me see.” 

 

_ Korekiyo, you cannot let anybody see that filthy body.  _ Korekiyo tore his hands away from his sister’s ghost hand. He unbuttoned his shirt all on his own, shrugging off the heavy jacket. When he pulled off the next layer as well, all that was left was a green tank. When he pulled it over his head, Toko could see the vinelike scars that traveled down his arms, and the criss crossing scars on his back.    
  
“This is my darkness. My bruised body. Even if I hide it, it won’t go away because it’s who I am.”    
  
“Real edgelord line right there.” 

 

“Mm.”    
  


Toko reached forward to touch one of his scars. She tried to be delicate. The moment she saw his misshapen body, she could not help herself. “Gross! Gross! Gross! Gross! I hate blood! I hate wounds! It looks like it hurts so bad! I don’t wanna see!”  

  
Toko suddenly light headed fainted backwards.    
Korekiyo saw her eyes spin like they were a slot machine.   
She landed on all Jacks.    
  
“Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey! Whoa a shirtless hunk the moment I wake up, lucky me! Have I finally died and gone to heaven! Looks like somebody made a mistake! Hah, I punked you god!” 

  
“Hello again, Jack.”    
  
“Pleased to meet you.” She changed tunes and suddenly gave a polite nod of her head. 

  
Jack stuck her tongue out of her mouth and it flicked in the air as she restlessly moved her head back and forth, but Korekiyo did not seem to react at all. “Hey, I smell something familiar! And it’s not this idiot who refuses to take a bath and be considerate for the person she’s sharing the body with! I mean I get that she’s the land lord and I don’t even pay rent but still, think about somebody besides yourself for once! I mean I am her, and she doesn’t even think about me! That’s a new level of self absorbed.”    
  
“Jack.”   
  
“Oh, I know what it is! I smell a corpse! You! Did you touch a corpse!”   
  
“Yes, I moved Kumagawa-kun’s corpse from a dorm to the anthropology lab for further study.”   
  
“Wow! Kumacutie is super popular now and all he had to do was die! Everybody’s fighting all over him. Maybe you should follow in his example, Toko! Hey, hey, can I go see him. I promise I’ll only cut his body up only a little bit. What about after you bring him back as a zombie can I kill him a second time? I'm so jealous somebody else got to kill him!”   
  
“Wait until I’m done studying him then you can take your turn.”   
  
“Ugh! Don’t you get it! I don’t get much time to shine! I’m stuck as miss priss almost twenty four seven. When I finally get to step on stage, I only get brief appearances so I gotta make them as memorable as possible.” 

“Jack, I have a question for you.”   
  
“Eh??? Ehhhh??? Ehhhhh? Yeah, go ahead shoot.” 

“What’s your relationship with Fukawa?”   
  
“Isn’t it obvious, I hate her.” 

  
Korekiyo touched his hand to his face in mild surprise. “You two share the same body. You only exist because she does…”    
  


“Yeah. She imagined me. I’m not lacking in self awareness. I know I’m just another one of her delusions really, as fake as her stupid romance novels. She pretends to be all fluffy and romantic but the fact that I exist proves that she’s wicked and sick deep down. But the thing is, do you really think that girl could ever imagine loving herself?” 

So she created another person inside of her that hated herself.    
No, that did not sound right to Korekiyo.  

He knew Toko was like him.

Someone who wanted to be loved.    
Even if they were delusional.   
Even if they were liars.   
That desire was real.   
  
“How were you born?"

Jack shrugged. It was fun to reminisce over nostalgic memories. She only shared feelings with Toko each of them had a set of their own memories. She did not know exactly the situation leading up to it, because she was formless back then. If she had to describe how the memories felt to her, it was like watching a movie through somebody else’s eyeballs.    
  
She remembered laughter. All around her, they were all laughing. She finally thought she had found a friend. Even someone like her who had never found love could love someone else. The idea made her so happy. She was not a lost cause after all. She was not someone who had been better off stillborn.    
  
Those feelings of love that saved her. They were just laughable to everybody else. No, it was the idea of someone as ugly as her falling in love that was laughed at. She was unaware of how repuslive she was. How the brain others would reel in disgust at even the idea of her having feelings for them. Her having feelings for another boy was just an insult to him. She was that lacking in self awareness. 

  
She really should have known better, but she always preferred reading books to people.    
She just wanted that boy to know her feelings.   
She tried so hard to tell him.   
Then she wrote and rewrote it over and over again.   
She never asked for him to love her back.

She just wanted to be understood. She wanted it to be okay for her to love someone.    
The result of writing and rewriting until her hands bled.    
Was all this laughter.    
  
He must have misunderstood. Maybe, nobody would understand her. She was just impossible to understand no matter how well she wrote them out. That was why nobody ever came when she called for help. 

 

Apparently the boy who was her first crush, only put up with her because she never picked up on the obvious signals that he really did not want to talk to her. She thought he was enjoying those conversations, but he just waited for them to be over and went back to his friends to complain about her. 

 

Her feelings had caused him so much trouble. She just needed to explain to him again. She needed to explain that was all it was. This time she would make him understand. She never meant to misunderstand his intentions. She really thought they were friends at the time. But, she did not expect him to be friends with someone like her. There was no need for them to fight. She just wanted to thank him for putting up with her for so long.    
  
It was the first time anybody had ever talked to her. Even if he only ever seemed to go ‘Hmm’ and ‘Yeah’ every few minutes without ever looking up from what he was doing.    
  
Her crush had moved away to a different city. She tried to write and rewrite the letter again. She just needed to do a better draft. The words she could not say, she could communicate through her writing. She cut up the stationary with a pair of scissors, and then quickly stuffed it into an envelope and stuffed the letter in her skirt pocket along with the scissors so she would not be late for the train.    
  
She found the boy by his new apartment. The moment he saw her, he cried out. “I can’t believe you followed me all the way here! Take a hint! Are you going to turn into a stalker now?”

 

He pulled her away from public into an alleyway, because he did not want to be seen with her. She just meekly obeyed and followed him along. Toko looked at the envelope in her hands, folding it and unfolding it. She finally shoved it towards him.    
  
“Eh?”   
  
He took the letter she had spent all night writing, and threw it into a puddle of mud. 

Oh.   
Toko would just have to try to use words to explain it then.    
  
“I...I… I’m really sorry. I didn’t know I was bothering you. I was really happy because I thought I made a friend so, I’m s-sorry if I embarrassed you. I wanted to thank you for putting up with me-” 

  
“This is the reason I keep getting harassed by you?” The boy suddenly grabbed her by one of her braids. He pulled her down to the ground and Toko landed in the same mud puddle that her letter had landed in. “This would have never happened! If you had just known your place! This is what ugly girls like you deserve!” 

 

It was senseless bullying. The way a child would bully. He did not think about whether he was hurting her, or how he was hurting her, he just wanted to shut up the girl in front of him that annoyed him.    
  
Toko was suddenly reminded of the way her mother always dunked her head in the bath tub. Drowning her the same way. After enduring that was she going to drown in a puddle of water. Strangely, she thought that suited someone like her.    
  
She saw blood running from her nose into the puddle.    
She hated blood so much.    
She remembered her mother threatening to punish her with a pair of scissors.    
She got covered in so many cuts.    
Blood got everywhere.   
Once one of her mother’s attempted suicide in the bath tub.    
The blood sloshed back and forth in the water. 

_ I guess no one is coming to save me after all. _ _   
_ _ Princes don’t exist. _ _   
_ _ They’re imaginary.  
_

At that moment Toko heard the sound of someone laughing. She thought it was that boy. The laughter got closer and closer to her, and she realized it was the sound of her own voice. 

“Kyeeehahahahaha! Whose this cutie here? Awe, how did you know I was into rough play.”   
  
The next thing she knew, she was standing holding a pair of bloody scissors. The boy in front of her was no longer moving. She had no memory of what transpired.    
  
“N-no, I didn’t do it. I’m not the killer.”   
  
That was the exact moment that Jack remembered being born. In the present moment she finished relaying her story.    
  
“See, it’s nothing but trouble. I’ve gotta share headspace with a total wet blanket. I’m stuck with being her dark side, all of her stress, the part of her that she hates the most.”   
  
Korekiyo watched her face closely. It unnerved even Jack a little bit. She was used to being looked at with fear (or annoyance from Byakuya-sama). She had no idea why he took such interest in her. She thought she was a pretty classical two dimmensional cliche of a split personality type serial killer.    
  
“No, you’re wrong.”    
  
“You can’t say that! You’re not a protagonist.” 

“Don’t you think it’s wrong. Killing someone just because they put you through a little bullying? He might have been rude, but that doesn’t justify killing him.”    
  
“Hey, hey! How come he was justified in kicking a girl who was just trying to apologize to him into the dirt? How come he got to post her letter up without facing any consequences? How come her parents got to keep beating her? How come all the kids picked on the one kid in class that was already getting beaten? If society is so just, why did all of that happen to her and nobody stopped it?” 

“You don’t need to defend her. Toko’s a murderer,” Korekiyo’s voice did not change in emotion.    
  
“Hey, you smooth talking piece of shit! I’m not letting miss crab apple take any credit for my kills. They’re mine, you hear me! My works of art! I put all of my genius into that! There’s no way I’m letting her plagiarize me!”   
  
“Why are you so insistent that she’s not the one who kills?”    
  
“B-because she can’t handle it. She can’t kill anyone. That’s why she needs me.”   
  
To save herself from the mental stress of realizing she had killed someone.   
Genocide Jack was born.   
She severed all of her negative emotions, her stress, all the parts of herself she found ugly. 

Jack, the insensitive girl always laughing and delighting in killing.

She did not want Toko to bear the burden of being a killer.    
Toko wanted to be saved so badly.

She imagined a hero inside of herself, and it took the form of a psycho killer.    
  
“No, you’re wrong. You’re protecting her, aren’t you?”    
  
“Ehhhhh! I’m just along for the ride, shut up!”    
  
“To have those feelings inside even the worst part she severs away from herself, yes, Toko can love herself after all.”   
  
“Too bad, I’m not into selfcest.”   
  
“Even if she can’t… She wants to.”    
  
The wicked witch wanted to be wicked no more.   
  



	38. White Flowers Bloom Red

Komaeda was surprised at how routine this was all becoming. Everyone in this school was living, forgetting that two of the students had died. They were all living alongside death and they did not know it. 

  
They were just playing house.  
  
He was surprised because he did not expect the others to act like him. When he was younger, he became used to living alone easily. No matter how small he felt compared to the vast empty space of the house, he was never scared. He kept white covers on furniture, and drew up every window with long white drapes so cleaning never became so much he would be required to ask for help. The only thing he never learned how to do was cook. He did not want to hire someone else either, because the idea of someone like him being helped or cared for was wrong.  
  
He grew up in a house that had no signs of being lived in. That house was all white. When he saw Kamukura’s room in the old school building for the first time he felt a strange familiarity.  
  
When he was younger he thought living all alone would be unbearable. He never overcame that kind of living, he simply became used to the pain. He just forgot there was any other way to live.  
  
How pathetic.  
  
Komaeda woke up to the smell of flowers. He breathed in, letting the smell permeate him. Flowers were used to cover up the smells of the sick and dying after all. When he opened up his eyes, he saw a pure white flower field. Tufts of grass, green leaves, stems rose up between the cracks in the floorboards until they bloomed all around him. He rolled over and felt the petals of a flower rub against his cheek. It felt like a soft hand caressing him.  
  
He wondered when he died would anything be able to grow from his body. If thin green stems could grow from the base of his spine, and climb twisting themselves around his ribcage. Those flowers may just be the first drops of coloring, to his colorless self.  
  
He opened his eyes slightly wider and realized he had been dreaming, or maybe hallucinating sometimes it was hard to tell. The room was simply filled with flowers kept in pots, and cared for by Zenkichi. When he was on the student council it was his habit to tend to the flowers. 

 

He was in Zenkichi’s room.  
Zenkichi insisted that he watch over Komaeda at night due to his illness.  
Komaeda wanted to sleep in the closet, but he lost the argument.  
Even though he was the type of person who just said whatever he felt, and did not care about the feelings of others, for some reason he could not argue with them. They knew better. 

 

Zenkichi put so much care and effort into those flowers, they all bloomed beautifully.  
A pure white bloom.  
Komaeda liked beautiful sights, but he hated looking at those flowers.  
He knew, the only person Zenkichi cared about showing those flowers to was Medaka.  
He was really that thin.  
Paper thin. He could be ripped in half so easily.  
Every morning he woke up, Zenkichi was already gone from the room.  
Zenkichi dedicated himself to all the other students at the school.  
He was becoming their “Hope.” 

It matched Komaeda’s ideal perfectly, but he was not happy at all.  
The idea of Zenkichi saving someone else, and not him. 

He was lonely, but he did not want to have friends.  
Not because he was afraid of being hurt by them, he just knew he would make a terrible friend.  
  
He dragged himself up off the ground finally. His bones hurt, but his bones always hurt. It was difficult to differentiate between the pain he felt every day, the pain of living, and the pain of dying.  
  
He flinched away from the light coming through the window. Light hurt, just like everything else. He hooked his fingers underneath his hoodie, and pulled it up over his head. The pale skin underneath was starting to peel, like a corpse that had been left out in the sun for a few days. He tried not to look at his body too much while he got dressed in front of the mirror. His ribs were showing, he was convinced that sooner or later his skin would tear and those ribs would poke out. He just kept losing weight no matter what he ate, or rather no matter what he could keep down.  
  
He thought keeping his glasses off would prevent him from having to look at his body. Suddenly, the mirror in front of him rippled like it was the surface of water. He could no longer recognize the blurry outline in the mirror that was supposed to be himself. Komaeda felt an intense vertigo. This happened every time he left his glasses off, as one eye was much better at seeing than the other. Almost as if he was missing an eye.  
  
He brought his robotic hand to his face to steady himself. At that moment he felt a set of acrylic nails scraping across his cheek. In the mirror he saw red. The image of someone beautiful was looking back, so he was no longer seeing his own appearance. 

 

Enoshima Junko, again. Sometimes, the person he saw was Kumagawa Misogi.  
He was starting to forget, who was he again?  
He was Enoshima Junko.  
He was Kumagawa Misogi.  
He was human failure.  
He was anybody, but himself. 

 

『 _Are you lusting after my girl? I won’t forgive you even if it’s only a metaphor._ 』

  
He saw Kumagawa’s smile, but not his face.  
Shut up Kumagawa. 

  
The thought of staring himself all morning as he got ready was intolerable. He barely put any effort into his appearance anyway. This was a bit silly, but he thought others might laugh at him if they saw him wear makeup. Trying to hide all that ugliness? Laughable. He knew no effort would make a difference so he did not even bother.

For a moment his hand traveled to his eye. He placed the acrylic nails at the edge of where his eyelid met his eyeball, and considered ripping it out. That way everyone would know there was a hole in him. They could all see through him, then.  
  
He decided not to. He did not want to inconvenience Hitoyoshi by getting blood on his floors. 

He felt something squeezing neck.  
Then realized it was his own hand.  
He stopped, because it was impossible to strangle oneself to death.  
  
To calm himself down, he embraced himself. He did not imagine someone else holding him, because for Komaeda that scenario would only make him feel unsafe. To hold someone, to draw close to them, to cross that line, he knew everyone would smell right away the death that permeated his being. It was like a layer of slime that grew underneath his skin. It was a poisonous swamp he had sunk into, and simply become used to living in.  
  
The only reason he held himself with his own arms, was to hold himself together. 

 

He did not bother with his hair. It was like dandelion fluff. He was sure sooner or later, it would start falling out in clumps. One breath, one small puff of air, that was all it took, and he would scatter and be blown away. The only thing he noticed was that his hair had gotten so long he needed to tie up the back, and his bangs were so messy they fell and covered one of his eyes. 

  
Dandelions.  
They were just weeds.  
How fitting for him.  
A weed among flowers.  
Sucking up their life with his thorned roots. 

 

Komaeda sometimes wondered if it was possible to bleed colors. If colors could escape from between the lines. If it could fall away like drips of paint. If it could smear and blur when someone touched it. Not so much freshly colored paint, but rather the abstract concept of colors. His hair was originally red, but it all bled out and what was left was colorless. His skin used to have some more color to it as well. His eyes so grey like a fog that had fallen so thick it prevented any color from being seen. 

 

As Komaeda pulled the black hoodie over his head to finish, he noticed how even the promise of his pitch black clothes made him look even more white. The contrast, just made a brighter, purer white. 

 

He felt something in the black of his throat. He started to cough horribly, loud enough to shake his bones, and reached for a tissue. When he pulled it away from his mouth he saw small spots of red.  
  
Red. The first color he saw all morning. He lifted his head and saw, one single red flower had been tucked away in between the white flowers. Probably a prank by Monokuma. It was red because he was in this room. He was the spot. He was the stain. Everything he touched, it would no longer be able to stay white, it would be dyed a completely different color.  
  
If Kirigiri were here, Makoto would not be so meek, and she would probably grab Zenkichi by the ears and tell him that helping everyone was only hurting him.  
Komaeda did neither of those things.  
He was still.  
Motionless as a corpse.  
He hacked again, and again. Until the sound of him coughing echoed in his ears.  
  
He felt like he was choking on the air itself. No amount of flowers could cover it up. He hated, the smell of dying. He hated it because it was familiar. He hated because he was used to it. He hated the smell of dying, because it was his own scent.  
  
That morning, he picked up his plate and went to sit with Mukuro and Makoto again. As he walked there ignoring the way his body creaked with each step, he passed Korekiyo.  
  
He saw Korekiyo glance at him.  
  
“White, so white.”  
  
He muttered those words into his mask.  
  
“Almost transparently so.” 

 

🧸

 

Rantaro thought he needed to go find Shuichi, and convince him to go back to practicing piano with Kaede. Shuichi found Kaede on his own and dragged her by the hand to the music room this time. Well, he did not touch her hand so much as hold her wrist. He was shy, even when he was being bold.  
  
How like Shuichi, Amami thought.  
He ran away, and then he ran back. In other words he was just plain indecisive. “I’m never going to give up” sounded much less cool when you phrased it as “I changed my mind about giving up.” 

 

Rantaro thought he needed to do everything for the two of them. He could not be further from the truth. After all, when he was alone the first week those two found each other on their own. They got lost from each other on their own. They kept finding each other, again and again. 

 

This was the Kaede and Shuichi show. It was no wonder he almost died in the first round, he was more two dimensional than a character painted into the background. He really thought he was helping those two get along, if anything he was getting in the way. Those two belonged together, and he did not belong anywhere. 

 

“I can’t believe you came to duet practice!”  
  
“Y-yeah…” 

 

“I thought I was being too pushy, and not thinking about others again. That you didn’t want to come here anymore…” That he did not want to be around her.  
  
Shuichi brushed his bangs behind his ear and away from his face. “Where else would I want to be when you’re here?” In that moment he met her eyes and it felt like there was nothing else between them.  
  
That guy was so honest, it was painful Amami observed. Life would probably be much easier for Shuichi if he could put on a mask, and hide himself like Kokichi, or even Rantaro himself would probably live a much easier life.  
  
“Then, let’s start!” Kaede did not notice Shuichi’s statement at all, turning her attention to the piano instead.  
  
Rantaro closed his eyes and listened to the sound of Shuichi’s minor keys, form a melody with Kaede’s major ones. If Rantaro had to describe it, it was like the sound of colors mixing together.  
  
That was what getting along with others meant after all. The moment you touched someone, you left a handprint on their very soul. Those handprints each had their own color, some were pretty pinks, and purples like Kaede, some of them were gentle and calming blues like Shuichi. There were the ugly black and blues too. Every single person had their souls dyed a different color from the people around them. Even if a pair of twins were born completely identical, they could become completely different colors because of this, to the point where they might fail to recognize each other.  
  
That was why Amami avoided touching others. He did not want to forget the touch of his family. The way he could wrap his hand all the way around his younger sister’s hand. 

  
Shuichi and Kaede, so awkward and clumsy, it was like their colors were splashing together. Those two were always tripping over each other’s feet trying to get along. Rantaro, the outsider, watched them fall. 

  
  
When Kaede was all alone in this music room, or when it was just him and Kaede, for a room meant to be filled with music it was almost oppressively silent. Kaede loved the piano, but for some reason she looked almost chained to it, like that was the only thing in her life. Now, the room sounded so colorful.  
  
It was like Shuichi had brought flowers with him. Rantaro hated living in that empty mansion, but one thing he liked was the garden. There were so many colors there he could forget his otherwise colorless life. He had fond memories of tumbling around in those flowers with his sister, kicking up grass as they played childish games. The garden had an alluring air of beauty about it.  
  
Gorgeous roses from all over the world bloomed in that garden. They were given the utmost care, even had their thorns removed. The voice of his sister was like music played by faeries. She looked perfectly natural in such a scene, like her and the garden behind her were a portrait painted by the same colors.  
  
The two of them had been inseparable in those days. Amami sat, reading to himself while his sister played around. She approached him with something in her hands and then threw them up into the air. He watched the petals she had carefully plucked from the flowers rain down.  
  
A voice spoke up in his memory.  
  
“Let’s play make-believe. I’ll be a princess taken away and you’ll be my valiant knight, and then you'll become my prince to rescue me."  
  
“A knight can become a prince?”  
  
“They can! Knights and Princes aren't real so of course they can. Which is why… it has to be you older brother. No one else can be my prince or my knight.” 

He needed to become a prince to save her.  
Even if princes only existed in stories, then he would just simply become a fake.  
He would lie to the whole world and become a forgery to make saving her a reality.   
  
“All right, all right. Wherever you go, I'll rescue you dear princess."   
  
“You're all I have big brother, so umm… don’t be anyone else’s prince but mine, okay?” 

That voice asked him.  
  
That voice he was pretty sure it belonged to his sister. He remembered that her cheeks turned the color of the roses they were surrounded by as she got excited. However, he no longer remembered what her voice sounded like, or what her face even looked like they had been apart so long. 

  
He also, no longer remembered what he had looked like, or what he had sounded like. To be truthful he dyed his hair (he did not have green pubes or anything), he was pretty sure his hair used to be the color of a wet crow. It looked feathered and tussled now, but it use to fall straight over his face like he was a child that had just drowned.  
  
Colors, flowers, even precious memories as pretty as they were they all eventually faded.  
It was so unfair.  
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if children could just stay children forever?  
When his sister went missing, he stopped going to that garden, his parents stopped paying to take care of it, and it all fell into ruin.  
  
He heard Shuichi hit the wrong note, shocking him back into reality. Kaede put one hundred percent of herself into everything she did, it was one of her wonderful qualities, but also one of her annoying ones. They both looked completely exhausted from Kaede’s teaching.  
  
“Phew… Let’s end it here for today,” Kaede said.  
  
Rantaro had not cried once. Not since the day he was born. He was pretty sure though, even he would shed a tear put through Kaede’s teaching. Shuichi however, only smiled. He probably did not even notice he was tired, because the only person he paid attention to here was Kaede. He watched her far more than he watched himself.

Like she was the only one in the room.  
This atmosphere made Rantaro feel a little loney.  
Pft. Funny. You needed a ‘self’ in the first place, to be alone and by yourself.  
  
“I feel like I’m getting a lot better!” Shuichi said, getting close to Kaede’s face in his excitement.  
  
“Definitely! I honestly think you have the talent to play the piano, Saihara-kun. If you practice more you might become the new Ultimate Pianist.”  
  
“Ah, I don’t know about that… And besides, this is just practice.” 

 

Kaede reached forward taking Shuichi’s hand from him. Hers now. She brought his fingers close to her face and held them near her lips. “No way, you’ve really got the hands for it. They’re so soft, delicate, and long just like a girl’s…” She slowly interlaced her own fingers with his, as if caught in a trance. She too, seemed to forget what she was doing, what she was thinking about, or even who she was when she was around Shuichi.  
  
Those two were such airheads. 

Suddenly, she saw something and pulled her hand away. Kaede suddenly was uncomfortable being so close, and scooted back. She realized that she did not want to realize. The moment you started thinking about it, it became impossible to think of anything else. “You’re right, it’s good to practice but… We should focus on getting out of here together.”  
  
“Together… Hey, Akamatsu-san. Do you really want to be friends with me when all of this is over?”  
  
“Huh? Is this your usual ‘nobody likes me, I’m no good’ emo crap?”  
  
“Don’t bully me!” 

 

“I’m not bullying you. I’m bullying the guy who’s always insulting you. I need to stand up for you, so I’ll bully the crap out of him if that’s what it takes.” 

  
“I think you’re the only one who understands your own logic, but… that’s what makes you so you I guess.”  
  
“Who else would I be?” Kaede poked him in the cheek, leaning a little closer but not too close. “I bet you’re the kind of person that worries about stupid things like once they see the real me they’ll never like me.”  
  
Kaede was so harsh. Her kindness was killing him. Shuichi touched his chin. “No, I wasn’t thinking about that… just… what if the only reason we’re getting along is because of this situation? If we were in a normal high school, you’d probably be surrounded by friends and…”  
  
“Actually, I didn’t have any friends back in my old life.”  
  
That sounded completely strange to Shuichi. Kaede, the center of attention, who loved and wanted to be loved by everybody. It was like she was an entirely different person. “Wh-what did you do all day besides practice piano then?” 

 

“Umm… what else would I do?” Kaede’s face slowly turned to distress. “I just realized! Without the piano, I’d have nothing!” 

 

Shuichi just kept staring silently. His face was a visible “um…”  
  
Kaede suddenly grabbed his shoulders. “Saihara-kun never leave me! You’re the only thing I have in my life besides piano!” She was such an open book. Whether it was anger, happiness, or existential panic she felt it and let everybody know immediately. Her emotions were as loud, as the notes played when someone banged on piano keys without any reservation. 

 

“It’s not like I planned on leaving,” Shuichi set quietly in response. 

The moon and the stars.  
Her loud, forceful kindness.  
His soft, gentle consideration.  
They were complementary forces always pushing and pulling on each other.  
All that movement caused some friction on its own.  
  
Kaede, probably did not even hear him. She just kept panicking. “Saihara-kun, we need to find something to do. I can’t believe the only way I could think of to get closer to you was to play piano, I’m such a one track minded freak.”  
  
“Ah, it’s okay.” Shuichi was curious. “Akamatsu-san, if you didn’t have any friends before this then why did you keep saying you wanted to be friends with anybody?”  
  
“Because I wanted some friends. I figured if I was lonely, I should just make some.”  
  
It was that simple!  
The complex problem of human interaction had been solved with a fool proof formula.  
Even Komaeda, the fool, could not mess with it.  
  
“This might sound weird but…”  
  
“What’s the matter? You can tell me,” Kaede suddenly braced herself. She breathed in deep and out. Her face even turned a tinge of red. As if she was waiting to hear something else.  
  
“How can you be so optimistic?”  
  
“Huh?”

“You’re always talking about cooperating, and working together, and not giving up. I’m just amazed every time you talk like that. Well, no, I suppose it’s easy to talk like that. But I know you…” He reached forward and his fingers brushed against hers for a moment. It was like they were playing a game with each other’s fingers. “I know you truly feel that way, deep inside your heart. I suppose I’m just asking where those feelings come from.”

“...”  
  
“I’m sorry, I guess I said something weird.”  
  
Kaede, the open book suddenly became unreadable. “Oh, not at all! I just… it comes from experience.”  
  
“Actual experience? You were in a situation like this before!?”  
  
“No, not that. It’s just in my experience, the only way I’ve ever had to reach other people’s hearts was music. When I tried to talk to them, there were a lot of misunderstandings, or even in cases like my sister we just didn’t talk at all.”  
  
“Music…?”  
  
“I told you this before… I play the piano because there was someone I wanted to see smile. Even if they’re a stranger, even if we can’t speak, we can bond anyway through music. So, I’ll be fine. I know I can overcome anything just by creating a bond.”  
  
Shuichi wanted to be enchanted by her idealism, but his face look troubled. He must have noticed, the shadows at the edges of her bright face. Rantaro saw it true. “I… I suppose that’s true.” 

  
Kaede got lost in her own ranting about music again. “I plan to do all sorts of things. Classical music is my main focus, but I wanna do a performance with pop music. Oh, yeah! Wouldn’t it be super fun arranging music for famous games or movies? I can compose the songs however I like then hold a concert! That would be cool.”  
  
“I think that’s a wonderful dream, Akamatsu-san. I’m sure you can do it,” Shuichi said, and like it was nothing at all he gently placed his hand over hers. After all, they had already played piano together, he had touched all her keys, Shuichi was sure that was far more intimate a gesture.  
  
“Being able to dream of the future so easily, you really are an amazing weirdo,” Rantaro finally joined in from the audience.  
  
“Really, you guys think so?”  
  
“Absolutely.” Kaede got in his face again, but Shuichi looked like he was starting to get used to her closeness. He was uncomfortable with everyone, especially himself, but Kaede was the one person he felt comfort from. “And I’d like to come to that concert.” 

  
“I’ll definitely invite you! I’ll send you the first ticket!” Suddenly, Kaede came to a screeching stop as she hit the brakes on herself once. She seemed to realize something else. “HOLDONJUSTONESECOND!” 

 

Kaede covered her reddening face, the same color as flowers blossoming and shook her head. She made a sound like her puffy cheeks were slowly deflating. “I-I just told you my dream… Hahaha… That’s embarrassing. I can’t believe you got me to blurt out my secret, Saihara-kun!” 

 

She punched him hard in the chest. 

 

  
“Did you get sick with Amami-kun’s playboy germs or something…? You’re not supposed to be… like this.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“N-nothing!” 

  
She pushed him away even further, because Shuichi was weaker than her. 

 

“N-no, I’m glad you told me,” Shuichi’s voice was soft. He smiled the way one smiled in a warm embrace.  
  
This was the same emo loser who could not bring himself to face her a month ago. He was going to become stupid soon with all of this happiness, Rantaro thought. That was why he stayed away from the warm aura, like a corona surrounding the both of them.  
  
He walked up, and easily swung his arms around both of their shoulders pulling all of them together. “Hey, let’s go take a break. You guys aren’t in tune just yet…you need to work on your rhythmn.”  
  
“What, like a metronome? I’m sure I can find one.” Kaede said, looking at him innocently.  
  
“No, the beating of your heart.”  
  
Kaede immediately grabbed his face and shoved him away. “Icky playboy germs, don’t touch me!”  
  
“Afraid you’ll catch feelings?”  
  
“That’s exactly what a playboy would say!” Kaede snapped at Rantaro.  
  
“Mm, but I’m a former playboy.” Rantaro turned away looking someplace else. “I have an idea for a different kind of practice, it’s night time anyway.”  
  
“Wait, we’ve been practicing all day!?” Kaede threw her arms up in shock.  
  
That girl was so airheaded. She basically needed Shuichi around at this point.  
Or else she might forget herself.  
_Don’t become like me._  
Rantaro thought. 

 

🧸

 

By night time, Komaeda stayed outside the dorms and stalked around the school grounds because he did not want Zenkichi to find him.  
Even if he hated that Zenkichi spent all his time helping other people.  
He also hated the idea of being helped by him.  
He hated the words _I need help._  
He did not want to cause any more trouble than he already did naturally by existing.  
  
He was trying to hide away from everybody else.  
At the same time, he also felt lonely. 

He did not want someone to touch his hands because they were cold and clammy.  
His body became soaked with sweat from his sickness, even though he was cold.  
Yet, he wanted someone to hold that same hand anyway. 

As he sat against the wall his only companion was his shadow.  
Kumagawa MIsogi sat next to him.  
There was no one closer in the world. 

  
He read a book once by Haruki Murakami. In a town at the end of the world, people took a knife and slowly cut away their shadows from their own feet. When that happened they lost all their memories from how they lived, but even knowing nothing they continued living. That was what this felt like, something precious had been cut away from him, and his existence was severed.  
  
Komaeda looked at Kumagawa, and Kumagawa smiled back at him. That comforting smile was all that he could see of Kumagawa’s face. Kumagawa refused to show him anything else, his anger, or his tears. He felt so lonely, because he could not see that ugliness. Even though Komaeda only wanted to see beautiful things.  
  
His shadow ran away like peter pan, without it he could not grow. He could not live, and neither could he die. He needed someone to stitch it back to his feet so he would never lose it again. He spent so long living with a fatal wound, he wondered when someone would try to sew him up already.  
  
He reached out towards that shadow next to him.  
Words fell from his lips.  
Like flower petals he had plucked, swallowed, and then spit up.  
  
“Will you…”  
  
His fingers curled enclosing on nothing at all.  
  
“Stay by…”  
  
What he was reaching for was transparent. Unlike hope, he was sure it was real.  
Even if he could not see it.  
  
“My side.”  
  
While he could not see it, or even touch it, he could still feel its warmth.  
It was probably better that he could not touch.  
His touch, it would smear.  
It would stain.  
It would blur.  
It would dirty.  
  
“Will you promise me?”  
  
Peter pan. His pale fingers interlaced with a pitch black shadow. He saw the riss crossing of black and white, as their fingers became a tangle together. He held, tighter and tight. “If I let go of your hand. You’ll fly away.” 

  
Scared. Scared. Scared.  
  
“I’m…”  
  
Scared. Scared. Scared.  
  
“...of that.” 

 

He was grasping at flowers. Grasping at spring. Grasping at warmth. He grasped at things that were naturally meant to fade. They would wilt in his touch. If drops of blood fell from his mouth, that flower would no longer be able to remain white.  
  
For him the act of living itself, was like slowly fading away. 

His mind forgot, and the details became blurred. 

It lost everything.  
The same way everything was lost when you woke up from a dream with tears in your eyes.  
  
“All of this seems like a dream.” He wondered, he still wondered, whether Kumagawa jumped knowing he would die. He wondered if Kumagawa made the choice to leave him behind. His life was one where all he ever knew was abandoned it, but now that he thought about it, it was always freak accidents. Nobody chose to abandon him, because nobody ever chose to come close. “Don’t try to disappear, Kumagawa-kun…”  
  
Inhale.  
Flowers, and healing, and white.  
Exhale.  
Ashes and bones and crimson. 

 

He had to remember to breathe, even if he was just spewing out all of the toxic and rotten things inside of him.

“Were you talking to me? I am not Kumagawa-kun.”  
  
Someone was here.  
Someone else was sitting next to him.  
That was right he saw a shadow, because there was a real person there casting a real shadow.

Korekiyo Shinguuji looked at him. There was no fright in his eyes, instead his eyes were as empty as spotless mirrors that took in every bit of light, every detail. “No wait… you were talking to him, were you not?”  
  
“The talents of the Ultimate Anthropologist are wasted on trash that can’t be called human. Please, make someone else the subject of your studies…”  
  
He smelled foul.  
Slowly rotting.  
He was never a flower.  
He could never bloom, even once.  
Even if he was planted, he would die in the dirt before he broke the surface.  
  
“You are wrong. All aspects of humanity are beautiful. I came to observe those three, but I am observing you with great interest as well.” Korekiyo said, raising a pointed finger.  
  
He looked different. He wore the same hat and heavy uniform as always, but his hair was shorter and because of that it was eaiser to see his face. Komaeda wondered if the mysterious boy had always been this easy to read. 

 

“W-well, if scum like me can be of use to someone like you…” Komaeda really wanted to say no, but he was bad at arguing, or telling others they were wrong.  

 

“You seem reluctant,” Korekiyo said.  
  
He caught that. Komaeda touched his face, wondering what about his expression conveyed that emotion, or even what expression he was making. “I just, if you find all humans beautiful then I feel like even less of a human. There’s just nothing at all interesting, or worthwhile, about paying attention to me.” 

 

There were some flowers that shrunk away from the light.  
They could only grow in the dark.  
Komaeda was not even qualified to be called a flower. 

 

“I disagree.”  
  
“I would never badmouth somebody in possession of such a talent that can be service to all of humanity. I mean, imagine what other people can learn about themselves, and the world with your wonderful talent. That being said, I don’t think you can understand me. I’m just… not someone who shares things in common with anybody else in this world.” 

 

Korekiyo watched him silently the whole time. It was strange, people usually interrupted him, or told him to shut up by now. This could get dangerous, if Korekiyo was too polite Komaeda would just keep talking until he ran out of breath and died. “I cannot think that way. To be truthful, I like being around you, you’re covered in a familiar scent.” 

 

He knew.  
Komaeda was always aware that they must all see through him. Even when people were kind to him, he was sure they were just pitying someone who did not belong at Hope’s Peak.  
He had the scent of a miserable watcher.  
The scent of someone dying all alone.  
_Disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting._  
They could all tell just by seeing him.  
He was covered in that stink.  
Komaeda held himself tighter, and Korekiyo only quietly observed as he did so.  
  
“What do you know about me?”  
  
“Not a single thing. Only what I’ve observed. I have a feeling you would never tell me anything either.” Korekiyo looked at the three he had been following earlier. Rantaro, Shuichi, Kaede they were all laying in the grass. “I don’t need such a thing either. I don’t need others to tell me their feelings. I can observe as much, and for the rest there’s only one heart I truly understand.”  
  
“Um…” Komaeda wondered if this was how others felt when he just kept talking with no idea whether he was understood or not. 

 

“Look at them, what do you think?” 

 

“The girl Akamatsu-san  possesses a great passion for her talent. She has the natural charisma that talented people have, which draws others to her. She wants to be confident for the sake of other people. She’s a wonderful hope that everyone can unite around, and yet that hope has been diminished.”  
  
“And the boys?”  
  
“Saihara-kun, he is so close to Akamatsu-san he may as well be her shadow. He seems like a natural support character type, but it’s actually the other way around. Right now, he’s the one trying to stand up and be strong, and she’s just clinging onto him. You know, there’s a certain kind of hope that can only be produced by an underdog like Saihara-kun, that’s the kind normal people find the most relatable.” 

“You didn’t say anything about my dear friend Amami-kun," Korekiyo said touching his face with what must have been a fond expression under that mask.   
  
“I doubt he knows you’re his friend.” Komaeda thought that was a little mean. “I… I don’t know.”  
  
“He seems like an outlier doesn’t he? You know, the pure white you, and the dark me, we both rather stand out. Perhaps he’s just better at hiding it then the both of us," Korekiyo said. 

“Hiding it?” Komaeda asked.   
  
“Playing house," Korekiyo repeated again more direct.   
  
“I see…” Even if Komaeda could read them this much, it meant nothing, so he just kept talking. “Seeing and understanding are two different things completely. All I know is, I’d never be part of such a heartwarming scene. THe fact that all we can do is watch, doesn’t that just make us stalkers for all of mankind?” 

  
Rantaro could blend in at least, like a chameleon he could change his colors. 

The only color that Komaeda was, was all white. 

 

🧸

 

“So you like the stars? Not because anybody wrote piano songs about them, you just like them?”  
  
Kaede asked as she lay on the ground next to Shuichi, her arms tucked away behind her head. Rantaro found them this grassy spot to lay on. He called it his favorite napping spot. Rantaro seemed like the empty headed kind of guy who would sneak away to sleep all day.  
  
“Yes. Every time I realize how vast the universe is it calms me down. The sight of stars… ever since I was little…”

 

“I don’t get it.” Kaede muttered. Of course she didn’t.  
  
“Well, it’s like how you talked about people being able to connect because they hear the same music. When I think about someone looking at the same sky as me, I’m comforted.” 

 

“Instead of looking for a change, you prefer a relentless yet vast world. That’s natural for you, someone who wants to disappear.” Rantaro said, his voice more empty sounding that usual.  
  
Wanting to be seen but not wanting to be seen.  
Wanting to have someone by his side, but not wanting them to look.  
That was Shuichi Saihara.  
  
Kaede kicked at him with her foot. “Stop suddenly saying really deep stuff out of nowhere, and then going back to your empty headed self.”

  
“Do you think the aliens are watching us, or are we watching the aliens?”  
  
“See, it’s exactly what I said!” Kaede got frustrated.  
  
Shucihi only laughed quietly. As usual he was trying to keep his presence as small as possible. He probably liked, how small he was in comparison to everything else. “Besides, stars shine so bright even from far away... “ Shuichi’s gaze slowly shifted away from the sky, he looked at Kaede instead. “They’re so pretty, what’s not to like?” 

 

Kaede did not even notice that he was ignoring the whole sky in favor of her. “I don’t think stars shine that bright. I mean, they wouldn’t shine in the first place if it wasn’t dark out.” 

 

Kaede, like every single star that dotted the sky.  
She was the whole sea of stars, the whole sky. She was everything to him. 

He wanted to feel just a little bit of warmth, to be wrapped up in her like a blanket of stars.  
  
“Don’t think about music. Don’t think about music. Don’t think about music.” Kaede muttered underneath her breath. She was starting to sound like an addict. 

  
Rantaro sat up. He had a suggestion. “You know, Akamatsu-san, you can hear music even without an instrument.” 

 

“Huh?”  
  
“You just make your body the instrument.”  
  
“That better not be an innuendo.” 

  
“How did I ever get this reputation? Jeez, you let someone see you naked once and they fall for you. It’s hard being this attractive.”  
  
“I didn’t fall for you at all! Not only is your attitude bad, you washout, so is your head!”  
  
Washed out.  
All the colors faded, how perfect for him. Rantaro stood up offering Kaede a hand. “If you want to learn about someone, you gotta dance right? You take a step, and they take a step, and suddenly you’re doing it together.” 

  
Both Shuichi and Kaede at the same time.  
“I… I don’t know how to dance. I’ll probably be clumsy, and umm look weird.”  
“I don’t know how to do anything besides play piano!” 

 

Rantaro pulled Kaede up first. “Then, I’ll teach both of you. Just keep your feet on mine and watch your steps.” 

 

He was probably being selfish. The only reason he asked this, was because he remembered in a flower field. The sister he always played with. One day, she stepped on his toes just like this. _Brother, I want to dance like a princess does. You have to teach me, because you’re my prince._ He showed her the steps, and told her to close her eyes and picture like they were in a ballroom. Even if there were people dancing around them, they were the center of the attention, the only two in the world dancing. 

 

He danced with her alone in that garden. They were careful not to step on any flowers. The wind blew. A few petals that his sister had plucked were picked up and carried on the air. They flowers spun around, swaying back and forth. He was sure, in that fairytale like time in his past the flowers were dancing with them too. If they were any sprites or faeries in this world hiding underneath the leaves they would have joined too.  
  
There were no such thing as fairy tales. They were imaginary, they could not coexist with reality. The prince never lived. He was dead right from the start. That was why he could never be her prince. He was something far more foul, stinking of death as the only survivor. He was beelzebub all along.  
  
When he finished dancing with both of them, he passed Kaede off to Shuichi. Of course, as usual Kaede was too eager and took the lead stepping all over his feet, and Shuichi was too nervous and kept making missteps.

When Kaede tripped over Shuichi’s foot, he caught her. He took his hand in hers, gently again, holding it like some precious, fragile thing, and then pulled her into a much slower dance that he took the lead of. As the two of them drifted around each other, they were like flower heads drifting on the surface of the water.  
  
The flowers spun and spun too. The flowers, the stars in the sky, even the dirt they were standing on. It was all spinning. It was all in orbit around them, as if they were the center of it all. Suddenly, the differences between the heavens and the earth did not seem to matter.  
  
If they wanted, they could probably step into the air, and dance among the stars. They were so light. Even then, it was a clumsy, slow, and careful thing where they were both just barely holding on to each other. 

 

Each step was a careful tip toe. When one of them pushed, the other pulled subconsciously, and vice versa. Black and white were usually opposites, like enemies, like darkness in light, but with the two of them it seemed to naturally go along together.  
  
Some part of Rantaro from a long time ago must have longed for that kind of closeness, but he was sure it was dead already. He had gone to such great care to kill it. He watched them, a dead observer, while those two came to life in each other’s arms. 

 

Shuichi no longer needed to look at the stars. He saw the twinkle of Kaede’s eyes. Just for one moment, even if neither realized it, even if they could not communicate it they were looking at each other the same way. Kaede let her head fall on his chest, as she leaned against him. She was able to lean on a weak person like him, he was able to be strong for her. She heard the beating of his heart, like a metronome. That must have been what Rantaro meant by Rhythmn.  
  
Kaede did not need stars, or flowers, or any pretty things. She did not even need to hear music again. Even if she went deaf she thought she would be fine, because she could still feel that pulse all throughout his body. All she needed was to remain inside this moment a little longer. It was all spinning and her head spun worst of all, with feelings she did not dare to feel. Feelings she never felt before, or was on the receiving end of. 

  
Suddenly, she felt like her heart was beating too fast, her chest was so full that she feared she might explode and yet she could not breathe. She fell back. Rantaro watched her fall. Shuichi reached out and caught her, holding his hand behind her back. He was pretty weak, so she fell a little more as he struggled to hold her up. 

 

Kaede realized, she was being dipped back into the milky way.  
Shuichi realized she was in his arms.  
Rantaro saw in that moment, even if on the surface they were still their normal selves the ones they showed everybody, to each other, reflected in each other’s eyes were their true selves.  
Kaede felt an inevitability like the pull of gravity. She closed her eyes. She pulled her lips tight, and then the next moment indecisively puffed them out, as if she was waiting for something but was unsure of what to do.  
  
Shuichi stared at her looking just as clueless. “Why’d you close your eyes?”  
  
“You’re supposed to keep your eyes closed.”  
  
She felt the tickle of his breath.

She tried to take a breath too.  
Then they were both breathless.  
Like there was nothing at all between them, the vacuum of space, with no air.   
Then, Shuichi suddenly dropped her. Her head crashed into the earth and she really did start to see stars. The two of them both so overwhelmed by their feelings in the moment they were crushed by them.  
  
Rantaro laughed. They were really something.  
He walked over to a confused and fretting Shuichi, and pushed him so he landed on top of her.  
“W-wait!”  
  
“Saihara-kun!”  
  
“What? Did I do something wrong?” 

 

“You’re so hopeless, both of you.” Rantaro laughed, and then holding himself he muttered quietly so only he would hear it. “And I’m the hopeless romantic.” 

 

🧸  
  
Komaeda watched them until they were finished.  
Shuichi and Kaede fell asleep, Kaede leaning her head on Shuichi’s shoulder.  
Rantaro fell asleep like a careless cat his limbs spread out. 

 

“Goodnight Rin, Goodnight… Goodnight… Goodnight…” Rantaro had muttered that over and over again, a full thirteen times to himself before he finished going to sleep. There was no one around him, and yet his eyes looked like there was someone right next to him that he looked at like they were his whole world.  
  
All three of them seemed to belong together, yet, Rantaro felt like he did not belong there. 

He really did not understand people at all.  
  
Korekiyo brought a bandaged hand to his face. “He has the same feeling as you. The feeling of a stranger. Yet, he’s so close…” 

 

Komaeda remembered why he preferred to sleep on the floor. It had nothing to do with any remaining feelings for Zenkichi, even if he did lose his mind and make some kind of move Zenkichi would be too oblivious to recognize it.  
  
No, he just did not want to get that close to anybody else when he was sleeping. He saw Junko and Kumagawa sleeping in the same bed once in their dorm. It was like they had crammed themselves into the same funeral casket, that was the only way he could describe it. All of their limbs were tangled up, as if they were tied in the same knot together. As they stirred in their sleep, one would elbow, and one would kick, and they probably forgot where they ended and the other began. It was a conflict over such a small space, being that close.  
  
Komaeda seemed to faintly remember there was a time he was that close to somebody else, but that person was no longer here anymore. For everybody else it just seemed like a chore, being that close, fighting that much, being close enough to be hurt by somebody else’s words and then be comforted by it, it just seemed exhausting to him.  
  
He wasted all of his energy on barely staying alive.  
The next time he blinked, there was Korekiyo’s hand in his view.  
  
“I want to show you something. Will you watch my talent.” 

 

Damn, he got him there.  
Komaeda took that hand. He was glad it was covered in bandages. He did not feel like touching or being touched. He did not feel like mixing with another person.  
  
Korekiyo led him to his talent lab. It was late enough that if they were caught by the student council they would be accused of plotting a murder. When Rantaro lit a lantern inside of his dark room, Komaeda was greeted by Kumagawa.  
  
Not the fake Kumagawa in his head he kept talking to.  
He knew it was a fake, because Kumagawa did not understand other people.  
Any hallucination he could come up with, would always be far away from the real thing.  
His perceptions were warped.  
Pretending to talk to Kumagawa like that, he was just making a mockery of his memory.  
The one in front of him was the real one. The dead one.  
He was on a table, and tied up in red rope.  
  
Komaeda knew he really was heartless, after all his first ever friend was dead in front of him and he barely felt a thing. He did not even feel the surprise of finding a dead body. Now that he recalled, he also just kept talking with Junko normally when she threatened to cut his body to pieces. He really was cold, colder than any corpse could ever be. 

 

“Is this some kind of joke, haha…?”  
  
“I studied many rituals of mummification. I thought I might try one out if there was just a body lying around.”  
  
Komaeda felt bad for Kumagawa.  
Everyone was just doing whatever they wanted with his body.  
This was already repeating so much it made a tiresome running gag.  
  
Korekiyo reached for Kumagawa’s hand. “It’s the strangest thing, even though it’s been over a month it hasn’t rotted away even a little. Komaeda-kun, earlier you were talking with his spirit outside of his body weren’t you?”  
  
“No, that was just a hallucination. You really shouldn’t believe anything I say, even I don’t believe what I say that much anymore.” 

 

“N-no, I know it must be so. Y-you see. I’m just like you, I can hear them too because I’ve lived besides death my entire life. B-but, my sister is angry with me. I let a girl say terrible words about her, and she must have thought I was insulting her too. So I can’t hear her at all.” He reached forward, grabbing Komaeda’s hand. Komaeda saw the bandages around Korekiyo’s hand unravel and underneath was a hand covered in scars. “You can help me.”  
  
“You’re unwell.”  
  
Komaeda never talked this plainly.  
  
“Don’t you want to see Kumagawa-kun, again? Isn’t that why you’ve been so troubled the past few weeks? No, it’s more than that, you’re drenched with sweat down to your skin, you always carry the faint scent of blood, are you dying?”  
  
Komaeda thought he had kept it a secret. 

If he were to ever die one day he wanted someone to hold his hand and be by his side.  
For the longest time he only dreamed of that.  
He also, did not want anyone to know he was dying.  
They all thought he was sick in the head, but he did not want that sickness to be seen.  
  
Transparent.  
Vague.  
Ambiguous.  
Whatever he needed to become so they did not look his way.  
  
He realized what Korekiyo was doing. The sight of a corpse would trigger different feelings in a dying person, than a healthy one. Not only that but a friend that was dead because of him. He suddenly was hit with all the feelings he became see through to avoid, head on.  
  
The feeling.  
The closest thing he had to an old friend.  
Dear agony.  
Just let go of me.  
Don’t get go of me.  
Suffer slowly.  
Let forever drag me down.

Falling, falling, until I fall to where Kumagawa is.  
  
There was a difference between falling and watching someone else fall. Watching someone fall may seem like the enviable position, but the person falling was probably stronger in the end. 

 

 _Ah, but I’ve always been falling._ _  
_ _All I can do is trip and fall._ _  
_ _And be thrown back and forth by luck._  
  
“I’m not dying.”  
  
“Lying does little to change the fact-”  
  
“I am alive, until I am dead.”  
  
Even one more breath is enough to fight for, to endure all this pain for.  
Until the end. 

I’m not a main character but I want to make it to the end. 

  
“Kiyo-chan, listen to me. If you’re like me, and you should hope you’re not-” What a use of the word hope, “Then you’re just hearing things. You’re in a cave seeing shadows on the wall.”  
  
That must have been Korekiyo’s faint hope. That separated from this sister that he apparently talked to, one day he would see her again, one day he might feel her again, one day he could hear her words of love again.  
  
That hope was absolutely rotten. It was the hope of a corpse. Korekiyo tried to cause despair with his friend’s corpse for this.  
  
“You were speaking to Kumagawa-kun, and his body is still here untouched. I know of some rituals that can commune with the dead among other cultures-”  
  
“That stuff is just all imaginary. The weak make these things up and tell stories greater than themselves because they can’t cope with living.” 

“No, you’re wrong. Man fears death, and yet at the same time, man is drawn to death. Why do you think so many different cultures hae funeral rites? Why do you think rumors of ways to resurrect the dead never cease? The living must find a reason, however forced, to accept death when it happens. They search for meaning in death…” 

 

“There is none.” Kumagawa’s voice left his lips. “There’s no meaning. There’s no meaning. There’s no meaning, got it.” 

  
Korekiyo in a crude way was trying to force him to confront death, because he thought they were the same. “What is Kumagawa-kun could come back?” 

 

Komaeda widened his eyes but gave no other reaction.  
  
“You’re just like me, you want to see him again. You’d do anything to see him again. Look, his skin is ice cold, his lips are faded, and yet he refuses to rot. Doesn’t he look like a sleeping prince waiting to be awoken by a kiss?”

 

Komaeda slowly approached Kumagawa tied up like that. He leaned over the body. His white hair fell in loose curls, the tips of which tickled Kumagawa’s face. Kumagawa’s eyes were closed, so even if he were to steal something right now Kumagawa would never see. It would be so much easier if he were just asleep. He wanted those eyes like clear water, to open and look at him again. The only time he felt clean, was when those eyes stared at him.  
  
Even though he was a dirty person. 

He desired pure white.

“There’s no such thing as a death that can be accepted, but you have to accept death. How you come to terms with death determines how you live, yes? I know, because I too lost something vitally important, I was fatally wounded, but I had to keep living.”  
  
Komaeda coughed again suddenly. Droplets of blood from his lips fell to Kumagawa’s own. He was always doing this, always staining white flowers with his blood. Kumagawa may have been a black dahlia, but he was a flower nonetheless. Even when he was trampled on, even when the wind knocked him down, he bloomed ever so beautifully.  
  
Everybody could be a flower, everybody could bloom except him it seemed.  
He could only watch them die.  
That was why they could not get close to the weed, because they would die.  
  
Komaeda withdrew his head and met Korekiyo’s eyes. He did not laugh evilly, he did not break out into a screaming fit, he was oddly calm for once. “Haha…” That quiet short laugh was all he could muster as he wiped the blood from his lips. “Saying that there’s somebody else like me? What a joke. You should be the Ultimate Comedian. You and I are nothing alike.” 

  
“But you’re surrounded by death-”  
  
“I will never accept death,” Komaeda cut him off.  
  
Komaeda, the machine slowly breaking down.  
Korekiyo the cracked mirror of his sister.  
Rantaro, the prince who could not exist in reality.  
All three of them were strangers, but that did not mean they knew each other either.

Komaeda wrapped his arms around himself. “I’m almost jealous… you had an unbelievably precious person to you? You had someone who loved you so much it was painful? Are they the reason your hand is cut up like that? I’m jealous of that too, because you see I’ve never been hurt by anyone. I never felt anyone’s pain. It was just, random circumstances, and therefore it was meaningless. You have someone to love to the point of insanity, I don’t have anyone to love, I just have someone to hate…”  
  
He thought of Enoshima Junko, her nails tearing his skin, her hand wrapping around his neck, gouging out his own eye.  
  
“But then again, you got to hold your sister’s hand as she died. You got to always be by her side, she got to die loved by a person like you. What a heatwarming scene, if this were fiction I’m sure it would mean something to the person reading it, but it’s not. Death is just death. Your sister doesn’t care anymore whether you loved or hated her. Hmm, actually if she had just been killed by a random meteor would it have been any different?” 

 

“Y-you’re just denying it because you’re afraid of dying.”

  
Komaeda held his hand under his one eye.  
Pure white.  
Almost transparently, so, like a shinigami. He understood the comparison now.  
That was the color for which there was nothing left.  
That was the color of nothing.  
Touched by no one.  
Mixing with no one’s color.  
The color left behind when all else dies.  
The color that belonged to death. 

  
“Death is endlessly consumed by culture, right? Not out of fascination, but by fear. You’re just trying to understand it, not accept it. Not live with it. You’re just trying to get used to living without your sister, because you’re too afraid otherwise. Rituals and myths are just people trying to make sense out of the senseless. You’re not learning and trying to find a way to live, you’re just that same kid, crying at his sister’s side going ‘Why, why did she have to be the one to die?’ but there’s no answer for that question…” 

 

“You’re not scared of dying?”  
  
“Death is my old friend, that’s why I’m terrified of it. Because I know it. I’m selfish, I don’t think ‘I should have been the one to die’ all I think is ‘I’m so glad I didn’t die’, and you’re the same way too.” 

 

“...No.”  
  
“When you saw your sister dead, all you thought was ‘I’m so glad that it’s not me’. I had a friend once. He rejected everything. Hope. Despair. Love. Hate. And most of all death. It was such a foolish way to live, because he was going to die regardless but still…”  
  
“I don’t know what that’s like...”  
  
Korekiyo’s voice fell quiet. He held himself the same way Komaeda did.  
  
“Having a friend.”  
  
Komaeda’s eyes were completely dull. When the fog cleared out from his eyes, when hope and despair stopped spinning, there was nothing left. It was like a hurricane that consumed everything and left only waste behind. It was almost better to be filled with the volatile mixture of hope and despair, because that was not empty.  
  
Komaeda spoke up. “I see, this is your pathetic, cloying attempt at making a friend. You want a friend as broken as you are, even if you have to break them yourself. But that will never work with me, because I hate broken people, I hate weakness. People like that should be stepped on and stepped on until they break like glass, and then break further until they’re just dust.”  
  
Korekiyo stared at Komaeda.  
Oh, there it was.  
The glass mirrors in his eyes were broken. 

All that was left was the fear underneath the cracks.  
Korekiyo spoke out in a shaking voice, as if he was addressing a monster. “I was wrong, you’re not a special person at all. There’s nothing at all extraordinary in your dysfunction, an ordinary failure of a human being. You're just a wreck.”   
  
Komaeda sighed. “I keep telling everyone I’m a lesser person, but they never listen to me.” Komaeda turned around. Korekiyo was troubled but he had no intention of saving him.  
Komaeda could not save a single person.  
He could not even save himself.  
Besides, he despised that weakness.  
He despised his weak self.  
It was all about him.

And if it was only about him he was the only one who would ever get hurt.  
  
Komaeda just walked away leaving him there.  
Proving nothing, except that he was a scarier person than Korekiyo.  
Which was nothing at all.  
He turned his head back and laughed.  
  
“That’s me, human failure.”  
A hollow laugh, that sounded more like white noise, completely senseless.    
“That’s me, no longer human.”

 


	39. I Can't Not Be With You

The story of me, Tsumugi Shirogane, is something I cannot retell.   
Am I myself?   
Who did this to me?  
Who stole away 'myself'?  
  
 _The culprit is already in the room._   
It’s just me all along.   
My name is already very unstable.   
My name has been changed several times already that’s why I can’t seek identity in it.   
None. Not at all.   
So I tell other people’s stories. 

Finding out that a character you admired was human all along. 

Doesn’t that feel like a betrayal?  
Envy is a natural human emotion, so says nietzsche.   
Humans desire to be something other than themselves.   
But there was one person in this world, I thought was in love with being themselves.   
Enoshima Junko. “A Real Girl” as opposed to a fake like me.   
A girl who can simply be described as not fake. 

Could it be that charismatic, cute and popular Enoshima Junko longed to be someone else?

Betrayed. Betrayed. Betrayed. Betrayed.   
Is there a single person on earth who is comfortable in their own skin? 

🧸

  
Haha. It’s gone on so long without something happening. 

Enoshima Junko you’re supposed to be a beautiful, untouchable person. A person who can move everything with one touch, but you’re just lying in bed. 

  
“Hey! Hey! Why are you just laying around? No one’s going to die at this rate! The only thing you’re killing is the mood.”   
  
Enoshima Junko was awoken by Monokuma shouting in her face like the world’s most annoying alarm clock. Normally, she would be delighted by this, but this was just an imposter monokuma. He was just a walking copyright violation.   
  
“Shaddup!”

 

Junko took one the severed head of a nearby stuffed animal and tossed it right at Monokuma’s head. She rolled over in bed. What was wrong with sleeping seventeen hours a day. It was called beauty sleep, and she was so beautiful she needed a lot of it.   


  
If she had been the mastermind rather than the fake, she would have done the exact same thing. She would lock herself away in one room, a metal and concrete box and simply spend all her time watching the interactions between her other classmates through the one window. Unable to interact with others, unable to reach out and touch a single person, unable to leave that box. 

  
Kumagawa destroyed everything she thought.   
Kumagawa took her hand and pulled her out of the box.   
Kumagawa leaned down over her coffin and gave her a kiss so she could wake up.   
He woke up sleeping beauty in the most violent way possible.   
  
“Come on! You don’t even have to kill someone, you can just manipulate someone else into killing themselves or performing a murder! Won’t it be fun? You’ll get to see your precious Senpai again, or I could bring your precious Matsuda-kun. If you committed a double murder I could bring both. Don’t you want everything?” 

  
Everything. 

The whole world. 

 

“I feel sick…” 

 

Not hate or love, just a bitter and petty feeling in between. A feeling that could never fill her up, just sit underneath her skin with satisfaction. A stupidly peaceful lookwarm existence. Just, a sickness, an enternal nausea, she was made sick simply by living. It was probably because someone like her was never meant to live in the first place.   


_Not a single thing._ _  
_ _I don’t like a single thing._   
She had no likes or dislikes.   
_Get sick._ _  
_ _Get sick of this already._   


She wrapped her arms around herself embracing herself. Her nails dug into her skin, leaving harsh red streaks. She just wanted to peel that skin off. She wanted to be done with it, the feeling of being sick, but that was also the feeling of being her. 

  
There was nothing outside for her. There was no place for her in a world like that.   
The world she wanted to belong to was the one between her and Kumagawa. That narrow, chaotic, impossible to define and ever changing world. She no longer wanted to destroy the world, but she still felt the sentiment of _they can all go die for all I care._

 

Enoshima Junko had no presence among the other students. She was a ghost, or a mystery. She preferred it that way, not a single one of them would ever see her.   
_Just leave your impressions there._

_Don’t compose a contrary image on me._

What did she care about what a bunch of dolls thought?  
A bunch of actors playing two bit parts and reading their scripts.   
She wanted reality. She wanted a genuine feeling.   
She wanted other human beings to prove to her that they were real.   


People around her never wanted to be interesting. All they wanted was to gather in groups and then drown together in stagnant happiness. Hope was the slowest group suicide ever. It was just people linking hands and walking into a lake together. She would not do it, she would not live slowly waiting to die.

  
She saw a shadow in the corner of her eyes. She saw Kumagawa appear in the mirror when she looked away, like bloody mary come to haunt her. Junko scrambled out of her bed, crashing into the floor and then dragging herself back up. She sat with her back to the mirror, wearing only her underwear and Kumagawa’s jacket draped over her shoulders. 

 

『 _You call this living?_ 』 

 _  
_ “...”   
  
『 _Junko, breathe without me._ 』 _  
  
_

She could not face him.  
She could not look his way.   
She could not say his name.   
She could not even reach a hand out when she needed him.   
  
“Senpai…”   
  
She sighed and shuddered at his touch. Melancholy, the lukewarm emotion she hated the most. 

 

『 _Why don’t you just go outside?_ 』

『 _Find somebody else, Mukuro, Komaeda, it could be anybody._ 』

『 _It doesn’t matter does it?_ 』   
『 _It’s not like our connection was meaningful._ 』   
『 _It’s not like I was anybody special._ 』   
『 _...I get it._ 』   
『 _Still trying to please people with your fake image?_ 』

『 _I’m sick of you._ 』   
『 _Don’t love me._ 』   
『 _I want to escape from you._ 』   
  
Her shadow tried to tear itself away from her feet. She could feel it, like her flesh getting ripped off. Enoshima Junko had never been rejected, she had no concept of it. Actually, she had always been rejected. She was rejected by everybody else to begin with, because there was no one else like her. She was entirely lacking in the feeling of rejection. She did not feel it, the pain of being close with others, the pleasure of being embraced by them. Even her own shadow wanted to escape from her.   
  
She should have been able to push herself through her beauty routine at least, she did not know who she was really but she knew she was vain. Yet, routine was such a dry and insipid word for her. Normal people were able to get up every single morning and live through their lives without thinking anything at all. She was incapable of doing anything a normal girl could. 

 

Enoshima turned around and fell back.   
She fell on top of her own shadow, it was like falling in pitch black water. She heard the surface of the water break. It was more than just a metaphor, she could actually feel droplets of water splashing up and landing on her face. The only tears she would ever be able to cry.   
  
She got so bored her brain decided to hallucinate to entertain her. She guessed. She could not even lose her mind like a normal person, how frustrating. She simply lied in a dead man’s float at the surface of the water.   
  
Junko folded her hands over her chest like she was a beautiful girl in a casket waiting to be buried dressed in all white. She stopped, and indecisively reached out for a lotus flower on one of the lilypads.   
  
“I want to live, but I don’t want to live.”   
“Live.”   
“Die.”   
“Live.”   
“Die.”   
  
She counted as she plucked the petals away from the flower. She knew, each choice would disappoint her equally. That was why she was naturally such an indecisive girl always changing her mind.   
  
“There’s something out there for me, Senpai told me so, but I don’t know where it is.”   
  
Junko crushed the flower, shredding it to pieces between her nails. 

She closed her eyes and stopped floating along the surface of the water. She wanted to stop thinking. She wanted sensory loss, to feel deprived of sight, sound, and feeling. Well, she did not feel anything regardless.  
  
Her thoughts were half disease, half arrogance.   
Diluted by sewage, marinated by lukewarm water.   
Why did she even think anyways?   
Glucose.   
Melted.   
Into her brain. 

 

『 _You’re just a lazy girl making an excuse not to get out of bed._ 』   
  
“Laziness is it’s own kind of despair. You can never become the person you want to be, and you don’t even bother to try. I wanna sink down further and further.”   
  
She spoke, but since she was surrounded by water she ended up swallowing the pitch black liquid. Good. She wanted to drown. She wanted to drown in the river that was Kumagawa Misogi. She wanted the shadow to cover every part of her exposed skin. She wanted the cold water to caress her. 

 

“I ---- you.” 

 

『 _You don’t mean that._ 』   
  
“I ---- you.” 

 

『 _You don’t mean that, either._ 』   
  
“If you say the words are meaningless then I’m going to smack a bitch.”   
  
『 _If you want something meaningful, just say those words. Those words, those words, the more you spit them out the closer they become to the truth._ 』

 

“You’re not allowed to talk in theme like that, you’re too stupid, senpai! When you try to sound smart, everyone just laughs, and I laugh the loudest of all.” 

 

Revering, declaring, shining awfully bright, like a theme park. That was the image of Enoshima Junko. Underneath that, was just a dull and empty girl. Nobody wanted her to have depth, it would have been better if she just remained a two dimmensional character who purely lived for despair.   
  
She was once pure, in a way.   
Now, she was dirty.   
She wanted to sink in dirty water.   
She wanted to be defiled. 

  
She remembered the last time she sunk like this. Kumagawa and her drowned in a river together. If only they had died then, then they really could be together forever! Their bony hands would be wrapped around each other, as the river tied ceaselessly washed over them again and again. She could still clearly recall the pained look in Kumagawa’s face as they were both falling. He had been so desperate to save her, but she did not take his hand. Instead, as they both fell she slowly reached up and held both sides of his face with her pointed nails.   
  
That face. She wanted to remember it forever. She wanted to take it and make it hers. That look of utter agony as the curtain fell, as if the words _I don’t want it to end_ were written in his eyes. It was because he was in so much pain, that was when she knew for sure he truly loved her.   
  
He truly loved her.   
But she did not know how to love or be loved.   
Perhaps it was better for him to disappear while they could both still feel love.   
Falling out of love.   
Slowly feeling those emotions diminish away would have been too painful.   
Like her heartbeat slowing down until it one day just stopped.   
Once it gets senile, love no longer exists.

 

Suddenly, a hand reached out and pulled her out of the water. Being ripped from drowning in ink, and seeing light again felt like being born. That hand pulling her was her own severed hand, stitched onto Kumagawa Misogi’s body.   


『 _Don’t do this._ 』   
『 _Survive without me._ 』   
  
“I…”   
  
『 _You long to die, that’s why you’re unable to die._ 』   
  
“No, I…”   


『 _I won’t let you! If it’s destined to rot, then just let it rot! Quit trying to throw everything away!_ 』

 

“I want to be more like you, senpai. I wish I could pretend to say such cool words.” 

  
She gasped the moment her head broke away from the water. Enoshima Junko stumbled out of the shower. That was right, she had been hallucinating in the middle of taking a shower. She had actually decided to get up and try to get dressed after all. It was annoying when her own brain was being an unreliable narrator making her forget things. 

  
In the mirror she saw several Enoshima Junko’s flash by. Her cute pose, round cheeks, her hand curled up like a paw at her cheek.   
  
“Maizono Sayaka.”   
  
Her cool intelligent beauty pose, a pair of glasses her hair tied back in one pony tail as she pushed up her glasses on her nose.   
  
“Togami Byakuya.”   
  
Her punk pose, she held her hands across her chest curling her fingers like devil horns as her tongue fell out.   
  
“Genocide Jack.”   
  
Her silhouette wore a half smile in the mirror. “You wanted to become like them, didn’t you? You tried to copy them to become more human.”

  
Enoshima Junko collapsed onto her bed, still naked and wet. She felt a weight on her bed, as if someone was crawling around on it on all fours. Her hand was aloft, as she laid there restlessly on the bed. That person’s hand slowly crawled over her like a spider, and then wrapped his hand into hers, fingers curling as he pushed her hand down harder into the sheets.  

 

『 _It’s not your fault._ 』

 

As he crawled on top of her slowly. His shadow fell over her. She was completely still underneath him, and he remained careful in his approach. She felt the weight of his hands at her legs, her hips, traveling up. He brushed the other hand against her shoulder, gently holding her there. As he held his head over hers, his hair fell down and tickled her cheeks.   
  
At this point they were completely eclipsed. 

  
『 _You didn’t ask to be born like this! You’re just a pathetic little rabbit tossed about by providence._ 』   
  
He pressed his cheek against hers. He looked down, and saw her eye, colorless and dull. Slowly, she let that eye fall closed. 

 

『 _Junko, your eyes are so pretty. So melancholic, so pitiful. So prettyful._ 』   
  
His arm went over her shoulder as he held her, while continuing to tie their fingers together up in knots. There was not enough room for the two of them, it was like their bones were being crammed together into the same small space.   
  
『 _Fall asleep with me. We’ll mix and melt together._ 』

  
A shadow’s whisper. 

A shadow’s lullaby.  
Lovely lullaby.   
Crazy lullaby.   
A lullaby just we two.   
A lullaby as we hold each other.   
An ecstatic lullaby see us thrill.   
No more sleeping.   
No more waking.   
No more thinking.   
  
Her head jerked back suddenly, her body rocked, her mouth fell open in pain. She gasped uncontrollably.   
『 _Look, I am you and you are me._ 』   
『 _It’s only right this would hurt._ 』

 

“Senpai… That’s not your voice. I can’t talk to you.Even though I want to talk to you, the most... I can only talk to myself, that’s all I ever do.”   
  
I want to see Senpai. I want to see Senpai. I want to Senpai. I want to see Senpai.   
She fell asleep filled up with those thoughts, embraced by them. 

 

The next time Enoshima Junko woke up, Ikusaba Mukuro was shaking her.   
Her face, redder than normal.   
Her red freckles were covered with red hot cheeks swelling with emotion.   
Mukuro was so warm.   
Burning up.   
There were tears falling from the corners of her eyes, and flying in the sky in slow motion.   
As she shook Junko awake in a panic.   
Her sister felt so much.   
If Junko tried to feel those emotions with her weak heart, she would burn up, there would be nothing left, not even cinders.   
  
“You’re all right? You’re alive?”   
  
Oh. She made her sister cry again.   
  
“Huh? What? Good morning.”  Junko was so out of sorts she did not even have the brain energy required to insult Mukuro.   
“You’re all right?”   
  
“It’s too early to give that question the philosophical answer it deserves. Is anybody truly all right? Some questions are best left open ended.” Junko had enough brain matter left to answer like a smart ass apparently. “Yes, yes, methinks that a smart thing to say.” 

  
Hand. Hand. Hand.   
Her sister’s hand.   
Raised up in the air, she slapped Junko.   
Mukuro almost never raised a hand against her.   
She kept clawing at Junko’s chest.   
Junko looked and saw, the water was spilling out from the shower and into the electronics she kept all over the room. 

 

It did not hurt at all.   
But it hurt a whole lot.   
  
“I won't forgive you. I’ll never forgive you. Even if you apologize I won’t forgive you. You ruined my whole life, so you have to live the rest of your life making up for that.” Her sister collapsed against her, overflowing with emotions, spilling them out like water, but Junko could not do a single thing.   


“Stop isolating yourself. You’re only getting worse,” Mukuro said again.   
  
Junko felt like she was only going to get worse no matter what she did. “That might be its own kind of despair, slowly losing myself like this. Maybe that was the true despair I was facing, my entire life, it was always going to end up like this, not able to do a single thing like a person diagnosed with a terminal illness from birth.”   
  
Mukuro pulled at her sister’s hair. “That’s not despair, that’s just sad.”   
  
Not in despair.   
Just a sad girl.   
Never before, did Junko feel so exposed, so naked.   
She supposed her sister could see after all.   
That the emperor had no clothes.   
She knew everything about her after all. 

 

“Junko-chan, you want to see it too don’t you? You want to see Hikoboshi.” 

 

Enoshima Junko saw the shadow of Kumagawa’s back, illuminated by a faint light. That was right. Kumagawa could not shine so brightly without darkness. She slowly reached out for that light for the first time. 

 

_A light of my own._

  
🧸

 

Ikusaba Mukuro carried her pitch black sister on her back.  
Pitch black.   
A color that absorbed all darkness.   
Perfectly dark.   
Unable to see a thing.   
  
Her sister cast a shadow over her whole life. She would not be who she was without that sister. That was why, even if it was for a twisted reason she could never throw her away. 

  
It was hard to tell whether her sister was awake or asleep, but she was completely quiet. The last thing she had said or did was reach out towards something Mukuro could not see. Mukuro carried her all the way on her back, like she had when they were much younger leaving tracks in the snow together.   
  
When she finally made it to Makoto’s dorm, she opened the door and dumped Junko inside with Makoto simply sitting there reading a manga that his sister asked him to read. That was probably a bad idea but she would deal with it later, she had other people besides Junko to take care of for once.   
  
Ikusaba stopped for a moment to look at her own hand. She wondered, between Junko’s pitch black, and Makoto’s pure white, what color was she? Had she gotten any farther away from her sister? Had she gotten closer to Makoto. 

 

She stopped thinking about that (she was stupid after all) and jogged to the library. She bowed her head politely. “I’m sorry for being late Kiyo, I’m glad you agreed to hang out with me.”   
  
“You… you’ve changed your skin.”   
  
“For a mellow guy you’re very dramatic, Kiyo.”   
  
“What are you wearing?” 

 

Ikusaba Mukuro was dressed in a red and black uniform and miniskirt. In other words the reason she had gone to check on Junko earlier was to steal some of her clothes. To be honest, to wear these clothes again was to embrace her feelings of the past. She felt them crawling all over her skin. It took all her strength to fight her trembling in front of Kiyo.   
  
“Kiyo, I’m like you. In the past, my sister forced me to dress up like her as well. I had to wear this super trashy outfit designed by someone who apparently ‘has a taste in fashion’, but I’m really doubtful about that,” Mukuro said, venting about her sister behind her back again.   
  
“All humans are beautiful of course…” Korekiyo suddenly hissed in a much lower voice. “But, you’re not suited for that outfit at all.” 

  
“Of course I’m not, because this is something Junko would wear. Not something I want to wear. Wearing an outfit this bright, I could easily attract attention in the middle of a crowd and get stabbed.”   
  
That was an oddly specific example from the military minded sister. She reached for the skirt and lifted it up slightly. “This is the world’s shortest skirt too, no wonder Misogi-chan is always staring at her like that.”   
  
“What is the point of this? Just because I am a silent, stoic soul does not mean I just want to sit here listening to you one sidedly complain.”   
  
“I thought you liked observing others.”   
  
“I- sssh, you.” 

  
“Do you like wearing that heavy uniform, Kiyo? Or do you just wear it because your sister told you to wear it.”   
  
Korekiyo’s heart stopped.   
His blood ran ice cold.   
He, longed for his sister.   
He longed for her touch.   
Her smell.   
Her warmth.   
He could imagine all those things when he wore these clothes.   
He could pretend he was being embraced by his sister again.   
  
He loved his sister.   
He had no choice but to love his sister.   
Enduring pain for the sake of love was more meaningful.   
Otherwise, he had been hurt by her so many times for no reason at all.   
Then his sister after hurting him so much just went and died like that. 

 

His sister could not have abandoned him. He read in her diary that she was looking forward to the future. She always told him how much she wanted to live. She left so much behind for him. These bruises, these scars, these bandages, and these clothes to wear. He reached up and hooked a finger around his mask dragging it down.   
  
The lipstick on his lips was smeared. He could not hear his sister’s voice. He spoke with his own shaking voice. “I don’t know… I don’t know what I like…” 

 

“Th-that’s okay…” Mukuro said, in a gentle and hesitant voice. Completely different from the voice which she had confronted him with last time. Almost like she had two different faces, no wait that was him. “You know if you want to wear lipstick, that’s fine. I don’t really like makeup that much because my sister always used to force me to sit there for hours and make me play as her dress up doll. ‘Hey, Mukuro your face is so ugly this is all I can do until I figure out how to photoshop someone’s real life face.’ Stuff like that.”   
  
“You’re just one sidedly complaining again.”   
  
“I’m sorry! Bad habit!” She bowed her head, apologizing enthusiastically again. 

 

Korekiyo had never told a single person what his sister had done to him. Even Toko, he could not bring himself to share the details. He had the sense she already knew, she might have known for awhile, but knowing and speaking something aloud were two different things.  
  
He did not know how to speak in his own voice.   
He only knew how to imitate his sister.   
He wanted to become her, or so he thought.   
  
“There must be something you like to do. Not because it’s beautiful or anything, but just because it’s fun.” 

 

“Books.” 

 

“Hm…” 

 

“I thought I didn’t need to understand my own feelings, because sister understood them for me. Then one day, I read a book and realized that these feelings were my own.”   
  
Mukuro nodded her head. “There was a time my world just consisted of me and my sister, but then a boy smiled at me. He looked at me who was a nobody, with such kindness.” She played with her hair between her fingertips, as her cheeks reddened. She suddenly realized, she was just talking about herself again.   
  
Both sisters were a little bit self absorbed.   
Mukuro only knew isolation back in those days.   
Even if she was always with Junko, she felt lonely.   
  
That day the screws holding her heart in place loosened a little.   
Her end goal was to reach a place where she could see ‘other people’.   
But right now she also believed she did not deserve to be among them. 

She was too ashamed of the blood on her hands.   
  
“You don’t understand! I’m not as lucky as you! Nobody found me, nobody was kind to me! When my sister died I had nothing left. I don’t have friends, I don’t have a single person who knows me, so it’s better if I just disappear right?” Korekiyo said, suddenly as he always did losing his cool.   
  
“N-no, I understand because I almost disappeared to.”   
  
She didn’t because she met someone. 

Because she met someone, she shook all those screws loose and her heart broke.   
Because she met someone, she started to doubt herself.   
A thorny vine planted in her heart began to grow.   
If she followed through with Junko’s plan, then everybody would have forgotten about her.   
  
They would just see Junko when they looked at her.

 _Junko would be the only one who knows about me now._   
That should not have been a problem for her.   
That was how it was before.   
As long as she knew her sister she knew herself.   
This is how things should be… it’s fine I think. 

 

Mukuro reached forward and tried to touch the shaking Korekiyo again. She tried to steady him with her own hand, only for him to escape her reach. “My sister wanted me to pretend to be her, and make all her other friends forget me. Then, my own sister threw me away. I thought I lost everything but… you know Kiyo, that person told me it’s okay to lose everything.” 

  
“N-no… I won’t let go of her.”   
  
She knew Korekiyo was the same. He was tied up in vines. They constricted him. They wrapped around his feet making it impossible even for him to run away. So he averted his eyes and fooled himself to loving his sister.   
  
“If it hurts, you can just throw it all away. You don’t have to love her.” 

 

“No one would miss me.” When his sister died, he cried over her. Korekiyo was convinced if he did the same not a single person would cry. He was just the ghost image of his sister after all, someone the world could do without. “Do you understand, if I let go of my sister then I’m just… some kid who doesn’t know how to do anything?” 

  
That was why it was better for him to hold on to a painful love. Even if he disappeared, it was better for him to try to live as someone else.   
  
“It’s not better, it’s just easier,” Mukuro muttered under her breath in a low growl. She had known all along the kind of person Junko was, but she just lied to herself instead of confronting her sister, and because of that she became a murderer. She did not want Korekiyo to make the same mistake. “It’s hard to live as yourself, it’s painful.” 

  
  
She knew because she was nothing more than a murderer. She was ashamed, so ashamed. No matter how far she ran she would never escape that title. Her sins would follow her until she died, like a dog running to catch up with her and then devour her. 

  
She knew she was lucky to meet Makoto. She knew Kumagawa sympathized her even though she tried to kill him several times. The only reason she was able to live as herself because of those other people. That was why she wanted to become that, for this person in front of her. All she could do was help as she had been helped.   
  
She reached forward and tried to touch Korekiyo’s cheek, the one he usually kept covered with his mask. “Kiyo, if you disappeared I think that would be a bad thing. Because maybe you can pretend to be your sister, but you’re the only person that can be you. I would miss you.” 

  
Korekiyo opened his mouth and chomped down on her fingers hard. She saw red. She heard something crack. She forgot, not only was Korekiyo unstable, he was also violent. It was almost beastial, like his mind had ceased being able to reason.   
  
She pulled her hand out of his mouth, holding it back. She did not feel that much pain, or rather she was used to it. There were two large holes on her knuckles,  like a snake had bitten her. 

 

“Th-this is your fault. I was happy when it was just me and sister. What good comes from realizing how unhappy I am?” He clutched at his face again, his bandages falling off of his hand coming undone. He looked like a mummy falling apart. When he realized he could hurt her, his eyes contracted becoming snake like slits. “Don’t lecture me like you’re a person. You keep talking about this sister. Your sister is your despair, Naegi-kun is your hope, but where are you between the two of them? You don’t have either hope or despair.” 

  
Korekiyo looked up, smiling. His smile had visible fangs no longer hidden underneath his mask. “You define yourself entirely by the others around you. If you did not have your sister, if you did not have Naegi-kun, who would you be? You can’t do a single thing on your own, you’re still taking orders you just changed your master.”   
  
He was hurt, so he lashed out like a confused and panicked animal. Mukuro just found it sad, that Korekiyo hated himself so much that the idea of being anyone else was better. It was not his fault, his sister had taught him this hate. 

  
“Nobody told me to want to be your friend.”   
  
“I don’t want any friends.” If love was at all what his sister’s love was like, then he could do without. He could keep his distance as a matter of survival. 

 

Mukuro walked over to the wall. She pulled a book off the shelf and slowly moved to him holding the book up, “I want to get better at reading, do you have any reccomendations?” 

 

“Fukawa-san’s novels are the best. Not that I care what a dog like you reads, I’m only interested in humans.”  
  
“I’ll read this quickly, and then I’ll tell you what I think about it. Let’s both read the same book, and hear how the other feels about it.” She slowly passed the book into his hands. 

  
Korekiyo accepted it. He did not know why. He held it with trembling fingers. For a moment he wondered if there was ever a time, he and his sister got along, before her sickness. Those memories were almost faded now.   
  
He thought he had the faintest memory, of a girl placing a book in his hands. Her fingers overlapped with his. “Let’s read this together. If you get stuck on a world, big sister will help you.” There was a question he had asked himself over and over again. If it was all the sickness driving her to do those things, or if his sister simply loathed him. An answer that he would never get, because the only person he could ask it to was dead. 

  
It seemed everything else died with her.   
Yet, he was still here.   
Was Komaeda right, should he just be relieved he was still alive? 

 

Before he could think any more, or even open the book and read a single page of his life suddenly the door burst open. “Hey, so you were borrowing Kiyo! Give him back already!” She said, making rude demands as usual as she immediately grabbed him and started to drag him away.   
  
“I’m suddenly so popular. Have I become a fad among human beings?” Korekiyo murmured passively.   
  
“Fukawa-chan, there’s no reason why we can’t both hang out with Kiyo. I wanted to catch up with you too…”   
  
Fukawa immediately turned away. “Oh suddenly, the popular girl is taking pity on me.”   
  
“I… I’m not popular.”   
  
“You have a boyfriend, you have a sister, I thought we could be friends because your chest is flatter than mine, and in comparison to you I’m basically a greek goddess but there’s no way I’ll get along with someone who just feels sorry for me.”   
  
“This feels like talking to my sister all of a sudden.” Mukuro said, those words were a shot straight to Toko’s heart, she even saw her classmate seize up. “You don’t get along with anybody and… I don’t feel sorry for you, it’s just we’re both killers so…”   
  
“Then you just feel sorry for yourself. You have it so good right now, even someone ugly like you found love. All you do with all that love is lie down in the mud along with all the other dogs.”   
  
Fukawa’s nastiness made Mukuro pause. She just wondered if she had done anything to make the other girl angry. If Makoto were here, he would be kind to both of them but what could she do?   


“Fukawa-chan… I… I think you’re the one whose looking away from other people. Even when people try to be friends with you, you always do this. It’s like you want to be alone… b-but then you always complain about being unpopular.”   
  
“Yeah, so just leave me alone. I didn’t ask for your sympathy, your pity, or your attention-”   
  
“You’re constantly asking for all of that.”   
  
“No, I don’t! Let me leave on a cool line for once! I always think of them for my books but I never get the chance to say them in reality! Jack gets to say all the cool stuff.”   
  
Fukawa just left at that.   
Mukuro did not know what else to say.   


Mukuro sniffed herself. “Why do people keep calling me a dog today? Do I smell or something?” 

 

  
🧸

 

The desire to become someone else, it’s probably just loneliness right?  
It’s a lonely thing being an individual.   
Even if there are two people crammed into your head, you can still be lonely.

 

“Oh, so you don’t want to kill me for cutting your hair. Well that’s good.” 

 

“Once again you are way too chill about this whole hanging out with a serial killer thing, it’s unrealistic. If this was a novel, I would think this interaction was too unrealistic.” Toko scoffed at Komaru. 

  
  
All three of them, or rather Komaru and Toko were talking in the media room and Korekiyo was sitting in the corner of the room watching. He looked like one of those Yokai who appeared in the corners of photographs. 

 

“Huh, I thought novels were supposed to be unrealistic?”   
  
“W-well, they still need to have believable scenarios. Books are lies told by the authors that the readers have to believe.” Toko said, stealing my line. “If you’re lying you still have to lie within the realm of possibility, or it has to be consistent, or believable.” 

 

“Oh, so that’s why you’ve never written a novel where a gloomy girl who likes books falls in love with Togami-kun, because that would never happen in reality.” 

 

“W-why would you bully an innocent girl like me?”

 

“Wow, you’re really smart about these things. I guess you know better than me.” Komaru said, accepting that answer rather easily.   
  
“You didn’t think about it at all! You’re way too go with the flow.”   
  
“No, I think you’re just too high strung. You overthink everything, I don’t know what that’s like.”   
  
Toko was indeed high strung. So high strung it was like hooks were driven underneath her flesh, and constantly she hung suspended from red strings. No wonder she danced around so erratically, no wonder she wanted to cut all the strings with her scissors, she was always in pain.   
  
All that aside, Toko was also just kind of petty. “I guess you can’t know what it’s like when you’re too dumb to think about anything at all.” 

  
“Yeah, I guess…”   
  
“Now you’re agreeing with me too easily! You’re not supposed to have low self esteem you’re supposed to have average self esteem!”   
  
“What’s with this characterization of me I didn’t ask for? It’s not like I’m an rpg character with average stats all across the board.” Komaru sighed, that was just a part of dealing with Toko that she was slowly getting used to. “I guess I don’t really think of you as a murderer, I just don’t dwell on it.” 

  
“You should quit following me around, or everybody else will make fun of you too.”   
  
“There are bullies inside this school too? You’d think everybody else would have higher priorities you know with the k-k… you know the thing going on.” 

 

“You know you’re exactly the kind of person who dies in these games. I know virgins usually make it to the end of slasher movies, but that’s pulp and anything I’m in has to be fine literature. I-It’s like the destruction of innocence, a theme like that.” 

 

“Umm, I’m sure that was smart, but I really have no idea what you’re saying…” Komaru’s antenna twitched, swaying back and forth in confusion.

  
“You could die following me around you know. You’re idea of following a serial killer around is stupid, and besides I don’t want to protect anyone. What part of me looks like I’m a responsible person in any way?”   
  
Her clothes were in tatters, her hair was messed up even short as it was now. Even when Komaru tried to look her in the eyes, she avoided eye contact. She was a walking mess. 

 

“Umm… Well, you have talent.”   
  
“Fine, I’ll show you.” Toko grabbed the scissors from underneath her skirt, even though it was never her hands who had held them. She just needed a little bit of blood. She held them at her hand but hesitated. “Ewe. Ewe. Ewe. Don’t like pain, don’t like blood, so gross.” 

 

“You know for someone who is apparently a serial killer you’re kind of a wimp most of the time.”  
  
“Quit it with the quips! I don’t want to give anybody the impression that you’re funny, or likable, or attractive.”   
  
“Those last two were just unnecessary.” 

 

Toko pulled her collar back and found a stitched up injury from when she had fallen, and hit her head in the bath (again, just a few days ago, she was mortified by this recent trauma). She still had no idea who rescued her back then. She snipped away a few of the red stitches, reopening the wound.    
  
“Look, this is the real me.”   
  
She watched the blood ooze down her neck and remembered.   
The blood covering her body.   
The foul smell of that house.   
The fear that she was really going to die there.   
Her mother’s slit wrists.   
  
“Whoa man, I’m getting more screentime than usual. I must be getting some development this arc! Or maybe I’m just back by popular demand!”   
  
Jack grabbed her belly and laughed. She laughed, and smiled freely, because Toko was unable to. She laughed so hard she shed tears, because Toko could not cry. The girl on the other side of the mirror, the other person that Toko could become.   
  
Jack smiled, revealing razor sharp teeth. She quickly snipped the scissors into the air around Komaru. “Hey, hey, hey, how about I return the favor for that haircut you gave this body.”   
  
“O-oh. You’re the other one. Umm, well hi I’m Komaru.”   
  
“You realize I’m threatening you right?”   
  
“Yes, it’s very scary. I just have this bad habit of continuing to talk even when I’m scared. What was with that remark about being popular though.”   
  
Jack withdrew her scissors. This girl did not seem like much fun if she was not going to scream and cry and make cute faces. “Hmmm, well you see I don’t really have anywhere to go when I’m in that girl’s head, so I just hang around outside the fourth wall.”   
  
“The more we talk the more confusing this gets.” Komaru remarked, before looking at Jack with concern. “Wait, that girl, aren’t you guys friends? I mean, you’re basically roommates.”   
  
“That girl doesn’t have any friends, or rather she can’t.” Toko slid her tongue along the blade of her scissors. Not for any particular reason she just thought it looked cool and had difficulty standing still. “Anyway, what am I doing out anyway? Unless it’s snip snip time, I don’t want to be wasting valuable screentime. I think I’m too comedic a character for these kinds of scenes.”   
  
“I think she wanted you to come out and scare me away.”   
  
“Why would she want that? I’m a much more mellow, and likable person don’t you think?”   
  
“Ugh, I don’t get what Fukawa is trying to tell me with this at all! She keeps getting close to me, and then running away.”   
  
“Hmm, hmm, I wonder if I should tell this secret. Well, it would make that girl embarrassed so that’s a good enough reason. You don’t get it, it’s not really you she’s drawn to, it’s your normal aura.”   
  
“I get it I’m normal okay, you don’t need to remind me every five minutes.”   
She wished Kumagawa was back from the dead so she would have somebody else to be a loser with, however she also did not want to think about how he had died.   
  


Jack suddenly grabbed Komaru by the face, drawing her close. She held one thumb inside Komaru’s mouth so she could not talk back. “My other’s greatest wish is to be a normal girl. But, in the end all she did was create me? She became even more abnormal, in trying to escape her previous life. Pathetic right? Doesn’t it make you want to laugh at her? Go ahead, everyone else is, even her other self.”  
  
“N-no. That’s not pathetic, that’s just sad.”   
  
What was so good about being normal?   
Komaru always thought that.   
She never once thought…   
  
Korekiyo walked up and grabbed Jack’s hand, forcefully jerking her hand away from Komaru. “That’s enough. Stop playing around, Jack.”   
  
“But playing around is what I do best!” Jack said, flicking her tongue back and forth. “Trying to escape from herself, she just made another one of her self. Now she can't have enough of herself! What kind of self absorbed idiot does that?”   
  
Enoshima Junko and Fukawa Toko, apparently.

She grabbed at Korekiyo’s shorter hair with her scissors, and yanked him in her direction. “Oh, hey we’re matchies, kokokiyo. Why are you being such a killjoy anyway?” 

Komaru suddenly joined in. “Hey, I just noticed. Whenever me and Fukawa-san talk, you always just sit there and stare quietly. You could join in you know, I always need another manga fan.” 

Korekiyo reached up and subconsciously touched his neck. He felt the phantom touch of his sister’s hands around his neck even now. Even when she was dead. Even when he found other people to be himself around.   
  
“I don’t wish to have friends.”   
  
“What about Fukawa-san.”   
  
Suddenly, Korekiyo’s ice cold eyes looked like they were melting. “She does not need friends either. She is fine, exactly the way she is. She is beautiful the way she is.”   
  
Korekiyo put his hand over his mask. He murmured into his fingers, words that only he could hear. “Please don’t change, because then… you won’t be like me anymore.” 

 He felt envy.  
Oh.  
That was the proof that he was human after all.   



	40. Can't Stop, Can't Stop, Can't Stop

Can’t become close with you.   
Can’t stop wanting to become close with you. 

 

🧸

 

“You came to practice again? You’re so serious about this…” 

  
Kaede poked Shuichi in the cheek, not caring for his personal space again and spoke. “Hey, you’re supposed to be looking at the music not me.”   
  
“U-uh sorry.”    
  
“I thought I had been the only one looking at you, but I guess you’ve noticed me, too,” On the outside, Kaede smiled coquetteish, then tucked her golden hair behind her ear. Not only did she have no  sense of personal space, but she was able to say words that close to the heart like it was no problem at all.    
  
On the inside however, Kaede’s mental dialogue probably went something like this:    
_ That was the wrong line! _ _   
_ _ Why did I say that?  _ _   
_ _ Shuichi will read it the wrong way. _ _   
_ _ He’ll misunderstand.  _ _   
_ _ I didn’t mean it like that I just… _ _   
_ _ Hey, since when have I been this worried about what other people? _ _   
_ _ Or… is it other people? _ _   
_ _ Is it just him?  _

 

Kaede suddenly hit several random keys at once, the loud, discordant sounds were about what noise her brain was making at the moment too. She did not want to think of this any further, like a child slamming on all the piano keys at once in a tantrum. 

 

“Let’s get started already,” She said.    
  
She did not need words, because words would fail her. Words could easily become lies. Even if you said them with the best of intentions, even if you wanted to keep your promise with all of your heart they were just words in the end. If only they could understand each other without confusing words.    
  
She liked talking to others usually, especially Shuichi, but suddenly she was nervous. All of their previous piano lessons she had been talking the entire time but this time she put everything into her playing. She understood music even though she did not understand people. She wished she could convey her feelings to him with music alone.   
  
A duet.    
Two people playing piano together, sharing the same keys, and the same notes. In order to truly play together, you had to understand the other player, be in sync.    
  
As Shuichi was an ameteur among ameteurs, he stumbled through his playing as always. Rather than play with all five fingers, he used one finger on each hands to peck at individual notes. He looked like he was using all of his focus just to hit the right note at the right time. It was like watching an old person who never touched a computer before trying to use a keyboard.    
  
Kaede was the exact opposite, she played so quickly that her fingers seemed to float from one key to the next. Not just her fingers, the music was carrying through her entire body, she bobbed her head up and down, and moved her whole body like a wave being carried by the melody. If they were skating, Shuichi would be just barely standing up, while Kaede skated circles around.   
  
She glided.    
They needed to play together, not apart.    
She still remembered the first time Shuichi nervously sat at the bench.    
_ Weren’t we going to talk? _ _   
_ _ Piano duets are musical dialogues. _ She said.    
She leaned over him and touched his fingers, bringing them up to the keys. She moved his hand for him, and played a melody as natural as a spider moving on silk. Her hand over his.    
When she sat down next to him, she bumped hips with him for a moment. It was natural.    
Being this close to him. She did not think anything at all of his body clashing against hers.    
Their hips touching.   
A feelish rushing through her just for a moment, like a wave cresting.    
  
She closed her eyes and continued to play, rocking her head back and forth as she did. She could hear Shuichi’s slow and plodding notes like they were footsteps. That was right, it was like she was always running ahead and he was the one always struggling to catch up. She was the bright star, and he was the shadow that always followed. 

  
Music washed over her as she tried to forget, the distance between them, the gap on the piano bench. All of the times they were not able to talk to each other. She wanted them all to melt away, the same way she melted into the piano when she played. She became so focused on piano, it was like she ceased to be, and became part of the music instead. The muses could take control of her and puppet her around however they pleased, to make their music come about. 

 

Because Kaede still knew.   
That she was not supposed to be alive.    
That she and Shuichi were not supposed to be together.   
The snake had bitten her foot on the day of their wedding, while she played in the garden.    
She fell into the underworld.

She played her music and the god of death shed a tear for her and let her go. 

Yet, the moment Shuichi looked back at her.   
The moment he turned his head and saw a dead girl sitting next to him, she would disappear.    
  
The struggle to not be seen.    
She did not say the words but she wanted to be heard anyway, through music.    
The composers she all admired always tried to put images, words, and even feelings to their songs. Even when she could not understand people, she wanted to understand the feelings that other people wrote into their music. 

 

Her eyes still closed, she tried to picture what this duet brought to mind. When it was Claire de Lune, she thought of the moon on the water, a calming presence that was always by your side when you did not notice.    
  
Kaede saw herself and Shuichi. They were playing together. Well, maybe not together-together, but they were trying. They were both children. If only they had met somewhere outside of this game. If only they were given more time. They could have become good friends. She thought that, no, maybe she longed for that. Shuichi was a faceless child, as he hid his eyes behind his hat. He turned away from her. She went chasing after him. She tripped and fell. She felt like she wanted to cry. Never had she felt more ignored, more alone. Then suddenly a hand appeared in her face, she looked through eyes blurred with tears. 

  
In that hand was an apple.    
Kaede’s eyes opened as she jolted awake. No, she had not been sleeping, but focusing so hard on the music felt like dreaming while awake. She became acutely aware again, of Shuichi’s proximity to her. “Saihara-kun, I think this is a good plce to stop so let’s end here for today.”    
  
She said slamming on the keys.   
  
Shuichi looked like a startled cat who had heard a loud noise, but he quickly regained his calm. “Ah, done already.”    
  
“Yeah, well… Whenever we see each other, we play the piano together, right? It feels like I’m forcing you to do this. You’re not having fun… are you, Saihara-kun?”  She couldn’t do it. For the first time, piano was not enough to express these feelings inside of her. She could not conect with piano alone like she had in the past.  

 

_ It’s not enough. _ _   
_ _ I want to keep playing with him more and more. _ _   
_ That was why she decided she had to stop. 

 

“What’s all this?” Shuichi said, his expression inquisitive fitting a detective. “I’m not the most fun to hang around, and not the best at smiling but I was having lots of fun.” 

“R-really?” For some reason, those weak, fumbling words, really picked up her mood. “Okay! Then, let’s do it again! Since I told you my secret, you’re gonna have to tell me yours!” 

  
  


“What!? Why?”   
  


“Because I’ve decided! We’re talking about you today!” It was always about her after all, and Shuichi was comfortable letting it be about her. 

  
“That’s not fair, you’re not making Rantaro share a secret.”    
  
“That’s because I’m made of nothing but secrets,” Rantaro said.    
  
Rantaro was laying down on the floor in the piano room, looking as carefree as always. He had a book pulled over his face, but he only seemed to be half paying attention to the content inside the pages. He shyly place the book over one of his eyes, and suddenly looked like he was posing for a magazine shoot.    
  
Kaede sat up from the piano bench and walked over to him. She snatched the book away from him. “This one’s too stubborn. He won’t tell me anything no matter how pushy I get.”    
  
“So, wait you’re aware of the fact that you’re pushy…” Shuichi muttered.    
  
Rantaro looked up at Kaede with lazy eyes. “I’m made of nothing but secrets, so if I let you guys know the truth I’d disappear. I just want to stay a little bit longer with you guys, that’s all.”    
  
“Pretentious prettyboy.” Kaede commented, as she peeked at Rantaro’s book.    
  
“That’s a trashy romance novel you know. Careful, I wouldn’t want your pure eyes looking at one of the dirty scenes.” 

  
Kaede quickly threw the book up in the air, juggling with it, before it dropped on Rantaro’s face again. “Quit acting like such a louse.”    
  
Shuichi saw the title of the book Rantaro was holding, before Rantaro concealed it again with his hand.  _ The complete guide to suicide.  _ He never knew what was on Rantaro’s mind, so he decided not to say anything about it. 

 

“So basically, because I’m easy to push around we’re talking about me today.”   
  
“Exactly! Now you get it!” Kaede smiled in response to Shuichi, clapping her hands together.   
  
“Don’t look so happy while saying that!” Shuichi gave up anyway. He already knew he could never win against her. “Well, if you want me to… But what should I talk about?”    
  
“How about your hobbies?”   
  
“Hobies? Um…”    
  
“Huh? You have to think about your hobbies!?”    
  
“W-well, I overthink everything it’s kind of my thing.” Shuichi stood up from the piano bench. He paced back and forth for a moment, touching his mouth and muttering to himself. “I suppose being a detective is my hobby.”   
  
“It took you that long to think that up!” Kaede gave an energetic response. Then, suddenly she imitated Shuichi’s mannerisms getting up and pacing back and forth as well. She raised her finger and pointed like a detective she had seen on television. “So your hobby is being a detective. Then, we should enjoy being that today!” 

 

_ Is this what I look like to her?  _ “What? Wait, why are you suddenly taking notes? Where did you get that notebook!? Don’t write anything mean please my heart can’t take it.”   
  
“From my backpack. This is what detecitves do write down clues. I would never.” She crossed the gap between them, and pointed at his nose, then playfully flicked it. “I’m gonna be the detective who’ll expose your secret.”    
  
That only left Shuichi more confused. “I thought I was going to be the detective,” he whined.    
  
“Being interrogated might be good experience! It’ll be useful next time you’re in action.”   
  
“Really!?” Shuichi figured he was not going to win this time either. 

 

“Yup! So now, next question! What’s your favorite food? Meat? Veggies? Fish?”    
  
Shuichi had no idea how this was exposing his secret. It just sounded like a normal conversation. “Fresh fish…” His eyes had been compared to a fish’s before but he didn’t really like thinking about that.    
  
“Awe, fish are so cute especially when you eat them.” 

 

“Akamatsu-san there’s such a thing as being too cheerful about certain things~!”

 

“Oh, you don’t like juicy meat? Even though you’re a boy in your meat teens?”   
  
“Who even says that?”    
  
“Fish, huh? I prefer fish over meat, too! We’re so alike!”

  
Shuichi watched her quickly write more things down in that notepad she was holding, getting nervous about what she was writing. “Y-yeah…”   
  
“Then, I guess I shouldn’t worry about our compatibility…” Kaede said under her breath, holding the notebook close to her chest.    
  
“What is she muttering about…”   
  
“Next question! What’s your favorite place?”    
  
“That’s a pretty broad question, I don’t know if I can answer that.”    
  
Kaede suddenly pulled her notepad in front of her face. Her fingers squeezed tightly on the pages, as she tried to think. “Oh, right. Umm… how about… If you went out on like… a date… where would you go? Movies or the amusement park?” 

 

A date with Kaede. Where would he want to go?    
Shuichi suddenly hit the brakes on his own thoughts so hard that if his thoughts were represented by driving a car along a long highway and picking up a woman, he would have spiraled out of control and hit that poor lady.    
Kaede was asking too much of him, just asking him to make a simple choice was already asking too much. Shuichi glanced away. “Whatever they pick, I suppose.” 

 

“Hmm… That’s gonna be a problem.”    
  
“Huh? Why? Was this a test? Did I fail?”    
  
“Nothing! It just means you’re less likely to make a move, right?” Kaede said as she started to furiously write down more notes. 

“What are you going to use those notes for?”   
  
“That’s…” Kaede said, leading him.    
  
“...Yes?” Shuichi replied, being led by her.    
  
They both subconsciously leaned towards each other.    
  
“A secret!”   
  
“What?” 

  
  
“Don’t worry, it won’t be used for anything bad! I won’t show these notes to anyone else! Detective Akamatsu Kaede is just gettin’ started! Tell me everything ya know, punk!” Kaede said, making a finger gun as a joke and shooting straight for his heart.    
  
“Ack!” Shuichi reacted like he really had been shot in the heart. He crossed his arms over his chest like he was naked and trying to hide it, and then looked back towards the door. “I suddenly remembered, Momota-kun needed me for something… Seeya!” 

 

When he was gone Kaede sighed. “That dumb boy of mine. Always running away.”

 

Amami appeared behind her, and snatched the notepad away. He used his height to play keepaway with her as he read the pages.  
  
_Likes fish. (We’re compatible)_   
_*Not likely to make the first move._ _  
_ _Works for uncle_ _  
_ _Very sweet_ _  
_There were even doodles of her and shuichi’s faces together, both smiling.  
At the bottom she had underlined boyfriend material.   
  
“These doodles are pretty good.”  
  
“Hey, give that back!” 

  
“I wonder how long we can keep playing these high school games. Hey, do you think he like likes me?” Rantaro said, mocking her voice at a much higher pitch. 

 

“Amami-kun, it’s not a game. People could die. We have to get to know each other and rely on each other.”

 

“They’ve already died. Unless you forgot. It’s a killing game.” Rantaro looked so thin in the sweater that loosely hung off of him, almost as if he was starving. He gave her that same hollow eyes look that he always did. “Akamatsu-san, what if I want to learn about you? The person you are in this game, was it the same one you were in the past? Or… did you spend all your time alone. Even always surrounded by others you can’t trust them. You always put up barriers. You were socially adept enough not to cause problems, but you didn’t have any friends.”

  
“Enough, I’m not interested in any of that,” Rantaro was always so kind to everyone else, she had no idea why it always had to be her he picked fights with.    
  
“Have you forgotten, Akamatsu-san? This is a game. If it’s not interesting, then the mastermind is going to make it entertaining if necessary,” he walked away tossing the notebook back towards her.    
  
“I know something bad might happen if I hide myself away in the music room, th-that’s why I went back to eating breakfast with everyone. It’s not my fault nothing’s happening, the student council keeps getting in the way-”    
  
“You’re essentially hiding in your room now. You only pretend to get along with others, so as to not worry anyone but you’re nothing like you were the first week. I bet the mastermind had a lot of fun that week, with a great foe to defeat, this arc must be so boring in comparison.” Rantaro put a hand on the back of his neck, and stretched his head back to look at her. “You’re so uptight, Akamatsu-san. Why are you suddenly so uptight?”   
  
“Because you like to mess with me.”   
  
He was not talking to her. He was just talking to himself.    
The himself from the past that he saw in Kaede.    
Rantaro’s eyes suddenly became empty, the shadow of where two eyes once were. 

His hair fell over his face in such a mess.    
He looked like he had been dragged out of the water by the hair. 

Kaede thought she wanted Rantaro to stop grinning at her like a cat.   
She wanted to see what he really felt.    
Yet, the raw on his emotion was almost scary for her.    
It was creepy.   
Creepy how easy he could turn it on and off like flipping a switch.    
  
“No, that’s not what I mean. Why do you care so much about preserving the atmosphere inside this school if you want to get out?  If it’s wearing you out, you should tear it down.” Rantaro brought his finger between his eyes. “You’re not thinking something stupid like I’m glad I came to this school after all I finally got to make friends… because judging from your current state of mind, I bet, if someone threatened our little group of three you’d try to kill again.”   
  
Kaede could play at being friends all she wanted. Rantaro would even play along, after all he was a good big brother who always played when his younger sister asked him to. However, that did not change the reality that she was a killer, and sooner or later one of them would no. No amount of light and fluffy romantic comedies could change that.    
  
“Don’t…”   
  
“Is getting along with others, is escaping what you care about the most?”   
  
“What?   
  
“Isn’t there something else you care about just as much?”    
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  
“Yes, there most certainly is. But you’re trying desperately to pretend you don’t know. Because you’ll destroy this small amount of peace we’ve found, if you let those feelings out.” Rantaro took her hand, and led her to the edge of the cliff but not a step farther. It was too bad they were not lovers, because he was sure the view from the edge was absolutely romantic. “Isn’t there someone you care for deeply-”   
  
“Shut up!”    
  
“Ahhh… You’ve become aware of your own feelings. There’s no turning back now. Once you know it’s too late to run away.” Rantaro covered his mouth with his hand. He felt the need to giggle. He might have been able to if he was not quite so hollow. One needed lungs to laugh, they needed to shake their vocal chords with air and he lacked all those things. He was more than just aloof, he was lighter than air, he was a vacuum. He wondered if this was how Kokichi was always feeling. “Oh, I didn’t expect this to work so well.”   
  
He saw Kaede’s face, red like she was about to burn up.   
She was about to be burned by those feelings she did not wish for.    
_ Can’t stop. Can’t stop. Can’t stop. _ _   
_ _ Can’t stop feeling this way.  _   
Rantaro smiled at her for the first time.   
His not-so-gentle smile.   
His genuine smile.    
He showed it to her.   
  
“Can I sock you real hard?” Kaede asked.    
  
“Sure. Just don’t ruin my pretty face,” Rantaro replied. 

 

🧸

 

“Oi, quit squirming already! I’m almost done making you pretty for my ugly ass sister.” Enoshima Junko had been thrown into Naegi Makoto’s room. In the short time between then and now she had somehow convinced Naegi to sit there while she did his makeup.    
  
“How the heck did I end up agreeing to this?” Makoto kept squirming as a means of resisting her while she kept pinching the side of his face. 

  
“And that antennae too! No matter how much hair gel I put on that thing it won’t stay down. Someone’s excited!”    
  
“I didn’t ask for this makeover!” Makoto flailed his skinny limbs to no avail. 

  
Junko was just bored, so to distract herself she made him her doll. Then, she got bored of being bored, so she just let him go. “It’s your fault for being so easy to push around. You’re such a herbivore guy, no wonder my big bad wolf of a sister wants to eat you up.”

  
“You’re the bad one.” Makoto said, she had no idea that pure and innocent baby of a boy was capable of making such a spiteful obsession. “Besides I’m not a vegetarian, I eat plenty of meat, I’m in my meat teens.”    
  
“Really? My sister fell for you of all people? What’s with this guy, anyway?” 

 

“Quit looking to the audience for answers, there’s no audience! I bet you’re the kind of person who makes lazy excuses like ‘it’s their fault for being tricked’ when they deceive people.”   
  
『It’s not my fault!』Junko said, doing a perfect imitation of Kumagawa’s voice. She curled her fingers beneath her chin. “It’s really not my fault for being born this smart. It’s just everybody else’s fault for being born so much stupider than me.”

  
“It’s amazing that you're still alive when all you do is make excuses like that.”   
  
“I was just about to say that, I think it’s amazing I’m still alive too. I still have no idea how the hell it even happened. I for sure both me and half of your friends would be dead by now.” She said those words, with absolutely no remorse at all, or rather no feelings behind those words. She could hurt people however she wanted because she felt nothing, that was what Makoto thought of her.    
  
“Quit acting like you don’t care about whether you live or die. That always hurts Mukuro’s feelings.”   
  
“I’m not so sure about this other people having feelings thing you keep talking about, empathy boy.”    
  
Talking to Enoshima Junko was the most exhausting thing on earth. He doubted he could last two hours, he had no idea how Mukuro had lasted seventeen years before this point. “I don’t like you, capiche?” 

 

“That’s not a very nice thing to say. Aren’t I one of your beloved classmates? Even though I’m an ultimate talent you just treat me like a normal person, that’s your thing right?”

“You were never my classmate. Even though you were in my class, we never made any special memories together. You never smiled carelessly without even realizing it. You never once thought  _ these are the rose tinted days of my youth. _ ” 

  
Oh, oh, oh.   
Even if Makoto witnessed his classmates all killing each other she was pretty sure he would forgive all of them. She was the one exception, because she was never his classmate to begin with. She rested her hand in her chin, and gave him a crooked half smile. “That’s not true, we made plenty of precious memories together! Remember when I took you to Shibuya to go shopping with me?”    
  
“That’s only because you said you couldn’t bear to look at my clothes, and would go blind if you didn’t pick me out something better to wear. You made me hold your bags for you the whole time.”   
  
“Remember, when you confessed to me behind the school, and I told you I was too afraid of ruining our friendship, and then we both cried and hugged each other and said we would always remain friends?”    
  
“That never even happened! It’s a fake! Fake!” 

  
“So what? You never thought I was your friend? Not even once? Th-then, how am I supposed to enjoy the despair of killing you?” Enoshima Junko was choking up with crocodile tears. She was still showing those razor sharp teeth that looked like they could tear apart anything. “D-don’t you know? I just wanted to enjoy my school life like everyone else. I’m such a tragic heroine. Sympathize with me! The queen orders it! Or off with your head!”    
  
“You were just putting on an act at the time, weren’t you? Even though you were there, you just don’t feel present. I don’t feel anything real from you.” The hope idiot who sometimes gets things right by pure luck said, looking at, no looking past her. “You just keep faking, and keep playing around, as someone committed to growing up it’s sad watching you play the same childish games.”    
  
“Growing up? My precious sweet innocent cinnaemon roll baby boy Naegi-kins, do you really think you’re growing up?” Enoshima Junko leaned in, rolling her  _ eye _ at him. “Do you think you’re the center character of this narrative? Do you think everything hinges in an arc that revolves around your growth?”    
  
“Bla, bla, bla, hope, bla, bla, bla despair. You gotta be ttired of hearing it by now too, but I guess you can’t even talk like a real person.”    
  
Junko tilted her head to the side. “How have you grown? You’re just doing the same thing you always do, sitting around and hoping things will be better this time.” 

“That’s not true. Nobody is going to die this time around. My friend’s won’t die, or kill each other-”   
  
“Just like Kirigiri would never become a murderer?” 

  
“...”   
  
“That was so easy it wasn’t even fun. I know you’re just little hope jr. and baby boy since you haven’t become Ultimate Hope yet, but you could at least put up more of a fight? Okay? Okay?”   
  
“Even arguing with you is tiring.”   
  
“Isn’t it weird, the dumb happy go lucky boy is able to argue with me so well.” Junko said as she moved her face closer to his. “You’re able to see people’s weaknesses just like me, but you don’t ever do it deliberately, it’s inconsistent, unpredictable. I wonder what you’d become if you could actually be useful for once.”    
  
“That’s a lot coming from the world’s most useless younger sister.” Makoto pushed at her face to get it away from him, like a cat that wanted personal space. 

 

“Are you going to tell me I’m not a real person now? Because Kirigiri already tried that one. And trust me, if I could be a two dimensional anime character I’d do it in a heartbeat. Like I even want to hang around you losers anyway!” 

  
“You might be human but… It’d be easier for everyone around you, if you really were just despair,” Makoto said, his voice clear, succinct. “You think those people around you exist to make you human, but all you do is steal their humanity away from them and treat them like objects. You’ll never get close to people if all you think about is how you need them, they’ll be too far away, always out of reach.” 

 

“Yep. Bored now. Checking out from this lecture in three, two, one…”   
  


“That’s why, you’re not Mukuro’s sister, you’re her enemy.”   
  
“Huh…?”    
  
“Even if you were to become a good sister suddenly, that wouldn’t make up for the seventeen years of abuse. That doesn’t change the fact that Mukuro forces herself to love you and keep forgiving you because she’s too afraid to lose you. You know trying to love you as a human being, and accept that her sister who was capable of loving her chose to hurt her over and over again is the most painful thing of all for her. If you actually gave a damn, you’d let her go and be her enemy.” 

 

Makoto stood up over her, though he only gained a little bit of height. He shouted in her face. “She won’t be alone even if she loses you. I’ll be her family! She can let go of her old family and form a new one with me!” 

 

She was only useful as the enemy of hope.   
That was the only role she could play.    
What a strangely Komaeda-like thing for him to say.    
She pulled her lips tight, but her tongue stuck out of the corner of her smile. “You’re not going to save me, Naegi-kun? Even though you want to save everyone?”    
  
“You’re not a part of everyone.” 

  
She supposed it was always going to be like this. None of her classmates would accept her. Not that she cared about such a thing, she could make a big show of her sorrow.  _ It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. _ But that to would be fake. Both her tears and her smile were fake.  _ It hurts ever so slightly.  _

  
They could not become classmates. She could not make precious memories with others. She never once thought she was enjoying the rose tinted days of youth. That wasn’t a pitiable thing, that was what made her inhuman.    
  
She did not have a single classmate. Even though she was born on the same day as her twin sister, Makoot was likely right that she was not someone who could have a family either. She was never supposed to be born in the first place after all. Mukuro should have been an only child.    
  
She had nothing.

She had nothing but a senpai. 

Enoshima Junko reached out her hand once more spreading her fingers out in front of her face. 

  
_ He reached out his hand towards me. _ _   
_ _ His scratched up palm covered in flaws.  _   
_ I became ashamed of my own pure white palm without one flaw.  _ _   
_ _ I wanted to be dirtied by someone like him. _ _   
_ _ To think we could touch and become mixed up in one another.  _ _   
_ _ In my heart which had completely abandoned hope, a faint flame of desire was lit.  _

 

『 _ You’re trying really hard aren’t you? You’re trying harder than anyone else. _ 』

『 _ I… I can’t hate you. _ 』 _   
_ _   
_ _ I just wanted a place I could fit in and be myself. _ _   
_ _ I wanted a voice to respond to my calls. _ _   
_ _ I wanted to laugh like everybody else did.  _ _   
_ _ I desired to feel warmth at the tip of my extended hand. _ _   
_ _ Your clear eyes like fresh water, that cry like rain, for me those are indispensable things.  _ _   
_ _ The one who made me realize that was you.  _

 

Junko pulled his jacket over her shoulders as if it was a blanket. She started to drool from the corner of her mouth. As she wiped it, she muttered to herself. “You’re the only one aren’t you… the only one…” 

 

“What are you muttering about?” Makoto said, looking at her with a flat expression.”When you’re not being fake you’re just being weird. You’re a weird girl.”    
  
“I was just thinking, senpai is much cooler than you are.”    
  
Enoshima Junko and Naegi Makoto, the in laws kept bickering for a little while after that. 

 

🧸

 

When Komaeda finally made his way into Naegi Makoto’s room, he stopped genuinely shocked by what he saw. “Why exactly are you braiding her hair?” 

  
“I didn’t want to!? She’s just very persuasive okay,” Makoto said. His potential for hope might have been the only one capable of crushing Enoshima Junko, but he was not ‘the only person she could not control’.    
  
That title went to Kumagawa Misogi. 

That was only because Kumagawa could barely control himself.    
Komaeda refused to believe that a beast like her, that only needed hope to sharpen her claws, and other people to sink her teeth into, would be tamed by someone like Kumagawa Misogi. 

In an end result that was neither particularly hope nor despair.    
  
“Oh look, my two least favorite people in the world formed a club. What funsies.” Junko said as she kept lounging on the floor, ignoring both Komaeda and Makoto. 

 

“Naegi-kun and I are trying to become friends, you and your despair aren’t welcome.”    
  
“I think the more despair inducing result for Naegi-kun would be actually having you as a friend.” 

  
Komaeda remembered why the first time he ever met Enoshima Junko, he wanted to shoot her. “If you’re not going to serve as the enemy to hope then your existence is completely senseless, just don’t get in the way.”    
  
“Oh no, I’m not invited to your little loser party. Whatever will I do…” 

 

“Um, sorry Mukuro just came in and dumped her on me. What’s up?” Makoto said, looking up at Komaeda as friendly as ever.    
  
What a welcoming face. Komaeda realized right then, what he made must have been the opposite of a welcoming face. When people looked at him they immediately wanted to look away. When he tried to make a joke no one in the room laughed. “I finally realized how someone helpless like me, can finally be of help to you.”   
  
Makoto held his hands in front of his face. “You don’t need to help me, Komaeda-kun. I just want to be friends.” 

 

Komaeda felt Kirigiri’s gloved hand wrapping around his neck again. That was right, for someone like him who did not have a single friend. Someone like him who only thought of himself and could not be of help to others. She had died for him. Kirigiri was not here to be Makoto’s friend, and only Komaeda was left. 

 

Kirigiri who had a brilliant talent that was definitely needed for surviving this killing game. Kirigiri who had friends who would miss her when she died. Kirigiri who had a father she wanted to meet again. He killed talent. He killed one of his precious talented people. He had destroyed hope itself, a weak person like him.    
  
Makoto was kind but Komaeda was completely sure, if he were forced to choose he would have chosen his friend Kirigiri. It was the choice that everybody would make. He was sure everyone when they looked at him immediately thought  _ Why are you even still alive?  _ As if Komaeda did not ask that question every time he half dead, half poisoned face in the mirror.    
  


“I know I’m an insensitive person who can’t understand another person’s feelings, but I think I can at least serve as a person to cry on. All that requires is me to just sit still and not say anything that would make your crying worse.”    
  
“I don’t cry that much…” Makoto said defensively. “Why do you think I want to cry?”   
  
“You’re sad about Kirigiri-san still aren’t you? But you haven’t properly mourned her after all this time.” 

  
“Komaeda-kun that’s not…”    
  
He had to face despair! Kirigiri told him once, that if Makoto had lived the exact same life that he had, Makoto would have overcome all the despair in his life and kept smiling. It was not their circumstances, it was just who they were as people, and Komaeda was just sick, so sick you could smell it on him underneath his skin. 

 

No matter what trial he faced, Komaeda was sure that Makoto would overcome it with a smile. Unlike Komaeda he was a good person. There was almost nothing a bad person like Komaeda could do for him, except to be his shadow. When you were fundamentally beneath a person, all you could do when begging for their favor was allow them to step on you. 

  
Makoto who everyone liked, who made friends as easily as breathing.   
Makoto whose only outstanding quality was his optimism.    
Makoto would overcome this with a smile too, just like everything he had in the past. 

  
“You don’t have to always keep smiling, not in front of me. I know what it’s like to have people randomly ripped away from you too, people who you always thought were going to be by your side.”    
  
Komaeda let a little too much emotion into his voice. No no no no bad. He could not make this about his feelings, because this was all about Makoto. If he touched Makoto he would ruin him.    
  
After all, Makoto was a kind person. One who wanted to be friends with him.    
And all Komaeda felt in return was envy. 

Komaeda always thought his own love was one sided, but it was the other way around.   
He could not return other people’s feelings no matter what, neither love, nor hate.   
Yet he demanded that they love or they hate him.    
It was all just self satisfaction.    
That was what other people were to him. 

 

He saw Makoto like a great white tiger in front of him. There was not a single thing he could do for that beast, cleaner, purer, whiter than him in every way. All he could do was let the tiger devour him with everything he had. He wanted to be chewed apart until he lost his form, until he was something else other than Nagito Komaeda.   
  
Even if that happened, he would never become Naegi Makoto. 

 

“Kirigiri-san’s last message, Ikusaba-san finished decoding it and said I should give it to you. I’m sorry, I can’t say optimistic words like you do. Nobody ever believes me when I talk about hope, but umm… maybe I can hold your hand as you read it.”   
  
Makoto took his hand, his fingers as long as a spider’s. As Makoto wrapped his hand around his, Komaeda realized he had never felt the hand of someone who seemed so alive before. He could feel the pulse of Makoto’s beating heart in his hand.    
  
_ First of all thank you. _ _   
_ _ Thank you for your back breaking work always following me around. _ _   
_ _ I really do feel apologetic that I’ve only been causing you trouble. Lately, I finally feel the reason I was always using you as my partner to investigate crimes was probably just my own selfish ego. My responsibility for tying you to me as a result is not something I can ever fully make up for. _

 

_  Especially since after all this time I’ve made the decision to die rather than continuing to live on with you. Or rather, I made the decision to become a criminal rather than a detective. From now on, all the time we spent together is something that will only hurt you.  _

 

_ I’m making the easy choice leaving you behind. All I have to do is die. You’re taking the hard road, continuing to live. How troubling. I’ve done nothing but trouble you. So I’m not really in a position to ask something like this of you…  _

 

_ But, if I don’t do anything the rest of my precious friends will be hurt.  _ _   
_ _ I have no choice but to rely on you. _ _   
_ _ I only have you to rely on.  _ _   
_ _ So, I’m saying this to someone for the first time. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Help.  _ _   
_ _ Please help. _ _   
_ _ Please help me.  _ _   
  
_

_ I’ll say this right now. Every time I dragged you along on an investigation as my partner. It was just an excuse. I wanted someone to rely on. I wanted someone to spend time with. I wanted someone who I could trust, especially when my observation skills would allow me to see through all lies. You were never much help on investigations, but to me you were that person.  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ The real reason was… The real reason was… It was an excuse to spend time with you. I thought someone like you could save me. All that time I wanted to ask you those three words that are so hard to say.  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ I’ll say this plainly right now. _ _   
_ _ I was abused. _ _   
_ _ My father might have loved me. _

_ But he never loved me enough. _ _   
_ _ Not to stay when my mother died. _ _   
_ _ Not to try to bridge the gap between us when we were at the same school.  _ _   
_ _ As a child, I was never enough for him. _

_ Even at the end I don’t understand what I did.  _

_ To make him lack so much love for me.  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Everyone around you loved you, Naegi. You were enough for them. You did not need to be the Ultimate Detective, or even the Ultimate Anything, just being your average self you were enough. _ _   
  
_

_ Stress and envy. Axiety and agony. Bad possibilities and deep shadows.  _ _   
_ _ I won’t be able to feel them anymore. _ _   
_ _ I won’t even be able to despair.  _ _   
_ _ That’s why I ask you, this unreasonable request.  _ _   
_ _ Face them for me, Naegi. _ _   
_ _ For the both of us.  _ _   
_ _ You’ll probably be disappointed. Because the only value you see in me, is that of a hero.  _ _   
_ _ I don’t want to disappoint you. _ _   
_ _ I ended up never telling you even once that I loved you. _ _   
_ _ I fell in love on my own, and I lost that love on my own.  _ _   
_ _ This is truly my last wish.  _ _   
_ _ I’m forcing a very tough job on you. _ _   
_ _ I won’t let you save me. _

_ I’m going to die. There’s nothing you can do. _ _   
_ _ Because I didn’t ask for your help once, until now. _ _   
_ _ All this time I hoped you could save me. _ _   
_ _ But you didn’t save me in the end. _ _   
_ _ So please.  _ _   
_ _ Save everybody else besides me. _ _   
_ _ Make my death the last one.  _ _   
_ _ Please rescue everyone else. For me who you failed to save. _ _   
_ _ Please become their hero, like you never could be for me. _ _   
_ _ Sincerely yours, and apologies for suddenly becoming so emotional, _ _   
_ _ Kirigiri Kyoko.  _

 

Makoto holding the note in his hand trembled. Tears suddenly streamed forth, and just like Komaeda had said he threw his face into Komaeda’s shoulder. Komaeda stiffened. He was sure he could feel rigor-mortis set in at this point. He felt his bones creak as he tried to reach around and pat Makoto on the back. One touch or two should not be too bad, he would not infect Makoto with that much.    
  
“You shouldn’t feel bad. You did everything you were capable of at the time.”   
  
“R-really?”    
  
Komaeda, holding the shaking Makoto, feeling the boy crash against him like a wave. As he felt the weight of all of those emotions, knowing that a person with a fragile heart like him would only crumble in the face of such despair. So unsteady he could not even become a stepping stone, he would just collapse the moment anyone tried to lean or depend on him.   
  
Komaeda Nagito smiled. “Of course not think about it. When she was being pulled off to execution, you ran after her didn’t you?”   
  
“N-no, Mukuro held me back.”   
  
“Well, there was no way you could have hoped to overcome Mukuro’s strength. And before that there was no way you could have possibly guessed that Kirigiri-san was plotting murder, even if you had what could you do?”   
  
“What do you mean?”    
  
“I mean, it’s dangerous isn’t it? If you had tried to stop her, you might have ended up dead as a result. You’re far too precious of a person to risk your life like that. Think how much it would have hurt all of your friends and family to lose you.” 

  
“Th-that’s…”    
  
Komaeda made sure no one else in the world could see his sick smile.    
They did not need to know how diseased he was.    
  
“You’re not someone who can carelessly throw your life away like Kumagawa-kun for the sake of someone else can you?”   
  
“Kumagawa…”   
  
“That’s right, while you did nothing, Kumagawa-kun jumped in the way and stopped someone from dying, but it was his action saving that person that killed him. It’s better you did nothing in the end.” 

  
Makoto withdrew from Komaeda and held the letter in his trembling hands. His fat tears fell on the paper like rainfall, causing the ink to run. He could no longer make out the words of Kirigiri’s last message to him. 

 

“Actually, you’ve been making such a big fuss over Kirigri-san all this time you haven’t mentioned Kumagawa-kun once. You mourn his murderer more than him do you? Haha, do you hate Kumagawa-kun or something?”    
  
“What…?”    
  
“It’s just a joke don’t worry. I’m sorry, I keep making jokes even though nobody laughs I really need to learn when to shut up.”    
  
As Komaeda said that, Komaeda caught Enoshima Junko’s red eye. She saw that eye, a pitch black silhouette, as she glared possessively. That glint in her eye was all he needed to see to know what would come next.    
  
The emotions reflected in that eye were so bright they were blinding. 

  
Komaeda pushed Makoto over getting in the way between the two of them. He suddenly felt Enoshima Junko’s claws bury deep into the side of his face. “Hey? Hey? Hey? Hey? Who said you were allowed to hate my Senpai?”    
  
“K-komaeda!”    
  
Makoto only watched.    
As Komaeda held back Junko’s tantrum.   
Komaeda stood between her, and him, fighting back against her and not letting her get to him.    
The two of them fell to the floor and tore pieces away from each other.    
He could only see blurred movement.

Everything went too fast suddenly, like the two of them were a storm of hope and despair he got caught up in.

When he pulled Komaeda back, he was bleeding.   
Bleeding!   
Komaeda was bleeding. 

  
It was difficult for Komaeda to breathe, his breath haggard. “Naegi-kun, don’t worry. You’re Kirigiri-san’s last hope, so I won’t let anyone hurt you. It’s better if someone like me gets hurt.” 

  
A person got hurt for his sake.   
No, Komaeda who everyone looked away from, who nobody believed in.    
He wanted to be a kind person too.   
He wanted to protect people too. 

Makoto finally saw it, the fragmented hope, the small flickering light Komaeda held close.   
He had to hide it otherwise the wind might blow it out.    
That kind of weak person, was doing his best to be dependable to someone like him.

  
“Th-thank you for taking care of me, senpai.” Makoto said, wiping the tears from his eyes.   
  
And Komaeda Nagito smiled back at him.

 

🧸

  
Makoto left the room to go get Mukuro, not wanting to be alone with Junko any longer.    
Komaeda reached into his sweatshirt pocket, and unscrewed a flask. 

He tipped it back, and drank.    
  
“Wow, what an irresponsible senpai you are.” Junko who had been angry enough to try strangling him a moment ago had immediately calmed down, or rather she was bored of being murderously angry. "You're being such a bad example to me right now, and to the audience. Don't try this at home kids! Don't imitate everything you see on TV."    
  
“Monokuma walked up to me and said, ‘Hey kid, do you want to try some alcohol. I know a guy who can buy some for you.’” 

“Isn’t your brain poisoned enough by hope already?”    
  
Komaeda wondered why of all the people he was able to talk about this easily with Enoshima Junko. There were two people desperately trying to become his friend, but he could not be bothered to return their feelings. Oh that was right, this was more self satisfaction.    
  
Enoshima Junko was like him.    
He loved to hate himself.   
He hated to love himself.   


He tipped his drink back again. He might as well water the flowers with poison, that was all he was good for. “I’m already dying, how much worse can it get?”    
  
Cheap bourbon full of impurities really suited his half hearted behavior. Whether he was slowly poisoned by his brain, or poisoned himself, it was all the same to him.    
  
People drink to kill their solitude.    
And fill up their emptiness.    
He was a cracked glass that could never be full.    
It all poured out, his parents, his health, and even love.    
He would sacrifice anything so…   
  
Before he knew whether it was good or bad, hope or despair, he wanted to forget it all.    
He would just make the same excuses tomorrow he knew that.    
_ I hate it. _ _   
_ _ I don’t want to hurt anyone  _ _   
_ _ I’m so lonely.  _

Even if he knew he was deliberately hurting Makoto right now, he would not stop himself.  
As long as he could continue to numb the pain of hurting others with those excuses.   
  
_ So, don’t stop. _ _   
_ _ Don’t stop.  _ _   
_ _ Don’t stop.  _ _   
  
_

“Hey, Komaeda-senpai you just can’t stop yourself can you?”   
  
“Whatever do you mean? My underclassmen with a wonderful talent, who only uses her talent for futile despair.”

“I mean weren’t you pouring it on a little thick with Naegi-kun there. First you tampered with Kirigiri-san’s last letter to him to make him believe her last wish was for him to take the responsibility of saving everyone on her shoulders.”   
  
“You really think a person like me who can’t even convince others to hope because only foul words come out of my mouth could really write such a touching letter?”    


He took another drink. 

“Then you set me off on purpose, knowing I would lose myself in jealousy over Senpai. So you could put your body at risk protecting Naegi-kun.”   
  
“Please, it hurts so much right now I can barely string a few thoughts together there’s no way I could ever do anything to manipulate the Ultimate Enemy of Hope.” 

As long as you throw away pride and reason love is easy to lie about.    
Komaeda felt the bitter tasting liquid on his lips.   
It was like someone pressing a finger against them gently ssshing him.    
He never knew what it was like for someone to gently reassure him it would be alright. 

Bloody booze, fiery booze, bitter booze.   
He was going to be kind to Naegi from now on so please don’t leave him alone.   
He was going to watch over him like a good senpai.  

“The only way you could think of to get into his heart was to manipulate him like that? Who are you, me? Oh, this is because of Kirigiri-san isn’t it? How do you think little Naegi-kun is going to like it when he knows that you knew she wasn’t the murderer, but convicted her anyway?”    
  
“There’s no way I could have known a thing like that. After all, how is someone as foolish as me supposed to outwit the Ultimate Detective, or even understand what her brillaint mind was thinking? I’m so far below even normal people I can’t even hope to comprehend them.”    
  
“Jeez you’re not even despairing, it’s like you’re feeling nothing.”    
  
“Well, I finally found a medicine after all. You know, for a pathetic reason like it made him stop worrying what other people thought of him Yozo spent all his money on booze and cigarettes.”

People were making far too much of a fuss over whether it was real love or not.    
Even Enoshima Junko was being senseless like that. 

All you needed was some idea to fill you up.

Even if you had never seen hope once, all you needed was the idea of hope.    
The idea that one day you could be loved. 

You could get drunk on ideas too    


“Hey, Komaeda-senpai. Do you want to hear a fun story? Did you know that Naegi-kun wasn’t even the original Ultimate Lucky Student. It was originally just some girl. On the day her invite was sent out in the mail, he got caught up in a jewel heist that destroyed the entire bag of mail her letter was in. He didn’t get diagnosed with cancer or anything, but his luck was strong enough it destroyed somebody else’s invitation and then the next time they drew his name was drawn instead.”   
  
“...”   
  
“It’s kind of like the academy chose him didn’t it? Poor Komaeda-senpai. Hope won’t choose you. Despair won’t choose you. Even your own luck won’t choose you. I don’t even want you as an enemy. There really is nobody in this world that would choose you.”    


“It doesn’t matter anymore.” Komaeda said.    
I hate it.   
I’m at my limit.   
I won’t stop.

Before I die.   
Another drink.    
He was always imbibing something, alcohol, hope, blood, just to forget the constant ache for just a moment.   
He would drink it, even if that drink was just poisoning him in the long term. 

“You’re right. For me it could be anyone as long as they choose me. And since even that ‘anyone’ didn’t choose me, I have to choose myself,” Komaeda smiled. 

Won’t stop.  
Another drink.   
Can’t stop.  
Without any meaning, he took another drink. 


	41. The Chosen

_All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it._ _  
_ Far more unfortunate.  
Are the children who have forgotten they were children. 

🧸  
  
A scene from the past.  
A chance encounter.  
  
That morning Naegi’s alarm clock malfunctioned due to his sister last night tripping over a cord and spilling juice all over it, which she also forgot to tell him about. He rushed to get dressed, and get to school on time.

  
Technically, at his high school there was no punishment for behind tardy for even skipping class but Naegi thought it was wrong for someone like him who only got the privilege of going to the school through a lucky draw to show up late. Besides, he did not go to that school for the prestige, he wanted to see his friends every day.

  
That being said, Naegi already had a reputation that he was completely unaware of, of being a chronically tardy student. When he got on buses they sometimes malfunctioned, he had a habit of walking past old ladies who needed help with their groceries, cats stuck in trees, and one time Naegi saw a child drowning in a river only to jump in and learn the river was only a meter or so deep. He still had a bump on his head from that time. Someone so eager to help others, was quick to forget about themselves.  
  
Nervously, he readjusted the knot on his tie hoping he would not be teased for being late. “Alright, I have to do my best today too…”  
  
Just by coincidence, because he had been late this morning he saw Togami arriving at the exact same time. It was strange, because Togami was always punctual, to the point of obsession.  
  
“Togami-kun.”  
  
“Ah, Naegi?”  
  
“Are you going to grill me for being late again? I’m really sorry-”  
  
“You are of no concern to me, and of course by extension my plans are of no concern to you,” Togami pivoted on his heel and walked away. Typical Togami. He walked with the same proud gate as ever. “No, actually… Since you’re here come with me.” 

 

“..Eh?”  
  
Togami kept walking with the implication that Makoto should follow. If this were a game and he were the main character he would be offered a set of choices. Naegi did not believe he was anywhere near qualified to be a main character.Rather than others being pulled into his orbit, he was always being pulled around by them. The Ultimates among him were like brilliant celestial bodies. At least that was how they seemed at first, but he was starting to see different sides of them. No matter what he saw he always thought the same thing. _I don’t want to leave him alone._  
  
Normally, Naegi was far too timid of a person to skip class. He tended to dismiss Togami’s bossiness as him being Togami. He could easily let him go and watch his back disappear into the distance. Today felt different, as if the summer heat pushed him forward.  
  
“Wait up! Togami-kun!” 

  
“It would be insulting for me to pity a loser like you unable to keep up with the elite by slowing my own pace. I do this out of respect for you, Naegi.”  
  
“Really, because it feels like you’re still insulting me. It has nothing to do with being a loser anyway, my legs aren’t as long as yours.” Makoto whined, he did not exactly deny the loser part. When he finally caught out, wiping the sweat from his brow he looked around at the school gate. “Say, Togami-kun, wher’re we going?” 

 

“We? You’re quite a presumptuous one to assume you can follow in my footsteps.”  
  
“You invited me!” 

 

“Naegi. I often hear those commoner students running around the city. Just what are they doing?”  
  
Naegi and Togami stood next to each other, so close but so far apart. As they stood at the gate, a few of the reserve course students talked to one another. Even though they were not elites, they were laughing together, sharing food, and one of them had an arm around the other. Underneath the shine of his glasses, Togami stared at them.  
  
So far away.  
A place that even he who could achieve anything with money and talent could not reach.

  
“Why’re you asking me…?”  
  
“You’re a commoner among commoners, your common stat is the highest of them all.”  
  
“Even when you try to praise me it doesn’t feel like a compliment. Did you pick up that game talk from Fukawa-san?” 

 

“Implying I have conversations with that woman… Naegi, I know you are the utlimate lucky student but must you make a show of pushing your luck.” 

 

Makoto decided to just answer his question before Togami got impossible to deal with. He did not consider himself smart with people at all, just someone who could read the room. Which was actually a rare talent among Hope’s Peak. “Well… I’d say they’d go hangout at the arcade, or karaoke, I guess?”  
  
“How boring, a waste of time.”  
  
“You’re the one who asked!”  
  
“Let’s go, Naegi!” 

  
“Wait, what!?” Even Naegi who was capable of reading the mood had no idea what was going through Togami’s head that day. 

 

Togami and Naegi sat across from each other at big bang burger. Togami had already made a scene when he bribed the cashier to give them good seats even though he had not called ahead for reservations. He also asked the man behind the counter what the chef’s recommendations were, only to receive a blank stare. Makoto decided to just order for him before Togami got them kicked out.

Togami took one bite out of the big bang burger, and held it in his trembling hands. Sweat dripped down his face from his chin, and his eyes seized in agony. Makoto was worried for a moment that he had some sort of allergy to commoner’s food. He spat up the bite he had taken in Makoto’s face, covering which caused a lettuce leaf to stick to his forehead. “Th-they tried poisoning me!” 

 

“N-no, that’s just what it tastes like.”  
  
“The quality of this patty is substandard! There’s too much oil! How is this even considered eible? Do commoners even have taste buds? No wonder they’re all so lazy, they have such poor nutrition.”  
  
“T-togami-kun! You’re making a scene.”  
  
“I am a scene.”  
  
“W-well, this place does sell their food pretty cheaply. You can switch me if you want.”

“Hmmpph…” Togami took another bite of his own hamburger, ignoring Makoto. He swallowed hard to force himself to keep it down.  
  
“You’re really troublesome, Togami-kun.”  
  
“That’s quite hard to buy coming from the class’s number one troublemaker.”  
  
“I’m a troublemaker!?” Makoto made his sweetest and most innocent face. If everyone around him tended to treat him like a baby because of his height he might as well take advantage of it.  
  
“I’m so sorry I ruined your expensive suit Togami-kun, I didn’t know the sprinklers were going to go off because I tripped and hit the fire alarm. Togami-kun can you bring me to the nurse’s office, someone threw a bottle from a window and it hit my head. Togami-kun, can you pick me up I somehow got on the wrong plane for our school trip and I’m in Osaka.” 

 

“I-I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought you’d be like ‘What is a hamburger. Is this what the poor people eat?’ How fascinating.”  
  
“Is that your impression of me? I suppose someone as great as myself cannot be understood by your feeble mind.” Togami took another painful bite of his hamburger. Completely forgetting his manners, while his mouth was full he muttered, “Besides… I’ve eaten hamburgers before. My mother used to make them for me.”  
  
“You had a mother?” 

 

“No they planted me in the ground and I sprouted fully formed.”  
  
“Wow, that explains why you’re so tall.” 

 

Since they were still inside the mall, Makoto took him to the UFO Catcher machines that were lined up near the food court. He did his best to catch a teddy bear from the machine, and almost got it over the edge when suddenly the bear’s stitching came undone and it’s tear fell off causing the bear to fall back.  
  
“Ah! That was so close! This always happens when I try to play games like this.”  
  
“What a childish game. Allow me.”  
  
“You like games, Togami-kun?”  
  
“Everything in life is a game to win. If I didn’t like games, I wouldn’t like my life much either,” He tried to retrieve the bear with the torn ear. He caught it by the head, only for the bear to slip away the moment it was pulled up by the crane.  
  
“That was a good shot, Togami-kun!”  
  
“Wait, let me try again!”  
  
Five tries later.  
  
“Uh, togami-kun shouldn’t we quit while we’re ahead?”  
  
“That’s loser speak! Naegi! You have five seconds to exchange this for me.” Togami said as he pulled out a wad of bills and shoved it right into Makoto’s face.  
  
“Are you serious?”  
  
Togami analyzed the machine and after that point, employed a serious strategy of picking up the bear and nudging it closer and closer to the slot. When he finally achieved victory, Togami… well he never really smiled but he had an awfully proud smirk.  
  
Naegi had even started to cry a little, because he thought he might be stuck watching Togami spend more money than he would ever make in his life on a single toy catcher machine.  
  
“Finally!!” Togami ignored how much he had spent with his victory achieved. He shoved the bear right into Makoto’s face. “I’ll give this to you.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“That was just a moment of fun. A meaningless distraction. I don’t really want the prize anyway.”  
  
“A plush worth a thousand dollars, huh…” Makoto picked the bear up in front of his face. “Well, I do like bears. Th-thank-”  
  
“Enough wasting time with your pointless sentimentalities,” Togami already started to walk away. Makoto was worried because he felt Togami had no idea what he was doing, and raced after him shoving the bear into his bag.

Makoto fished out two ice cream bars from the freezer and tried to offer one to Togami. Togami stared at the ice cream bar in front of his face. “You have such dull taste. To think I wasted an entire day observing your boring life, I thought I might at least find something to laugh about but now I’m just sad you really live this way.”  
  
“Sure, sure, Togami-kun. But you were having fun weren’t you?” Makoto said, as he held the ice cream bar out to him. Togami finally snatched it away, for just a single moment Makoto felt their fingers brush against each other.  
  
This was a strange thing to suddenly think about, but he wondered if anybody had been this close to Togami before. Makoto could never imagine Togami playing around with the others the same way those boys were at the front gate. He finished biting down his ice cream, and looked at the stick underneath. “Ah, I didn’t win again.”

“Luck is supposed to be your one good point, Naegi? Why are you wasting this academy’s time anyway? Or did you use up all of your luck getting into hope’s peak?”  
  
“Ahahaha. I don’t know why I’m here either, and I don’t know if it works that way. I mean good luck balancing out bad luck, that’s kind of silly, it’s all just random isn’t it?” Makoto laughed off Togami’s sharp insults as always.  
  
Togami had always had complete control over the people around him. Either they took a knee, or they feared him. They all knew how to act in the presence of a Togami after all. There was one person he could not control, one who just did whatever he pleased. Sometimes Togami wondered if that person wanted to be around _Byakuya._ Byakuya was dead already, he stopped existing when his mother stopped calling him that name. “Oi, oi, you really think you can just say whatever you want around me, do you? Pretty bold for talking garbage.”  
  
“Hmm, just because I’m an Ultimate Lucky Student doesn’t make me trash Togami-kun.”

 

As the sun started to make its trip down in the sky behind them, their shadows lengthened. Togami was an untouchable person, but Makoto smiled just being able to walk next to him like this. Their shadows were touching, overlapping in the summer sun. “But you know, I think I really am a fortunate person. If I hadn’t come here, an ordinary person like me would never have been able to walk beside someone like you, Togami-kun.” 

 

“What flattery. Are you finally recognizing me as your better, Naegi?”  
  
“I’m different from you. All our classmates have such amazing talents, but I’m not like them, I’m a normal high school boy. I don’t think I’ll ever be like you, but today to be able to hang out with Togami-kun like normal friends, it made me really happy.”  
  
_That attitude of his really pisses me off._ _  
_ _He’s just riding on the tailcoats of his parents._

 

“Togami-kun, thank you letting me tag along today.”  
_  
_ _No one will want you child unless you make yourself useful._ _  
_ _You should thank me for knocking up that mother of yours._

 _You’re only worth something because I’m your father._ _  
_  
“I know I’m only a bother, but I’d really like to follow you again sometime.” 

 

 _You look more like your father every day, Byakuya!_ _  
_ _Byakuya, why won’t he come back to me?_  
  
“I’m really happy like this!” Naegi said, smiling in a way that Togami never could.  
  
“Hmph. I didn’t bring you out of any frivolous feelings.” Togami said as he took the last bite of his ice cream bar. 

 

“Ahahaha, I guess so, huh?”  
  
“It’s because I took notice of you. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
Togami looked back at him. He shone brighter than the summer sun, but his eyes were like ice. “It’s a proverb. It means if you can only obtain something inferior, that’s still better than longing for something better.” 

 

Makoto never imagined that Togami was someone who could long for anything. “I know what words mean… kind of… but so what?”  
  
“Have you considered my offer? Makoto, be my secretary. Belong to me, Naegi. I’ll permit you to stay by my side.”  
  
“I’m sorry but I’m gonna hafta say no.”  
  
“That was too quick!” 

 

“Well, I want to be around you. I don’t need a reason like money to stay by your side.” Naegi’s simple minded answer confused Togami to no end. 

 

He just stared from behind his glasses, calculating and recalculating. He was certain of it now. The person in front of him was someone he could never understand, and never control. Therefore he had no use of him now. “Why are you so happy right now? Are you just too stupid to be sad?”  
  
“Umm… I guess for me happiness comes from living the life I want to live. I want to be around you guys forever, so that makes me happy.”  
  
“Living the life you want to live?” Togami repeated, as if confused.  
  
Before he could finish voicing his thoughts, Makoto got in his personal space and snatched away the stick from his fingers. “Ah! You won, Togami-kun.”  


Winner, was printed on the stick. Togami stared at it for a moment. Even with Naegi’s warm hand against his, he could never melt. “You really are lucky, Naegi…” At the time, Naegi did not understand what he meant when he said that. No, he would never understand. 

 

🧸

 

If Makoto had to describe Togami, he was a rose in a glass dome.  
Beautiful, but with thorns. 

 

Togami’s skin was soft as a flower petals, and his cheeks were colored red with life. He had an otherworldly quality, standing next to him made Makoto light as air. Togami did not just live, he thrived in full bloom. He had such a presence that Makoto was sure flowers opened at his feet.  
  
He was the sun’s rays on a garden on a hot summer day. No matter where he went, every flower would turn head towards his light. Even a young little sapling like Makoto thought that way. He had always followed Togami around, hoping one day that Togami would show him what lied underneath when you peeled away his petals.  
  
Soon Makoto began to realize that Togami did not have any roots. He was like a plucked flower. He may have been perfectly preserved in his glass case, but he could not do a single thing while he remained behind glass. 

 

The only thing that was left for him to do was slowly wilt. He would lose petal by petal, and as they fell at his feet no one would be there to catch them, like falling rain, or faded memories. All the vibrant colors that composed Togami, would eventually fade as long as he was trapped in that glass.  
  
Makoto could tap on the glass, he could press his face against it, but he could never break it.  
He did not know how.  
While he watched, Togami’s heart would just wither and wither, until it became a shriveled up rose.  
  
As he tried to explain to Togami how they needed to work together now that Kirigiri was gone, Togami simply turned his nose up at him. “How do you still not understand?”  
  
“Understand what?”  
  
“I’ve been sacrificing all this valuable time of mine for your sake. But it’s all nothing. We simply have nothing to talk about.” 

 

The Little Prince.

 _It is important time you have wasted for your rose, that makes your rose so important._  
Makoto wondered if anybody had ever read Togami a story like that at bedtime.  
A prince who did not know anything about the Little Prince, it was almost ironic.  
  
“We could talk forever and a day, and I would gain nothing from it.”  
  
“B-but, the more we come to understand each other, Togami-kun I know you’re lonely right now without Fukawa-san around. I don’t want to leave you alone. L-let’s work together, I’ll even be your secretary or whatever.”   
  
“You and I will never understand each other. We live in different worlds. Our ways of thinking are totally incompatible. You’re a loser. So go ahead and live your loser life and make a bunch of loser friends. Then together, you can lick each other’s loser wounds.” 

 

“You don’t have to keep saying loser…”  
  
“Kumagawa would have called that a compliment. You’re not even aware of what you are.”  
  
“I know who I am. I’m your friend.” 

 

Togami sneered. “You say that to everyone. That word has no worth to you.” Togami once thought it was an oddity that Makoto wanted to be around a person like him. He, who was rejected as an arrogant brat even by his own peers, who was mocked for being handed everything. Then he realized, Makoto was simply that way with everyone.  
  
For Togami who could not form bonds with anyone, there was only one thing he could conclude. That bonds were worthless, cheap change to Makoto. That he did not really meant it when he said he wanted to be your friend, each individual friend must not have meant that much to him if he could make friends so easily. That was a relief for Togami. He did not have to deal with the unecessary feelings of somebody else caring for him.  
  
“You can’t do anything on your own You only had value when you were a team with Kirigiri-san…” Togami pulled his lips into a tight line, as if he was choking. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m alone or not, whatever happens I’m going to keep on fighting, and I’m going to keep on winning. That’s the one thing that will never change.”

 

“But having to win all the time… Doesn’t that make your life kinda hard?”  
  
“Such is the fate of the chosen.”  
  
“Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time. You keep talking about “the chosen” what does that mean, exactly? The way you say it, it seems a lot heavier than how I’d normally think of it.”

Togami told Makoto about the peculiar inheritance of his family.

 _When he was ten. He called his father and reported his mother. He had no idea what happened after that, but he never saw his mother again. He was given a suitcase, and taken by limo to another one of the Togami siblings. He had fourteen, but only one volunteered to take care of him until he was old enough to participate._ _  
_ _  
_ _Togami already knew this brother was not his family, but rather he was competition. He probably only took Togami in to gain some advantage over him in the future. He closed off his heart so as to not have feelings for that person. In order to deceive him, he acted like the helpless child curled up in the corner of his room._ _  
_ _  
_ _He was not sure how much of that was acting. Perhaps he did too good of a job and convinced himself he was really crying for his mother. He saw almost no resemblance between himself and his brother, his brother had rough black messy hair. Their only similarity was their eyes. Ice cold eyes just like their father’s._ _  
_ _  
_ _“Nii-san.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _A balled up wad of cash appeared at his feet. His brother stood tall over him. “You're going to get an allowance to keep yourself fed. If you start to starve, then sell this.” He grabbed at a ring around Togami's finger and ripped it away._ _  
_ _  
_ _“That’s my mother’s…”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“That woman is already dead. She has no need for it.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Y-you’re not going to feed me?”_

 _“Only an idiot expects to be cared for just because of what family they were born into. If you can’t support yourself now you’ll die four years from now, I’ll kill you myself.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“M-my mother isn’t dead.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“I could kill you right now and remove the competition. Listen.” He suddenly crossed the room and grabbed Togami by the bow tie around his neck, lifting him up. “That woman lost. She doesn’t matter. Don’t want to be like her, than live. The winners are the only ones who get to keep living.”_

_The winners are the ones who survive in this world. Families were supposed to teach their children, how to make friends, how to talk to others, how to cook, how to cry, how to laugh, but those were the only words his family ever taught him._

_For four years he lived in that household, a place he only knew as cold and remote. His brother left him money on the table, but told him if he wasted it he would never give him anymore. He reminded Togami it was his own fault if he starved to death, as no one was going to care for him._

_Togami only spent money on books and food. He started to study several years above his class, as he had to make up for lost time. Togami had already decided, his cold machine-like brother was the first of his siblings he was going to kill. Apparently, as the first born son he was considered the favorite to win. He probably only took Togami in because he was underestimating him._ _  
_ _  
_ _Togami studied so hard that sometimes, he would fall asleep on his desk. When he woke up he always found a blanket had been drawn over his shoulder. He assumed one of the servants did it. A few of them must have taken pity on the child that their master was neglecting.  
_

_He ate with him every morning (though they had separate breakfasts as Togami had to cook his own food) and his brother would interrogate him about his studies. Togami kept the details vague because he knew one day this information would be used against him. He had no idea why he took an interest in the life of a child he saw as nothing more than compettition._ _  
_ _  
_ _His brother often spent all of his time on business trips. He would disappear for long periods of time, and Togami enjoyed those the most as he did not have to deal with such a dangerous person in the house. When he came back, he brought Togami a book from wherever he had gone. Togami found it annoying to receive a present from the same man who said he would stop paying to feed him if he ever ran out of money. He threw every book his brother brought him in the garbage._

 _Togami did nothing else, but read and eat. He felt like he was becoming every bit the machine his big brother was. The only hobby he had was… more reading. There were some books written by a child his own age, a so called prodigy, he dismissed them as silly romance at first but the emotions portrayed in the books were deeper than anything he had ever read._ _  
_ _  
_ _He wondered sometimes what kind of life the girl had led in order to write with such lonely feelings as these. It was probably a life very similar to his own._ _  
_ _  
_ _One day, the second oldest brother came to visit the two of them. His brother was suspicious of that fox-eyed man the whole time. Togami seeing an opportunity to gain an ally against his brother, the favorite to win, told his brother he wanted to talk with his second oldest brother alone. His brother reluctantly agreed._ _  
_ _  
_ _“Why doesn’t nii-san trust you?”_ _  
_

_“He’s smart not to.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“What about alliances? Doesn’t it make sense to trust others in the short term, and then dissolve the alliance when there are less competitors. It’s mutually beneficial.”_

_“The only things I trust are the people I own, and these cards. Do you want to play, brother?”_

_His second oldest brother began visiting once a week or so. It was the only warmth in that home. He was an interesting person at least. Togami started to gamble with the money his brother gave him, and he felt his wits sharpening as second oldest taught him more about cards. It was the only time anyone ever bothered to teach him something._ _  
_ _  
_ _Togami had no experiences of family members simply laughing and playing cards together. He was only doing this to earn the trust of this brother, so he could turn him against other brother in a temporary alliance. Slowly, he was the one who started to trust his fox-like brother._  
_  
_ In the present moment after hearing the story of his family, Makoto looked horrified. Togami loathed the look of pity in that normal boy’s eyes. He knew nothing of how wonderful it was to be chosen. The worthless could not possibly understand his worth. 

“So, now you understand? I won my title in open combat. That is how I became the Ultimate Affluent Progeny. I was not born with a single thing. I had to earn it. I put my life on the line, and I earned the right to be called chosen.”  
  
“You put your life on the line…? Then… what about your siblings?”  
  
“Dead.”  
  
“D-dead?”  
  
“I don’t mean that literally, of course. They become dead to the family, unfit for the name Togami. Of course, death would be preferable to becoming one of you.”  
  
“But it must’ve been really hard, right? I couldn’t imagine ever having to fight Komaru. Th-that’s so sad, I’m so sorry…” Makoto suddenly, recklessly, foolishly, threw his arms around Togami in a hug. Togami stiffened, feeling spears of ice force themselves through his spine. His whole body was as rigid as a frozen corpse. 

 _“Let’s make an alliance. I want to help you defeat nii-san.”  
_  
_His second oldest brother smiled fox-like. The smile of a predator. He reached across the table and cupped Togami’s cheek in his hand. It was the first time he had ever been touched so gently. In four years he felt like nobody had touched him, sooner or later he was just going to forget what a person’s touch felt like altogether._ _  
_ _  
_ _That was why he let his guard down._ _  
_ _Suddenly, Togami felt hands hands closing upon his neck. The cards they were playing with on the table fell  all around them. The drink his brother had poured was kncoked off the table, the glass fell to the ground and shattered and alcohol spilled everywhere. One of his brother’s cigarettes lit the spilled alcohol on fire, burning up the cards._ _  
_ _  
_ _As he saw orange and red dancing behind his brother’s pitch black silhouette, Togami finally understood what kind of world he had been born into. Ah. This is hell. He thought. He wondered whose fault it was, his father for sleeping with his mother, his mother for carrying him to term, or was it his for being born._ _  
_ _  
_ _His mother sometimes lost her mind like this, so the sudden violence did not bother him at all. He looked up with dull eyes and asked. “Why… nii-san?”_

 _“You said you wanted to work together. You’re going to help me defeat him. I’ll kill you, and frame him for your murder. That bastard will be in jail, and I’ll be down two compettitors.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _He did not look like he had decided this on the moment. He waited until his brother was not home. The reason he talked with him so much, the reason he laughed and smiled with him, it was because he had planned this all from the start. Not just him, all of his other siblings would turn on him like this one day._ _  
_ _  
_ _Togami could not throw his brother’s weight off of him. His hands were still free. He had to move, and fight back in any way he could. Otherwise he would not achieve anything with his life. He had not even lived yet. He reached forward and grabbed the broken wine glass. Holding the shard of glass caused his hand to be cut, but he hardly cared. With the last of his strength, he brought his hand up and shoved the glass shard right into an artery that he had read about in one of his books severing it._ _  
_ _  
_ _His brother screamed and fell back. His expensive suit became stained with his own blood. As Togami watched him slowly bleed out, suddenly his older brother appeared in the doorway. The only thing Togami was thinking about at the moment, was how cold and wet being covered in blood was. His entire body went cold, and Togami knew he was dead._ _  
_ _  
_ _Then suddenly, he felt warmth._ _  
_ _His cold, machine-like brother had taken his jacket off and put it over his shoulders._ _  
_ _Suddenly, his brother wrapped his arms around Togami. He felt it all, blood mixed with tears. His brother who never showed him any emotion was crying?_

 _  
_ _  
_ _“I’m so sorry. Listen, that man committed suicide. Tomorrow morning he’s going to be found in his study after a hanging. You did not kill him. Nothing that happened here was your fault, okay? Nothing. If you have to blame anyone, blame your big brother who could not keep you out of this life.”_

 

 _I’m so sorry._ _  
_ _His brother who did not have a heart, was suddenly spilling warm tears on his face. He apologized, over and over again._ _  
_ _I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault. It’s because you were born a Togami. I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do for you._ _  
_ _I’m such a piece of shit._  
_Togami had no idea why he was apologizing. This too, was probably just a ruse. He had appeared out of nowhere to save his life, and then suddenly showed him warmth after all of this time. It was all a ruse, just like his other brother had tried on him. Love and hate, they were both lies._

When Makoto embraced him, he remembered both the warm embrace of machine-like, and also the weight of fox-like pressed against his body as he tried to strangle him. He wanted to slither out of his own skin to escape these feelings.  
  
“Enough!” 

 

He wanted to tear his own skin off and become someone else. Togami pushed Makoto away. His expression sharpened like a knife that he wanted to use to cut away any connection between them. “Enough of this!” Togami shouted. “Enough of a spoiled person like you, pretending he understands me!” 

  
“Me, spoiled? I know I’m eggy, but I’m like the least spoiled person I know-”  
  
“You were given a family. You were given a sibling who never once tried to kill you. You’re given all this support, and yet you have done nothing to earn it! People are loyal to you even when you’re useless! They forgive you even when you make mistakes! You have everything! Everything you can possibly need! You’ve been given it all! Yet you’re still cruel enough to look down on someone like me, who has nothing, no matter how hard he works?” 

 

Togami turned and stormed away. His voice was like lightning that pierced the sky, and thunder that shattered it. Makoto felt his eardrums fall apart like glass and he could no longer hear anything.

 

“You really are lucky, Naegi…” Those words kept ringing in his ears.

 

No wonder why he could never touch Togami. Togami was right, he had never understood him once, he never tried to. This was just like Komaeda all over again. Kirigiri would have done something smarter in his place, but he could not do a single thing for Togami. 

  
🧸

 

“Just because you have special privileges over other students doesn’t mean you can run your mouth and blab whatever you want! Keep this up and the headmaster is gonna give you detention kiddo!” 

 

Rantaro Amami’s eyes had a glazed over look in them from boredom. This dumb bear had been chewing him out for quite some time. He was used to getting lectured for being mouthy. He used to be an obedient first son of the family, a model child, but in recent years he had turned into quite the brat.  
  
“Are you done? This is such a drag…”

 

Rantaro turned around and just left. He figured either Monokuma was pissed off enough to kill him, or he would not bother. Either way he did not care that much for the result, as long as he was separated from his siblings he was a dead man walking.  
  
When he turned around however, he saw a small silhouette and a pair of eyes watching him. That tiny shadow was none other than Ouma Kokichi. “What are you doing, Amami-chan?”  
  
“Me and Monokuma formed a team to make the game more interesting. We’re the super Monokuma Busters.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“No, not at all. That was just a joke.” 

 

“You’re not very good at telling jokes. It’s hard to tell when you say everything in that exact same lazy tone of voice.” 

  
“But, all jokes are lies. Isn’t it a good lie if you can’t tell what the speaker’s intentions are?” 

  
Kokichi did not expect such a thoughtful question. He responded in an almost-honest manner. “What good is a joke that nobody laughs at?” 

 

“I’m no good if I can’t make you laugh, huh?” Rantaro tucked his unevenly cut hair behind his ear as he thought. “I don’t even remember the last time I laughed.”

  
  
“God, what a downer. You look all mysterious, but what if the twist is you’re really just a boring person? That’s the worst twist ever! Go rewrite your character already!” Kokichi’s mood quickly changed as he suddenly started to throw a fuss in front of Rantaro.  
  
Rantaro just watched him, as calmly as ever. No matter how much of a fuss he made, Rantaro would not even ripple. Kokichi got the sense that Rantaro was not even looking at him, he could not see a single thing in front of him because his gaze was always fixed to a far away place. 

 

“I’m that bad, huh?”  
  
“Yeah, you’re the worst liar ever. I know everybody else in this game is a bunch of chumps but they would never fall for a single one of your lies.”  
  
“What about this cute face of mine? Looks can be deceiving.”

 

“Hmm, I admit your face might be cute. In fact, I’ll even call you the second cutest after me!”  
  
“Then, you should give me advice-”  
  
“No way. I might be a better liar than you but I’m not your senpai. I’m always the baby. I don’t want to take responsibility for anyone else, waaah, waaaah somebody be my mommy.”  
  
Rantaro simply watched as Kokichi broke down into fake tears. He took a deep breath. “Are you not going to answer my question?”  
  
“Well, I’ll answer it with a lie. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I actually give a damn about your feelings.”  
  
“That’s fine, then I’ll just do the opposite of whatever you say.” 

 

“Nooooo! You’ve found out my secret weakness! Now I have to bring down the full force of my organization in order to kill you.”  
  
“From one liar to another,” Rantaro swiftly interrupted him. He stood tall over the other. His whole body looked like an elegant, feathered crane, and Kokichi was just a crow whose feathers looked like they had been dunked in water. “If you had to tell a lie to save someone, would you tell them you were the hero, or the villain.”  
  
“A hero, obviously! Villains can’t save anyone! They’re pure evil, who exist to terrorize the world for the luls! No one knows this better than me!”  
  
“Oh, okay then. Thank you for the advice. I’ll have to become like that then.”  
  
Prince or Demon.  
  
Rantaro turned around leaving as casually as he came. Everything was nonchalant with him. No matter how hard he tried, Kokichi could not get a reaction out of him. It was different than with Kaede and Shuichi. Kokichi did not even get the impression that he was simply hiding his reactions to save face. It was like he felt nothing at all, no matter what others said to him their words never reached his heart. 

  
Prince or Demon.  
Rantaro had to choose one of them. He had to choose. “But it doesn’t matter what you choose to become, because you can’t become anything…” Kokichi whispered to himself, as he pulled on the white jacket that covered his chest that looked like a straight jacket restraining him. As long as he wore it he could never let anybody see what was underneath. As long as he wore it, he remembered who he was, if he took it off he would go mad. 

 

Togami went to visit the library to calm his heart. It was just another stroke of bad luck, he happened to run into the person he least wanted to see. He saw Rantaro standing there returning a book to the shelf. _The complete guide to suicide._  
  
“Why was someone like you invited to this game anyway? It’s almost unfair comparing the two of us, a no-good son from a minor family, and the heir to the Togami.” 

  
“The game we’re playing is a killing game, not a dick measuring contest. Chill out already.”  
  
“Why you-!” 

 

“Oh, I forgot to answer your question. Sorry, that was rude of me.” Rantaro said, with a spacy expression on his face. Togami was annoyed at how much this man refused to look at him, to acknowledge him. It was… cold. “I don’t know why I was brought here, but I’m going to win this game and return to my silbings side.”   
  
“I’ve heard of the Amamis tradition. Only the first born son is the one that matters. All of the siblings that were born after you, your brothers and sisters are all just back ups. The parents put all their effort into cultivating the first born.”  
  
“...Hm.”  
  
“It’s too bad you were such a waste of their time.”  
  
“Yep, that’s me. The no-good son.” 

 

“Don’t you have any pride at all?”  
  
“I find pride to be useless. It’s better off fed to the dogs.”  
  
“I refuse to accept a compettitor with such a stupid reason as yourself,” Togami said, pointing straight at Rantaro’s face. “I’m going to win this game, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve had so much fun. I need to get as much enjoyment out of it as possible. So play along already.” 

 

“You’re having fun, you don’t look like it.” Rantaro grabbed his fingers, and spun around the several silver rings that he was wearing on one hand. He was so fidgety, like he did not want anyone to ever be directly looking at him. He wanted to slouch out of their gaze. “Are you sure you’re even playing this game? Why would you want to play a game that you’re not having any fun with?”  
  
“I…” 

 

“I admit, my reason is stupid and selfish but at least I have a reason. What’s yours?” 

 

“...”  
  
“Togami-kun, don’t you think it’s kind of embarrassing acting jealous of a lowly person like me?”  
  
“Jealous, why would I ever be of someone so far beneath me-”  
  
“You wish you could have saved your siblings too, don’t you?” 

 _One day his brother suddenly grabbed him and dragged him from his room. “We’re going on the run now. Our third oldest sister is playing dirty she’s trying to kill us before the game even starts.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“I thought killing was against the rules, nii-san.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“It’s against the rules if you get caught, because your assets get seized while you’re in jail. Even if you were to kill every other sibling, as long as you won it wouldn’t matter. The winners are the ones who get to live.”_

 _Saying those familiar words his brother took him by the hand. The two of them suddenly got rid of all of their assets and only paid with things in cash. They stayed in cheaper motels where they might never be found. They rode buses together. It was the first time that Togami had ever spent this long, this close to his brother._ _  
_ _  
_ _His machine-like older brother kept talking to him all the while. He asked him if there was anybody he missed at his school. Togami told him there was nobody for him to miss, he did not have anybody in the first place._

 _  
_ _His brother finally met with his contacts. Their family had several underworld ties, including an alliance with the biggest yakuza group, the Kuzuryuus. That day Togami caught a glimpse of the heir. He was a little bit older than him. Even that person, even yakuza scum who made their money through illegitimate means had a person by their side. In a soft voice a girl with white hair and red eyes called him away._ _  
_ _  
_ _His brother had finished formulating his plan to counter the assassins their sister had hired. Togami however, was tired of it all. He was tired of running. He was tired of hiding. There was no purpose in living, even if he survived until the end he would gain nothing from winning this fight._ _  
_ _  
_ _“I’m going to turn myself into nee-san.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _He said, letting go of his brother’s hand and beginning to walk away._ _  
_ _  
_ _“You’ll die.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“I’ll die anyway. Either she will kill me or you will.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Hah…There’s no way someone who gives up so easily like you could be my little brother. Losers get thrown out. Only the winners get chosen.”_

_Togami saw a glint of a knife as bright as the sun. He could not see a single thing with that light glaring in his eyes. In the dark of night, in the abandoned street he was running away from the man chasing him trying to kill both of them had finally found them._

_  
_ _Togami closed his eyes and accepted it. He wanted to die. In the next life, maybe he would be born into a family that was not as twisted as this one. Before he could feel the cool blade sliding into him, his brother suddenly threw arms around him. The knife slid into his brother’s side, and then ripped out chunks of his flesh._ _  
_ _  
_ _“The hell do you think you’re trying! That kid is mine!” He saw his brother come alive suddenly. Gripping his side he tackled the assassin. He used nothing more than his fists to beat the man in front of him to death. There was nothing left of the assassin’s face, it was just bloody pulp on the ground._

 _He had no idea the feelings that moved his heartless brother. He had no idea what had made him so angry. He did not understand at all, who his brother was trying to protect by punching that man over and over again, when he was already dead._ _  
_ _  
_ _His brother stood up finally, and stumbled forward. He removed his hand from his side, and looked at his own blood not the man’s covering his fingers. He just started to walk towards Togami._ _  
_ _  
_ _“What are you doing? You should get to a hospital.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Forget it. It’s better for you if I die right here. That’s two down, and twelve to go.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Nii-san.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _For the first time, Togami saw his brother smile. His brother picked up the knife from the ground, and drove it into himself again, twisting it further, pushing it deeper. From the corners of his lips, blood dribbled out._

 _  
_ _Togami reached for him in confusion, but his brother already fell back._

 _  
_ _“I was going to become the head…”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“What are you doing you fool? Stop talking.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“From the moment I met you, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. My future was all planned out and you ruined everything.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _Togami moved to the side of his collapsed brother. He had no idea what was happening. He did not recognize the scene playing in front of him. He did not recognize love. The words that came out of his brother's mouth were just confusing to him. "D-don't take anymore money from the old man. You'll be cursed like me. If you run out of money, you’ll have to earn it yourself and… steal if you have to, sell yourself, do anything… anything is better than being a Togami. Just, keep running away from all of this.”_

 _“Why are you doing all this? Why?”  
_ _  
_ _“B-because, it’s all my fault. Until the end, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t become your brother…”_

 _Togami did not have a heart. He did not have connections to anyone. He did not have love. He was born without all of these things, so he did not need them. Despite all of that, he felt a sudden weight on his chest. Instead of putting that weight into words, Togami howled.  
_ _  
_ _His scream was almost musical. It was a lamentation. A requiem. Perfectly composed. He howled for his brother who died without ever becoming his brother, without even knowing why he was born or why he was forced to compete like this. Without ever knowing what a family was like._

_The boy who had no feelings, felt more in that moment than most did in an entire lifetime. He felt so much his head was going to explode. He wrapped his fingers around his skull, getting his brother’s blood all over him. “What is this? Hey? What is this feeling? I don’t understand it. Hey, hey, I get it. If I kill them all, will it go away?”_

_Togami Byakuya._ _  
_ _Ceased to be a child anymore._ _  
_ _He was no one’s younger brother._ _  
_ _He was no one’s son._ _  
_ _He was not Byakuya._ _  
_ _He was simply a Togami, and that was all he would ever be._  
  
_“Are you kidding Nii-san? I can’t run away. You were just saying that to trick me weren’t you? You wanted me to lose, because you weren’t able to win. I’m not going to listen to you. I’m going to win against them all. Only the winners get to live.”_  
  
“How ridiculous,” Togami said. Even though he dismissed everything about what Rantaro said, he found himself backing away, as if he was scared.  
  
“I’m not trying to insult you or anything. I think it’s a good thing. You, and even Fukawa-san, even though you’re both like me you didn’t turn out heartless like I did. You’re both so sensitive, like big kids. You should be happy that you still have a heart, that you still have those feelings.”  
  
"I'm nothing like Fukawa. I have no need for such useless delusions."  
  
"You might actually be worse than her," Rantaro said, looking straight through him for once. "You don't even know what love is."   
  
“I can kill my heart in an instant.”  
  
“That’s no good Togami-kun. If you kill yourself, then what reason did they all die for?” 

  
Rantaro Amami.  
The aimless equation.  
The unsolvable mystery.  
The perfect crime.  
The enigma.  
Togami recognized one thing, he would never be able to win against this person. 

 

🧸

  
“Hitoyoshi, will you get me another wrench!” Soda asked him.  
  
“Hitoyoshi, can I test another invention on you!” Miu asked him.  
  
“Hitoyoshi, can you listen to me sing!” Keebo asked him.  
  
“Hitoyoshi, can you do my nails!” Monaca asked him.  
  
“Hitoyoshi, can you wear this cosplay for me! You’re perfect for the shonen hero!” Tsumugi asked him.  
  
“Hitoyoshi, is Komaeda doing okay?” Mukuro asked him.  
  
“Hitoyoshi, can you go get me another manga volume? I don’t really feel like going outside today, all the other people are scary.” Komaru asked him.  
  
“You’re making sure to watch over my sister, right? Thanks, Hitoyoshi.” Makoto asked him.  
  
“Hitoyoshi, don’t do a single thing for me. I would hate to pull away your amazing talent for helping others from the rest of the people who need it more.” Komaeda told him. 

  
Zenkichi made ten. The ten of them were over half the students who had joined together to form a student council to stop the killing game from progressing. However, there was one catch. Most of the group was just those who tended to go with the flow, like Tsumugi, Soda and Miu. The only one of them that was holding it all together, the one that held ten people on his shoulders was none other than Hitoyoshi Zenkichi. 

It was funny, he heard his name so much and yet he was starting to forget who he was. All he knew was that he hated the words Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, and he hated the sound of them. He could go about three days on three hours of sleep, which gave him the maximum amount of time possible to keep everybody safe.

That day, Hitoyoshi heard another voice calling out his name. It took him a moment to recognize they were referring to him. Slowly, he turned his head around. He saw Kaito standing up behimd him. “The reign of tyranny on the student council is over! I’m rebelling.”  
  
“Tyranny…?”  
  
Zenkichi gave a tired response. No, he was helping them. He was helping everybody just like Medaka used to.  
  
Before he knew it, Kaito swung his fist at him. Zenkichi suddenly felt reality blur in front of him. His body moved on his own. Was Kaito trying to kill him? Was the killing game starting again? The killing game that took Medaka away from him.  
  
Zenkichi dodged his blow, and perfectly countered. Even when he slammed his foot right into Kaito’s face, and Kito crashed into the ground he did not stop. He kept kicking. He needed to make sure Kaito never got up. He needed to keep Kaito safe, as well as everybody else.

Zenkichi saw something red and sticky on the botttom of his shoe. What was that? Had he stepped in something? He hesiated for a moment, and as he did a girl threw herself over Kaito. It took him a moment to recognize her, twin tails, and a red school uniform. Oh, it was Maki. He should ask her if she needed anything.  
  
“That’s enough, just leave the idiot alone. He’s going stir crazy.”  
  
“Ah…Of course I forgive him, even my enemies are my friends. We’re all friends here. You guys are my friends, I want to help you all...”  
  
Zenkichi started to walk away. As he did he glanced back to see Maki helping Kaito up. She really was strong, just like Medaka was. She lifted him over her shoulder, and started to drag him.  
  
“You seriously protected me?”  
  
“I’m only protecting my secret. If an idiot like you dies, then I’ll obviously get blamed.”  
  
“Ah, but I’d want to stay around you even if I wasn’t keeping your secret.” 

“That’s just because you’re annoying and impossible to get rid of, like bacteria…” 

How nice it was to have somebody by your side. Strange, Zenkichi thought he was helping everybody, but there was not a single person by his side. He kept walking trying to find the next person that needed help.  
  
His legs gave out from under him.  
He collapsed again.  
When he woke up in the nurse’s room, he saw Togami sitting over his bed. The boy looked down from behind his glasses as always. “You should quit this, Hitoyoshi-kun. You’re just embarrassing yourself at this point.”  
  
“Enough of your chosen, and not-chosen nonsense. I’m going to overcome it all with hard work.” 

 

“You know people who labor in mines all their lives are working hard too, do you know what happens to them? They die without making a single cent of what their employers earn from their labor.” 

“...” 

“ I’ll put it as simply as possible so a fool like you can understand. You are not Kurokami Medaka. No matter how hard you work, you’ll never become like her. You can’t be anybody than your own pathetic self, so give it up already.”  
  
“I-I’m someone who doesn’t know when to quit. As stubborn as the devil, Hitoyoshi Zenkichi.”  
  
Togami leaned over the bed. He stared in his face, looking at him like he was nothing. “No matter how hard you work, you will never become worthy of her. Because you were never worthy of her in the first place. You already know this, you simply wish to deny it.”  
  
Togami leaned back.  
Zenkichi could swear he saw something blurry in Togami’s ice cold eyes, as if those eyes were melting.  
  
“Both you and me, no matter how hard we try we can’t change.”  
  
Melting.  
He avoided warmth, he knew he could not get close to anybody else.  
Togami did not want to melt away.  
There would be nothing left of him, because he had no name, no identity, nothing of his own besides what the Togami gave him.   
  
“Being born this way… don’t you think, we both have such rotten luck?”


	42. Mistaken Belief of Love

“Hey, what kind of love is this?”   
“Hey, what is this love in words?” 

Those questions were going unanswered. She was sure.   
  
Love…? Love is, love is, love is, scissors tearing through the flesh. I love the organs inside shaped like sphaghetti. I reshape them like ravioli. I love cute men, all of them, all of them, all of them. The best part is peeling the flesh off, breaking it at the seams and tearing apart the stitches. I don’t care about what people feel deep inside their hearts, I don’t need to see, because I can make everything inside spill out.   
  
I don’t need to hear the words. I can see it in their trembling. Flowing so smoothly. I’m all wet. It clings to me in one big mess. Clinging.   
  
There’s no such thing as words of love.    
That’s why I want you to love me   
But you won’t.   
So I’ll love you instead.   
  
Oh, my, you shouldn’t seek a definition of love. No definition is needed. No words are needed. All that’s needed is a feeling. That’s why you know, I love you, I love you, I love you. You’re the only one for me.   
  
You’re my only “anyone.”   
“Anyone”   
Anyone, anyone, anyone.   
My heart is so big I have love for the whole human race.   
There’s not a person more loving than me!

I’m a goddamned romanticist.   
So why…. Why won’t they love me back already?   
Love, love, Love… me?

Don’t care. Don’t care. This is just a fun little meaningless fling anyway. No one cares about the emotional turmoil of a sadist. She’s the deep one, with a million issues, complex with all of her various complexes. I’m the free one. Free to love!  
  
Genocide Jack suddenly turned her head around, so sharply it was like she did not have any bones in her neck. A noise behind her interrupted her work.  “Oh, it’s just you Kiyoyo. I thought I was going to have to share screen time with a bigger presence that’d suck all the attention away from me.”   
  
“Kiyoyo?”   
  
“Slip of the tongue,” Jack’s tongue unfurled from her mouth like a red carpet being unrolled.   
  
“You did that on purpose.”   
  
“You know what they say, even a monkey can fall out of a tree, hit its head, slip into a coma, and die! Kyeeehahahahaa!” Jack picked up the body she was dragging behind her, and grabbed onto Kumagawa’s hand puppeteering his body to make him wave. “That’s so rude Senpai, don’t ignore Kikiyo’s Delivery Service. What is it about dying that makes boys so dull? Come on now, say hi.”   
  
“Perhaps he’s just shy,” Korekiyo said, giving a normal response to her rambling. “Was there something you needed with Kumagawa?”   
  
“Why, are you jealous? I didn’t know you were into that kind of thing, if you want I can cut you up next! You’re my precious Kore-zon after all,” She raised a pair of scissors to his face and snapped them right in front of his nose like a crab’s claws.   
  
“No, that inquiry was mere curiosity on my part,” Korekiyo crossed his arms over his body. “If the only way you can express your feelings is by cutting people to ribbons, I would love to witness such a beautiful expression of humanity but unfortunately I’d die.”   
  
“Yep, you’d die!” Instead of cutting, Jack settled for just prodding him with her scissors. “Fine, I’ll tell you but you gotta become my accomplice! I thought I needed to put on a show. I mean, I’m sharing this space with three other serial killers you know. I’ve got personality to spare, but I’m stuck in this body with negative two charisma. I might be a flat character, but gloomy’s as flat as a board.” 

“I… your body is…” Korekiyo fell quiet and instead went to pick up Kumagawa’s legs so the two of them could lift the body together. They had to move quietly if they did not want to get caught by the student council, Kiyo was quite good at being quiet but Jack had a habit of giggling.   
  
“Kyehehehe, you’re a weird one you know that?” 

“No, I don’t know that. Nobody has ever told me before. Up until this moment in my life, I mistakenly believed I was normal.”  
  
“I mean I get you’re a freak like me, but you’re talking to me a little too normal. You see, I don’t do all this human connection shit, I cut connections like that to pieces! I’m just here to see the faces people make when they’re crying and begging for their lives.”   
  
“Hm.”   
  
“Don’t hm me! I’ll have you know I don’t go for the stoic type at all! You better start the waterworks, and show me how scared you are of me right fucking now!”  

“Hm… you’re rather childish.” Korekiyo stopped for a moment and walked to a nearby vending machine outside the dorm rooms. He bought two cans and then offered the black coffee to Jack.   
  
“I don’t eat, I’m watching my figure.”   
  
“Really? I thought murdering burned a lot of calories.”   
  
“Fine, gimme.” She snatched it away, and then drank the whole thing in one frantic sip. Coffee spilled from the sides of her mouth as her tongue made it difficult to keep it all in. “See, I don’t get this why you keep following us around like it’s all normal when I know the two of us are tweedle die and tweedle dumpster fire.” 

  
“Do I need a reason? Perhaps I simply like being around you.” 

“Pffffft, someone liking Toko! Damn for a guy who’s so serious all the goddamned time you’re pretty funny!” When they made it to Toko’s dorm, they both crept in. Jack of course could not resist making a crack. “Inviting a boy into my dorm…? Y-you better not take advantage of my innocence.”  
  
“You’re a guilty serial killer.”   
  
“Hell yeah I am! Kyeeehahahahahaha!”   
  
Korekiyo sat on the floor politely, while Jack threw Kumagawa’s body on her bed and inspected where she wanted to cut him. She brought the scissors to his cheek, as if caressing him with a blade only for her to hesitate when she made a small cut on his cheek and blood fell. “This body’s over a month old, how the hell is it still bleeding?”   
  
“Hey, Jack can I ask you something? You were lying earlier, weren’t you? You’re not just trying to disect Kumagawa’s corpse for fun aren’t you, this is for Toko.” 

“Why the hell would I do anything for gloomy’s sake, ehhhh?”

“Because she feels guilty about Kumagawa’s death, and you share feelings with her.” Korekiyo picked up the canned tea he had bought from the machine and pulled his mask down to sip it.  “Why do you kill people?”

“Because it’s easier to kill than try not to!” 

“I disagree. All of your victims have something in common, they’re all men that Toko would be attracted to.”

“Yeah, so? I already told you, I’m just your friendly neighborhood psychopath that wants to kill the people she loves.”  
  
“I disagree again-”   
  
“You can’t deny with a maiden’s heart like that.”   
  
"She's timid and you're sadistic. She's as shrinking violet and you're so bold. There's an undeniable relationship between you, it's like you're covering for each other's vulnerabilities like a pair of twins- you kill because they might hurt her right?" 

Suddenly, there was a pair of scissors leveled at his eyes. Korekiyo did not flinch at all. “Just quit analyzing me already. No matter how hard you try, you’re not going to find anything normal between the two of us… er… the four of us.”   
  
“You asked me why I keep talking to you like you’re normal. This is why. To me, you’re human too Jack.” Korekiyo said, his gaze fixed on her refusing to break. Jack considered for a moment, even if she cut his eyelids and gauged those eyeballs out but it would not stop him from looking at her. 

“I can’t believe… between the two of us you’re the weirder one here,” Jack tossed her scissors to the side. She had lost interest in cutting up Kumagawa-senpai’s body that was all. She was not disarming in front of him. She did not need to show this man vulnerability, because she was the side of Toko that always needed to be strong. 

“Jack, why don’t you want to kill me?”   
  
Korekiyo asked suddenly.   
  
“Because you don’t even look like you’re alive to begin with. Can’t murder a ghost now can I?”   
  
Jack fell back on the bed. She reajdusted her skirt pulling it up slightly so it would be more comfortable, and pulled off her glasses using one arm as a pillow. She looked like a restless maiden lying on a bed. “Since you’re pestering me with questions, can I ask you something?   
  
“Hm.”   
  
“Will you stay here until morning? So gloomy doesn’t wake up alone?”   
  
“Of course.”   
  
Jack suddenly snatched his bandaged hand away. She ripped the bandages away cutting them with her scissors until nothing was left but his bare hand. The next moment a gash appeared across his hand bleeding fresh pink blood. Jack did the same thing to her owh hand, and then twined their fingers together in a mess of blood.   
  
“There, now you can’t let go.  There's blood smeared all over your hands. You’re an official accomplice now!” 

“I wasn’t going to let go.”  
  
Korekiyo said, strengthening his grip on her. He watched their blood seep together, and it was impossible to tell mixed up like this where she ended and he began. It was warm after all, from the tip of his fingers to his palm, a warmth he never expected to feel or hold onto.   
  
“Eh? I forgot to ask. I know you’re a psychopath, but are you a murdering psychopath? There’s a difference you know.”   
  
“Mm…”   
  
“Oh, who did you kill? Tell me? Tell me? Tell me? I need a bedtime story.” 

  
Korekiyo stayed silent for a long time, and then finally answered. “My sister.” 

 

🧸

  
Toko woke up and thought nothing at all about the hole in her memory from last night. She grabbed her glasses from her night stand and walked over to the closet. The next moment, she realized what had happened more or less when Kumagawa’s body came spilling out of her closet and fell on top of her.   
  
Korekiyo who had been sleeping in a chair, stirred awake from the noise. “Oh, sorry. Jack said she wanted to scare you like this was a haunted house.”   
  
“W-what are you doing here? I told you to stop talking to Jack so much! What are you t-trying to do anyway? Do you want to get both of us for the world’s weirdest three way? I c-can’t believe such a perverted boy snuck into my room.”   
  
“Jack invited me in. I only stayed to make sure she did not do anything to Kumagawa’s body. You’re the one whose mind went there first not me,” He answered calmly.   
  
“Why do you care so much? Y-you’re worse than a stalker. At least stalkers keep their distance and watch from afar, you keep meddling.” 

 

“I thought it would make you sad. If you saw the body of your former senpai cut up.”  
  


“You got your line wrong! You’re supposed to say ‘Humans are equally beautiful to me whether they’re happy or sad.’ I swear everybody’s going slowly mad in this school, nobody’s even acting in character anymore.” Toko saw the dried blood on her hand and immediately jumped up. “Aaaaah! Gross, gross, gross… I-I’m going to the bathroom to get changed. You better not peek.” 

  
Shyly, Korekiyo grabbed the top of his hat and pulled it down over his eyes. Strange, when he did that he looked almost boyish to Toko. It was hard to imagine that he had ever been a child. To be fair it was the same for her as well. She was sure the child she used to be would be disappointed with her grown up self. After all, she had grown up into a serial killer. 

  
“I like both of you, is that so wrong?” Korekiyo asked.   
  
“Yeah, it is…” 

 

“I’m concerned. You haven’t left your room at all lately. Ever since you got that haircut, it’s like you’re hiding yourself.”   
  
“Th-they’re all going to see! I just don’t want them to see okay!? Quit looking at me, I already know I’m ugly.”   
  
Toko pulled her uniform jacket above her head on the other side of the bathroom door. Whether she washed or not, she always felt like a thin layer of ash was clinging to her body. 

 

She looked at her uniform and frowned. Jack needed to stop customizing her clothes without permission. Her clothing torn up from use. The gap between her and Togami when they shared the bed that night. Neither of them seemed like she could ever sew them up in her conditions.   
  
She reached a hand out towards the mirror. The boy with a rose for a heart, whose petals slowly fell away one by one. Even if she pricked her finger on his thorns and was cursed, she still wanted to caress him. When she touched his reflection in the mirror, however, she noticed how cold the glass was. It was almost as cold as touching the real Togami.   
  
_We’re all mad here?_

_I’m the mad one._

 

In the mirror Toko’s own features were scratched out. She did not want to look at her own face, just the face of her beloved. Her eyes were two blotches of ink, and her mouth was one large smear of black in the shadow of a smile. 

 

Did you know? Every single person had a hidden garden inside of them. She wanted to walk the thorny path to Togami’s, but she knew that was wrong. She was not someone who could reach out and touch flowers. Beauty was wasted on a person like her. She snipped, snipped, snipped, cutting the flower heads off from the stems. She decapitated. Off with their heads! Flowers rolled at her feet. Heads rolled at her feet. She was not alice, she could never be a princess pure of heart all she could ever become was a queen bathed in red. 

 

“Hey, this love is damaging.”

A voice repeated in her ears.   
It was just a memory, she drew a fine line she was crazy but not that crazy.   
  
“Don’t you know how to accept love?”   
  
She heard that irritating normal girl’s voice repeat again and again in her ears.   
  
“Don’t lecture me, you damn virgin with no experience.” Toko wetly coughed up the words. 

 

She reached up to pull on her hair where it had been cut. Perhaps she could make it longer, or if not that perhaps she could pull it out of the flesh of her scalp like she was uprooting flowers. 

  
The ash that always layered over her skin.   
The ash so thick she could choke on.   
Could it be?   
The cremated remains of her victims.   
She felt something smoldering beneath the surface of her skin. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, like she wanted to slip out of her own skin. There was a question, deeper, even deeper somewhere inside of her that she was afraid to ask. 

  
Toko reached out for the mirror where she saw the face of her beloved once more. “Hey, do you think… if I could love you then… maybe one day… could I learn to love myself as well?” Whens he reached for Togami however, flowers grew around his face. They bloomed out from his eyes and then the wind blew them away before she could even touch him. 

  
Toko stumbled out of the bathroom still half dressed. Filled with so much self disgust she wanted to vomit, to her living was just an eternal, incurable nausea.   
  
When she fell at his feet, Korekiyo immediately jumped. It was the most emotion she had ever seen him express. His hands reached out, and she instantly flinched expecting pain. All he did was readjust her clothing, buttoning it up, and fixing her skirt so she was no longer revealing herself. She hiked her skirt up and grabbed his hand to stop him from retreating, and placed his bare hand over the scars on the inside of her thigh.   
  
“Hey, Kiyo. This is how many people I’ve killed.”   
  
“Did you do this to yourself?”   
  
“I d-don’t know what to do. I only ever wake up after Jack has done it. I can’t do anything, so I just, take the scissors and carve a tally into my leg so I won’t forget them.”   
  
Korekiyo reached to the bandages covering his arm. He slowly unwrapped them. She saw the same bruises she had before, but there were a few fresh new cuts. At first Toko thought Jack did them until Korekiyo spoke up. “My sister… she used to punish me in harsh ways. W-when I want to remember sister’s touch, when I want to feel her again I… I…”   


“W-what is this crap?” Fukawa Toko turned her head to a sick angle, and openly laughed. She had no idea what she was laughing at, just that if she did not laugh she would start to cry. “W-what are we doing really? If we share our scars, will we get closer, is this one of those scenes? That only happens in books… that’s just a romantic delusion. I c-can’t be part of a beautiful scene like that.”

 

She saw the wounds that wrapped around Korekiyo’s arm. They were like a snake coiled around him so tightly that it had left burn marks. She pictured Korekiyo naked then, lost in a garden of thorny vines unable to escape. There was no one to cut him free. As those vines were the seeds planted by his own feelings.

 

His sister had gave him nothing, Toko understood in that moment. She understood without him having to say it because she came from that kind of household to. Yet, he still clung onto that pain. He let the vines wrap around him. He let the serpent coil in his chest, and make its home wrapped around his spine and between his rib cage because otherwise he would be as hollow as a corpse. Even if he had nothing but painful memories he wanted to hold onto them. He refused to let go, even if he was being slowly strangled by them.   
  
“I don’t know what it is,” Korekiyo said, honestly. “But, you’re here, and I’m here aren’t you?” 

  
Harshly she pushed him back. He must know how much she stunk. The smell around her was beginning to suffocate her. The truth was she gave him no reason to stick around her, him and anybody else. She demanded people be kind to her, but she never gave them a single reason to love her. She was the most despicable, weakest, and greedy person for thinking someone as ugly as her still deserved to be loved.   
  
“Just st-stop already. Stop being nice to me!”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“I don’t need your pity. Y-you just see me as a pitiable girl.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“I don’t want you to like me.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“Why? Why? Why? What are you a damn kid? Fine, I don’t want to fall for you! I’m tired of loving people, and I’m tired trying to be loved. I’m just tired of it all! There’s not a single person who could love an ugly person like me, you got it! I…” What she had known since the day she was born, the reason why she knew she was never going to get any love from that household. The people who gave birth to her, could not have been bothered to love her. They would have been so much kinder, if they smothered her with a pillow so she could die with her stillborn sister. “I don’t deserve to be loved.” 

 

“You’re going to write all of humanity off so easily. You really believe in seven billion people not a single one can love you? That’s just looking down on humanity-”  
  
“Enoguh of your ‘I love humans’ crap! It’s so obvious you’re just as lonely as I am. Even if we are both alone that doesn’t mean we should get along, why do that when you can just be alone and miserable forever…??” 

 

Hate was comfortable.  
Hate was what she knew.   
Hate was what she was used to.   
Others hated her, she hated them in return, and most of all she hated herself. She was just nasty as a person. She could finally admit that she gave others reasons to hate her. “I-I’m just so ugly…”

  


_Tell her how much you hate her._ His sister’s sharp voice commanded in his ear. He felt her fingernails raking across his lips. The hiss of her breath at the back of his neck made his veins start to prickle with ice. 

 

 _Tell her she’s an ugly woman unworthy of ever being your sister’s friend. Then sister will forgive you. Sister wants to love you Korekiyo, that’s why you can’t love anybody else._ _  
_ _  
_ _You don’t need anybody besides sister._ _  
_ _She’s the only one allowed to touch you._ _  
_ _She’s the only one allowed to love you._ _  
_ _She’s the only one allowed to hurt you._ _  
_ _She’s the only one allowed to hate you._   
  
“Don’t ever say that.” She saw Korekiyo express an emotion finally. Anger. Seething resentment under his skin, directed at her. She wondered if she had made him hate her now, mission accomplished. He reached forward and touched both of her shoulders. Unfamiliar. His fingers trembled, at the feeling of being close enough to touch someone else. “You took an interest in me. Spent time with me… What sort of beauty will you show me? That is what I wish to know. When your whole body trembles, that is beautifu, your fear, worry, anger, and love, all beautiful. There’s not a single part of you that is ugly so stop saying that over and over again like some kind of excuse.”   
  
He removed his hands, wrapping them around himself instead. “I… I at least… I at least never once thought you were ugly. Not just as a human being, but as Fukawa Toko I… I….” 

  
He could not speak, because the words were caught behind his mask. Even when he tried to open his mouth he could not. He was choking on his own tongue. He felt his sister’s fingers slide over his mouth. She pressed on his lips forcing him to stay quiet.   
  
Finally he whispered through the cracks in his mask. “There is… there is someone who loves you out there. I’m sure of it.” 

 

“Y-you don’t get it. It’s a mistake! Please, stop liking me, please don’t be kind to me. You don’t know the kind of person I am, I’m just pretending to be pitiable and unfortunate. I know…” Toko wrapped her arms around her chest. Korekiyo wondered for a moment what it would be like to hold her like that. “I knew. I knew Togami-kun never loved me. I knew, but… all I cared about was my own feelings, it was self satisfaction.”   
  
It was all about herself in the end.   
She loved other people, because she could not love herself.   
She killed other people, because she could not handle her own emotions.   
Korekiyo told her that reading her books helped him feel understood.   
But she didn’t give a damn about how her readers felt.   
All she cared about was understanding herself, these messed up feelings inside of her.   
She wanted to be understood by others, but not to understand them.

She wanted to be in love, but she did not want to be loved back. 

No wonder she smelled so bad, she was rotten. A rotten river.   
Other people’s feelings never even reached her, she drowned herself and all of them out.   
She did everything for herself in the end, and yet she never even liked herself.   
  
She could not even be called a good reader. All she ever did was skim the surface of books, she never cared about what feelings people were hiding in between the lines. 

『 _It’s not your fault._ 』

 

Her head repeated then.   
Just what she needed, more of herself inside her own head. The last thing Jack needed was more friends. “It’s my mother. It’s my mother’s fault she was born inside of me. I never thought of them as my real mothers, not even once.” 

 

“Hm?” 

 

She told him suddenly, the words came spilling out of her mouth faster than she could control it. She vomitted her ugly backstory on him. Korekiyo watched his eyes like still water the same as ever. He did not get it. She was only acting like this to get him to pity her. She just wanted to be an innocent victim, she cared so little about how many victims she created. 

 

“J-just stop me already, or I’ll go on and on about my misfortunes.”   
  
“Sorry, I was thinking…”   
  
“I told you to quit analyzing me! I ain’t your goddamn book report. Y-you’re the one who kept asking me, so you’re gonna wallow in these bad memories with me, damnit!” 

 

“You say you don’t have a family, but you also say you had a sister born alongside you. Which one was born first, you or her?”  
  
“Er, I was…? What does that matter though, she’s already dead, lucky bitch.”   
  
He reached forward and pushed the bridges of her glasses up for her, fixing them so they would no longer be crooked on her face. “What if Jack is the spirit of your departed sister. She’s watched over you all this time.”   
  
“H-hey, I may be delusional but I’m not your level of delusional. One of us needs to be the less crazy one here. You’re the guy who thinks his own sister is haunting his flat ass. B-besides, I hate Jack, she’s done nothing but ruin my whole life.” 

 

Korekiyo suddenly flicked her on the forehead. Toko looked up, and saw anger in his eyes like she had agitated a fresh wound. “You’re an older sister. You must not treat Jack that way. All this time, she’s handled your stress for you, you dumped all the ugliest parts of yourself on her and yet she still loved you. So, don’t you think it’s time you learned to be a proper older sister to her?”

 

“Eh-eh-eh? I have a sister inside of me…” Toko had on idea if she was laughing at the idea or simply in shock. She let her head hang as she thought about it. Slowly her fingers reached her fingers up for Korekiyo’s mask, and then pulled it down over his neck until his entire face was revealed. She grabbed his hat as well and threw it away. There was no part of his face he could hide now. His dark eyes, with feminine opal shapes. She stared at those lips for a moment, red.   
  
“You always say such strange things…” She murmured.   
  
“So I have been told repeatedly.”   
  
When she saw him flinch at her touch, the same way she did, she recoiled. “You. Do you really want to die that badly to rejoin your sister?”

 

“Yes.”  
  
“W-well too bad. You’re not allowed to die. N-no matter what happens, don’t let me kill you okay? Or else… or else I’ll tell everybody that you snuck into my room to peep at me, and everyone will think you’re a disgusting creep and your reptutation will be ruined.” 

 

 _Die with me, Kiyo._   
His sister whispered in his ear.   
There was someone who wanted him to live. 

 

“Fukawa. To tell you the truth. I’ve always wanted to help you with research for your book. I want to make the characters you write, even more human.”   
  
“Y-yeah, you can’t die because I need you. Let’s go somewhere where we can research my books. We’re going to paris, okay? It’s the city of love, it’s perfect for a love freak like me. As soon as I’m getting out of here, I’m going to write my greatest story yet and you have to read it.”   
Korekiyo’s eyes were gentle and kind.   
At least, they were the eyes of someone who craved gentleness and kindness. That was what he wanted to be. Even if underneath those eyes all there was, was a sobbing child.   


Korekiyo nodded.   
It was a promise.   
A worthless promise.   
A worthless promise between a killer and a mummified corpse.   
  
Yet, Korekiyo could already feel himself beginning to unravel.   
  
🧸   


You grew up in a room that was four and a half mats in size. 

Your entire world was contained in that tatami mat room.   
You are human shaped, but there is nothing inside you.   
They contain multitudes.   
Even with two people inside of you, even with you and your sister you’re still so much less.   
When you make them as empty as you are, do you feel connected?   
Which is your real mask?   
Is this your mask?   
Is your face the real mask?   
Do you understand the difference?   
The fact of the matter is your sister was the only one who understood you. When she died, a part of you died with you. Your entire life was controlled by her, when she disappeared so did you. Does it make you angry that she died peacefully without you?   
Do you feel closer to your sister now that she’s dead.   
You can’t love your sister that always hurt you, but perhaps you can bring yourself to love the memory of her.   
Maybe you cannot die because you are already dead.   
Maybe you died when your sister did, and all you are now is rot.   
You could just move on. 

You could find someone else to love you besides your sister.   
There’s no reason to spend all that time longing for the touch of someone who never even loved you. But scarier than the idea that she didn’t love you, is the idea that she did.   
Because that means your sister taught you that this was what love was.   
Love was pain.   
There was no point in loving anybody else, because it would be just as painful.   
In that way, longing for someone who is already dead is less painful.   
Because then you’re just numb. 

 

“If this is uncomfortable, you can tell me Kiyo-chan,” Mukuro said. His eyes snapped back to reality and he saw she was gently painting his face.   
  
“I am surprised you know how to apply makeup if you hate it.”   
  
“It didn’t matter if I hated it, Junko-chan decided everything I liked. She basically drilled how to wear makeup into my skull.” Mukuro suddenly realized she was talking about herself again and backtracked with her words. “What’s important is what you like Kiyo-chan. If you don’t like wearing makeup, then we can stop if you want.” 

 

 _Korekiyo._ _  
_ _Don’t allow her to touch your face._ _  
_ _Your face belongs to me after all._   
  
He could see his sister’s fingers reaching out to touch the skin of his face, as if she wanted to peel it off. He wondered them even if she peeled off all his flesh, would she just be pulling off a mask? Would he even feel it? 

 

“Spending time with me individually is unnecessary. You have the wrong impression of me. I may always be alone but I’m not lonely. I have the entirety of humanity as a companion.”  
  
“I like spending time with you, and besides I used to think that too. That I wasn’t lonely as long as I had my sister but… it was wrong, I was loneliest when I was around Junko-chan.” 

  


Mukuro’s touch was nothing at all like his sister’s. Her fingers lightly brushed his cheek. He did not know someone’s touch could be this soft.  She carefully painted his face. He started to wonder if she could paint on a new face entirely, not one that resembled his sister’s at all, one that was capable of smiling like everybody else did.  
  
Once he did not even think it was possible for someone like him to live without wearing a mask. He wondered when he had started to change his mind about such things. 

 

“Oh, I finished that book you told me to read. Toko-chan is really good at writing romance, the boy was so manly, strong, and he could protect the female protagonist just by holding her in his arms. He’s just like Makoto, really…”  
  
“Naegi is literally nothing like that at all. He’s the exact opposite of that…”   
  
Mukuro could not even hear Korekiyo. She had gotten lost in a world of lovey dovey illusions. “When the boy held her face, and wiped her tears away standing tall above her as if to shield her with his back that was just like Makoto too. Oh, and when he told her that the way she always smiled at him saved him, and reminded him there was still a light in this world…”   
  
“This is absolutely nothing like your love story. Naegi is shorter than you are…” Korekiyo sighed. “You really do become a different person around him. I’m starting to worry you might have a split personality too.” 

  
“What are you talking about? I’m always lovey dovey like this. I’m Makoto’s number one fangirl. I’m the president of his fanclub. I’m permanently sick with Makoto fever.” 

 

He was happy for her. Love was such a rare thing to find in this world, and he considered it impossible for him. If only Toko could find someone, then she might be able to smile this freely too. However…. “There’s such a thing as too much love…”   
  
“No, there’s not.”   
  
“I find your claim that you’re always like this dubious as well, considering how expressionless you are.”   
  
“What are you talking about? Can’t you see, I’m absolutely blushing.”   
  
She was not blushing at all. Nor was she making any kind of expression. Her cheeks were pale, and her raven colored hair only served to show how ghost-like her face was, almost transparent.   
  
“Well, either way you’re a human being even I cannot possibly comprehend.” Korekiyo said, _because you’re like me, and yet you found love._ “How are you not scared when you’re around him? Didn’t your sister teach you what love was like…” 

“You’re right, Naegi is so strong. I can see why he’d be fearsome.”   
  
“He’s not strong at all, nor is he fearsome.” 

 

“I know I’m a woman unworthy of him but…”  
  
“Since when did you become such an old fashioned maiden? I can’t handle all these character changes, just pick one mask and stick to it please.”  She was greedier with her masks than kokichi, really. 

  
“If Naegi loves me, then I can’t help his feelings. And even if I don’t think I deserve it, I can’t help but feeling this way. All people want to be loved, right?” 

  
He already loved someone. As long as he had feelings for his sister in his heart, he did not ever need to be hurt again. Mukuro lifted the mirror up and showed him his face, announcing that she was done with his makeup.   
  
He saw his own face for once.   
Not the cracked reflection of his sister.   
The same face his sister called ugly and told him to hide.   
  
“You look so pretty, Kiyo-chan. Gosh, it’s too bad you always hide your face away like that, you’ve got natural good looks, you could totally be a playboy.” 

 

“...”  
  
“Actually, don’t listen to me. Don’t grow up into a playboy at all. Especially an accidental playboy like Makoto. If you grow up that way I’ll be disappointed in you.”   
  
Korekiyo knocked the mirror out of her hands. Another random outburst of violent. Perhaps she would get it now, that he was a dangerous person, that he was a rotten child. He looked at the glass that had embedded itself into his palm, and then laughed, squeezing his hand together tighter so he could dig it in deeper. 

 

“Y-you don’t understand a single thing, see because the only one who understands me is my sister, and I’m the only one who can understand my sister.”  
  
Korekiyo said those words.   
Those words Mukuro repeated again and again in the past to stop her from going insane. 

  
“Y-you keep getting in the way. I don’t care how many times you tell me in that pitiable voice that my sister’s love wasn’t healthy for me, that it was hurting me, that it poisons me slowly.”

 

All he had ever known is the ghost of his past. He touched hands with his sister, as she took the form of a past skeleton. His sister’s bones wrapped around him protectively. He wanted to be like that too, he wanted to slither out of his skin like a snake.   
  
He could leave behind a trail of memories, and fingertips touching his skin that he would love to forget. The way he was touched, the places he was touched. He covered his own hands with bandages because even when he touched himself he no longer wanted to feel the disgusting sensation of being touched.   
  
Hands like his sisters.   
Hands.   
Hands all over him. 

  
He smiled crookedly, like the way his face reflected in the mirror full of cracks. He smiled at the broken hand in front of him, he was glad it was broken. No one would ever try to hold onto it again. 

 

 _I’m scared of dying my sweet Korekiyo._ _  
_ _So, if big sis ever dies please promise me._ _  
_ _Die with me, Kiyo._

 

“I knew. I knew she never loved me. I just wanted to mistakenly believe that someone loved me, that she loved me.” 

 

Through the cracks in his face, tears spilled out. That was no good, he could not cry. His sister told him not to cry because it made her upset. He already made a promise not to cry anymore, or ask her for anything. He did not need anything. He did not need anything that would make sister upset. 

  
Mukuro looked at the crying child in front of her. She reached out to touch him, but hesitated feeling she would only make it worse. She still knew the feeling of convincing herself over and over again that Junko loved her.   
  
The child in front of her stopped breathing, expressionlessly.   
All alone, he must have hoped just like she did that the pain his sister gave him might be love.   
  
If Kumagawa were here, what would he do?   
He would probably wrap his arms around Korekiyo and say that he was now his brother, so forget about his stupid sister already.   
If Makoto were here, what would he do?   
He would tell him that there was hope even for someone like Korekiyo? That nobody in this world deserved to be put through what Korekiyo did, and Korekiyo deserved love.   


Mukuro’s mouth fell open, but she could not say a thing. She could not stop the child choking on flower petals, he had swallowed over and over again right in front of her. He was finally spitting them up, because he realized his love was unrequited.   
  
He spat them up, because he realized the flowers he was swallowing was poison all along.   
He knew his sister was a snake.   
He tried to swallow that poison, so he could become venomous like her.   
He tried to become used to her bite.   
But it was impossible, because he just wanted to be loved.   
There was no way he could be like her.   
  
Mukuro could only cause violence. She could only spread despair. “Kiyo-chan I…” 

She reached up and grabbed the mirror shards on the ground one by one. She assembled them like a puzzle, until Korekiyo could see the reflection of his face rebuilt in front of him. She reached out and gingerly took his hand, and then pulled out each shard before she redid the bandages.   
  
Her eyes were pitch black. When she got like this, all color, all light disappeared from them.   
  
“I hate your sister.”    



	43. A Maiden in Love

According to what I’ve read… it seems like the world is round.    
But… I wonder if that’s true?   
The world could be shaped like a crumpled up piece of paper for all I know.   
Yes, just like my first love letter that was pinned up and exposed on the school bulletin board, that I ripped and balled up violently, drowning in embarrassment.    
That must be it.   
Basically every single bit of “common sense” society gives you can actually be picked apart like that… 

That’s why I only believe what I read in books.    
Perhaps the “world” built upon that “common sense” is so cruel that it can’t be trusted.    
Perhaps that world should be crumpled up and thrown in the garbage.    
...Well, that doesn’t have anything to do with me, though.   
I think people who think they need to hate the whole world are incredibly small and petty.    
People who think they can contain the whole world in their palm.    
In a hand covered with red acrylic nails.    
Yeah, they must be all alone if their world is that small.    
I mean, my world isn’t so tiny that I need to worry about things like the world or common sense.    
Actually, it’s fairly big.    
It’s a little laughable how massively towering it is.    
Everyone is talking about working together to escape to the outside world but that’s bothersome.    
I don’t hope, or despair, I just feel tired.    
I don’t care about the world outside this school.    
I don’t care about any of that.    
I mean, Byakuya-sama is my whole world.   
The world begins from the beginning of my fingertips.    
It crosses a bridge between our held hands.   
The world  with the ends of his fingertips. 

Even if my feelings are unrequited, I’m fine as long as I have Byakuya-sama.    
Who cares about anyone else?   
I mean obviously everyone hates me anyway. 

That’s what I thought at least, but now even Byakuya-sama hates me too. 

 

Toko balled up the paper she had scrawled out her thoughts on, and threw it away. It was no good, it was like the time she tried to write the love letter. Even if she was capable of writing, even if she was someone who was called a talented writer it was never enough.    
  
There were simply not enough words in the japanese language to express this pain. No matter what kanji she scrawled out, none of them ever worked. The kanji fell off the page, leaving nothing more than a blank white page behind.    
  
This pain never went away. Not when she wrote, not when she insulted others and isolated herself, not even when she killed others. Even if she could relieve her stress temporarily it just built back up again. It was like living itself was synonymous with pain. It was a punishment.

  
She supposed that made sense for someone like her a child of adultery.   
She was a born punishment to both of her mothers.   
Her mother’s punished her over and over again for her father’s adultery. 

  
Hey was there anyone? Was there a single person who would reach out and touch her without hitting her? Was there anyone who would pat her on the head and tell her she was going to be okay? Not a single person, since she was a child… nobody had… 

 

She just wanted to cry when she was in pain and be comforted but even if she wrote eighty books, even if she wrote her masterpiece, even if she surpassed Dostoevsky, and Dazai in writing about human misery she would never be able to express it in words. 

 

Just then Toko slowly turned her head around to see an open door. Standing in the middle of the doorway was a girl so ordinary, so replaceable, she may as well have been faceless. Yet, this faceless girl kept bugging her. 

 

“Umm… Toko-chan, if you’re hiding yourself away in your room because I cut your hair without asking I’m sorry. I was just trying to be bold, but big brother lectured me that you were fragile-” 

 

Komaru sounded nothing like her usual self. She had already seen a normal girl’s friendly attitude, and now this was what lied behind that, a normal girl’s pity. Makoto told her that Toko was delicate, like paper that could easily be torn apart or cut by scissors and now she was walking on eggshells. 

  
How insulting. Even if everybody else in the whole world was looking down on her, Toko could not stand this worthless girl looking at her that way. “If you really think a girl as insignificant as you could actually affect my mood you’ve got a big head. Don’t tell me you’re one of those ‘she seems normal but she’s actually always desired to be something special’ character types.”    
  
“Okay, now we’ve gone from feeling sorry for Toko-chan, to being insulted by Toko-chan.” 

 

_ Seriously, who gave her permission to start calling me Toko-chan?  _

  
“If you want to show proper respect to your superior who will accomplish more in one year than you will in your entire life, you should call me Fukawa-sensei.”   
  
“Nah, I don’t feel like it.” Komaru told her off without thinking. “It’s kind of weird when you act all haughty like that, it doesn’t suit you at all.”    
  
  


 

“I c-could totally play one of those haughty lady types. If it weren’t for my appearance, my inability to t-talk without stuttering, and my complete lack of confidence in myself I’m sure I could pull it off.” She could write that character well at least. It was one of her most praised characters, a prideful and yet secretly vulernable young woman. Yet, for some reason she could never act that was in reality.   
  
It was because she was not as delusional as she seemed. She had always known, the lines between fiction and reality. No matter how many times she tried to get lost in her books, a painful reality always reminded her where she was. One time, one of her mothers had even threw out all of the books on her shelf on a whim. The books that were her only lifeline. It was like saying  _ just go die already, you’re the reason we’re stuck in this house.  _ Or maybe.  _ If we can’t escape this house because of you, then you can’t escape either.  _   
  
Their only ties as a family was that they all wanted to drag each other down further, and further into hell together. 

 

“No, I didn’t mean it like that! I just think, you’re way too nice to ever be a bully like that.” Komaru said, making what Toko was sure was a genuine smile not that a gloomy girl would know anytihng about smiling. The one who smiled for her, th eone who laughed for her, the one who cried for her was always Jack. “Well, that and you’re also way too much of a spineless coward to ever bully someone, sure you act mean but the moment someone stands up for themselves you always back done.”    
  
For a moment Toko thought Komaru was the exact same kind of idiot that her brother was, the kind that was somehow even more delusional about his relationship with Togami than she was. She realized that Komaru saw the reality in front of her much more than her brother.   
  
She simply did not care about the reality she saw. She just latched on to Toko and decided to follow her around anyway.    
  
It was just because she was scared of everyone in this game turning into a murderer, and Toko was the least threatening. That was all, Toko refused to entertain that thought any further. 

 

Komaru was just “Dorothy” she was just “Alice”, nothing more than a helpless girl who followed the path set in front of her without thinking about it at all. As long as she followed the yellow brick road easily, she would make friends on the way and eventually reach the end of her journey. 

 

When Toko was younger she taught herself enough english to read children’s book in english because she got bored of her native language. This was before she just started to read literary classics and books several years above her. The first western book she ever read was the Wizard of Oz. When she was still young enough to dream of escaping that house, she used to hope that a tornado would come and pick up both her and her house and take her away. 

If only she had not been born into this world. If she was in another one, even a sad little girl like her could make friends, but when she read the words  _ There’s no place like home _ at the end of the book she tossed the book away.    
  
At that moment she realized she could never become Dorothy, because she would never be able to say those words. No matter where she went, she would never have a home to return to. She could not find strength inside herself when she was feeling her weakest. She could not find new friends, even though she was all alone in a scary and unfamiliar world.    
  
If she could never become Dorothy then she wondered who she was. Her hands slowly traveled up to her face. She had a beauty mark on her cheek, no that was just an ugly wart. Her features were jagged and crooked. That was it, she could never be Dorothy, because she was the witch. She was the most despised person in muchkinland, and just like her two mothers, everyone else would celebrate when she was dead. 

 

“Shoo, shoo. I know you think even a normal person like you might become a part of my radiance if you can be of help to me, but I don’t need you.”  _ I don’t need anyone.  _ “I’m just having a bit of writer’s block when it comes to writing a latter that’s all.” 

 

“Be a part of your radiance… isn’t that something Komaeda-kun would say? And you’re uhhh… the least radiant person I know.” 

  
Toko was starting to figure out it was not that Komaru was brutally honest, it was more like she was too stupid to tell lies. 

 

“W-well, I brought you this because you seem to be one of those types that prefers books to people,” Toko suddenly had a manga volume shoved in her face.  _ The bomb inside her volume number two.  _   
  
“Can you blame me, humans are all just noisy animals, and also they whisper mean things behind your back and instantly size you up and pinpoint all your weaknesses. A book would never hurt me like that…”   
  
“Well that’s nice…”    
  
“Don’t you ‘well that’s nice’ me, I know you say that when you’re not listening at all. Anyway, didn’t I tell you I’m not interested in this filth?”    
  
“Weird, Kumagawa-kun would say something like ‘filth is suited for a garbage person like me?’ You’re a lot different than him.”    
  
  


Toko noticed this girl really was impressionable, too damn easy to influence. She probably just went along with whatever others did. “S-so you’re calling me trash is that it? I’m a filthy woman who can never be clean.”    
  
“N-no, Toko-chan don’t spiral I wasn’t saying any of that at all!”   
  
“I’m not spiraling. Listen, if I were to experience negative character development it would be written much more compellingly than this. This is just…” She locked herself away in her room, this was nothing more than a brat’s tantrum. That was what her mother called it when she tried to hide away with her books.    
  
“Oh, come on don’t say that. You should at least try reading one… It might help you understand Kumagawa-kun. The final date scene from this volume is so good, it’s considered a masterpiece of manga history!”  

  
Toko decided to not tell Komaru that Kumagawa’s body was shoved into her closet, that was probably too much for a normal girl to handle. Makoto had not even allowed her to look at the body when they discovered it. 

  
Tch, why was she thinking so much about a normal girl’s sensibilities? Everyone else should be as miserable as she was, they should get used to the sight of dead bodies like she had for all she cared.    
  
“A masterpiece of crap is still crap! But, speaking of dates, I wonder if there’s any place in this school that would make a good date spot.”   
  
“Yeah, it’d be nice for a couple to hide away in one of the classrooms together and whisper sweet nothings to each other. I’d want a date like that for my first time.”   
  
“Huh? I took you for some sleazy tramp who just acts innocent! You really don’t have any experience?”   
  
“Of course not! Yes!”   
  
“Well, which one is it!?”    
  
“I totally have experience! Lots of it! Too many to count with both hands. I flip through attractive boys like pages in a manga!”    
  
“So, then you are just putting on an act,” Toko said, nervously playing with her fingers. “You don’t look like it, but you’re a poisonous little succubus on the inside.”    
  
“Um, well, no, maybe not… that bad,” Komaru hesitated.    
  
“No, really. If you’re gonna be a slut, you should at least be proud of it.”    
  
“Uh… Okay, I lied. I don’t have any experience.”   
  
“Why would you lie about that?”   
  
“Well, I didn’t want you to make fun of me.”   
  
“Your views on sex are about a quarter of a century old. Only the most narrow-minded vermin measure a person’s worth by their sexual experience,” As Toko spoke a scowl of contempt overcame her face.    
  
“H-hey, you’re the one who always makes a big deal about virgins and purity and whatever. Why is that anyway, was your mom really strict and never let you go on dates with boys or something?” Komaru made a clumsy guess. She really was so normal, she just could not comprehend what an abnormal family may look like. 

  
“That’s because my mother always told me-” the words slipped out of her mouth before she even realized it.  _ Don’t end up a slut like you’re other mother!  _ Her mother said as she pulled her hair so hard she felt like she was going to rip it out of her scalp. “Nevermind, it’s nothing…” 

 

Komaru easily changed the subject not even noticing Toko was keeping quiet about something. She was the exact opposite of Korekiyo someone always observing others, it was like Toko purposefully kept her head down. “Well, even though I never actually went on a date I have been asked out before! So, if the reason you’re locked up in this room is because of love problems, you can still come to me for advice.”   
  
“So you turned them down?” Toko asked.    
  
“Yeah, cause they were all my friends exes or like guys older than my dad.”   
  
“I can see that. You have the aura that really pulls in the lecherous types just bursting out of you. Ten years from now, you’ll probably be sold off to cover some low-life’s gamlbing debts.’   
  
“Stop that! Don’t say it, or it might come true!”    
  
“Well, what can I say? You’ve got a face that ugly guys just love. The kind of face that makes them think ‘Even I have a chance with her’...” 

 

“Well thanks Toko, I’ll remember that,” Komaru huffed. 

_ What is her deal? Just hate me already… like everybody else… it’ll be sooner or later.  _ Toko’s eyes suddenly brightened as she remembered something, Komaru’s type of man was total losers. “L-listen you, no matter what you can’t fall in love with Kumagawa Misogi. I know the moment I say that, the forbidden love trope will take effect but still. That guy has a scary big boobed girlfriend that will kill you.”    
  
“Huh? Why did you have to mention her boobs?”   
  
“That girl doesn’t even have a heart at all. Her chest is just empty hot air, that’s how they got so big! They blew up like balloons! You’ll be crushed for sure by her.”   
  
“I-I’ll be crushed by her boobs…” Even Komaru was starting to notice this was a little silly. 

“Just avoid a girl named Enoshima Junko no matter what you do.”   
  
“W-wait, are you saying that Kumagawa-kun was dating Enoshima Junko? The model? I heard rumors that she had retired from modeling to date a normal boy but I had no idea… gosh it’s like a fairy tale.”   
  
“Y-yeah, one of the Grimm ones where all the characters die and get their eyeballs scooped out, and get torn apart by thorns, that kind of fairy tale maybe…” Toko almost thought it was amazing how little Komaru knew. 

“Hey, Toko-chan. You don’t seem to like people in general, so why are you so boy crazy anyway?” Komaru asked, stupidly honest as usual.    
  
Toko touched her hand to her head, cradling the side of her face. She felt a fresh headache forming, because she had been up all night trying to write. Maybe Jack was getting antsy and beating on the inside of her skull. “A maiden is most beautiful when she’s in love.”    
  
She remembered the first time she heard those words. It was when one of her mothers clung to her crying.  _I just want to go back to loving that man. Listen, Toko a maiden is most beautiful when she's in love. Your mother used to be beautiful too, she used to be loving, you made me so ugly with hate._

“I don’t think you need to be in love,” Komaru said, walking up close to her to look over her shoulder. She saw the many discarded papers that Toko covered in smeared ink. “Are you writing a love letter to that jerk Togami-kun? Is that why you locked yourself away in here. You know, Toko-chan if loving him only causes you pain you don’t have to love him, right?” 

As Komaru said that she placed her hand on Toko’s head to give her a reassuring pat. Komaru was just doing what was normal, she thought she was comforting a crying, lovesick girl. It surprised Toko, how much she had waited to be touched like this, and how wrong it felt.  
  
Because it was not his hand. 

She thought it was fine as long as it was ‘anyone’, but when Komaru touched her on the head she pictured Togami immediately placing a hand on her head and smiling down at her instead. When she realized he would probably never even so much as look at her again she felt unbearably lonely. 

The household that she had grown up in could only be described as ‘trash’. She wore the same clothes for several days at a time, only because her parents never even bothered to do the bare minimum of taking care of her. Clothes were stacked in messy piles, trash was left on the floor. The house she lived in was overflowing with mess, and yet at the same time it was empty. 

Her mother never bought her dolls, so she made paper ones all on her own. She cut the paper out of the pages out of books she did not like. People were made up of words after all. Just like her parents, who were entirely written with nothing but harsh and cruel words inside of them.    
  
Her hands were clumsy. They always trembled in fear because she was just a child. She tried to handle scissors, but when attempted to cut the shape of a person, she always ended up cutting the head.     
  
She saw Togami as one of those paper dolls. She saw his head separating from his shoulders, then the paper shriveling up in flames. 

_ Every little string I try to weave of you and me together is wrong. _ _   
_ _ So, I should just cut the tie and sever it.  _ _   
_ _ It’s gone already. _ _   
_ _ I haven’t stalked you for a month. _

_ Even when we were together, we were just standing next to each other.   
_ _ We never talked.  
We never even tried to.   
_ _ The words would just pile on and on, and break the frayed end pieces of what was connecting us.  _

She held a pair of scissors at the bond between her and Togami. The both of them, they were just trying to make their relationship a replacement for having any actual relationship. They were trying to make their strange connection worked, but it was already over with. She knew all this.    
  
Yet, her hand was shaking.   
She could not cut through that connection.    
  
Even though she knew eventually what would happen. A girl woke up alone in a classroom with no memory of how she had gotten there. The last thing she recalled was her first crush, telling her he hated her and kicking her in the head over and over again. She pushed herself up from the ground, and her hand slipped in something wet.   
  
At first she just thought it was a puddle. Strange, even though the last thing she remembered, she was tired and in pain wishing that person in front of her would just stop hurting her, now she felt strangely refreshed. It was like she had a long deep sleep for the first time in her life. At her  house she barely slept, because her mothers kept her up all night screaming at each other, and sometimes they screamed at her. She figured they just got bored of fighting each other. 

“Where… am I?” 

 

She was dressed in a primary school uniform. She still had the backpack on her back she had worn the entire trip. She had stuffed a map into her backpack for the sake of this impromptu trip. She was like a latchkey kid, learning how to use the subway all by herself. She was sure, even though she was an ugly and unwanted child from afar she might have even be mistaken for a normal child. She was just a plain girl in glasses and braids.    
  
She just wanted to visit her first crush and apologize to him for the misunderstanding. SHe wanted to apologize for falling in love with him. No matter how terrible that house was, she was not like her mothers who always beat her, she was just a normal girl, she could fall in love normally, and one day she would marry a nice man and be a part of a normal household and forget that house.    
  
She was wrong for thinking that way. If she was a normal girl, why was she covered in blood? Her eyes trailed across the room as she saw stains of blood on the floor, leading in a trail. The window was broken behind her. Shards of glass had cut up her arm. He was hurt much worse though.    
  
In front of her, a small boy, the boy she still loved was crucified by several pairs of scissors against a normal classroom wall. Yes, that was right she had woken up in a normal classrooms, upturned the desks, and turned this into the scene of a crime.    
  
She saw  _ bloodbath fever _ written in the boy’s own blood behind her. Toko gripped her face, and screamed tears streaming from both sides of her face. That was right the first time she had discovered a body, she cried. Even though she never cried when she was hit.    
  
Strange.   
She could not remember the last time the sight of a dead body had affected her that much.    
Her eyes looked around for who could possibly have been the culprit, and all she saw was a flickering shadow smiling at her as she gave the peace sign. The shape of that shadow was a girl in glasses and pigtails, and it was connected to her own feet.    
  
Toko pulled the scissors from the wall and tried to shake the boy awake, but she already realized it was too late. She took out the scissor that had been jammed into his neck, and held it at her own neck thinking of the only thing she could do to repent.    
  
Yet, she had never been happy in that life, not even once. Was this the way her life was written? Was the genre of her life to be a tragedy? Even though it was the only way she could think of to stop herself from killing ever again, Toko who had never been loved even once could not cut out her own throat.    
  
  


She stabbed the scissors into her leg instead, and carved out a tally mark in her own flesh. She cried fat, selfish tears over her own pain when she had killed someone. The only person she could mourn was herself. The only person she could hate was herself.   
  
That was right, a split personality was born.

A twisted murderous girl at that.   
She couldn’t even trust herself, she was born to be hated even by herself.    
And she would always be hated, it was a simple fact.    
That was why it didn’t hurt. The hatred, the contempt others held for her.    
Other people’s feelings did not reach her at all.   
She was not in pain, she was not lonely, because this was the only world she knew.   
It had always been this way for her.    
She had no reason to cry, because she did not know what happiness even was. 

 

Even knowing all he would ever do was hate her in return, she could not stop herself from loving Byakuya. Her hands weakened, and her fingers went slack. The scissors slipped out of her fingers and fell away. 

 

_ I guess I genuinely love him, huh…?  _ _   
_ _ It’s not a delusion.  _ _   
_ _ I have someone I love.  _   
  
That realization brought her nothing but pain. The feelings that were supposed to be her comfort, burned her as much as other people’s scorn did. She felt a tightening in her chest.    
  
Even if her love was wrong.   
She could not help but love him. 

 

Komaru watched all of this silently the entire time, not able to read at all the complex emotions flashing across Toko’s face. “I know I might sound stupid for asking but, why do you love him so much?”    
  
“Because, he’s the same kind of person as me. He’s… just a lonely kid looking for love, but all he finds is hate.”    
  
Even if she could not love herself, couldn’t she love a person who was just like her?   
Couldn’t she show love for someone who needed love as badly as she did? 

 

“I don’t get it…”   
  
“Yeah, you wouldn't get it,” Toko turned away from Komaru and hunched her back over her desk again. She just wanted to shut out the entire outside world and go back to her writing. “I don’t want to do girl talk, I don’t want to chat about cute boys with you, just… leave me alone.” 

 

The only kind thing she could do was make sure Dorothy stopped following around the wicked witch. She should just click her silver slippers and go home already. Toko’s foot could never fit, in silver slippers or glass ones. 

 

“B-but Toko-chan. You didn’t call me by my name, not even once.”   
  
That was right she had been mentally referring to her as ‘that girl’.    
  
“I don’t bother remembering the names of unimportant people,” Toko said, as she went back to trying to handwrite her letter. She did not even know when Komaru had left, just that she had left by the next time she looked back. 

 

🧸

 

“Okay, Saihara-kun! Time to get super pumped for practice.”   
  
“Yeah, let’s do it.” 

 

A piano duet.   
Two people playing piano together.   
When he was first learning he did not get it at all.   
But now, it felt nice.    
Shuichi played the low notes while Kaede played the high.   
Shuichi played the minor chords and Kaede played the major.    
Together, they played a melody.    
Kaede was carrying him the whole time, her piano playing so fast it was like she was elading him into a heart pounding tango.    
At first he was so focused on Kaede sitting next to him that he could not focus at all.   
He still saw them both as individuals.    
Her touch, her breath, her warmth, he noticed all of it. Every movement of Kaede’s became a tremor in his heart. But as they kept playing, it got easier. It felt natural to be by her side.   
It’s like Kaede and Shuichi, became one.    
  
Both of them wishing to disappear, both of them always feeling the pressure of other people’s eyes on them. Kaede wanted to perform for the crowd, and Shuichi wanted to hide from them. The two of them who were always surrounded by others and always alone, they found each other.    
  
A garden all of their own. A place where they could lay down together and feel the sun’s rays. Even if they were lost, even if they forgot about the outside world, they somehow found each other. This school it was like the garden of their beginning. 

  
  
Kaede sighed as the two of them finished playing. Unlike her usual sighs of anxiety and dealing with the pressure of others expectations, it was a sigh heavy with affection. “I can’t believe you’ve improved this much. You’re amazing,..”   
  
“N-no, I’m not…” Wait that was not what he wanted to say, he was not trying to put himself down like normal. “I had a great teacher who showed me her beauty with the piano.”

 

Wait.   
Shuichi realized he got that line wrong.   
What he wanted to say was  _ the beauty of playing piano.  _ _   
_   
  
“I-I just mean, I was only able to have this great experience because I met you, Akamatsu-san. I know that this is an… abnormal situation… but I’m still so glad I met you,’ Shuichi tried to explain himself in a hurry. It was just a slip of the tongue really,  _ no don’t think of tongue while staring at Kaede’s lips like that.  _   
  
“I had a great teacher who showed me her beauty with the piano. Saihara-kun I can’t believe you said something so embarrassing,” Kaede at first looked at nothing more than shock, as Shuichi was supposed to be a cowardly little lion. Then she averted her eyes unable to look at him for a moment without her face reddening.    
  
“Huh? What?”   
  
“B-but… I’m glad I met you.”  _ Even though you betrayed him? Even though it was Shuichi who could have died as a result of that death trap you set instead of you?  _ Kaede’s fingers tightened around the piano bench as she hurriedly tried to change the subject. “Hey, Saihara-kun. When we get out of here, come over to my house.”    
  
“Huh? You mean it? Your… house?”   
  
“Of course, where else?”   
  
“W-well it’s just that… I mean, going to your house is…”   
  
“W-wait a minute! No, I didn’t mean it like that! I wanted us to perform our duet practice on my favorite piano, so you could hear it!” The piano freak immediately switched gears to talking about piano again, that was easier than uncomfortable thoughts about unfamiliar feelings. She wondered why Shuichi’s mind immediately jumped to that.   
  
“It’s probably just because of Amami-kun’s icky playboy germs.” 

 

“My playboy germs only spread from mouth to mouth,” Rantaro said still laying on the ground as carefree as a cat. He was the only audience for their little piano lessons, no it was like he wanted to stay in the audience. 

  
“But… I also wanna talk to you, and watch TV with you,” Kaede realized this school was much like a garden. If they ever did escape, they would never be able to return to this. She would not have a time in her life where Shuichi was always by her side like that, following her around like a shadow. She would not be able to talk to him whenever she pleased. They would not be able to walk around together in school all day, and talk to people together, and that thought made her lonely. “You know how I said I wanted to become closer to you when we get out of here? And, if it’s you, I feel like we could get to know each other a lot more.”   
  


_ Does that mean? _ Shuichi thought.   
  
“That’s why…”   
  
“That’s why…?”    
  
“Geez!” Kaede snapped at him. “Just be a man and say yes already!”    
  
“Ah! Sorry! Yes! Yes! Yes!”   
  
Kaede wanted to laugh at how eager to please Shuichi was as always. She wanted to lighten the mood, but suddenly she felt it tightening around her neck the suffocating reality she desperately wanted to escape from. Kaede reached to her collar and loosened her tie, but she could still feel it tightening around her.    
  
Kumagawa Misogi.    
Kirigiri Kyoko.   
Her two victims, telling her the murderer that she should have been the one to die. That she should join them. She had already resigned herself the moment she decided to kill the mastermind that nobody would want to be friends with a murderer after the fact. 

  
Yet, here she was playing house, playing at being friends with Shuichi. She was not doing this for his sake, but rather her own, because Shuichi’s presence comforted her made her forget for a few moments that she was a murderer.    
  
She felt her own heartbeat inside her ears. It was so loud it drowned out all other sound. She could not even hear music, all she heard was the rhythm of her own heart quickening whenever she was around Shuichi. But, she was not allowed to develop feelings like this.   
  
  


She was a criminal and he was a detective.    
She deceived him the entire first week. The words that he thought saved him, were just a lie she told.  _ I believe in you.  _ She never believed in him from the beginning. If she believed she would have trusted him. 

 

Did she ever apologize? Did she apologize to Kirigiri’s friend? Did she apologize to Kumagawa’s sister? She never even once apologized to Shuichi. She just started talking to him again like everything was normal. She always told Shuichi to face the truth but here she was, living a happy dream with him. Dreams were just another form of lies after all.  She wanted to take everything on herself, all the blame, and everything else. That was just selfish of her.    
  
_ I mean, I guess I had it coming. _ _   
_ _ That’s right I admit it. I was stupid to think my plan would work.  _ _   
_ _ I just wanted to play hero.  _ _   
_ _ I wanted everyone to trust me, but you know I actually don’t trust people easily.  _ _   
_ _ I’m sorry. _ _   
_ _ I lied.  _

_ I thought the Kaede you saw me as was a wonderful person.  _ _   
_ _ I wanted to be as kind as the ‘me’ that you saw, but I’m selfish after all.  _ _   
_ _ I just wanted to be alone. _ _   
_ _ Probably. _ _   
_ _ If I wanted to have someone by my side I would have trusted you.  _

 

“This… this isn’t right. I can’t make plans for the future like this.”   
  
“W-why? Y-you don’t have to spend time with me outside this school if you don’t want to.” Shuichi said self consciously.    
  
“No, I… I’m a crimminal. If I were to stay with you, it really might save me but I don’t deserve to be saved. Y-you have to turn me in once we get out of here.”    
  
She casually crushed two futures, then she really thought she could have a future like that. Kaede began to itch at her neck again, trying to loosen the noose she felt there. It tightened and tightened strangling her, until her nails raked her skin and drew blood.    
  
“Akamatsu-san, I think you’re just panicking I’ve had these before so-” 

  
When Shuichi reached out to her, she slapped his hand away. She never should have taken that hand again, because the first time it had been a lie. The entirety of their relationship from the beginning was a lie. 

  
  


This time it was Kaede who ran away.   
Rantaro lazily got up off the floor. When he noticed Shuichi’s hesitation, the way his fingers closed slowly on empty air he began to say something. “Don’t worry I’ll talk some sense into-”   
  
“No,” Shuichi’s fingers tightened into a fist. He grabbed Rantaro’s arm and pulled him back. For the first time, Rantaro saw something other than fear in that boy’s eyes. “I’m not going to lose her again, not even to you.” 

 

Amami smiled and let go.    
  
Shuichi already knew what almost happened. When he closed his eyes at night, he saw Kaede’s legs in the air dangling there. She was hanging from a noose around her neck. Kaede, who was so vibrant, who loved life so much more than he did, she almost died.    
  
He could picture reaching out for her, only for her fingers to slip away from him as she was pulled by the noose to her death. When he closed his eyes all he saw was Kaede swaying back and forth, but that thing was not Kaede, that thing was not warm like she was.    
  
That was why he could never lose her again. If Kaede was a murderer, than he was her killer for bringing her to justice. In his mind they were both already unforgivable, but they were still here. As long as they were both still here, there was something he could hold onto. Even if that string he was holding became a noose for his own neck as well he did not care.    
  


In his life before he never had anyone important to him.   
He never thought he would lose anybody because he had nothing to begin with.   
The game gave him someone more important than himself.    
The game almost ripped her away.   
Now, he could not return to his previous state of being.   
He would no longer be able to be “himself” without her.   
He could not live without her in his life, he was sure.    
Maybe it was just dramatics to say that but it was how he really felt.    
He would never let go again. 

  
When Shuichi found Kaede, she was alone in the classroom they first woke up in, the same one where she had taken his hand. Her back was turned to him. He saw her cross her arms and pull hard on her sleeves.    
  
“Hey I need to find a bandage for your neck. Let’s go to the nurse’s room and lie down for a little while, I’m worried…” Shuichi said, voice soothing her better than any gentle melody could.    
  
“I told myself it was fine, you know… because you all would have gotten to live. I told myself I was doing it for all of you, but that’s wrong. I killed somebody for myself. I told you to face the truth but… when we were investigating I kept wishing someone else would turn out to be the killer. When we were together I wanted to forget who I was… I…” Shuichi knew, the face that Kaede refused to show him was her crying face. A murderer’s lament. She did not want to show him the ugly tears of a girl only pitying herself when she lived and two people were dead. “I’m so selfish.” 

 

The selfless Kaede. The one who did everything for her friends. She realized she could no longer be that person, sooner or later they would all find out. Even Shuichi would find out too, and then he would leave her. She would miss him. She had no right to.    
  


Even when Kaede was like this she would not embrace him. She would not cry into his shoulder. She would not rely on him even the smallest amount. She did everything by herself in the end. She was right, she really was selfish.    
  
“I also felt that way. I didn’t care who died as long as it wasn’t you. I seriously considered just letting us all die so you can escape. You cared about saving everybody, but I only cared about saving you. If you’re selfish, then I am too.”    
  
“W-why are you even chasing after me?”   
  
“If I run away you’ll chase me. If you run away, then it’s my turn to chase.”   
  
“When did you suddenly become so strong without me? How can you say those things?”   
  
“You told me the words I needed to hear. When you’re weak, I’ll be strong, I already told you…”   
  
He would keep reaching out for her.   
And this time.   
This time.   
This time.   
He would catch her.   
This time she would not slip away from his fingers.    
  
Kaede shrieked, her voice reaching an ugly high and sharp note. “I lied to you! When I said that I believed in you, that was just a lie! The words that saved you were all lies! I thought you were unreliable and worthless, so I needed to tell you something to make you stronger to convict me.” 

 

Kaede finally turned around, she expected Shuichi’s fragile eyes to finally break. She wanted to see the boy’s glass-like eyes shatter in front of her. Instead, he kept those eyes on her. She saw her own face looking back at the center of them.    
  
“I don’t care if none of it was real. It was real to me.” Shuichi twisted the front of his striped jacket in his closed fingers, “I already told you I’m selfish.”   
  
Kaede Akamatsu believed in him. No matter how many times he calls himself a fake detective, she encouraged him. He followed her around all day, he just made things awkward and got in the way, but she still believed in him. He needed to give her a reason. He had to.    
  
Kaede is the first person to believe in him, to look at him, and he realized he never wanted her to stop.    
  
Shuichi barely slept that first week. He kept sneaking into the library late at night reading every book he could trying to find a hint of their predicament. Even when she was no longer around him, even when she did not watch Shuichi kept working. 

 

One day, the book case swung open in front of him. He was so excited. Kaede had a reason to rely on him now. She had a reason to trust him. Kaede would be so happy. He was useless to everyone else, but he had been useful for her.

 

“I wasn’t trying so hard to escape for selfless reasons. I thought… that if I helped us escape… that you… might have praised… even someone like me.” 

 

Shuichi reached for his hat to pull it over his eyes to block his tears, but he no longer wore that hat.    
  
“I stopped wearing my hat because I wanted you to notice me. Remember, you said I’d look handsome if I stopped wearing it? It was for a stupid reason like that.” 

 

Shuichi warpped his arms around himself, to stop himself from falling apart. He wanted to run away. He wanted her to look away. He felt nothing could be gained from showing his true self at this moment, Kaede was one of the few people who looked his way. He wanted to be the hero she saw him as.    
  
“I liked following you around all the time, because you were a pretty girl, and you paid attention to me of all people.”   
  
“I don’t even know that much about Piano.”   
  
“I only wanted to play a duet with you because I thought it might impress you.”    
  
“I don’t want you to get involved with others, I want it to just be me.”   
  
“I hate how friendly you are to everyone because it makes me wonder if you’re just being kind to me.”    
  
“I want you to look at me the most. I don’t want to just be another one of your friends.”   
  
“I want to be different from all of them.”   
  
“I want to be above them all.”   
  
“I want to be the only one for you.” 

 

_ I’m selfish too.  _   
He made these desperate declarations over and over again.    
It was like he had no shame at all, even though he spent his whole life perpetually ashamed of himself.

 

_ Saihara-kun, you must believe in yourself.  _   
Ever since she took his hand.    
  
“Akamatsu-san, I’m in love with you. I always have been. Ever since you took my hand, I have always, always, always, always, been in love with you.” 

 

“...Eh?” 

 

“I can’t become your hero. I can’t even become the detective who brings you to justice. The only thing I want to become is your lover.” 

  
Shuichi stood tall over her for the first time. He had stopped crying. If Kaede is crying then I won’t cry. If I start to cry, then Kaede will comfort me. If Kaede cries then I’ll stop crying and comfort her instead no matter how I feel. He leaned over her, and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. Even when she tried to push him away, he would not let up. He wanted to keep staring at her face, uninterrupted, forever.    
  
Kaede finally threw her arms around his thin body. He looked so weak that he might collapse if someone added the smallest amount of weight, and yet she held onto him.    
  
“Y-you can love a murderer like me?”

 

“Yeah. This is the first time in my whole life I don’t care what anybody else thinks. That’s selfish of me, huh?”    
  
Both of them wanted to be heroes together, but they were just people in the end. Both of them wanted to trust others, but they just could not. Yet, because they both wanted it, they could keep trying again and again.    
  
Was it enough just to want to be better people than they were?   
Was it enough just to want to be together?   
If only we had more time, Kaede had thought that over and over again as she faced her death.    
What kind of story would we write?    
Now she realized, she did not need to be a part of a love story. She only needed, the real boy in front of her that she could cling to, and hear his breath and feel the rise and fall of his chest. She pressed his ear against his chest and heard a rhythmn. The sound of Shuichi’s heartbeat, soothed her better than any music.    
  
  


🧸

 

Rantaro figured those two were probably making up by now. Shuichi already told him he was not needed in that scene, but even if Shuichi had not stopped him Rantaro was already aware. A person like him could never share such a beautiful scene between the two of them.    
  
Kaede was warm colors, Shuichi was cold colors, but he was completely colorless. The two of them already had the entire color spectrum of emotions between them, he could never feel any of that. He was a useless add on to the group. 

  
He was glad they both forgot about him. Just for a little while longer, he wanted to continue being the friendly Rantaro that both of them had gotten used to. He never thought he would get this attached to a particular mask.    
  
He was not like them. He could only imitate the expressions they made on the outside. He could only guess at what the feeling of being around others were, he had to infer what others could intuit naturally. He could only see an illusion, of what everybody else took for reality.    
  
Amami Rantaro stood in front of Korekiyo. He had gone out of his way to corner the other boy in his talent lab, where Korekiyo spent most of his time. He stretched out his neck, feeling a little bit awkward.    
  
He was about to crush someone as unstable as Korekiyo, and that was all he could feel.  _ This is going to be kind of a hassle.  _ He really was that little of a person.    
  
“You know, I was hoping to let things play out a little longer. I thought it might be fun seeing who cracked first, you or Togami. Well, no maybe I didn’t think it would be fun, I just thought I might be the kind of person who enjoys watching that sort of thing.” 

 

“A game? Amami, I don’t really understand what you’re saying. I don’t remember playing any games with you.”   
  
“Oh, but you’re already a player.” The smile that spread across Amami’s face, was bright green, it was sick, it was rotting, it was green green. He picked up a monokubs tablet and threw it at Korekiyo’s feet. 

 

_ “Korekiyo, you have a choice you can bring back your beloved sister, or you can bring back one of the many girls you killed! This is your chance to repent! Even the soul of a no-good murderer like you can be saved.”  _   
  
“You knew your sister was a murderer from the start, that’s why when she died you started to target other girls that were like her. Older girls who abused those younger than them.”   
  
“N-no, that’s not what I…”   
  
“The only person you never killed was your actual sister. She just died of illness. Did you think you were some kind of vigilante? Did you believe that you were protecting others?” Rantaro’s face sank into the shadows. It looked so different from the gentle boy who was always smiling. No, that face was just a mask that was peering away. Underneath was a boy so lost in shadows, he had even lost himself. It was like a pair of eyes staring at Korekiyo through a pitch black night. “You were just protecting yourself weren’t you? You saw yourself in those powerless children, unable to do a thing but keep clinging to your sister as she beat you. You had absolutely nothing to do with your sister’s death, but that made you feel powerless too because the girl who tormented you for so long suddenly vanished.”   
  


Rantaro reached up and touched the earrings. He felt the holes he had punched in himself. The fatal wound he had suffered, that he was always walking around with. The things that had been torn away from him, he was living without a lung, without any ribs, he was about to collapse on himself. He could not go on living alone, that was how important what he had lost was. “You wanted other people to sympathize with you didn’t you? You wanted someone to pat you on the head and tell you it was going to be okay, that’s why you tried to hide who you were. You don’t deserve that anymore, you’re a psycho killer.” 

 

“N-no I… sister made me, she possessed me…”   
  
“You’re just delusional. See you’re breaking apart now. You know what you were doing was wrong, that’s why you kept your distance from others, that’s why you lied to yourself so much. You can’t live with the guilt that you’ve become just as violent to others as your sister was to you.”    
  
“I r-really wanted to make friends. I wanted to get along with everyone. I like everyone here, not just as human beings they’re all… they’re my classmates.”    
  
“You thought you could live your own life apart from your sister.” Rantaro felt the weight of his sister’s hand in his palm. He tightened his fingers around something he could never let go of. “You really thought you could be your own person? After becoming a murderer? You thought it would be that easy!” 

 

“I… that’s what I wanted isn’t it? I just wanted to live on as Korekiyo. I wanted someone to say Kiyo, and only think of me, only smile at me.” 

 

Korekiyo fell to his knees in front of Rantaro, or rather he felt his legs fall out from under him. He was just a doll in his sister’s hands. He was someone who could not live on his own, and yet he always desired.    
  
He wanted to be just as human as everybody else. He wanted to be with all of them.    
  
“That’s not what you wanted. Enough with the sad backstory, and wallowing in tragic angst. I know what you’ve been doing this entire time-”   
  
“N-no really. I’ll tell them all I’m a wanted serial killer. I’ll come forward and never talk to them again, you can all tie me up if you want. So please.”   
  
“What you really wanted was to kill Fukawa Toko wasn’t it? That was your only reason for getting close to her.”   
  
“N-no, I would never. I promised her I wouldn’t.”   
  
“You’re just a fucking psycho who kills people, that’s all you’re capable of.”    
  
Korekiyo’s eyes broke. His expression shattered like that mirror. The words were too much, their weight was not something his mind could handle. He reached up trying to hold onto the broken pieces of his face, but he only cut his bandaged fingers. Rantaro, laid his hand against the ground picked up a rock from one of the display cases and then started to beat his own arm. 

 

His mask fell away and his sister’s voice spoke up.    
  
“You’re horrible, my dear Korekiyo.”   
  
Bang.    
  
“Only your sister could love a boy like you.”    
  
Bang.    
  
“You’re just an awful child. Sister tries so hard to love you.”    
  
Rantaro kicked him hard, kicking the rock out of his hands. He supposed right now he had become a harsh and violent person because the moment called for it. “Don’t go anywhere, I still need you. Jeez, I know I sounded really harsh but I’m not condemning you really. I totally understand.” 

  
All the violence dropped out of Rantaro’s voice and he went back to his casual self. He raised his hands up in front of his body. “You see, I know what it’s like when your life no longer belongs to you. You belong to your sister now don’t you, just like me! If it was for the sake of my sister, I would die, I would even kill, I’d become anybody, so I’m totally not judging you man.” 

 

Korekiyo looked up with his cracked eyes. “If you become someone else, then your sister won’t recognize you when you finally see her again.” 

 

Rantaro put both of his hands in the pockets of his baggy pants. He shrugged. “That’s no big deal.” The necklace around his neck swayed back and forth, and he felt the metal that was hanging off of his body jingle. “I’ve thought about this a lot. You see as a part of my family tradition, I was basically my parent’s ‘project’ they poured everything they could into me. They even changed my face with surgery to suit their needs. I was literally their ‘model’ son. So, it’s totally possible when I meet my sister again, she might not even recognize me, she might even despise the person I’ve become but… yeah… I’m fine with that.” 

 

He did not even need to be called big brother. If she blamed him for abandoning her. If she beat her fists against him and said  _ I hate you big brother  _ he would accept all of that. For him it was enough to know she was safe.    
  
He did not expect a happy ending at the end of this road. He did not expect things to go back to the way things used to be between them, the happy memories of the past were gone forever. “I’m really throwing away everything for nothing, but I already know that. Who else… who else but family can you just burn everything for?” 

 

Amami held his hand out to the boy in front of him. Even though he had kicked him a moment ago, Rantaro genuinely looked like he was offering him a helping hand now. Both gestures were equally genuine, and therefore both were equally fake. “We’re both like that, yeah… so that’s why I want to save you.”   
  
Korekiyo stared through blurry eyes. “You… you will save someone like me?” 

 

Rantaro suddenly harshly kicked him again knocking him over to the floor. “What the hell? You don’t sound grateful at all. I’m really sticking my neck out for you buddy! Beg me to save you! Tell me how much you need be, because you’re just a useless fucking freak on your own.” 

 

“S-save me please. Amami… save me. You’re the only one who can.” Korekiyo reached for his hand again. “Save me big brother.” 

 

Rantaro was right, this was just awkward. He let go of Korekiyo’s hand and touched the back of his neck again. “I really should have gone after Togami, this was too easy of an egg to crack. I didn’t feel anything at all…” 

 

Outside, Mukuro was looking for Korekiyo late at night. She muttered under her breath, “He’s late… I really wanted to hang out with him again today.” 

 

She noticed someone’s eyes on her and sharply turned her head. Watching her from afar, there was a girl with green hair.    
  
“Monaca-san…? Why are you following me?”   
  
“I really don’t understand it… why was it a boring person like you,” Monaca walked away before Mukuro could get a clear answer out of her. 

 

Mukuro looked down at her own hands. “D-did I say something wrong again?” 

 

🧸

  
  


_ No matter what, I will always be hated.  _ _   
_ _ I always have been and I always will be.  _

 

Toko heard her monokubs pad call out to her when she opened the drawer looking for another pen.    
  
_ “There’s nobody who loves you in this world, so there’s nobody that you regret dying! Too bad for you, this motive is a total bust!”  _ _   
  
_

Toko ignored it, grabbing a pen out of the drawer before shoving the drawer back. She tried hastily to scribble another letter, before getting frustrated and balling it up to throw away.    
  
“Jeez, why is this so hard? We share the same body don’t we? We’ve been together all this time.” 

 

Even if she was always going to be hated. Even if she hated herself, and was hated by herself, Korekiyo told her that there was somebody who loved her. He said she of all people had a sister, a family inside of her own head.    
  
Toko’s eyes glanced back at the door. “I should have asked that normal girl while she was here… what having a sibling was like…”    
  
Even though they were always together, she had never talked with Jack once. Usually that was for the best because Toko was already sick of hearing her own voice inside her head, she did not need Jack’s laughter interrupting her thoughts. Yet it was strange, they were closer to each other than anybody else, but at the same time so far apart. 

  
Korekiyo told her not to mistreat her younger sister. That she had to be responsible as an older sister, when all this time she had been pushing the blame for everything onto Jack.    
  
Jack was not a twisted mass murderer, Toko was.    
She did not want to a murderer, she did not want to be violent just like her mother’s had been, she wanted to be beautiful so she blamed Jack for all of her ugliness. She forced all of the ugly parts, the parts she did not want to see, onto her.    
  
She had no idea how to put those feelings into words, so she tried over and over again to write a letter to herself. Even if Jack could not hear her while she had possession of the body, she could leave a letter behind for her to read.    
  
No matter how many times she wrote those letters she could never be satisfied. She had no idea how to face herself. She had no idea what it was like to be in a family. She had no idea how to love herself.

  
She did not just want to write a fiction like she usually did, she wanted to express her real emotions. 

 

She walked over to the mirror and touched her fingers to the glass. “J-jack, how come we never talk? Aren’t you lonely too? Is that why… you also fell in love with Byakuya-sama?” 

 

No answer.   
Toko became frustrated, and slammed her head against the mirror. 

This was supposed to be one of those symbolic literature scenes where she talked to herself in the mirror but Jack refused to play along.    
She could not even perform one of those symbolic mirror smashing scenes because she was too weak to break the glass.

She just wanted to press her head against Jack’s.   
She wanted to feel that person inside her that could be called her sister.    
But, she was Jekyll, and she was Hyde.    
  
Toko walked back to her desk and took off her glasses. She tried to write a letter again only to get more frustrated with the results. For an author what was the worst nightmare? The inability to express oneself. She thought that must have been it. 

The idea that nobody would understand the words that she wrote down on paper.   
That nobody would care about the feelings inside of her desperately trying to escape.    
  
Toko in frustration raised her hand into a fist and smashed her glasses with them. She looked up and saw her reflection in the cracked pair of glasses, looking back at her several times. She slowly moved her gaze to her bleeding hand, and saw several pieces of glass jammed underneath her flesh. 

  
Fukawa Toko’s eyes rolled back in her head and she fell back off her chair. The last thing she heard was laughter filling her ears. She recognized this laughter. It was the laughter of a person she hated to death. 

It was not Jack’s, it was her own laughter.    
  
“Feeling, lonely Miss Priss!? Don’t worry, I’ll do something to make all of them hate you, or maybe it’ll make all of them love you, well it’s not like it matters to you anyway.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	44. I Want to Connect, but I Want to Betray

Komaeda reminded himself he needed to continue breathing no matter how painful it was. His unrulyhair  was even longer somehow, it stuck to his forehead slick with his own sweat. Even sweltering in this heat like his brain itself was slowly burning away until nothing but white ash the same color of his hair would be left, he was still ice cold. He could bring his hand to his face to cool himself down. A lifeless touch.  
  
He stared into Naegi’s green eyes to refocus himself. Komaeda recalled, his eyes might have once been that color, but all colors had long since faded from him.  
  
_Blue dragonfly, with emerald eye_ _  
_ _Silver and green._

Makoto’s movements were so soft, delicate like the whisper of a beating insect’s wings. When Komaeda saw the boy’s tiny twitches of concern and wondered if he had ever been that sensitive of a boy. Perhaps a long time ago. Perhaps never.  
  
“Ah, sorry my thoughts drifted elsewhere…” Nowhere, really, “What were we talking about again?” 

Makoto chewed his lip in worry, but even his voice was too soft to speak up. “Oh, yeah about luck… To be honest I don’t really get it, isn’t it all just kind of random? I don’t think it matters much...” A nervous touch to his neck.   
  
No, he really doesn’t get it. Makoto has no idea, the glow of his skin, how the touch of his fingertips must feel. His skin unsullied, pink all the way up to his ears. That color existed because, blood flowed just underneath the surface of the skin. Nervously, his shoulders hitched with uneven breaths, he breathed in, he breathed out, he was alive.  
  
The borderline between life and death was a thin film, as easily torn as an insect’s wings.  
Yet, Komaeda sitting in front of Naegi Makoto thought there was no way he could be near this boy. Next to each other, even if they were to touch, even if they were to overlap, there would be nobody that Komaeda was father away from. Perhaps it was better that way, if he touched it, it would surely break. 

 _Blue dragonfly, the delicate wing._ _  
_ _Glinting on a reed in flower._

“Let me tell you a story of luck. A long time ago, when I was still in elementary school, the plane my family and I rode at the San Cristobal Airport got hijacked. It was simply “unlucky” at that time, but due to the impossible chance of a meteorite falling, the culprits died and I was saved. That is what you call ‘good luck’, right?”   
  
“Wha-what? All that happened to you?” Makoto gave a disappointingly normal reaction.  
  
“Altough the meteorite saved me, it had taken away my parent’s life. This was another form of ‘bad luck’. But with my parents death, I obtained the ‘good luck’ in the form of a large inheritance and freedom.”  
  
Komaeda when he spoke like this, always held his hands at both sides as if he were weighing both good and bad luck on a scale. In his right hand he held white roses, in his left hand red roses stained that ugly color. 

“W-wait a minute Komaeda-kun.” 

 “In my opinion, the bad luck that happens that first, and the good luck that comes afterwards are largerly proportionate. And just like that I entered a special government school that accepts only the top students with usual talents, known as Hope’s Peak Academy.” 

“W-when you say good luck why do you-”  
  
“For me to enroll so easily while everyone else had secretly dreamed to enter this ‘elite class’ school, there could be nothing luckier than this.. Or so I thought but.”  
  
“Why do you sound so sad?” 

As Makoto finished his words that were almost lost in the storm of Komaeda’s ramblings, winds strong enough to slice apart words, Komaeda suddenly froze. He was dragged straight into the eye by Naegi Makoto. For just a moment his eyes were unnaturally clear. “What are you talking about, I’m grateful for my good luck from the bottom of my heart. Imagine, fortune smiling upon an unworthy person like me? I’m so blessed it could be far worse.” 

“I can’t imagine it getting much worse than that,” Makoto’s eyes were a wellspring of emotion. They water. Komaeda saw pain in Makoto’s eyes. Pain. His pain. The pain he was too numb to feel. “How can you talk about all of that so easily? Th-that’s really…” 

Komaeda’s lips twitched in anticipation. _You’re such an interesting one. No wonder Enoshima wanted to snatch you away._  
  
_Blue dragonfly aloft,_ _  
_ _Perhaps by sleight of hand._  
  
Komaeda knew it could be worse. Perhaps he was always swinging between heaven and hell, like a man hanging on a rope whose soul could not be properly judged. That was better than the rope snapping. He’d just fall into the water. He’d drown without dying. He would be just like that boy. 

Komaeda saw him in the corner of his eye.  
His soaked black hair fell over his face.  
He looked like a drowned child.  
Komaeda forced himself to look away.  
_I don’t want to hear you anymore._

Makoto noticed how distant that Komaeda was getting again. “Komaeda, maybe we should talk about something besides luck. I think… there’s more to you than just your luck.”  
  
Komaeda smiled. He thought he was supposed to smile, anyway, in response to such kind words. He was always smiling at the wrong times usually.   
  
“U-um, are you okay?”  
  
Komaeda guessed he smiled in the wrong way. He was sure how his smile looked, dead and dried out lips pulled past the point of cracking, over dull teeth.  
  
“What do you see luck as anyway?” 

“You already asked me that.”  
  
“Oh sorry, being a stupid and unworthy student amongst elites my memory is hopelessly bad. Sometimes I wonder if I even have a brain, or I’m just a scarecrow…” He knew he had a brain, ill because it was full of sick thoughts. It gave him a dull ache behind his eye.   
  
“Inconvenient I guess?” 

“No, you just don’t understand. You don’t understand how wonderful you are.” His fingers uncurled in excitement, they were long and ugly like the fingers of a spider. _I’ll make you understand._ “Luck is a power. It’s a power that has terrible results due to the fact that I can’t wield it with my own will. You have a talent of your own, Naegi-kun you’re just unaware.” 

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m one of those shonen manga characters whose just waiting to have their hidden potential unlocked.”

“Really, I was about to suggest we have a training arc.”  
  
“Every time I try to run with Mukuro, I end up collapsing halfway through and have to be carried back by her like a princess. N-not that I mind, but it’s a little embarrassing that she’s like that in public.” 

“You’re always being carried by the others around you, huh, Naegi-kun?” Komaeda smiled so much, he was afraid his lips might peel off. “Haven’t you always been a little bit jealous of the others around you? All of their efforts… matter, they’re able to try with everything they have. Haven’t you ever wanted to try that hard?”

Makoto’s voice gave a quiet, almost silent, “...Yes.” 

“You have that inside of you as well,” Komaeda looked at Makoto, but he did not see Makoto in front of him. In his eyes there was a flickering flame that he watched. They were the same eyes of a person deserted and stranded on a field of ice, might stare longingly at a few embers in the distance.  
  
“Listen, that woman…” Komaeda’s lips were so hard they were stuck together with cement as he struggled to say the name of a woman he loathed.

Even mentioning her brought that loathsome woman to mind. His brain is covered in webs, perfect for a loathsome arachnid like her to dwell on. Spiders knew a butterfly was trapped in their webbing, from the way their struggling wings pulled upon the strings. She could hear the vibrations of the strings in a similar way. He feels her pulling at him, nails rake across the nape of his nick, lips brushed against his cheek but all that’s left from her kiss is smeared blood. She painted her face, so many different colors, and you thought just for a moment if she could touch you, those colors would rub off on you. Her touch hurt, but he could not stop himself from wanting to be touched. He wanted to burn a little more. She left scars but he wanted to thank her for them.

 Blue eyes, that he knew saw this greyscale world, exactly the same way that he did. The only eyes that he ever felt comfortable staring into, because he knew it was impossible for someone even as unlucky as him to drown in someone more shallow than a puddle. Komaeda took a breath as his head broke the surface of his thoughts again, and rasped. “She saw it too. Your luck is different than mine, it makes you unpredictable, imagine you’re like a wildcard that could turn the tides when things are at their worst.” 

 _Blue dragonfly caught,_ _  
_ _Crinkled skin of a diva.  
_  
“B-but how am I supposed to do that?”  
  
“With hope.”  
  
“Yeah, the hope thing, the hopey thing…”  
  
“Even I think you’re being weird, Naegi-kun.”  
  
“I just don’t know what you mean by it.” 

“I always wondered why someone like me was sent to Hope’s Peak. Perhaps, it was just to meet you…” Komaeda gazed at him breathless, that boy who looked like nothing at all but had everything inside of him. “Yeah, I think so… I can help you with your luck.”  
  
“I can give you my hand if you want. It should be an appropriate substitute for a rabbit’s foot.”  
  
“Uh, thanks but no thanks,” Makoto said, straining himself not to freak out at that remark.  
  
“It was a joke.”  
  
“It’s like really hard to tell dude.”  
  
“You would think with a life as laughable as mine I’d at least have some talent as a comedian,” Komaeda sighed, and then picked out his hand from his black overcoat and tossed it across the floor. It was a revolver. “There’s one way to train your luck, all you need is to overcome bad luck and then the good luck will come.”  
  
“K-komaeda, we’ll get in trouble-”  
  
“It’s not real. It’s loaded with blanks.” Komaeda smiled. “It’s just a game. Games are safe, and fun, because they have rules. Naegi-kun is kind enough to even try to be friends with someone like me, right? That’s why… I went through all the trouble of going to the Ultimate Soldier’s talent lab and swiping this.”  
  
He just pushed a bunch of random numbers on the lock and got in, it was pretty easy. Komaeda picked it up again and pointed it in a random direction, when he pulled the trigger only smoke came out. 

“O-oh, okay then. I guess if they’re all just blanks it’s not that big of a deal. Actually it’s like, a compettition between our luck.”  
  
“Please don’t insult yourself like that, you’re so out of my league we’re not even in the same category. My luck couldn’t possibly compare to yours.”  
  
“Says the guy who’s always causing crazy stuff to happen, when I just trip and lose my shoe. No, I just meant it could be fun.”  
  
“Hm, yes Hitoyoshi-kun and I used to play all sorts of games to try to control my luck. Sadly for me it always ended in failure.”  
  
Makoto picked up the revolver slowly. Komaeda had been careful in preparing it beforehand, to grease the shaft, and clean out the barrel with a meticulous hand. He rubbed it all over with a cloth, because he wanted the revolver to shine. Makoto checked and saw there was still five rounds loaded into the barrel. He pushed the barrel back in and spun it. He brought the cool muzzle to the side of his head, and flicked his thumb as he cocked it. 

His fingers shook, trembling. Komaeda often wondered, how insects were brave enough to fly. They should be scared that the wind would tear their wings. 

 _Blue dragonfly beauty,_ _  
_ _Fearful even to touch._

“Um, persona…?” Makoto said, trying to be cool. He only liked those games because they had gotten popular recently…

 _Click._  
  
Komaeda smiled happily. Luck was his enemy, but it was Makoto’s friend. 

As expected of the boy who made friends with anyone.  
He smiled so much, the corner of his eyes wrinkled. Even while he smiled, his eyes became the opposite shaped, they were a crescent moon turned upside down, and they waned growing thinner and thinner. 

 _Blue dragonfly composure._ _  
_ _Grates on the jealous eye._

Komaeda picked up the revolver, and ran his finger along the muzzle teasingly. He brought the tip to his lips, and gave it a kiss for good luck. He probably drooled a little too much, a line of spit still stuck to the barrel as he pulled it away. Really, he was such a disgusting dog, slobbering at the feet of those who were better than him. 

Komaeda picked it up and placed it against his forehead. When he brought his finger to the trigger, he felt a twitch in the muscles that were supposed to keep his heart beating, but had long since failed. He just wanted a pulse. If only for a moment. He wanted to feel alive. He wanted to be born. 

Komaeda finally pulled the trigger, but  before he could hear the barrel ignite with life (Komaeda had no idea why but living, seemed synonymous with burning to him) he saw Makoto moving closer to him.  
  
_No, don’t get close to me._  
  
He saw Makoto’s spread five fingers, and slam his palm right into Komaeda’s chest. 

 _No, don’t touch me._  
  
The scene plays out frame by frame, like a projector in slow motion. Komaeda is pushed aside. The gun jostles out of his hand. It goes off, and Komaeda’s forehead is only grazed by the bullet. Blood falls from the newly formed gash in his forehead forcing him to close one of his eyes. Makoto falls on top of him, and they both fell back.   
  
“Komaeda-kun, you loaded that with one blank and five real rounds didn’t you?”   
  
Makoto figured it out.

Komaeda waited for the words that would come next. _You dangerous freak! You were trying to kill me! You were trying to kill yourself! Kirigiri-san died to give you that life, and you don’t care at all._  
  
“Komaeda-kun, you’re so selfish.”  
  
Makoto said, and Komaeda grinned.  
  
“You don’t think about others at all! Don’t you know, it hurts me a lot when you keep putting yourself in these dangerous situations! You don’t have to push yourself so hard!” Makoto said, speaking as clearly as his eyes, two emeralds without a scratch on them. Makoto rested his warm head on Komaeda’s chest. “Don’t you think about how sad it would make me if you died?” 

Komeada’s eyes cracked open a little more, the clouds let a few rays of sunlight through. He had done this to prove to himself, that luck would choose him, but in the end even luck chose Makoto over him.  
  
But he was wrong, so wrong.

He thought he could be Makoto’s shadow, but he was wrong. There was not even enough of him to cast a shadow, light just passed through someone as transparent as him. His eyes twitched, his body convulsed in revulsion unable to process the idea that someone as good as Makoto would care about someone like him. 

He could feel Makoto’s heartbeat, when they were this close. How nice it must be to have a heart. “You don’t get it, I wanted to…” Komaeda is too much of a coward to finish that sentence.

Betray you. 

It’s better if I hurt them deliberately, it’s better somehow.  
It’s better than a meaningless accident. 

“Komaeda-kun, I get that right now you tried to hurt me. You did something dangerous again, but Kirigiri-san said no matter what you did you always had good intentions and also…” He reached forward and pressed his head against Komaeda’s forehead, sticky and wet with his sweat. He was feverish. It figures the only warmth he could ever feel was this unpleasant burning. “You’re hurting way worse than I am, aren’t you?” 

  
No, don’t think that way he wanted to say.  
Because I’ll- 

 _A grinding leather sandal._ _  
_ “Crinkles the blue dragonfly.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“It’s poetry. Hakushu.”  
  
“Oh, you’re so smart. Just like Kirigiri-san was," Makoto said trying to be kind.   
  
“No, I’m really stupid. I’m just so…” 

What was he about to do, to someone who had been so kind?

He just wanted to feel a kind touch from another person.

As someone who suffered alone he thought at least holding another’s hand.  
Might make him finally feel relief so… 

Why did he always cut off their hands before he could reach him? 

Komaeda wanted to say something as sweet as Makoto just had. He could at least say thank you. He could get embarrassed and mutter an apology. He had to say something, but the moment he opened his mouth all he could do was retch. He grabbed his face for a moment, and then pushed Makoto away leaning his head elsewhere and turning to vomit. 

 

🧸

 

Makoto carried him all the way to Hitoyoshi’s room. Even when Komaeda begged him not to. He did not care at all, that Komaeda who was sweating so much he was beginning to sweat through his black sweater, had wrapped his arms around his neck and then… touched him with such an awful hand. He smeared dirt all over such a clean face. 

When he made it to Zenkichi’s room the first thing he did was make his way to the bathroom. He fell after a few steps and hit his head against the tiles. He wanted to rest his forehead on the cool floor, but he did not want to make a mess on the floor and make Zenkichi responsible for more of his mess. He dragged himself to the edge of the toilet. 

Komaeda Nagito often dreamed of butterflies. They had such colorful wings, painted on material even thinner than paper. How easily it could tear, no wonder a single butterfly being carried by the wind like a kite, was a symbol of both life and death. They could easily flutter, between one and the other.  
  
Despite the scent of the bathroom quickly becoming as sickening as he was, Komaeda also hated the scent of flowers that filled his lung from the rest of Zenkichi’s room. He decided he hated flowers. They were a beautiful sight to the eyes, but the moment he reached out and touched them he knew they would rot away in his hands.

  
Flowers.  
Cherry blossoms.  
They were symbols of fading, symbols of dying.  
A time of renewal, the fleeting nature of life, fragility and beauty.  
He hated them.  
Because even if flowers were beautiful, even if they filled him with pleasant smells when he breathed them in, he could not enjoy the sight of them at all. He could never be a part of a garden. He could feel a root growing at the back of his throat, wrapping around his larynx and esophagus causing him to wretch in agony.  
  
He was choking on flower petals and spitting them up. He rather liked butterflies, though. They flitted between life and death just like he did. His heartbeat was as soft, and quiet as a butterfly’s beating wings. 

He often compared himself to an insect, but they were much more helpful creatures than he was. After all, a garden could not even grow if a insect did not fly from flower to flower. He was someone who could not hold even a single flower in his hands. If he reached out to catch a butterfly, its wings would tear between his fingers. 

He had tried to eat butterflies and now he was vomitting them up. He crushed them between his teeth, until they were nothing left but insect guts, torn limbs, and shredded wings, and then he spit them out. 

Of course behind all those flowery metaphors, he was just vomitting, so hard it felt like he had coughed up chunks of his organs that had been ripped apart inside of him. He tried to make his mind fly away elsewhere, he tried to distance himself from the pain as always. He wiped his mouth and looked back, still tasting acid on the back of his throat.   
  
There stood Enoshima Junko, the girl who pulled apart butterfly wings just for fun.  
There stood Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, arguing with her like she was some kind of person. 

Komaeda faintly remembered watching the silhouettes of his parents argue like this over what to do with him. He remembered no matter how distressed he felt watching them scream at each other, he could not cry, don’t cry.  
  
He could not hear the words coming out of their mouths. White, colorless, noise. 

“Quit complaining! You wouldn’t be forced to room with me if you hadn’t turned your room into the room from Lain. You see that, all the random wires and the cyberpunk shit, and the sparking how is that supposed to help? That’s just a hazard.” 

“It’s going to help by being awesome…” Junko gave a lame response, not entirely present in the conversation. 

Zenkichi ignored her and walked over to Komaeda’s side. Zenkichi picked up the flask Komaeda had thought he had hidden pretty well, and dropped it at his feet. “Komaeda, don’t you know? Alcohol just enflames the lymph nodes and causes pain in lymphona.” 

He probably knew that because his mother was a doctor who had been working on Komaeda.  
  
“Oh, I still have Lymphona too? I really do have all the luck,” Komaeda said sardonically. 

“Why did you try this?”

Komaeda’s eyes widened. He knew nobody could possibly ever have expectations for someone like him, but the idea of disappointing Zenkichi made his stomach twist again. _Horrible. Repulsive. Grotesque._ If he was any kind of an insect he would be a maggot. The kind only born in corpses. He was writhing in dead flesh. He twitched, wriggled, and crawled around on his belly. He wondered how corpses felt, with things slinking around underneath their flesh biting them from the inside, crawling along his veins, that was how he felt too. They were all fighting over who got to feast on him. “Hitoyoshi-kun, it hurts… and nothing works. Just… living… hurts…”   
  
“He’s really good at playing the victim. Even I was almost fooled for a second there. Poor baby Komaeda, I’mma cry all the big fat ghibli tears over a precious woobie like you,” Junko mocked him.  
  
Zenkichi ignored her. “Was the pain really getting that bad?”  
  
Komaeda shook his head. “N-no, I’m not explaining it right. I’m sorry, Hitoyoshi-kun my breath stinks, and you have to talk to me babble it’s okay if you want to put some distance between us.”

“Komaeda, just try your best to tell me what’s wrong.”  
  
He realized how frantic he seemed, just like Mikan. At least Mikan was competent sometimes though, he was far worse. “I-I… I used to self medicate a lot at school, because I was friends with Kimura-san. I stopped though. Because, I deserved to feel that pain.” 

“...”  
  
“B-but, it’s not the pain this time. I just don’t want to hear Kumagawa-kun anymore. I’ll do anything to drown him out.” Komaeda held his face in his hands, and pulled on the tight skin over his sloping cheeks. In the corner of his eye, he saw Komaeda dripping wet with water. He could hear a sound like raindrops in the distance. 

“Hallucinations. Worsening vision. Headaches. We can’t leave these symptoms untreated forever.” Zenkichi turned around and suddenly punched his fist into the side of the bathroom wall.  
  
Enoshima Junko put a hand on her hip, cocking those hips at an angle. She was always posing, such an attention hungry woman. “Why are boys always punching holes in walls to look cool, gosh?” She said in her normal vapid drawl, before much more teasingly. “Careful with those unchecked anger issues, golden retriever booooy.” 

“If you’re not going to be helpful-”  
  
“God, do you even know who you’re talking to? I’m starting to worry for you Hitoyoshi-kun. Why would I suddenly start caring about other people?" Enoshima Junko mused, "They haven't proved to me with conclusive evidence that they're human beings yet."   
  
“Wait, you can be helpful.” Zenkichi suddenly brought his fist up to his chest. “Enoshima-san, you were always around the Ultimate Neurologist, and you spent a lot of time with the Ultimate Nurse.”  
  
“Yep, I’ve got a million groupies because I’m just so popular. Do you want to join my fanclub, Hitoyoshi-kun? You seem to have a thing for women who are better than you in every conceivable way.” 

“Can we just have one normal conversation for once? You’re so difficult. Outside of the whole trying to kill me thing, you’re just hard to deal with.” 

“Oh, but Hitoyoshi-kun you’re someone who always rises to the occasion. You should thank me for challenging you so much, think about how much you’re leveled up by sparring up against a boss monster like me.” 

Zenkichi made the same noise a strangled mutt might have made in frustration. “Medicine. You can make medicine for Komaeda-kun, right? M-maybe painkillers of some kind would be able to help.”  

“Hitoyoshi-kun, I say this as someone who likes watching you get hurt. Is that really the best idea? Komaeda-senpai has kind of an addictive personality?”  
  
“That’s a lot coming from Enoshima Junkie-chan!”  
  
“Despair is the miracle drug! Now available for five easy payments of your life.”  
  
“How can I pay with my life five times?”  
  
“Well, just kill four people and then yourself,” Junko said with a giddy smile. "It's like the trolley problem, advanced round, just kill em all."   
  
“No thanks.”  
  
“Senpai would have given a more interesting response. He would have said.” Junko pulled the sleeves of his jacket over her own arms, now wearing it fully over her red and black uniform and then placed her hand on her chest in perfect imitation of his body language. 『That’s such a ripoff! You’re a snake oil salesman! No wait, you’re just a snake!』  
  
Junko switched back to her own voice, “And then I’d say ‘Buy this apple, five easy payments of the tainting of your innocent soul with original sin.” 

“Enoshima, you can talk to yourself later.”  
  
“But, I’m the coolest one in the room,” Junko whined in Zenkichi. “I don’t want to talk to a bunch of losers.” 

“Is it doable, could we make some kind of medication to halt the advance of his condition if we relied on your… your ability to analyze talent like Medaka-chan does.” Zenkichi was doing his best to seem strong, but the way his voice shook over just saying her name showed how weak he was.  
  
Junko inserted two sharp fingers in his face. “Two problems, it’s true that I could mix the chemicals to make those medicines in at least powder form as easy as lifting a finger, but I’m laaaaaazy, and just lifting a finger is hard work you know? Two we can’t access that part of the school, the doors are sealed off.”  
  
“Jeez, you think someone as destructive as you would think of a solution as easy as blowing up our way there.”  
  
“I like where this is going because it involves cool explosions that could potentially blow up in my face, but I’m still not sold.” 

“I’ll kill myself,” Zenkichi said, announcing it so suddenly that even Enoshima was stunned. She never thought that sheer idiocy would surpass her expectations. “If you save Komaeda-kun, then I’ll kill myself and bring Kumagawa-kun back. It’s fine… it’s not like Medaka-chan will be waiting for me when we get out of this school anyway.” 

Komaeda watched still clinging to the porcelain bowl of the toilet, as both Enoshima Junko and Hitoyoshi Zenkichi argued over his fate. He was just like the child who had watched his parents argue back then. So utterly helpless, not understanding a single thing. 

As Komaeda was dragged away, he reached out grabbing a small exercise ball from Zenkichi’s room made of rubber, about the same size as the shot put that had killed Kumagawa. 

 

🧸

 

Komaeda saw a butterfly’s wings, flutter as they passed in front of his eyes. He reached out to touch it, but his fingers passed all the way through it.  
  
All he had done was quietly watch and hang onto Hitoyoshi’s back, arms wrapped and crossed over his neck. He only heard the sounds in front of him once again when Zenkichi used the explosive he had stolen from the Ultimate Soldier’s room in order to blow open a sizable hole in the wall of the highest floor of Korekiyo’s talent lab. A hole which led them with a direct passageway to the highest floor where the science lab was.  
  
The noise was so loud it shattered the silence, and his ears kept ringing painfully afterwards. He was dragged back to reality as he saw one of the large robots the Monokubs piloted jump up suddenly from the bottom floor.  
  
Zenkichi shoved Komaeda onto Junko, and then jumped directly onto the giant robot. He was playing the role of the distraction. Komaeda reached after him but it was a fruitless effort.  
  
Junko whined, “Ugh, why do I gotta carry stinkomaeda? Couldn’t we have chained him up somewhere and just left him outside like any other dog…” Despite that, she swung his arm around her shoulder and started to harshly drag him behind her. 

He opened his mouth to try to warn Zenkichi about leaving him with a woman like this.  
He had to tell her that she was evil.

Evil, ornery, scandalous, and evil.  
But he said nothing in the end.  
  
He wondered why of all people, he ended up getting stuck with her. He was so desperate to connect, but of all people his string was tied to hers over and over again, in tangled, frayed, horrible ugly knots. 

_I am horrible._ _  
_ _I am repulsive._

 _But you’re worse than me._  
Oh that was why. The reason he kept seeing filth was because he was filthy himself. 

(In the same way). 

Komaeda could just let himself be dragged along like this. He did not have to do anything but suffer, and let himself be saved by someone else. If he was helpless, Hitoyoshi-kun would come and save him. He already knew he was nothing more than a hopeless child. 

He should just watch the scenery pass by his eyes, like Yozo in the final scene of No More Human. _Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes._

“You really are unlucky, Komaeda-senpai. I mean first you have your life destroyed by me, and now you’re going to have my life saved by me. Not to get all philosophical on your ass all of a sudden, but like why were you even born if you can’t do a single thing for yourself?” 

Komaeda’s fingers curled together in an ugly knot that resembled a fist. Before they could reach the door to the lab in the endless winding  hallway Komaeda took a step away from her. Perhaps he was helpless, perhaps he was hopeless, but that did not mean he could just do nothing. No matter how many times he wanted to, he could never just sit back and watch. 

He already lived by stealing the hope from others. He was a parasite. He filled himself with warmth by sucking others arteries dry.  
  
“The hell are you doing? I don’t have time for your clumsy ass shenanigans. You can’t be the cute ditz type, Komaeda-senpai, after all you’re not even cute.” 

Komaeda Nagito stood up straight, even though it caused his spine to creak. He had an easy way to get rid of the pain. The same way he stopped hurting over Kumagawa, and Hinata.  
  
All he needed was to stop seeing their ghosts. The end of love is a haunting. It’s empty longing, dreams you forget the moment you wake up, overbearing silence. Love haunts like a ghost. In that state, it’s easy to become a ghost.  
  
His pulse was too faint. Life ebbed. Nothing could stir him when he was like this. Some people called the end of pain healing, but it was not healing. He just needed to become a dead body that did not feel pain. He pictured himself outside of his body, he slowly drifted away from feeling chained to such a tattered corpse. 

“I refuse to be saved by someone like you. I don’t need that kind of hope. I won’t be saved by Hitoyoshi-kun sacrificing himself.” Good luck, bad luck, the choice was always made for him. That was why, whenever he could, even if he had to rip it away violently from the cold and dead hands of others he needed to choose what to do with this fleeting life. “My hope is… that one day I’ll be more than just misfortune to others.” 

“This is what I get for attempting to help someone for the first time in my life. Well, if you die I get what I want either way. Junko wins!”   
  
He raised his eyes and watched her, breathing in her scent so similar to his own.  As he breathed, he breathed in petals again. They danced around in his lungs. From the trachea, to the chronus, to the alveoli they bloomed like red hydrangeas in his chest. 

He understood that now. He forgot the scent of flesh slowly rotting away, as flowers filled up his lungs. Of course, Enoshima Junko made him think about death again. She was dead too, but unlike him her body showed no signs of death. She was capable of imitating the living at least. People adorned her, showered her corpse with flowers, they washed her feet with their hair and put perfumes on her, but a corpse was a corpse nonetheless. 

Komaeda turned his head to the side to gaze at the field of flowers they were both standing in.  
The flowers Enoshima Junko and him trampled underfoot in order to live. 

_I get it now._

_We walk to hell,_ _  
_ _Gazing at flowers._ _  
_ _Together._

Their garden was a special one only the two of them could see. They watered that garden in blood and added minerals to the soils by burying bones within it. A garden fertilized with death, bloomed with life.  
  
As a defense mechanism against insects, some flowers will bloom poisonously, like nicotine. That was what they were, nicotine, kissing tar smelling lips over and over again for the taste even if it only poisoned you slowly.   
  
Both of them saw each other for who they were. No civilizing hides, only their animal impulses. 

It was like they both decided the same thing at the same time.

_I’m tired of playing human with you._

“Don’t suddenly start acting like you care about other people, it’s tacky.” Enoshima Junko made the first move. She brought the toe of her boot in a quick sweep, and he felt his legs give out underneath him. Even if he could ignore his pain for a little bit he was still not the most coordinated person on earth, with his long and thin skeletal body probably lacking in any muscle cords stretched over the bones. “Just be a good obedient little dog already and take your medicine, or else mommy will force it down your throat and hope you choke on it.”  
  
Komaeda’s bandage fell off his head. His earlier wound reopened and he dripped blood on the floor. From that blood red flowers sprouted all around them. Komaeda pushed his flat hands against the ground and tried to pick himself up. He looked like he was bowing his head at Enoshima Junko’s feet as she stood over him. 

“Do you want to know how weak your hope is. Your hope depends entirely on others…” She brought the heel of her foot down on his head, to bring him to heel, he was not allowed to be his own person in her eyes just another dog. “You just want someone to tell you that even if you only bring misfortune it’s still okay for someone like you to live.” 

Enoshima Junko’s words were honey dripping from a flower a flower as it slowly unfolded itself before your eyes. Even he had once dragged his tongue along those petals. He just wanted to taste something sweet, just once, he was so tired of swallowing bitter poison.  
  
“But here’s the thing, Ko-Mae-Da-Sen-Pai. Even if someone told you those words you were so desperate to hear, you wouldn’t listen to them.”  
  
It was just buried too deep. The reason the flowers could bloom was because a corpse was buried underneath it. A corpse that was slowly broken down by the insects eating it up. The corpse of a child who should have died alongside his parents. It was buried so deep nobody would ever reach it.  
  
Komaeda was just the ghost that child left behind. His hair turned white as a sheet, and his eyes slowly lost all of their color. 

“What’s wrong… with thinking like that? At least I want to care about other people.”  
  
The diva’s face wrinkled. She looked at him like he was just an eyesore. She usually looked at him like he was nothing, he was glad he could at least be an irritation to her. “It’s not even despair-inducing, it’s just disappointing watching you…”  
  
Komaeda smirked. “You’re just angry, because that was Kumagawa-kun’s way of thinking too, and that was why he chose saving a random stranger over staying with you-”

Junko suddenly lost all self control and smashed his head against the ground. Her bedside manner was atrocious, didn’t she know he was just a sickly child? She should be gentler with him. Junko took a step back to ready another blow, but just by coincidence, she stepped in the blood Komaeda had stained the floor with on accident and her heel slipped backwards.  
  
Komaeda pushed himself up and escaped down the hallway. 

Running only made his condition worse, his breathing got heavier and he felt like his heart was going to explode. His heart was not used to beating at anything more than a dull pulse normally. 

When Komaeda turned to face the hallway in front of him, suddenly just like a funhouse he saw the floor at his feet spiral around him, the walls shifting in turn to, and the entire hallway extend out in front of him to forever.  
  
Komaeda shook his own head. “That’s very helpful of you brain. I know I’m an ugly doll that no child would ever hug, but does my stuffing have to be so worthless too?” Komaeda turned his head to the side and saw a window that reflected his face like a mirror. 

Even though the light was falling on his reflection, he saw nothing of ‘himself’ in that reflection, it was only a pitch black silhouette. It was the only way out and away from Junko that he saw so he raced forward and threw his body through the glass window. Broken pieces of glasses scraped at his skin, but a corpse could not bleed, nor could it feel pain. 

As he fell through the sky, glass scattering around him falling and shining like stars broken into pieces of stardust he turned his head back to see his reflection falling away from him too. He saw a glimpse of Kumagawa in that pitch black reflection, and in the next moment his face collided with the floor and Komaeda’s body went limp as a ragdoll.  
  
Only for him to pick himself up the next moment. Dolls sewn together from rags, and other discarded materials could not feel pain as well. He peeled open his dizzy eyes, and surveyed the environment in front of him. He saw an abandoned classroom, the chairs turned over, the desks toppled. There was blood on the floor, splattered everywhere. He turned his head to the side and saw the bodies of both talented and reserved course students piled up in the corner of the room.  
  
Then, he turned his head away and those bodies became nothing more than flowers that had been plucked and he forgot about them. He forgot about how they looked like they had been discarded and thrown away, like they were nothing. The distant look in their eyes that only death brought became replaced with red spider lilies. 

He walked to the window and looked, peering outside he saw students fell like rain. The moment they hit the concrete they splattered. The sound of their bodies crashing against pavement was like thunder. Komaeda just thought about all the flowers that would grow, watered by their blood. Even death could create something, so that was no reason to give up hope. Even though all that was reflected in those eyes of his was death.  
  
Their twisted bodies shattered into pieces beyond recognition, it was already over for them. Whether he cried or not it would not matter. Just like with his parents, there was no way hope could exist in such a broken thing.  
  
He watched as their internal organs bloomed in such a grotesque manner.  
He did not cry. 

A hand appeared to show him the way.  
Komaeda did not know where else to go, just that he had to get away from Junko so he accepted it and was pulled on stage. Briefly, he felt red velvet brush against his cheeks and saw curtains parting to either side of him.  
  
He looked at his own hand and saw Enoshima’s hand wrapped around it, her nails digging into his skin. When he looked up though he saw the hand was attached to Kumagawa Misogi. 

『 _Komaeda-kun. Say my name._ 』  
  
“I can’t.” 

He brought his face up to Komaeda, and brushed his cheek against the others. It was a nuzzle, while the two of them still looked in complete opposite directions. 『 _Please look at me._ 』  
  
“I can’t. You’re not my friend, you’re not the Kumagawa-kun that told me the words I needed to hear. If I acknowledge the hallucinations, I’ll only get worse.”

 『 _Why won't you accept me? You already stitched my body parts to yourself. My body, your body, I'm a part of you now._ 』 

"You're the part of me that I hate the most." 

One of Kumagawa’s eyes was stitched closed in a jagged pattern with red thread. He brought his hand to his face, and snapped the red thread, slowly pulling it out of his flesh. When he opened up his scarred eye again, it glowed red, Enoshima Junko’s eye. 

『 _What? Seriously? You look up to a guy like that, a wannabe hero who confused Shonen Jump for reality? Jeez don’t ya get it already. Lemme tell ya a thing or two about what these heroes are. They are freaks who only live to interfere with the hopes of dreams of others, got it. What’s a hero in general? Someone who comes out on top so how could they understand the troubles of the weak? These heroes are always fighting until they cough up blood hoping someone will acknowledge them, that’s the kind of person you look up to?_ 』

“That does sound like a very Kumagawa-kun like thing to say I admit.” 

『 _What are you doing here anyway?_ 』

“I’m not sure. I ran away from Enoshima, and opened my eyes and here I was.” 

『 _Komaeda-kun. Accept me._ 』  
  
“I don’t wanna.” 

『 _That’s immature._ 』

“This is a hallucination. Our psychology is defined by our formative years. Therefore, I have a right to be childish. I'm confronting the notions I've held onto since I was a child.” 

『 _No fair, you can’t use your smart person words on me to win the argument._ 』  
  
“It's your fault for having trash for brains. Can you help me get out of here, Kumagawa-kun? Being onstage… yeah, I feel like I don’t really belong here.”  


Kumagawa pulled on a rope. A sandbag fell down, the scenery changed. Kumagawa wrapped Junko’s hand around the nape of Komaeda’s neck, urging him forward as if pulling him into a dance. When komaeda looked up he saw a guillotine blade hanging perilously over both of their heads. Kumagawa’s hand still held tightly onto the rope. 『 _How about this, let’s play a game, if you win against me then I’ll tell you._ 』  
  
Komaeda imagined the head of a flower easily cut from the stem. He wondered how many flowers he had trampled over to reach that point. He did not even have the right to feel fear for his own life. “I was recruited to Hope’s Peak for my talent as the Ultimate Lucky Student. I realize it’s not much of a talent, but it’s my one and only gift…”  
  
In addition to the strung Kumagawa held onto there were five other strings. Komaeda only needed to choose one to cut. He reached out and pulled on it, and nothing happened. Kumagawa smiled, and then he pulled all the rest at once. How like him, engineering a situation where it was guaranteed he would lose. 

『 _Let’s become happy together, Komaeda-kun_ 』

Komaeda watched the guillotine swing down as Kumagawa embraced him. All he thought was how messed up it was, both of them could only see happiness in death. Even though the rope snap, the blade was too rusted and it made a screeching noise as it fell only a little bit and then stopped.  
  
“Is that all?” 

『 _Ahahaha, I have a hard time telling if you’re optimistic or pessimistic, Komaeda-kun._ 』  
  
“I could say the same for you.” 

『 _If you’re scared, I’ll embrace you._ 』

“No thanks. Don’t you think that would be too vain? Like that guy the narcissus flowers were named after, falling in love with his own reflection.” 

『 _Don’t you think loving yourself is better than hating yourself?_ 』

“I have to hate myself. I’m dangerous. If I don’t keep myself in check, I could easily slide and end up like her. What good does that kind of self love do?”

『 _That’s so sad. If you want to cry, you can always cry on my shoulder._ 』  
  
“You’re already too much of a crybaby for the both of us Kumagawa-kun.”  
  
The two of them walked forward. Komaeda saw that his feet was stepping on the surface of water, with each step he sank further in. The water was just like his own eyes, clouded, and impossible to see through. Rain fell from the sky above him. It streaked across his face, causing his hair to grow heavier and his bangs to fall down heavy over his eyes. When brushed his bangs away, he noticed his face was sticky and wet.  
  
Falling reserve course students.  
Falling people.  
They fell like cherry blossoms.   
He walked past a row of funeral portraits.  
Kumagawa held out Junko’s hand to him. 『 _Come on, let’s go to the outside world together?_ 』  
Komaeda saw broken concrete and toppled buildings. Highways were slowly crumbling away.  
It was a world without any hope at all, and yet. 

『 _It’s strangely comforting isn’t it? Seeing a world as broken as you are._ 』

“Only a sick freak like Enoshima-san would be comforted by that. People can’t live this way.”

『 _A world where despair can take you at any time, where there’s no safety, where any moment you and everyone around you can die… Isn’t that the way you lived before this? Isn’t everybody just suffering now the same way you did?_ 』

“Shut up.” 

Komaeda saw a plane streak down from the sky. In a world like this, plane wrecks must be completely normal.

Kumagawa danced around, like he was performing a tap dance in singing in the rain. 『 _This is the world we should have been born into, Komaeda-kun. It’s our playground! No matter how much we play, we won’t break anything worse than it’s already broken._ 』

“...”  
  
Komaeda watched silently as he saw a boy playing with his dog. He threw the ball and the large white hound went racing after it. The boy with red hair and green eyes smiled. “You know, Mon-chan I feel like I can take on anything. Do you think I’ll grow up to be an invincible hero one day?” As he played the childish game with his dog, he threw the ball again.  
  
Komaeda turned and saw a bunch of children playing at a playground. They were laughing around the equipment. Two of them were making a sand castle in the sandbox. When he tried to walk towards them, Kumagawa grabbed his arm holding me back. 

『 _We can’t play with the other kids, they’ll get hurt._ 』

The two of them walked hand in hand. Kumagawa led him by the hand. As if they were just childhood friends walking home from school. It was a memory neither of them had experienced before.  
  
They leaned closer to one another, as if to fill in the pieces missing in either of them. Komaeda felt a dull aching in his head, and heard a buzzing at the back of his ears. It was like his nerves were overcharged, trying to stimulate him still, cross the gap ways, continue to function despite the webs clogging up his brain. He reached up and touched his head and felt oozing brain fluid.  
  
Disgusting clouds of black and white floated in the sky.  
The clouds started to fall apart, and rained down checkerboard tiles on both of them, as if they were peeling off of a dilapidated ceiling. 

“My greatest enemy is up ahead. I’ve waited so long, so very long to defeat the Ulimate Despair.” 

『 _Don’t go flirting with my girlfriend like that, I’ll get jealous._ 』  
  
“Bringing hope to the world, the seeds of despair require a special fertilizer to sprout and grow indeed. They grow on hope itself. Despair flourishes precisely because there is hope. Though polar opposites they are like two sides of the same coin, such is the nature of hope and despair! I intentionally gave you all a taste of hope, so in the end it might nourish despair.”   
  
They both heard her voice echoing through the halls at the same time. 

As the two of them stepped into a room with a checkerboard floor. Enoshima Junko stood in the center of a trial room, facing off against faceless students of Hope’s Peak, Naegi standing at the center of them.  
  
Komaeda paused, feeling the sweat trickle down his brow.  
Kumagawa wrapped his arm around Komaeda, pulling him close as he breathed into his ear.

 『 _Hey, what’s wrong?_ 』  
  
“If you throw Naegi to the dogs, the rest of ya get to survive! This must be the most hopeless goddamn dilemna ever, knowin yer a dead man if even one punk gives into despair!” Enoshima Junko said, pointing a red finger straight at Naegi’s heart. “One last vote will put an end to this! All of your stupid hope shit!” 

“No one will fall into despair! None of us will lose to the likes of you!! I don’t want to lose to you, not only for us, but for everyone you’ve killed! Hope won’t lose to despair! Really living means ya gotta, push forward when the going gets tough don’t it!” Naegi Makoto said, and with those words Enoshima Junko broke apart into pieces in front of him.  
  
『 _Hmm, then what about us Komaeda-kun? Weren’t we living too?_ 』  
  
The two boys who were abandoned and it took everything they had just to survive. No, they were not living by pushing forward when the going gets tough, they could not live because they were merely corpses.  
  
Kirigiri alive in this world, smiled softly at Makoto. “By the way, I don’t believe you came to this school due to being lucky or unlucky. The way you’ve confronted Ultimate Despair, and stood your ground against despair to the very end that makes you… The Ultimate Hope! I believe that should be your true title.”   
  
Komaeda felt his legs give out from under him. He lied there helpless on the surface of the water. He turned his head and felt Kumagawa’s breath on his ear. Kumagawa had lied down next to him in his sleep, and wrapped his arms around him. He nestled his chin on the crevasse of Komaeda’s neck.  
  
“What… what the hell????” 

『 _I thought showing you this would make you happy. Isn’t this the world you wanted?  The world where Ultimate Hope could be born?_ 』

“I wasn’t able to help a single person yet… Why should I survive when they all perished if I can’t help just one person…I… I just want to….”   
  
Kumagawa stood back up over him. Komaeda felt a door shut, and overhead several doors closed as the hallway receded. Kumagawa let Komaeda rest his head against his chest in empty comfort, but Komaeda could hear Kumagawa’s chest rattle, from his own laughter.

『 _Everyone got hurt because of you. You bring calamity upon others simply by living, is that what you believe? Is that why you try so hard to prove you have the right to live?_ 』  
  
“Is it my fault?” 

『 _It’s not your fault. Hey, you know what would be much worse than your bad luck causing all those accidents? What if they really were just accidents? You were just the witness, to countless accidents before your eyes, and you couldn’t do a single thing about them._ 』  
  
“N-no, it was all my luck. First the bad luck, and then the good-” 

『 _All you are is a crying child who survives tragedy after tragedy by some fluke, and no merit of your own. And you can’t even cry._ 』  
  
“This isn’t what I wanted…”

『 _I mean come on. You make me laugh. Even if hope were to be born in front of you, you wouldn’t be comforted by the sight of it at all. What you really wanted, was to give into despair, wasn't it?_ 』

The pain he had been holding back his entire life, the pain he stopped himself from feeling, in order to stop himself from despairing, it all had to go somewhere. 

『 _You just wanted to be able to cry when something bad happened to you. You just wanted to feel sad over your terrible life!_ 』

Komaeda wanted to scream he was wrong, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was the cherry blossoms he had swallowed. They fell like the drops of pink blood he coughed up.   
His eyes were dry.  
He did not want to cry.  
He would do anything to avoid crying.   
He covered his ears and laughed.  
His transparent heart made a splatting sound as he cut it away from him.   
Even one single teardrop, he would slash it to pieces.   
He would drag a razor blade across his eyes and blind himself to stop himself from crying. 

Komaeda wished Kumagawa would not say that, it was too cruel.  
Once he cried he would no longer be able to hope anymore.  
The moment he woke up and wiped his tears away the dream would be over.  
_I know everything is a dream but don’t wake me up._ _  
_ _Let me sleep._

Komaeda woke up with his head on the floor. His body was curled up like a child, and he was sleeping posed like he was hanging from a single tree tied up by his feet. When he felt the blood on his head, he realized this must be reality.   
  
Then the next moment Enoshima Junko’s hand grabbed him and threw him against the wall. “It took forever to find you, you’re wasting my precious Junko time. Remind me why do I have to help trash like you again?”  
  
Nagito Komaeda laughed. “I already know that, I already know I’m hopeless, I’m trash that can’t possibly be helped. So what’s wrong with that? I’m truly glad from the bottom of my heart I got to meet someone like you, you’re the only person on earth worse than me.” Komaeda’s sickly lips curled into a smile. “You’re just a murderer who kills for a stupid reason like despair. For all your brilliant machinations, you’re no better than a child lashing out.” 

“If I killed people for the sake of hope, you’d probably praise me. You’d fall head over heels in love with me, you’re so desperate.”  

“You’re right, I want to be loved. I want to be loved so badly. I’ll even settle for everyone hating me and closing my eyes and pretending it’s love, but that’s still better than someone like you.”   
  
Komaeda picked up a rubber exercise ball he stole from Hitoyoshi’s room. He threw it, causing it to bounce off a nearby shelf. Junko watched it for a moment, calculated its trajectory and then just got bored and stopped paying attention.   
  
“You can’t love anybody but yourself. No wonder Kumagawa-kun dumped you.” 

“Excuse me.” Enoshima Junko grabbed him by the sweater pulling him towards her. The anger on her face was so genuine it could not have been an act. “Take that back.”

She slammed his head into the ground. As if she wanted to push him against the surface of the water. Sink, down, down, down. Deluge, a flood of emotions after the walls that he had built so high break.  
  
Blood escaped from his body and poisoned the water.  
He looked up above Junko and saw checkerboard clouds.  
  
His heart had already fallen out of his body.   
The heart slips backwards, remembering, remembering, remembering…  
He might die here.  
All he ever wanted was someone to remember him when he died.  
Someone to hold his hand as he passed away.    
_Hinata-kun did I ever tell you I loved you?_  
_I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways…  
  
_He wanted to tell just one person he loved them.   
So they could hear the words he had never heard himself.  
But the words always came out so wrong.  
He bit the inside of his cheek, and tasted blood to stop himself from saying the wrong things. 

“I don’t care if I’m the worst. I don’t care if I’m pathetic. As long as I’m not a bad person like you…” Komaeda continued to reject her. Even when he heard Kumagawa’s voice in his ear, begging him to accept him already.   
  
I’m the lesser of two evils.  
Or am I?  
Or am I tricking myself into believing I’m nice? 

“Hey, Komaeda-senpai. Do you know why out of all the Ultimate Despairs I found you the most boring? It’s because… from the moment I met you, I knew you were just like me, and I’m the person who bores me the most.” 

“N-no… I’m nothing like you! I’m not a murderer like you are! I don’t hurt people like you do!” As Komaeda said that, the ball he had thrown down the hallway suddenly came bouncing back. Junko was too busy with Komaeda she did not even notice it, until it bounced off of the shoe that Komaeda had left behind which changed it’s trajectory from what she had predicted and slammed into the back of her head.  
  
Komaeda heard a crack. He saw blood spill from Enoshima Junko’s forehead. She fell forward, like she was a body waiting to be discovered in the middle of a crime scene. Komaeda did not give her time to get up.   
  
“You, never should have been born. If Ikusaba’s umbilical chord had strangled you in the womb, everybody would have been so much happier.”  
  
He said as he reached his hands forward, to tighten them around her neck. Enoshima Junko’s body spilled out on the ground in front of him, as he sat on her chest facing her and strangled her.  
  
Not a single person.  
If only she was dead.  
If only she had died alongside of them.  
Why was someone like her even alive? 

Suddenly he no longer saw Enoshima Junko as the one he was strangling. Instead, it was Kumagawa Misogi. A lost child with white hair and blue eyes. A hopeless child. He just wanted to stop seeing Kumagawa Misogi, he wanted to stop looking, lookingly only made him worse.  
  
What was wrong with wanting to dream?  
What was wrong with desiring to see something other than death?  
What was wrong with wearing a fake smile?  
He just wanted to pretend to be happy for once.  
  
Komaeda looked up and saw a dead tree, it's twisted and gnarled limbs reaching out for the sky. It was a tree that would never bear fruit again. There was an old legend he recalled just now. That the only reasons cherry blossoms bloomed, is because cadavers were buried underneath their roots. How else could the flowers of the cherry tree be so magnificent in their bloom?   
  
He thought about a flowering tree in full bloom. It was beauty, vivacious. Yet, Komaeda always felt nothing but gloom when he watched the cherry tree blossom. He was unable to accept such a beauty.   
  
It made him anxious.   
Melancholy.   
A feeling of emptiness overtook him.  
Finally he understood why.   
The only way such a beautiful bloom could happen, was if rotting cadavers crawling with maggots and reeking of intolerable stench. One needed to bury carrion and left behind corpses at the roots of a tree in order for it to grow properly.   
  
He had come to see cherry blossoms for what they were. In bearing witness to the gradual process of decay, he could see nothing to appreciate in the beauty of living.   
  
He did not feel a single joyous thing, watching cherry blossoms fall.   
The mist of flowers.  
A shadow of the flower fell on the ripples of the water, shuddering and falling below. The same water he wanted to drown Enoshima Junko in.   
Cherry blossoms fell for him. They scattered in front of his eyes.  
As if to tell him that he was only capable of withering, and then being left behind all alone. 

A dead tree.  
What a suitable grave for the two of them.  
Komaeda’s voice repeated over and over again. 

“It’s not me! You’re not me! I’m not the hopeless one, it’s you…”  
“Die.”  
“You can’t help a single person.”  
“All you do is cause trouble for others.”   
“Die, my salvation, your salvation.” 

 _Is it my fault?_ _  
_ _I make everyone unfortunate simply by being alive…?_

“I should have died alongside them.”  
“I don’t want to be happy.”

Enoshima Junko finally spoke, her voice rasping in ecstasy as he saw drool leak down from the corner of her mouth. “Do it. Kill me. Kill me for hope.”  
  
If he killed this girl, Kumagawa would be sad.  
Rather than by accident, he would intentionally be inflicting misery on his dear friend.  
Even if that despair was better for him in the long run.  
Even if Komaeda thought it was better if he never had met Enoshima Junko.  
Kumagawa Misogi loved her.  
His hope was Enoshima Junko.  
It would be easy as closing his hand around a butterfly to crush it.  
She only thinks about herself.  
She only thinks about her own pain.  
She lashes out in despair because she’s not happy.  
Because of her everybody else has to be miserable.   
All he needed to do was betray Kumagawa.   
Even if Kumagawa came back from the dead, some misfortune somewhere along the line would take him away again.  
That was why he needed to betray, to push someone away before they were taken away, then he would no longer need to feel the pain of losing them. 

Komaeda finally let go of her.  
  
“It’s no wonder we’re so lonely… when we are… so ugly…” 

Komaeda said.  
  
He released the butterfly from his bony fingers. Just because something was fragile, just because it was delicate, just because it was already broken, did not mean it was unworthy. It did not need to be broken further.  
  
If only the world was a little bit kinder to broken thing. If only he was kinder to broken things. Ever since he first saw Kumagawa who was kind to the broken and the weak, he had fallen in love with that kindness.  



	45. I Want to Connect, but I Can't

“Excuse me. Who are you, again?” 

 

🧸

 

Vines wrapped around her neck, she felt their thorns dig underneath her skin and scratch at her throat. The boy holding her down was stark white, his hair in starched curls. As his fingers closed around her throat she barely resisted. Most people when their head was pushed under water at least struggled to breathe, but she was lacking even in that basic survival instinct. She looked content to drown, as her eyes were already dead. 

 

Even as she felt fingers close around both sides of her throat, Enoshima Junko did not truly feel it. To her it was like she had drifted away from her body. As if she were watching the events from a third person perspective outside of her eyeballs. In front of her on the other side of a screen, Komaeda Nagito was strangling some girl she did not know. 

 

Then suddenly the screen filled with static, and the picture quality dropped. The screen broke splitting in two, on one side Komaeda Nagito, and on the other side a boy with long dark hair. As she watched the events play out on screen she thought in a distant and unfeeling way _I’ve seen this show before._  
  
“This is ridiculous… to think she’d be this driven by despair. I don’t want to believe this but, she must have gotten near me at some point.” 

  
“He must love her… but at the same time, hate her right?” Mukuro asked.  
  
“That’s right…” Matsuda-kun quietly nodded. There was nothing she could do but to give up and let everything end. This is the end of her world, of the world of Matsuda-kun and her. The curtains of her soul suddenly began to fall.  
  
His eyes were full of anger, sadness, love and hatred all boiled and concentrated together. They were all emotions she would never be able to feel. She wondered if he would cry as he killed her. If a single tear of his fell onto her face, would she be able to feel the emotions behind it? Could she return even a single teardrop’s worth of his feelings? Or was he right. It was all for nothing.  
  
“I didn’t want Enoshima Junko to get involved with others… I thought I would be protecting her that way,” He got so close, close enough to kiss or kill, you had to get close to do either. “That’s why I hid her, that’s why I desperately tried to hide her. But it was pointless. My actions did nothing. None of what I did meant anything to Enoshima… in the end, there was nothing she could do but inflict despair on anyone involved with her.”  
  
She felt her heart thump.  
She heard it in her ears.  
Even after she had taken a knife and cut it out of her own chest.  
Even after she had hid it under the floorboards.  
She could not stop her own heart from beating loudly in that moment.  
She did have a heart after all, how surprising.  
  
They were close enough to be touching, then he reached out as if to pull her into an embrace only to place his hands at his her neck and hold her tightly. She wasn't in pain, she felt a warmth coming from the palm of his hands. She was most likely smiling. Her raging heartbeat. Her entire body heating up. Intense ringing in her ears. His face looked almost gentle. She had been by Matsuda’s side for seventeen years, and yet she finally just now felt it, the warmth of touching another person.  
  
To think there were people in this world without fucked up brains who could feel this warmth without having to shed blood.  
  
She wanted to go back to that garden too. The one they played when they were kids, when they picked the flowers apart and blew the petals in the air. She wished she had been pulled from his rib and made out of the same material that he was. She wanted to fall asleep under the same tree as him. She wished they could eat the same fruit, and she could taste his lips.  
  
But she wasn’t the girl in the garden. She was the snake.  
Any fruit she bit into would wither.  
Any lips she kissed, would bleed with poison.  
If only he knew how much she still wanted to kiss him, even with the lips and fangs of a snake. 

『 _What a boring way to die._ 』

“...Huh?”

Kumagawa’s voice shattered the glass in front of her. She was suddenly reminded that this body was hers by a sharp jab of pain. The princess who fell asleep in a rose bush, felt the bed of thorns prick her from every angle.  She saw pure white hair and a face directly over hers to the point where white curls tickled her.  
  
She lifted her tongue to the roof of her mouth and tasted honey at the back of her throat. Her head wet and hot, she heard the sound of water leaking from somewhere. No, it was her own blood seeping out of the back of her head, or maybe it was brain goo. Junko dipped her fingers in the blood pooling beneath her. She realized her head was cracked the same way Kumagawa had been. 

_Hey Senpai, if I die the same way that you did will I be able to feel any of your warmth?_

She wanted to close her eyes and picture Senpai was the one strangling her. Perhaps that was what she had wanted all along, for the one who had always told her that there was a future even for someone like her, to turn against her. She wanted to fail. She wanted to be told she was hopeless again.  
  
No matter how hard she tried she could not stop seeing Komaeda. He sounded like Komaeda. His hands were cold like Komaeda’s. He smelled of old wet bark slowly rotting away like Koameda did. She could not see a trace of Senpai in this person. Because there was only one Senpai in the world.  
  
People were expendable extras, she could use them any way she liked and she never cared about throwing them away because she could always find more toys. Yet, there was no replacing Senpai for her. He was a unique existence.  
  
Disgust. She licked her lips and tasted a mixture between cherry lip gloss and blood, but all she swallowed was bitter self loathing. She was being an unfaithful woman. Those weren’t Senpai’s hands around her throat. She did not feel Senpai’s warm breath as he whispered loathing words into her ears. She wanted to suddenly scrape off the skin on her neck, to get off the dirty handprints that Komaeda would leave behind. Dirty. Dirty. Dirty. It wouldn’t wash away. It was not an enjoyable way of being dirty. She just felt filthy and used. Suddenly, she could not breathe. Worse than being strangled, she felt dirty water sloshing around in her lungs. As if what she breathed was muck, and swampwater. As if she could drown on dry land.  
  
She wanted to scrape her skin off, but she did not want anyone to see the scales underneath.  
Komaeda’s familiar cold voice spoke in her ear but she did not listen to him. She realized she had completely given up.   
  
What was this sensation? Why? Why was she so willing to give up her own life?  
She didn’t want to live?  
It wasn’t that she wanted to die anymore, but she didn’t want to live, either. Life was a big hassle, but she wasn’t jumping at the idea of death specifically. Was there nothing important to her? Was there nothing she wanted? Nothing she wanted to protect? Is that why she was so ready so ready to give up?

 _Wow. Those are my dying thoughts. How lame. I really should just die. Seriously._ _  
_

Reality, it didn’t matter. She was apathetic and indifferent. There was no future. There was no past. She had forgotten about being born long ago. Maybe she had never been born. She was the dream of a girl in her chrysalis, curled up naked with the goo of metamorphosis pooled up in the crevases of her body. She was oblivious to the fact that she was still alive. Reality was nothing more than a synonym for illusion to her, and that was never an antonym for dream.  

『 _It’ll be lots and lots of fun, I just know it will!_ 』

She heard his voice in her ears again. An eardrum shattering sound. The feeling of a shock wave running through her entire body. It was a voice more familiar to her than the sound of her own heart beating.  
It haunted her.  
She wanted to be haunted.  
If Kumagawa was a delusion.

Then she wanted to be delusional.  
_Why are you always…always... shaking me up?_

 _You._ _  
_ _Really._ _  
_ _Why is it always just you?  
_  
The light. Gradually her eyes adjusted as she realized Komaeda’s fingers slackened from her throat. He gave up on squishing her like a bug, but she wasn’t a bug. She was a chrysalis. She was permanently stuck in a state of metamorphosis and yet unable to become anything.  
  
She sat up, rubbing at her neck. She always thought if there was a noose around her neck she would just point at it and laugh, but her skin was irritated. “Boys really are disappointing, ya know. Way to bring a girl all the way to the scene just before the climax and then just quit when you’ve had your fun before I’ve even had the chance to get off. I feel bad for Kamukura-senpai if this is your usual performance” Apparently, her mouth ran on autopilot even when she was like this.

Komaeda offered her his mechanical hand to help her up. Junko took it without thinking. It was a little bit weird the two of them being this close with no attempt to kill one another. The two of them this close, it was like a photograph with too much white space, they were both just too empty to look at.

Komaeda went silent as Junko tried to navigate the hallway again. She observed that whenever Koameda became too self aware, he tended to sink into himself and just passively reacted. He got to a point where he was so afraid of leaving his own head he started acting tame of all things.  
  
He finally spoke up. “Ummm, not to question the judgement of an Ultimate but I think we’re lost.”  
  
Thinking is ouchie right now. Can’t you all like… think for yourselves for once? Prove me to that you’re a creature capable of independent thought, come on. You guys always make me do all the work.”  
  
“You don’t do any of the work, Enoshima-san.”  
  
“What path are we supposed to choose again? My head’s so foggy I forgot what route we’re on. Is this the Matsuda-kun route, the Kamukura-senpai route? I want to unlock all of Senpai’s CGs and bonus art when I beat the game. Wait, I think I did something wrong. I got his bad ending by mistake. I wasn’t actually trying for it this time, really I wasn’t. I should have chose all the flirty responses instead.”  
  
“I don’t think human relationships work that way. Besides, your definition of flirty tends to overlap a lot with stabby.”  
  
“Why don’t you take the lead? If it’s good luck you’ll lead us exactly where we need to be, and if it’s bad luck something horrible will happen to you. You know like in the horror movies when you yell at the characters onscreen not to open a door and they do anyway. Either way, it’ll be a win, win, win for me. We rolled all Junkos this time.”  
  
“I must be really unlucky if I have rolled that result,” Komaeda noticed Junko’s increased rambling. “Should we stop to do something about your head?”  
  
Junko whipped her head around suddenly at him, her blonde pigtails following the motion. “Are you really going to help the Ultimate Despair? What a kind and hopeful gesture from you.” 

“Well, not if you’re going to be an ass about it…” Komaeda muttered, being petty.  
  
“I’m fantastic. Even when I’m being an ass, it just shows how fantastic my ass is. Even you can’t keep your hands off of me, Komaeda-senpai.”  
  
Komaeda lost what little patience he had left for arguing with her. He grabbed a random door and threw it open. Enoshima Junko saw herself. She saw a whole room full of herself at the other side. 

 

🧸

  
A room full of Enoshima Junko.  
She saw it all. There were magazine clippings taped to the wall. Several posters of her hung from every available surface. Magazines where she had featured in were in piles on the floor. There were polaroids pinned to the wall. She saw mannequins wearing outfits she had worn at previous photoshoots.  
  
The whole room was painted in her colors. Someone had taken Enoshima Junko and splattered her everywhere. It was unmistakably dyed the same color as her soul. She saw the red tipped acrylic hands that were supposed to be her trademark, had been all over this room. She saw her own pink handprints on the wall.  
  
She saw several pictures of herself.  
They were all pictures of a girl who was merely cute and nothing else. She wore an eyepatch and puckered her lips into a smile. In one she bared her teeth in an ugly smirk. Ugly? She found the expression "What a cute girl!" to be vacuous. She loathed being complimented like that. She only had features that were passably attractive at best. It was just a matter of lighting, camera work and makeup to bring them out. There was nothing of substance to her cuteness. It was all performance, all artifice. Anyone who understood what beauty was would see through her immediately. They would see what she really was, nothing more than a dreadful child.  
  
The more she looked at her own face, the more she realized how indescribable she was. She smiled without smiling. It should have been impossible for a human being to smile that way. All she did was stretch her face in an expression resembling a smile, it was just forcing her muscles to imitate the shape of a smile. She had no understanding of what other people felt behind the smiles she had seen them make, she only understood smiles in a mechanical sense. Her own face was so hideous and nauseating she wanted to look away. 

The next picture her eyes traveled to was not any better. Her face failed inexplicably to leave any kind of impression. She was dressed up like a school girl, a red and black uniform, a plaid miniskirt pulled up to just below her hips, a black and white tight, black thigh high heels. She smiled an adroit little smile lacking in substance. Her smile a blank sheet of paper which invited others to write whatever emotion they felt like on top of her. Artificial, insincere, pretentious, none of these words could quite describe how full of herself and yet how empty her own expression was. She had the look of a beautiful young girl, and yet nobody could ever describe why was she was beautiful, all they could say was she looked 'not fake.' There was never a young girl whose good looks were so baffling.  
  
Enoshima Junko stumbled over and picked up a magazine cover, it was the most monstrous of all. A white rose was tucked into her hair. Her hair was strawberry, pink, and gold, and it fell over her face in pleasant waves of color. Her cheeks looked pink, but that was just makeup to give her the appearance of a young girl flushed with life. There was no way her cheeks could ever glow that way without makeup. Soft lips begging to be kissed. Her face was not only devoid of expression, it fails to leave a memory. It had no individuality. While she seemed like a compelling beauty, the moment you looked away you would forget her face. Try to describe her and you cannot recall a single thing about her.  
An unbelievably forgettable girl.  
As her friend once described her, a stupid and ugly girl.  
So many pictures of her face and that was all she saw.  
She was just a cute girl and nothing else.   
Suddenly, the magazine she held in her hands in front of her face winked at her. Enoshima Junko dropped it.  
  
“Wow, even I don’t love myself this much…” Junko breathed, and then her breaths quickened. “Hey, this girl looks like me but I’m not in any of these pictures. There’s no ‘me’ in these pictures…” 

“Um, Enoshima-san I understand how this must sound coming from me but try not to freak out too badly. It’s your turn to be the sane one-” Before Komaeda could finish speaking, Junko started to scream.  
  
“Ugh, I’m so bad at comforting people....” Komaeda muttered in a whispered drowned out by her screaming.  
  
“That’s my face. That’s my body. That’s my clothes. My face, mine… Not yours, mine…” She gripped the sides of her face trying to hold steady her crumbling expression. As she peered in between the gaps of her fingers, she felt the paranoia of a child hiding in the closet hoping the murderer whose knife was still wet with her parent’s blood would not hear her breathing.  
  
She saw the hundreds of photoes of herself on the wall, suddenly start to move of her own volition. All those pairs of bored looking eyes, turned to watch her. Then suddenly the four walls of the room fell away as if it was a poorly assembled set on a stage play. Behind the scenes, she saw a black void filled with numbers that a giant version of her slowly rose up from. The same holographic version of Junkai she had seen fifty two times at the end of the killing game. The hand slowly reached for her, and passed straight through her.  
  
Of course that was all just a hallucination, Enoshima Junko was just screaming standing next to Komaeda Nagito and irritating his sensitive ears.  
  
Then, she took off running in the opposite direction. She exited stage left so fast the curtains did not have time to fall. She tore straight through them, and saw the ripped up remains of red velvet curtains fluttering behind her.  
  
She did not care she just needed to run.  
She needed to get somewhere where the other Junkos could not see her, where she could escape herself. 

A circuit was tripped somewhere in her brain, and completely fried. She simply had too much wattage, all of the wires got stripped, and the breakers overloaded. There was no insulation only dangerous sparking neurons waiting to catch fire. 

Enoshima Junko suddenly remembered why she hated flowers so much.  
Someone like her was too distant, too mechanical to ever be part of the natural world. She had never been born in the first place.  
Maybe someone assembled her out of broken parts.  
She was plastic.  
She was superficial.  
She was artificially dyed rather than colorful.  
She could never become a flower, she could only be a fake that never needed to be watered, or cared for, and would never wilt.  
Wires did not belong among tree roots.  
Her brain was a collection of numbers, it was a formula that processed data at an alarming rate, she had a hard time believing that it was an organ made of blood and meat. Even if you cracked open her skull pried it out and showed it to her she would have a hard time believing it.  
Even if having plastic leaves meant she could not decay, she could not grow either.  
And she could not feel any of the sun’s warmth.  
  
As she ran in the hallway, she passed a mirror hanging on the wall, a full length mirror, a mirror tinted window, a mirror on a closet doorway, and then several bulbs of light turned on revealing the type of mirror that was present in a backstage dressing room. In all of those mirrors, Junko was not present enough to be reflected, she only cast a shadow.  
  
At the end of the hallway, Enoshima Junko saw her.  
She saw herself. She saw the reflection that had run away from her. The girl on the other side of the mirror that moved on her own. Her feet did not touch the ground, she floated like a ghost.  
She was ephemera.  
  
Oh, for the record it was not me.  
Imagine cutting away for a moment to Tsumugi Shirogane currently trying to see if Keebo could eat a sandwich. That was how my uninteresting day was going. As a background character who is unimportant I never get to be part of any of the cool scenes.  
  
“Excuse me.” Enoshima Junko, the Ultimate Fashionista pictured on all those magazines dressed in a leapord print coat and high heels asked her, “Who are you, again?”   
  
“I don’t… I don’t know anything about myself anymore…” Enoshima Junko could not answer that question. “Enough with the real Enoshima Junko shit, if you’re my brain you should have gotten bored of tormenting me with this already!”  
  
The ghost of a girl merely giggled at her.  She folded her hands behind her back in a carefree way. Junko tried to chase after herself, the past image of herself.  
That past Junko.  
That reflection that had run away from her.  
She did not run, she skipped like hopping on water.  
Her feet could dance on the surface without sinking below.  
Frolicking about.  
Going wild.  
Joking around.  
Laughing like crazy.  
Almost like she had broken.  
Almost like a dream meant to fade away.  
Dancing madly.  
Like an innocent child, utterly free of sin.  
A wholly pure existence, the untouched Enoshima Junko. 

Freely expressing her emotions - laughing, losing her temper, puffing out her cheeks and pouting with watery eyes, in a way the real Junko never could. 

As Junko struggled to run just to catch up, almost stumbling over her own feet in her desperation and hearing the click of her heels down the hallway she saw the other girl she was chasing move lighter than air. She roughly turned into a corner and collided into a wall, and saw her other self escape down the stairs.  
  
Halfway down the stairs, Enoshima Junko’s heel twisted and broke off and she started to fall. She cradled her head just before she collided with the floor at the end of the stairs. She curled her body up, like a girl in a cocoon.  
  
Chrysalis brought forth a beautiful metamorphosis, but in order to do that they liquefied the body parts of the animal, and no trace of their previous form was left behind. As she cracked her eye open, she felt something oozing out from the back of her head.  
  
Enoshima Junko (fake) was standing over her.  
  
“Like, who are you? Poster, pretender, fake boobs, dye job,” Enoshima Junko (real) looked up at her.  
  
“Yep, that’s you.”

“Are you for real? Are you like, for real with this shit again? Am I even alive? Maybe this is all a dream, I’d take that lame twist over more of this.” 

“You were never born in the first place. You never grew up. You lived an everyday life that has zero story nature. Enoshima Junko was just something you created, and I am her. You even wrote lines out for me, like I was a character on a script, and cast your sister to play the role.”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“Oh, I’m so glad that you asked. I was looking for an opportunity to monologue. You and I, unlike all those other boring people, can totally read our stage cues, and deliver our lines right. Do you know how many times Naegi-kun interrupts my villainous monologue? For me, despair is not a goal, or a set of principles, or even a lifestyle, or even an instinct… It’s what defines me as Enoshima Junko. It’s just my characterization! That’s why I’m able to pursue despair with such purity.”   
  
Enoshima Junko’s face was picture perfect.  
She lived in reality the same way most people only appeared in photographs.  
But a tear appeared in that photo.  
_I hate being pure._ _  
_ _I hate it… I’m so tired._ _  
_ _Tired of keeping myself all clean and pretty._ _  
_ _Tired of keeping up the charade of being clean and pretty._ _  
_ _I’m exhausted._ _  
_ _I want to get sullied._ _  
_ _I wanted to see myself absolutely filthy._  
She tore the picture further and further apart, until no amount of clear tape could patch over the tears in it.  
  
“So that’s why you slept with that loser?” Enoshima Junko (fake) asked her.  
  
“No, I was despairingly and stupidly in love with him. That’s why I slept with him.”

“Were you really in love with him?”   
  
“He’s the only one who saw the real me.”  
  
All she knew was the algebraic expression of love, not the feeling and not the reciprocation.

But she was sure at the time her feelings were real. She wanted to get close.  
She didn’t just want to use his body like it belonged to her, at least that was not all of it.  
  
“But, there is no real you. The only identity you have is what you’ve made for yourself. I’m all you’ve got, bitch.” 

“...” 

Enoshima Junko (fake) lowered herself to Junko’s level.  
“Hey, hey, if you’re pretending to be someone else other than who you are. Doesn’t that make you the imposter? It’s like I’m the gucci, and you’re the cheap knockoff brand, gucky or whatever.”  
  
Her fake lips, pulled into an imitation smile. “Nobody cares for you anymore. I’m the one they want. I’m the one _he_ wants.” 

Enoshima Junko (real) suddenly pounced and grabbed the other. She forced her to the ground. She brought her red nails to one of the girl’s pale blue eyes, and jammed her nail in without hesitation. She gauged until she heard a _squelch_ and then moved to the other eye. Both eyes out, she continued to hit the face again and again in front of her.  
  
She wanted to destroy something beautiful.  
She wanted to destroy the idea of beauty.  
She wanted to keep hitting her until no trace of a face remained.

“Mine. Mine. Mine. AhhhhhhhhH! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! It’s mine! Give it to me! Get away from me! My body is mine! My thoughts! My feelings! My face! My heart! My love! My despair! Miiiiiiiiine! Give it back to meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” 

Enoshima Junko thought she was gouging out the eyes of a girl in front of her. The most she hit, the more blood got on her hands. Blood got everywhere. It splattered on the photographs and magazine cutouts that had been hung on the wall. It stained the image of her face over and over again. 

For a moment she returned back to reality, and saw she was doing nothing more than beating her own fists against nothing at all but the black and white tiled floor until they became bloody. 

“Just give him back already! Give give give give give give give give give give give!” 

Enoshima Junko opened her eyes again. She was sitting in a desk in an abandoned classroom. When she raised her head from the desk, there was Kumagawa Misogi sitting across from her. The two of them were eating lunch together. The everyday school life she never got to be a part of. 

『 Hey, Junko-chan I know I’m an existence of little consequence but don’t just ignore me. I have feelings you know. Feelings that are ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but they are feelings nonetheless.』  
  
He suddenly appears before her eyes, captivating her even though he has no right to. He was not even a stage presence. If anything, he was one of the stagehands who dressed in all black while they moved the important props around to blend into the background.  

“Hm? Oh, I stopped paying attention for a moment there,” She rubbed at the corner of her eyes, muttering sleepily as if she had woken up from a dream. Kumagawa Misogi, frankly he was a terrible thing to see first in the morning. An eyesore. The worst kind of eyesore one that demanded to be looked at. 

『Junko-chan, of course you’re going to get bored easily if you don’t try to invest yourself in the conversations you’re having. I’m talking to you but it’s like you’re not really here at all, y’know, you’re not present in the moment so how can you enjoy it?』  
  
She considered him like always, the same way a lovesick teenager would while pining. _Oh, senpai how I hate you, let me count the ways. The way you look at me thinking like you know me, and yet those eyes of yours like pools of water so silent and still no one could ever swim in it. Not even me._ Kumagawa’s eyes were the dead see, filled with salt, no one could survive in it. _Not even me._ She adds a second time with frustration.  
  
She hates being seen by him and not being able to see him in return. In a word, it’s irritating. He’s much dumber than her (just like everybody else is), but he’s crafty and slippery enough to just slide out of her fingers every time she thinks she has her red acrylic nails squeezed tight around him. 

Ugh, she should just get a grip already. No loser of his caliber should provoke this kind of reaction out of her. These feelings, are confused, messy, and unfamiliar, everything she is not. So therefore she can’t feel that way.  
  
“I know you’re lonely senpai and you’re never going to have any chance with a real girl, but can’t you get a giant anime body pillow to talk to or something if you’re that desperate to talk to someone? My overflowing charisma feels kind of wasted on the likes of you. It’s like casting the most beautiful, most talented, most flawless actress and putting on the stage next to some bum you found on the street, where’s the chemistry supposed to come from? You and I were never meant to interact, down to our basic chemical composition, let alone react to each other,” She said, because she is a noble gas, unable to take or give anything from other people. Statically, unable to react and change her form. 

『 You consider yourself a real girl Junko-chan? I’m so glad. I was starting to worry about you.』Where does he even get off having her occupy his thoughts at all. He’s an impudent one.          『You’re right, I’m hopelessly socially inept and nobody would ever want to talk to me willingly, but isn’t it the same for you Junko-chan? I mean, do you even talk to people? It feels like you just ramble, and then pause to give them just enough time to react to you. Conversation for you is just a really elaborate way of hearing yourself talk. Don’t you get disgusted by the sound of your own voice?』

“Shush you.” She brushed him off by waving her red fingers flippantly at him, before she went back to filing her nails. What really bothered her. She had just lied, and he knew it. He got her to react all the time. He reached his grimy hands inside of her without permission, and dredged up these reactions from her chest. Usually when she was with others, she pretended to say things thoughtlessly to appear as a rude but likable girl in the eyes of Makoto, but around him she genuinely spoke without thinking. “You don’t seem to understand how our relationship works. You see, I the popular cool girl am allowed to make fun of you the loser. When I laugh at you, everybody laughs, that’s with me and at you. You’re not supposed to talk back.” 

She kept trying to tell him what their relationship was. She kept trying to put him in his place, and he refused her. 

That was the frustrating part, that someone on this earth could refuse Enosihma Junko.  
It was all she ever wanted, but it scared her.  
Kumagawa Misogi had a smile that never reached his eyes, and a dark streak so soaked in pitch black water she was sure sometimes even she did not know how deep he was willing to sink. Not knowing was scary, on a fundamentally human level. 

Enoshima Junko thought fear was a much more intimate emotion than even love, because unlike love which was sometimes dull to her fear always provoked a reaction and got her heart racing in her ears. 

『We don’t have a relationship. You just keep doing whatever you want, and I do whatever I want. Well, it’s probably more fun that way.』  
  
She didn’t even want to think about it.  
Think about the fact that talking every day like this meant they had some kind of relationship.  
She doesn’t want to think that Kumagawa’s right and she talks at, and not too many people.  
All people except for him of course.  
And in the same way whenever Junko really shares what’s on her mind, people just stare at her.  
All except for Kumagawa, who listens to her insane rambling and then replies like it’s normal.  
But that was the thing about Kumagawa that was so irritating, he demanded to be thought about.  
  
“Ewe. You and I, and relationship in the same sentence. That’s like, total gag. It’s hell being with you, Senpai. You know that? Hell. I’m sure Dante is going to write a longass self insert fanfiction about it and everything.”

 Enoshima did not even realize she was smiling as she complained about all that. She probably had no right to say this being the devil’s right hand bitch, but Kumagawa really was hellfire. Sometimes she thought about it, with a cloying, scratching feeling that scraped at her heart what it would be like to get close enough to that warmth to let herself get burned by him, to let his flames lick her lips, to breathe in his brimstone and ash and let his dust settle in her lungs. 

『You know what they say, friendship is hell.』  
  
“No, you’re misquoting that. It’s ‘Hell is Other People’.” 

『Well, I don’t really care to define what hell is. I don’t have time to philosophize. My daily life is hell regardless, so I’m just happy to be trapped here with you.』  
  
“You’re the last person I would want to fall into hell with. There's nothing about you that attracts my attention.” 

Another lie. See Enoshima Junko, endlessly cruel, who could kill others and feel nothing about it, one might assume she held hatred in her heart for the entire world but it was completely the opposite. She was just indifferent to the world. She was indifferent to most people. Just like Junko’s heart was too weak to bear loving any one person, she was sure she could not bring herself to feel hatred for another person without breaking a little bit either.

She loved to the point of despairful obsession, and she figured she must hate that way too.  
And Kumagawa Misogi, he irritates  her in a way that is impossible for her to remain indifferent.  
  
She hated him. She hated him so much she can already feel her heart starting to break. Disappointment, frustration, she was used to those feelings but not the rancorous way her heart disobeyed her and  wrinkled for one and only one individual. 

『Well, that’s probably a good thing because your attention causes nothing but trouble. I think I may have caught a lucky break for once!』He wiped his forehead. Phew.  
“Quit interrupting me, I’m running this show! I’m supposed to be throwing you off your game with my impossible to follow style of speaking, you’re not supposed to throw me off my game. I am game!”  
  
_Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. I love to hate you._

『Yeah. Cool. Whatever.』  
  
She slammed her hand against the desk. As if she was a judge delivering a guilty verdict right before punishment time. “Let me dumb it down to protozoan levels so you can understand, Senpai. With most people, I at least want to strap them down to a table and dissect them, feel all their gooey bits wiggle around as I put my hands inside of them, but I don’t want to feel that way for you at all.”   
  
Her childhood friend loved her without knowing who she truly was. He wanted to protect her. She wished she could feel that way. She wished she had that sentiment, but to her to love a person was to pull out the seams in their stomach, and then let all of their stuffing fall out and delight in it. 

『Ewe.』  
  
“It’s a metaphor. Don’t look at me like that I should be disgusted one here.” 

『Double ewe.』

“You’re doubling down? You refuse a direct order from her majesty? You have the audacity? The nerve? We will not stand for this!” Junko said, but then apparently she did stand for this as she tried to explain the metaphor. “It’s like you know, like disassembling a clock. With a screwdriver. And a hammer. And C4. If you want to see the inside of someone, just make their guts explode everywhere and paint them on the walls. I want to see inside them, because it’s fun proving how right I am about other people.” 

『Oh, okay. So basically you just like being right like any other internet troll.』  
  
“I can’t even be bothered to hate you though.” She could. She was. So much. It burned her up inside. She was lying, and the idea that he might catch on to the fact she was lying made her feel a twinge of apprehension. “What makes you happy, what makes you despair, what makes you do anything other than show me that insufferable smile, and especially what turns you on, I won’t care a bit about any of that when you die.”  
  
He only smiled at her in response. 

Kumagawa Misogi always smiled at her.  
His smile never reached his eyes.  
Sometimes when he was looking away from her, she day dreamed about what that smile might look like if it ever did twist up that far. He was such a dirty little thief, sneaking into her thoughts, stealing away her time like this. 

『Junko-chan, I know someone as smart as you probably understands this, but the more you deny your feelings the more real they become. Just tell me how much you hate me already, it’ll be fun.』  
  
Her nails sharpened against the table surface She dragged them, wishing she could drag them over his skin instead. “Killing you is going to be the happiest day of my life." 

 

Conversation, just like sex, or a dance required a good rhythmn. Junko was so used to being in complete control that she led the dance. But Kumagawa was so clumsy, he occasionally stepped off her foot and threw her off her rhymthn.   
  
『 When you finally kill me, just what are you going to do?』  
He asked suddenly, out of nowhere.  
He asked it the same way someone might ask ‘Describe what you’re going to do to me if I closed your eyes’ with the same flirtatious connotations, and she cannot tell how serious he is.  
  
She was breathless for a moment, and then she growled back at him. “Don’t you dare say something like you’re having too much fun and you don’t want these games to ever end.”

『 There’s just no love at all in your violence towards me. You’re so stingy. 』Kumagawa whined. She recognized it. It was the voice only lovers and murder victims slowly bleeding out had, he basically begged to be finished off. 

So, she gave him none of what he wanted. “I’m not going to do anything. You’re just a distraction. When you die, I’ll have no more use for you. That’s the way it is, got it?”

But. She was wrong. She thought he was playing around, teasing. Which is why she’s suddenly caught off guard, when his eyes water, and he practically overflows, floods, with sincerity.『You never… Once called me by my name. When you kill me, say my name just once.』  
  
Sincerity is the one thing she cannot handle.  
That’s why she feared those watery eyes of his.  
She was as wicked as a witch. If water touched her she would melt.  
That was why she never cried. 

“There’s…” She paused. She did not mean to. She can only hope he did not notice. “There’s no need for that. The time I spent with you is so boring, when you die I’ll have forgotten about you already.” 

That’s that.  
That should be the end of things.  
She keeps telling herself to end it and kill him for good. 

Kumagawa Misogi.  
A boy with a forgettable face.   
A boy she just wanted to forget.  
A boy she wanted to disappear.  
  
But she can’t stop seeing him. Of course she can’t. It’s like he was wearing horizontal stripes and plaid. He clashed. Her absolutely refused to conform to anything. He was distractingly tacky. That’s what Kumagawa Misogi does, he demands to be seen, again and again, you can’t get rid of him until- 

『 Hey, Junko-chan if you’re just like every other completely full of herself talented elite who thinks she’s above everything and finds other people just tedious, why do you spend so much time talking to a loser like me?』

Why couldn’t she quit him? Again and again she just kept coming back. “I haven’t figured out a good way to shut you up yet, that’s all.”

『Oh, I have some suggestions. You could sew my lips shut while I’m still awake. You could cut out my tongue. Bonus points if you force me to cut out my own tongue while you watch. You can pull out my teeth one by one. There’s also breaking my jaw if you’re impatient. If you want to break my upper jaw you’ll have to smash my still open mouth against a curb. If you cut the tongue fast enough, the back of the tongue will swell up and it becomes possible for me to choke to death on my own tongue. That might be ironic considering how much I wag my tongue at you-』  
  
“Ewe, don’t make me think about your tongue that much Senpai,” She says sticking her tongue out at him playfully at him showing exactly what she could do with it between her lips, tasting mixed blood and artificial cherry flavors again. Enoshima Junko, the exact definition of mixed signals. She was surprised Kumagawa could receive any of them, but that was only because he was as mixed up as she was. “How is it you’re somehow even more gruesome than I am?”

『That’s just me being my regular cute self! It’s genki!』  
  
“Stop pretending to be cute to hide how crazy balls you are.” 

『I couldn’t stop being this cute even if I tried.』

She finally figured out a way to shut him up.  
All she needed to do was smash her mouth against his, and grab him by the collar and force him down on that desk. She should have done this a long time ago.  
  
He was always smiling. He had a face that makes everything a jest, a mockery, she feels like she’s being made fun of. She wanted tragedy not comedy. She needed to find some way to wipe the smirk off his face. She thought the best way would be to press her own smile against it, until the friction caused both of their faces to melt.

She wanted him. To the point of self loathing. She could not believe she seriously regretted never using the desks for such a creative purpose when they used to hang out in classrooms together back then. Back when she thought all she wanted was for him to shut up. If she had figured out such a good method for shutting him up earlier, they might have gotten a lot closer a lot faster.  
  
She knew him. She knew he was always holding something back. That he just might be more deranged than even she was, and just never let it show. That there are depths even she cannot see or predict, because she’s never let herself sink that far before. Both her and Komaeda, they chose to hang above the water in a noose rather than fall, because falling was worse. But, he let go of everything else. He let himself sink there. That somehow, he’s even more hopeless than her. Nobody else knew him like she does.  
  
She knew and longed for it. She knew and it made her all wet. She wanted to drown in him, and quite possibly with him. These feelings, this wanting to be close, could not be called hate anymore. 

_Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, I hate that I love you so much._

One day he told her. 

『 _I want to love someone, even if it hurts them._ 』  
His painful, corrosive, acidic love nonetheless desired to be expressed, demanded to be felt.  
He never should have said that.  
Because when she heard it, she realized she felt the same way.   
Just like her.  
She was dying to be born.   
  
He said something interesting that caused him to shine in her eyes, and she was a goddamned magpie who could not resist wanting to curl her talons around shiny things.  
  
One day he told her.  
『 _Everything you say, you contradict yourself a moment later., Enoshima I’m always happy inside when I’m by your side but… how much truth do your words hold… just where is the real you? I want to see her!_ 』  
He never should have said that.  
She wanted to beg him.  
“Please, don’t take off my mask.”  
Instead, she leaned forward to try to kiss him instead. She invited him with her lips. 

『 _Junko-chan, we’ve already reached the end of the memory. That last bit was just improvisation we added on. Are you done dreaming about me? Remember what you said, when I die you’re going to forget about me already, so just forget about me and stop loving me._ 』

She dreamed about a memory of the past.  
She dreamed about him, just because she wanted to talk to him again.  
Even if it was just fake, it was fine.  
  
She finally realized the reason why. 

Kumagawa Misogi, the object of everyone’s hatred refused to be anything but a person in her eyes. Enoshima Junko, an idol to everyone else, and object of everyone’s love and one sided feelings, felt like a person when she talked to him.  
  
“I don’t want to stop dreaming. You’re the only one I want to talk to, Senpai.”

『 _Junko-chan, I know this is your delusion but how come we always have to talk about what you want to talk about? If you want to talk to someone you have to be willing to listen._ 』

“Why am I always getting lectured by a shitty senpai like you?”

『 _Even a shitty senpai is supposed to guide his shitty kouhai. I want to talk about a fatal wound. You know dying, in other words failing at life._ 』

“Uh-huh,” She just nodded along. 

『 _The key to suffering a fatal would, is that even after a profound failure, we go on. That’s the difference between me and Nagito-chan and everybody else, that’s why we’re such exquisite failures._ 』

“You’re the only person I know who gets so prideful over his failings.”

『 _The world is brutally tepid. It’s so kind that it’s cruel. It’s a devil’s heaven. To put it plainly, you don’t die by making a big mistake, or you can’t die. You just suffer. Nagito-chan’s luck won’t kill him, so he just suffers in agony._ 』  
  
“Sounds sexy, can’t wait for the part where you make it boring like you always do.” 

『 _And you go on. Forever, wherever. Meaninglessly, you just go on. And eventually you get to thinking. Am I really me, or did I become something else long ago? That’s what Nagito-chan and I… and of course you are like too._ 』

“Ehh?? What did I ever do to get stuck with you losers?” 

『 _But you were just born that way, weren’t you? We suffered fatal wounds but you were stillborn. You never should have lived past birth, and yet here you are. If you’re not supposed to be alive in the first place, then killing you doesn’t matter right?_ 』

“Nope, I guess it doesn’t.”   
  
Suddenly, the floor underneath her started to move. She looked down and saw the black and white tiles were replaced with a conveyor belt. She craned her neck back and saw that there was a large block resembling a trash compactor, that slammed down every few seconds intending to crush whatever was underneath.  
  
The desk she was sitting at slowly moved backwards. Kumagawa simply watched her move away, making no effort to reach out for her. This was goodbye then. She looked up on the board and saw _After school lesson_ written on it in chalk. This was the execution that she planned to kill Makoto, and later herself with.   
  
『 _You made yourself into an idol but that’s all you are. You don’t have a real self, you don’t have an everyday life, you depend entirely on other people to be seen._ 』

“...”

『 _I admit, you’re mostly awful and people have no obligation to like you, but doesn’t it make you a little bit lonely that until the end everybody preferred the fake version of you?_ 』  
  
“Yeah, a little bit.” 

『 _It’s not your fault. The moment you started putting on acts for people, you couldn’t stop. They all enabled you, because they too liked the version of you that could be whatever they wanted you to be. Yeah, that probably only made you more insane, more insulated… you got worse._ 』  
  
This really did feel like a lesson. A lesson she failed to learn right until the very end. For a girl so foolish that only death could cure her foolishness. A stupid, ugly, empty, girl. 

『 _It was probably going to always be this way with you. Yasuke-chan was right, you really can only cause despair. Your whole life was a conveyor belt, leading up to your death. Even if you don’t die, you’ll just lose your mind like this and no longer even be able to find your way back to reality._ 』

She thought she could just accept this kind of death. She thought he was right. Yet, Junko’s hands traveled to her face, and she felt a sudden pounding on her forehead like something was trying to split her head open and escape. She let loose an earsplitting scream. “Nooooooo! I don’t want to! I don’t want to die! Help me somebody! Help me Matsuda-kun!” 

She saw Matsuda, a knife stuck into his side. He reached for her and stumbled forward, leaking all over the floor of the laboratory. Matsuda could not help her now because she was dead.  
  
“Muku-chan! Muku-chan! Help me please!” She screamed out her childhood nickname for her sister that she swore she would never use again. She looked up and saw Mukuro reaching towards her, but once again before she could reach her, spears stabbed through every part of Mukuro. She saw her sister full of holes take one more staggering step towards her, and then collapse on the ground in front of her.  
  
“Ah, yeah, this is the end isn’t it? This is the end of someone who destroys everyone they loved.”   
  
She looked up and saw Kumagawa Misogi. “Senpai, please….” 

『 _You’re incapable of loving anybody._ 』  
  
“N-no, that’s not true. I really did love you.” 

『 _Do you even remember my name?_ 』  
  
She didn’t. 

Before she could make any excuse she saw a hand wrap around his chest. From behind him Ajimu Najimi appeared, she rested her head in the crevasse of his shoulder and pulled him away from her. Kumagawa looked away from her, turned his back on her, did not choose her.  
  
That was what she was scared of the most.  
That even if she wanted to connect to someone, that she just couldn’t.  
She was incapable.  
She can’t.  
She can’t be anything.  
  
She feared Kumagawa realized that, and went back to Ajimu instead of staying with her. Instead of trying to make things work with her, he chose something familiar and broken.  
  
He didn’t choose her.  
She wasn’t chosen.  
Nobody would choose her real self, over her charismatic fake one.  
  
Junko looked up and saw the giant crusher over her head, her desk directly underneath it. For a moment, the whole contraption creaked and hesitated. All she could do was stare up blankly at it.   
  
In those few extra seconds the malfcuntion bought her.  
She realized.  
Of course it was a completely self-aware matter. From the instant she had met him, she had chosen Kumagawa Misogi. To the point that she didn’t care about anything else. She didn’t need to be loved or even chosen.  
That’s right, she was fine with not being chosen back. Because this was what she felt. 

 _I don’t understand my feelings until I’m about to lose them, that’s the kind of hopelessly stupid person I am._  
  
“Please, don’t leave me alone. I don’t want to be alone with myself,” Enoshima Junko begged.   
  
The crusher fell.  
Kumagawa turned back and dove for her. He pushed her over. He landed on top of her. He protected her with his back. He allowed himself to be broken again to protect her. When she opened her eyes, she saw him over her, his palms flat on the ground on either side of her, and his back arched.  
  
Her head turned to the side and she saw the crusher that had failed to crush him, broken into pieces. 

『 _Why are you making such a face? Isn’t this the despair you wanted?_ 』  
  
“What I wanted…”

『 _Enoshima Junko, who longs for despair more than anyone else, feels more despair than anyone else, all this time…you just wanted to find hope._ 』 

“What the hell? Me finding hope?” 

『 _You just wanted to feel some hope for yourself, didn’t ya?_ 』

“You really are cruel.” Junko said, wrapping her arms around the back of his neck. She brought her face up to his. The distance between them sharpened her like a knife. It was a razor edge between them, that both of them were willing to risk cutting themselves on. “To be able to say that, you’re more of a monster than I am.” 

『 _We’re not monsters. Not with each other._ 』  
  
Enoshima Junko, painfully, woefully, to the point of despair, around him she was nothing more than a human being. She wore masks to cover her emotions, she pretended in front of others, she hid herself, she was always longing for something she could never quite reach. 

 

🧸

   
Enoshima Junko suddenly started awake. Her one eye peeled open. She realized her body was being moved. Her eye rolled to the side and she saw Komaeda Nagito had slung her over her shoulder, and was trying to drag her back the direction they came from rather than leaving her alone to be found by the mastermind.   
  
Komaeda Nagito, who loathed her the way he loathed himself. Why the hell was he helping her? Suddenly she remembered, the last time she was unconscious around him.  
  
He was just like that imposter. He wanted to steal away parts of her. He wanted to become more like her. He wanted to take away from her. Enoshima Junko grinded her teeth, and pushed him away. 

“D-don’t touch me bitch…” Junko said as she stumbled back from him. She saw her red eyeball in his head, she saw her necrotic hand sewn to his wrist, she saw another herself standing in front of her. 

“You really are a hopeless one, Enoshima-san. Even when people try to help you, you just don’t let them,” Komaeda said, gripping her shoulder.  
  
“Ugh, are we really going to do this again. You’re more hopeless than I am, part deux.” 

Junko looked around at the room they were in. There were monitors everywhere. Just like she thought, Komaeda’s luck had brought them somewhere plot important completely at random.   
  
“I only dragged you this far because we weren’t done with our discussion yet. If my hope is flimsy, your despair is even more flimsy. You say you’re despair is just meaningless and without reason but that’s a lie.” He grabbed her by the collar and yanked her up. “You’re looking for something in all that despair, the same way I am in hope.” 

She was looking for something, searching, trying to find a reason in what she called reasonless.  
They were both a paradox.  
That was why they rejected each other so much.  
  
“What are you going to find? You’re someone who destroys anything you touch, so what you can possibly think you’ll find?”

Junko may have fought back, if her own headache were not making it impossible to think. She had no idea what was worse, the pain of thinking too much, or her head being in so much pain she could not think.   
  
Komaeda continued, “If all you can do is destroy, if that’s truly all you’re capable of then you’re far more boring than the people you dismiss as boring. If all you’re capable of is despairing than you’ll even get bored of your own despair eventually. You’re a dead end existence. An empty girl who will find nothing.”  
  
They were both unpleasant. The blood had completely drenched the right side of her face by this point, soaking through her eyepatch. Komaeda threw her away. She crumpled on the floor. She rolled onto her side, gripping her forehead.  
  
“M-my head’s… splitting apart…”   
  
Enoshima Junko was never born. She never hatched. She curled up in the fetal position. She remained in her womb. She wriggled around in her chrysalis. Because she was never born, she was always surrounded by darkness and that was all she saw.  
  
“In that case, you’re far worse than I am. You’re the most hopeless person there is.” Komaeda said, as he picked up his foot to drop it on her head.

Kumagawa’s voice rang in her ear.  
The person she wanted to hear the most. 

『 _You never loved me, did you?_ 』  
  
_“Take that back-”_

『 _You're just obsessed. You want to be emotional like me. You just want to unravel why I’m like this, that’s all, when you solve the mystery I’ll lose all appeal._ 』  
_  
_ _“Shut up already. Saying ‘I can’t love anybody” that’s just an excuse I told myself. I used to believe I couldn’t love people, so I let myself do whatever I wanted to them. You’re the same, except you tell yourself that nobody ever can love you.”_

『 _It sounds like we’re woefully incompatible._ 』  
  
“ _I don’t care if we are. I want you anyway.”_

Junko as her head was stomped on, saw his hand appear in front of her. On his fingers, flowers were growing and wrapping in a wreath along his wrist and the side of his arms. He looked like a body that had been reclaimed by nature. Nature, death, they were trying to take him away from her.  
  
His skin peeled off. His fingers became nothing but bone. The vines wrapped around him, tugging at him and pulling him away further. His fingers grew farther and farther apart from hers. She saw a corpse bloom, as stems came up from his ribcage, and flowers bloomed from where his eyes were supposed to be.   
She just kept reaching for his hand. 

 _“How could I ever quit you. Even if all of me dies. Even if I’m branded with an unerasable mark. Even if I go crazy. Even if darkness swallows me.”  
_  
She reached for him.  
Her own fingers turned to bone but she no longer cared. Flowers grew in the gaps between her bones.  
  
_“I’m gonna love you to death. I want both heaven and hell with you.”_

That was right. The way she loved him.  
She didn’t love him so much she wanted to kill him, she loved him to death.  
Her head cracked again.  
The chrysalis cracked, and for the first time she saw light.

She started to wriggle more and more to escape.  
  
Junko threw Komaeda off of her and stood up suddenly on shaky feet. “Ugh, it totally kills me to admit this but you’re totally right. All I can do is destroy but so what…? Screw it! Just screw it all! Who cares if it's all fake, if it's all a performance! It's real to me! I put a lot of effort into my image, goddamnit!”  
  
Enoshima Junko grabbed him by the neck and slammed him back into the monitors. 

“I’m sick of everybody else telling me how I feel. I’m sick of everybody else trying to take from me. I’m just so sick of it all. Give it back, my hand, my eye, give me back the parts you took from me!”  
  
Komaeda collided with the wall of screens. The screens all cracked behind him. Junko saw her face reflected several times on the cracked screens. She wondered if the director of this sick program was enjoying her closeup (I was).  
  
She walked up to him and reached in his pocket, and pulled out the revolver he was hiding. She picked it up and cocked it, placing the muzzle against her forehead. “I’m taking it  all back. I’m taking him back… I’m not letting anyone else stand in my way. Everyone… everyone just pisses me off… Eh…?”

Enoshima Junko’s face went blank.  
The anger all faded away before she could hold onto it. 

“Who…? Who was I pissed off at? Who was this burning feeling for? Who did I lose? What was his name again…?”

Komaeda’s eyes widened in genuine shock. He who had seen a plane crash out of the sky, watched meteors fall and entire buildings topple, as well as the sky rain corpses looked at her in fear and surprise.  
  
“You… You forgot Kumagawa-kun’s name?”  
  
“Who is he again… uh… who am I?”  
  
A stupid forgetful girl.  
Komaeda closed his eyes. “No, stop it. I don’t want to feel pity for you.” That was right, she forgot things just like he did. He was there when she ran around as Ryoko-chan too. “Just.. Just kill me you monster.”   
  
As he said that, the cracked monitors behind him one by one lost their picture and faded away to static. All the screens went black. All there was was Komaeda, and herself, and a revolver pointed at his temple.

Junko dropped the gun on the floor. “No… even if I don’t know who I am, I know I’m not that person anymore.” 

In order to be born a world must be destroyed.  
Ensohima Junko took that far too literally.  
She just wanted to be born.  
Her chrysalis cracked open.  
For the first time, she was able to stretch out her wings and feel the light.   
  
Junko collapsed, her legs falling out from under her. She no longer had any idea what to do. Komaeda, through the his narrowing eyes saw a figure come up from behind her. He was completely covered in shadows. 

『I was going to stop you two if you got too rowdy with your play fighting but it looks like you worked it out yourself.』

Kumagawa Misogi smiled.  
He wrapped his arms around Enoshima Junko from behind and tilted her head back towards him. As he leaned up and over her, upside down he planted a kiss on the eyepatch she was missing. 

『Hey, hey, Junko you already knew all along didn’t you? Your true self is just whoever you want it to be. There’s no need to overthink things.』  
  
“...eh? Komaeda-senpai did you hear that?”  
  
“I was about to ask if you heard it too.”  
  
“Ugh, are our brains really that much on the same wavelength that we’re hallucinating the same thing? I think there’s such a thing as too much character foiling.”  
  
“I agree with you for once.” Komaeda muttered quietly. 

『 I finally woke up from my nap and you two are just going to pretend I’m not here? You both really are the worst.』  
  
Kumagawa sighed. He just stood there, covered in blood, but looking more alive than either of them.   
Junko thought she must have drifted asleep again, because in the next moment she felt the sensation of being picked up and carried in someone’s arms like a princess. If she was dreaming about Kumagawa holding her she wanted to keep sleeping like that, but an annoying alarm clock woke her up.  
  
**A body has been discovered, a body has been discovered!**  



	46. I Want to Connect, So I'm Not Giving Up

 

『 _ It’s not as though I’m unaware I have rotten luck. What a terrible life. _ 』   
  


🧸

 

『Watching the innocent suffer, that’s most people’s definition of tragedy right?』

『There’s a reason for that, it’s because most normal people when they see a person who's never done any wrong become a victim people think automatically  _ they should have been saved. _ 』

『At least I think that’s what they think. I’m far too much of an idiot to claim that I can understand other people, and I’m not so spoiled by happiness that I can sit around philosophizing. Brats like me who have to take care of themselves, well it’s natural we only think of ourselves.』

『Still I think it’s this way. The good and virtuous people are the ones who get saved. When they don’t it’s a tragedy.』

『If I understood anything about literature, I might say something pretentious like  _ this is how much our modern sensibility of tragedies have changed from classical ways of thinking.  _ 』

『Modern tragedy. Urban tragedy. A story that could take place in any city anywhere.』

『A good child on the streets slowly starves to death, not a single person saves their way.』   
『Everybody in the audience thinks  _ they should have been saved. _ 』   
『Then what about a bad child like me? If the good and virtuous ones are the ones who get saved in the end, then why am I even still alive? 』

 

If good people dying was tragedy, then bad people living must have been comedy.   
That was what he thought.    
That disturbingly unchildlike thought clung to his brain like a cancerous tumor.    
When he came to that conclusion all he could do was laugh, his laughter more like the wheeze of tuberculosis ridden lungs, a noise that exclusively belonged to the sickly and dying. 

 

The child stood up in the middle of the night. His whole body seemed to glow, but that was just a result of the stark white robe and hair, he was colorless against a pitch black background. For a boy living in a shrine, wearing a robe was pretty normal.    
Normal, except for the fact that it was the middle of winter.    
His sleeveless white robe felt cold just to look at, he seemed ready to melt into the snow, ephemeral, vanishing. He was barefoot despite the snow. 

 

One expected his eyes to be dark with hunger and exhaustion, or to light up in fear of a stranger. However, the boy in front of Deishuu Kaiki did not even react. The light in his eyes completely faded. His gaze entirely missed the reality in front of him.    
  


_ Poor thing.  _ Kaiki was sure anybody who had ever seen that child they would have thought that, but that pity did not necessarily move them to do anything. After all, he knew that most people were lazy. They would ignore the child, not because they were bad people or wished to hurt someone, but because it was too much of a hassle to do otherwise. Boredom did not kill people, apathy did. A completely broken child like this, anyone trying to piece back together whatever remained in front of him was sure to cut their own hands several times on the pieces. Kaiki wondered if simply letting the child starve to death, rather than giving them money for food and prolonging their misery was the right option. 

 

The boy however, did in fact know that there was a shadow in front of him. At the moment though, nothing went through his mind but echoes of despair. He had been sleeping in this shrine for at least, but his mind was fragmented and he barely could comprehend the reason why he was here, let alone why a shadow had walked through the snow to meet him. 

 

『 _ Abandoned. _ 』   
『 _ I’ve been abandoned. By something. _ 』   
『 _ I’ ve been abandoned. By me. _ 』   
『 _ I abandoned. I abandoned everything. _ 』   
『 _ That was why you were abandoned. _ 』

  
The world was entirely cold to him. Even if it was not winter he would still feel cold, the world was made of ice. The world was composed only of jagged edges. If he reached out, he would only cut himself. 

 

“--- ------ ---- ---”    
  
The man tried to speak to him, but the words never reached his ears. Before his brain could process them as words, he abandoned them as just noise, white and senseless as the snow which covered them and blotted out all light. 

 

『If he’s not really a demon then why does everyone avoid him like he’s one?』The white haired boy asked, it was like breaking his head above the surface of muddied water. 

 

“It must have something to do with your unsettling appearance. You look terrifying,” that lying man responded, far too quick and honest.    
  


『Unsettling? Terrifying? He - I… I thought I was cute.』

 

“Nothing evokes pity in the human heart more than a cute child suffering. If you were really cute, like a mewling kitten on the side of the road somebody good would have come for you, but the only one who found you was a wicked man like me.” 

 

Kumagawa existed in fragments. He had been broken into pieces, and then shoddily pieced together too many times than he could count. He had no formative memories to string together one continuous whole self. He never even had anybody to talk to. His reality,w as entirely dictated by what those faceless adults had decided for him. He was worse than a man staring at the shadows on the inside of a cave, he was the flickering shadows, flat, two dimensional, shallow, and never in one shape for long threatening to fade away at any moment. 

 

『Th-then what about me?』   
  
“You’ve probably been abandoned,” that man said flatly with no nonsense.    
  
The pieces that made up his broken mind, they trembled and swayed together becoming a great wave that violently shook his heart. He tried to remember something, anything, of the memories that made up Kumagawa Misogi.    
  
He recalled suddenly, they had feared him. Rather than a child, he was a doll whose heart had fallen out. “He must not feel pain.” They whispered. Whether he was sleeping on the ground, whether they starved him, whether he was beaten by an adult until he could no longer stand, not a single trace of genuine emotion ever crossed his face. All he ever did was smile. He never once cried, complained, or begged for it to stop. 

 

Seeing him react that way only confirmed what the adults around him suspected. “That child really must have been born a demon.”    
  
Kumagawa smiled for a simple reason though.    
He was like a pool of water reflecting back whatever it was shown.   
When people hit him, they tended to smile.    
He had no idea that people were supposed to cry when they were upset, or smile when they were happy, he just moved his face to copy the expressions they showed him. 

 

It was only when they were gone that he finally could begin to form his own thoughts, behind that mask of a smile he always wore. The first fledgling thoughts of that ego, was the realization that he had been abandoned. That there was nobody around him. He did not realize it until that moment when another man showed up in front of him. 

 

_ Don’t. _

『 _ You have been abandoned by everything. It is all over now. Over now. Goodbye. _ 』 _  
_ _ Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.  _ _  
_ 『 _ Goodbye. Goodbye. You can’t become anything. You can’t even become garbage. _ 』 _  
_ _ Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. _

 

His emotions.    
Kumagawa’s numbed emotions came rushing back to him like a flash flood. He was a child caught all alone in a storm. 『-----------------------------------------------』an indescribable scream filled the air with his grief. The boy who had not been able to scream out in pain even once in his life before this, voiced all of those silent screams in that moment. 

 

And when his endless scream finally ceased.   
Something very simple happened to Kumagawa Misogi.    
He despaired at the world.    
  
Yet all of those emotions meant nothing to the man in front of him. Kumagawa was sure they did not mean a thing to anybody, not a single person in this world cared to hear his scream. “Are you quite done? I’m sure throwing a tantrum like that must have felt good, but I’m not old enough to go deaf yet.” 

 

『You’re not going to save me, gramps?』   
  
“I’m not. Good people are the ones who get saved. Law abiding citizens get sheltered and kept safe.” 

  
Kumagawa had to force the words out of his dry, trembling throat.『Then, why am I still alive?』

 

If he had been less stupid of a child, he might have noticed the clear contradiction in Kaiki’s words. He claimed law abiding citizens were kept safe, and good people were saved, then what about the conman and a crook standing in front of him whose heart was not moved by the sight of a crying child, who probably did not have a heart in the first place. 

  
Deishuu Kaiki smiled.    
For the first time in his life, someone showed Kumagawa a genuine smile, even if it was a liar’s smile.    
  
“Bad people are the ones who live.”

  
If his fear of being abandoned was his first ever emotion behind his empty smile, then this was the second. However, it was incomparable to his previous feelings. Hatred, and outrage, and the desire to take back what he had lost. If put together, perhaps the three emotions would amount to a sort of love for the man in front of him. But his emotions flooded back into his fragile and newborn heart only twisted it further.    
  
The boy was as delicate as a spider web, Kaiki observed.

But he was not a poor innocent butterfly caught in the web begging to be freed.   
He was a spider sitting on the strings. 

 

Kumagawa had no idea what the concept of beauty was, and would not be able to recognize it even if he saw it, but looking back he would come to realize the way most people are compelled by beautiful, Kumagawa felt his heart captured by the ugliness of the man’s words. 

 

It was the first time anyone had told him he could live. “They live by…” But the rest of the man’s words were distorted. There was still a lot of details about that scene Kumagawa did not remember correctly. Why there was fresh blood in the snow, and what he was doing at that temple in the first place. Kumagawa was sure he knew in his heart that man finished that sentence.  _ They live by hurting others. _

🧸

 

“You can’t save anyone and you can’t be saved. You really are the living definition of a ‘good for nothing’ Kumagawa-kun,” A feminine voice lightly teased him. 

 

It was the voice of the person he wanted to see again the most. Ajimu Najimi, she appeared before him dressed in white robes, hair in colorless strands that split apart at the ends, her feet did not touch the ground rather she floated in front of him like a ghost. 

 

He looked to the side and saw his own dead body on the ground. He was sitting up beside it. There were other people standing around his body but he could not reach them, the scene was so far away it might as well have been hanging like a portrait on the wall.    
  


『Why didn’t I wake up in the classroom?』   
  
Ajimu gave him no answer. Rather, she giggled at him. As if to say  _ you came all this way to see me, and the first thing you do is ask me such a stupid question?  _ Kumagawa did not mind too much, the same way he wanted to be teased by her again, he also wanted to be laughed at by her.   
  
He wanted to be scorned by her. He wanted to feel Ajimu’s touch as she slapped his face. He wanted to feel the delicate caress of her soft fingers as they wrapped around her neck. 

 

『I get it. Dumb question. I can’t go back to that classroom, because my heart can’t return there anymore. But I’m just so tired...』   
  
“If you’re having trouble sleeping then I’ll help relax you. Just like when we were younger, I always let you sleep in my lap didn’t I?” Ajimu suddenly disappeared. She reappeared breathing down his shoulder, her pale fingers reached out and wrapped around his. For a moment Kumagawa was afraid to touch her, afraid his hands would pass straight through hers. “Let’s go together, to the place where there’s no more sleeping, no more waking, and no more dreaming.” 

 

『...』

 

“Why are you hesitating?” 

 

『...』

 

“You have to know, right from the start your ideas were flawed. You thought it was okay for even a villain like you to live, to try to save someone. You thought you could prove you had the right to live, but that’s just it.”

 

『I can’t save anybody.』   
  
“That’s right, your presence in people’s lives only makes things worse for yourself and them. It’s like a two way parasitic relationship, you only use and get used by others.” 

 

『My connections...』   
  
“They strangled you to death.” She walked over the corpse on the ground - his corpse, and kicked its head. He saw his own neck twist like a screw and then break off as his head rolled away. “You wasted your whole life dying to gain the approval of others, and now you’re dead. This is the end result of someone who considers their own life so expendable.” 

 

『I’m worthless.』   
  
“You always knew you were trash so why are you acting so upset at getting thrown away? Gosh, you’re so full of contradictions. Hey. You’re not alone. Even if they all abandon you I’ll still here, so come with me Kumagawa-kun, let’s disappear together. To the place you’ll never be abandoned again.”    
  
He remembered his dying thoughts. How he wished the sky would fall of him. 『Yeah, I must have wanted that...』His attraction to Ajimu Najimi. He must have wanted this from the start, from the very first moment he met her. Seeing that she was an ephemeral being who could disappear the moment you blinked your eyes, Kumagawa must have wanted to disappear too.    
  
And foolishly, he thought all this time that he wanted to live.    
He looked at his own twisted and broken up corpse. He died so easily, one bonk to the head was all it took. If he wanted to live, then why did he jump at his own death with no hesitation at all? 

 

Just as Enohima Junko and Ikusaba Mukuro found his body. Just as the two people who had found him and became his family after he was never good enough to become Ajimu Najimi’s younger brother walked into the room, Kumagawa turned his back on them. He walked out of the room, more than a child who had grabbed Ajimu Najimi’s hand. The same way he used to hold her hand and walked by her side in the past.    
  
Kumagawa Misogi sunk into the water.   
He fell, and fell, and fell into deeper water.   
He drowned without even attempting to swim to the surface.   
He opened his mouth and let the pitch black water fill his lungs.    
He saw rays of light breaking through the rippling surface of the water, but did not reach for them. 

『 _ Don’t leave me. _ 』   
“I won’t ever leave you again.” 

『 _ I don’t. I don’t. I don’t. _ 』   
“That’s why we need to disappear. If you keep on living those feelings will eventually fade. Everything, even the scars I gave you, even you yourself will eventually fade. ”    
『 _ So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. _ 』

“So - let’s just say goodbye now.” 

 

She was infectious. Her fatalism, it infected him. 

 

Kumagawa’s only connection his fingers gingerly locked with that of a ghost. She pulled him further and further down. She was like a block of cinder wrapped around his legs. She only caused him to sink with her, but if he let go he truly would have nothing. 

 

🧸   
  
Kumagawa Misogi reached the bottom.    
Then he fell through.   
When he looked up he saw he had shattered the surface of the water like glass, and fallen through like a broken window. He had fallen through the mirror, to the other side of the looking glass.    
Inside, he saw a memory from the past.    
  
He stood up on his own. 『Where am I?』

 

“You’re such a rude boy, Kumagawa-kun. You have to say goodbye to all of your friends if you’re going to abandon them.” 

 

『I may be petty, nasty, selfish, boorish, vulgar, violent, petty, proud, arrogant, ready to screw people over, awful, petty, and always obsessed with the past but I don’t want to be rude.』   
  
“...You said petty three times.” Ajimu let go of his fingers and then clapped her hands. Stage lights came on above them. The glare from the sudden light was far too much for him. “You’re so self centered Kumagawa-kun, you can’t disappear if the others remember you. So, just undo it.” 

 

『I’m not just dying… I’m undoing the fact that I ever met them? So… to them it would be like I never existed?』

 

“It should be easy for you. You only ever caused misfortune in their lives.” Ajimu Najimi reached forward and took his hand again, placing a screw in his hand. “It’s not like you were an important player on this stage in the first place.” 

As she snapped, the curtains pulled open on a memory. Several more lights turned on, and Kumagawa crossed his arms in front of his face because they were too bright for him. 

 

The Kumagawa from the past raced by him. He was desperately running, even though he had nothing to live for, and there was nothing he could do for a single person he still ran. There was a girl bundled up in his arms, she had red hair, and a stupid expression on her face as she was sleeping. He dressed himself in a reserve course uniform.    
  
He looked so desperate, like his feet could give out underneath him at any moment. His whole body seemed to be in pain. He forced himself to grin as he ran, as if he pushed himself hard enough, kept putting one foot in front of the other that he could outrun the pain too. His entire body was made of nuts and bolts. Every last joint, every last blood vessel, and every last nerve was rusted and creaking, he was damaged goods broken pushed past the limit He was stripping the gears, he was sure he would never be able to function again after this. 

 

And yet he did not cry out. He smiled like he could care less about whether he lived or died and masked his own pain, because far more important than himself was the girl in his arms. She was asleep and oblivious to everything, and she could not do a single thing for herself. She was above everything. She was detached from everything. She was just like a princess. 

 

Just then Kumagawa’s luck ran out as it always did. A bullet fired from his pursuer hit him in the leg, causing him to tumble forward. The girl spilled out of his hands and rolled away. He saw his own shin explode and tried to figure out how feasible it was limping the rest of the way like a dog.    
  
Slowly his head turned around and he saw his pursuer approach him in a slow confident walk. He had been running away so desperately, but she never broke that slow stride.    
  
Why?   
Because she was perfectly confident that she would catch him.   
His struggles to get away from her were completely meaningless from the start in her eyes.    
The moment he had bled in front of her it was all over. She would pursue him to the ends of the earth by the scent of his blood alone. The hound dog. The wolf. The bitch. Ikusaba Mukuro. 

 

『Damn it. This is ridiculous. I can’t kill this person. I can’t kill someone whose just been mind controlled into thinking they’re Enoshima-san. What the hell is the point of this, did you write this dumb twist for the sole purpose of mentally tearing me down? Did you want me to choose?』   
  
The person who cried on his chest as he held her. The innocent girl he wanted to save who had nothing to do with all of this was Otonashi Ryoko. She was also Enoshima Junko. She was at the same time the villain and victim of this play. 

 

  
Kumagawa Misogi still wanted to save her. Even if she forgot about them, even if she forgot about him, she had held onto him and cried, her feelings were entirely real in that moment. He chose to believe they were real no matter what amount of manipulation he had been through.    
  
Except to save Enoshima Junko, he also had to stop the person who was dressing herself up as Enoshima Junko and executing her plans in the place of the big boobed amnesiac. It was like having to choose, which one was real, which one was fake. Who was villain. Who was victim. Even someone smart like Matsuda had gotten caught up in the strings of this conspiracy. They were pulling him from every angle and threatening to pull him apart. Kumagawa was not smart at all, just a hopeless idiot.    
  
“You think this has anything to do with you? You’re a self absorbed one aren’t you? My sister doesn’t expect you to break, or to save anything. You’re not even a typo on the script, you’re a smudge.” 

 

Nobody expected anything from him.    
He already knew that.    
The words themselves sounded like taunts, but the way Mukuro delivered them was completely emotionless, as if she was merely commenting on an objective fact. She looked liked someone who looked straight at reality and accepted all of it without being moved by any of it.   
An unmoving reality.    
She was more like a physical force of nature.   
A storm descending on him.    
  
“Don’t tell me you were seriously thinking you had to choose between protecting me and her? Do you think I’m some innocent victim who got manipulated by my sister?”

 

『Sh-she’s your sister?』   
  
“You don’t have a choice. You don’t have to do that. Nobody asked you to do anything. Just die already,” Mukuro realizing it was useless to dress up as Junko at the moment in front of somebody who already knew the endgame twist the two of them were planning she grabbed the wing on her head and tossed it to the side so it would not get in the way.    
  
Kumagawa realized in that moment. Nobody was manipulating her. She was not being controlled or anything like that. Of her own free will, she heartlessly carried out her sister’s orders. She killed everybody. She killed herself. Her own emotions. She painted over her face and disappeared behind her sister’s face, wearing it like a mask. Kumagawa recalled the way Madarai’s body had been twisted and broken beyond all recognition when Mukuro was done with him, like she had ripped him inside out. He felt nauseous, like he wanted to vomit up his own heart and lungs. Because he knew soon, he too would end up just like that. 

 

Two bullets fired and Kumagawa threw himself to the left. He forced his broken leg to move anyway, and ran, or maybe just dragged himself low to the ground like a pouncing wild animal would and rushed towards her. In the air he twisted his body around and hit her with the same broken leg, his leg bent in a strange way causing it to stretch more than she anticipated clocking her in the side of the face.    
  
Mukuro’s face bruised, but her face did not show any pain at all. A death mask would have more expression than she did. She did not even take a single step back. “If you want to stop me, you’ll have to go all-out like you mean to kill me. But you can’t do that, can you? If you do that, all your efforts to protect other people up until now will go down the drain.”   
  


『Don’t...』   
  
“There really is nothing you can do. That’s why you never should have gotten involved in the first place. Just do nothing while I beat you black and blue, please.” It was a polite, almost earnest regret. The word’s sounded like they were taunts but Kumagawa could sense no malice behind them. It was like she was begging for him to give up. Don’t make this worse than it is. Don’t make me hurt you more than I already have to. 

 

『Don’t talk about yourself like you’re just some pawn to be used and thrown away by your sister! If she’s really your sister, don’t act like she wants you to get killed by someone who doesn’t matter like me just to inflict a little bit of despair.』   
  
“That’s exactly what she wants-” Mukuro said, cutting him off. “If I got killed by a nobody like you, I’m sure she’d feel lots of despair. I know that because I’m her sister.”

 

『W-what the hell? She can’t care about you if she’s using you like that-』   
  
“It’s because she cares about me, that she’s finding use for me like that. Because I care about her too, I want to be used by her.” 

 

『Don’t say something so painful!』

 

“Pain…?” She said, repeating that word with an expression that says  _ what’s that?  _ “It doesn’t hurt at all…”

 

Kumagawa brought his hand up to strike her across the face. He forgot about protecting Ryoko for now. He wanted her to shut up. He wanted her to stop talking about how she wanted to be used by her sister. He wanted to stop hearing the words of someone so desperate to be of use to even just one person.    
  
Before he could connect, he heard a soft voice that sounded exactly like Ryoko’s. It was just an imitation, she probably practiced it in front of the mirror. “Please help me, I’m so scared…” 

『...!』Kumagawa grabbed his own head as he felt a jolt of anxiety be triggered by those words. She was still dressed like Junko, she even looked like Junko, the girl who Ryoko really was. Saving Ryoko might mean killing the girl in front of her, he froze, feeling several spikes of ice growing in the space between his spinal column.    
  
Mukuro drew out a knife deciding to put her gun away. He found the blade embedded right in his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I have to toy with you a little more so my sister can get enjoyment over this. Run away some more.”

 

She reached under her skirt and drew throwing knives. As she held them between her fingers expertly, she tossed them with a flick of her wrists. Kumagawa could only just barely wrench himself out of the way. 

 

“All you are is a violent dog, just like me. You can’t protect a single person. All you can do is sink your fangs into someone, or get put down.”    
  
Several more knives scraped his skin, and then she was in front of him. She grabbed the knife from his shoulder and ripped it out, it hurts twice as much as when it had been embedded in him tearing apart his skin. She put it back in his stomach and twisted, finishing him off with a kick that sent him flying backwards.    
  
Kumagawa stood up once more, even though he had no idea why. “Ryoko-chan is the first person who never hated me, is that what you think? It’s not like she chose not to hate you. She just can’t. Because she’s not a real person. She’s not capable of feeling anything for herself, she’s just my sister’s happy dream.” Mukuro raised her boot and stomped his face again and again. As she spoke of her sister’s happiness, Kumagawa could not help but notice how lonely her voice sounded. “If she were her own person. She would come to hate you, just like everybody else.”

  
『The pain she felt at the time, it was real to me...』   
  
“That’s just it isn’t it? You want someone to be useful too. So you’re just pretending she needs you, you’re pretending she’s real-” 

  
Suddenly Kumagawa’s body came back to life and he hit her hard with an uppercut. As he stood up once more he coughed blood. From his mouth, screws came pouring out. They were all his broken pieces, he was coughing them up. His broken nuts and bolts, his screws that had come loose, he heard the sound of metal falling and raining down all around him. He kept moving not caring how broken his body was. 『So, that’s the game we’re playing. We’re not going to get out of this situation without somebody dying are we…? What a high risk scenario.』

  
  


Kumagawa ran forward, grabbing the knife out of his stomach. When Mukuro aimed a low kick at him, Kumagawa disappeared and reapperaed behind her. He moved faster than even an Ultimate Solider was able to move, him, a talentless nobody. 『I’m giving this back, tag, you’re it. 』   
  
The knife embedded itself deep in her shoulder.    
Mukuro had never taken so much as a wound in battle before. She grabbed the gun from its holster again and whipped her whole body around, holding it in front of his face. Kumagawa merely grabbed her wrist and with tremendous strength bent it backwards until it broke. She could no longer feel her fingers or move them enough to pull the trigger. He let go of her and she fell backwards like a discarded doll.    
  
He hit her in the face. 『This is the end. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You’ll die, and your sister will finally be able to love you after you die. And I’ll break. And you’ll break. And it’ll all be broken.』He hit her again and again. He smashed the image in front of him into pieces. He did not let up at all. 

 

『Well enough, I don’t want to put up with it anymore… it’s all just such rotten luck. If you didn’t want to die right here, you should have been asked to be born with a different siter. It’s not my fault...』

 

“Help…” 

 

Kumagawa’s fist froze.    
  
“Help me… Junko. Please… stop hitting me, s-sis. I don’t want to fight anymore.”

  
『 _ Help me… Ajimu-san. Please… stop hitting me, s-sister. I don’t want to fight anymore. _ 』

 

Kumagawa remembered in the past a foolish begging child. Mukuro was not okay with this at all, she was simply pretending she was. He stumbled backwars away from her. Even though she was just a broken body on the ground he looked at her like he was terrified. His iris and pupil both narrowed into fine points, and trembled rolling around his eye as he tried to see anything else.

  
Suddenly he saw it, a pure white field of snow, broken bodies surrounding him. A fragmented memory from the past. A field of red flowers in the snow. A field of death. All caused by him.    
  
Kumagawa started to spin around as he backed away. Atrociously, uproariously, madly, without a care in the world, he laughed. He laughed and floated like he was breathing in helium, lighter than air. Nothing seemed to matter to him anymore as he kept laughing. As he did, the red blood pooled around Mukuro’s head got worse and worse.    
  
“Who’s fault is this…?” Mukuro muttered under her breath. “It’s not… Junko-chan’s… it’s yours…” 

  
Kumagawa toppled over in his laughter, and vommitted up blood mid chuckled. His whole body wrenched and he bent over. His laughter shook him to the core, caused his lungs to rattle and scrape against his ribcage, cut himself against the delicate frame of his body, and caused him to bleed more. In between his blood coughs he tried to keep laughing, but slowly his voice died at the back of his throat. 

 

His breathing slowed down and he looked between the two sisters on the ground, hopelessly broken just like he was. Saving one meant killing the other. Either way, he could never protect a person like he wanted to.    
  
He felt silent. 

 

『Screw that! Screw it! Screw it! Screw it all! You’re saying that it was all fixed from the start? This is all a part of that bitch’s script, right? Either I kill you and save her, or I kill her and save you, and either way she gets what she wants! Written, Directed by Enoshima-san! I’m not even a character I’m just an extra whose gotta shut up and do what he’s told, right?』

 

No, he did not go silent. He screamed at the top of his lungs. He screamed because he was sick of it all. He screamed in defiance of it all. He had nothing else inside of him, but this childish hatred. He just resented everything. He just hated everything.    
  


『No matter how hard I struggle, somebody has to die, and my mind has to go to pieces, while Junko-chan can enjoy her little stageplay and laughs like the smug little bitch she is! This whole scenario was put together by you! So, I’m gonna turn it all upside down! If you can’t feel despair unless your sister dies, then  I will personally save her! Just you watch, you filthy bitch! I’m gonna break all your teeth and obliterate that smug expression of yours starting right now!』

  
Kuamgawa slowly wrapped his arms around her, and as he embraced her let Mukuro’s head rest on his shoulder. Mukuro’s eyes were so distant she did not look like she could see what was right in front of her. He did not care if she heard or not, or even if she forgot about him. 

 

『You punk-ass, scum-sucking, bitch! Rotten-to-the-core bitch who looks down on me, thinking all I can do is kill and cause misfortune. I’m gonna show you right now, that I have what it takes to protect something, too! I don’t care what happens, from now on, even if she kills me I’m never going to let you kill Mukuro-chan! I’ll never let anything hurt her again! Not even me!』

 

  
The actors froze on stage. The present Kumagawa collapsed to his knees. “But you did let her get hurt, didn’t you?” Ajimu clasped a clawed hand around his shoulder, and whispered into his ear. He felt venom dripping from her tongue. It burned as it fell on his skin. 

 

『N-no, I protected her.』’

 

“No you didn’t. You knew Mukuro-chan would be happier without her miserable abusive sister, but you chose to keep them both around each other-” 

 

『That’s what Mukuro-chan wanted! She loves Junko!』

 

“She’s a victim of Junko-chan’s love. The same way you were a victim of my love. You knew that, but you didn’t do anything, not really. You knew if you made a half-assed effort, and made it look like you were protecting her, that every time her sister hurt her she would run to you.” 

 

『Shut up...』

 

“But you needed her to keep getting hurt didn’t you? You needed her to remain broken. Only people just as broken as you, would ever think of relying on you. That’s why, even though you knew better you never tried to remove her from that unhealthy environment.” 

  
『I wanted them both to get along! I wanted, Junko, Mukuro-chan and I all three of us to get along as a family.』

  
“You wanted to play house. If you really loved her, you would have let Mukuro-chan be happy with Naegi-kun. It would have been so much better if he never met a person like you…” 

 

『Ah… yeah, I see. That declaration to protect her, making a scene like that, I was probably just trying to look cool wasn’t I?』   
  
He remembered Matsuda’s words. How much it hurt both of them, Mukuro and Matsuda that Junko tried to become a better person for Kumagawa, that he was enough for her and they weren’t.

 

『I’m always getting ahead of myself and showing off. Haha, it must be really embarrassing to watch.』Kumagawa walked over onto the stage, and grabbed Mukuro dragging him out of the arms of his past self. He raised a screw above his head and drove it right between her eyes, destroying her face. 『It’s so embarrassing, I wished it had never happened in the first place.』

 

🧸

 

“Do you understand what the difference between you and Komaeda-kun is?” 

 

『Umm… he’s into dudes?』   
  
“You’ve both accepted that it’s an inevitability you will hurt everyone around you. He cuts others off, and hurts himself in the process. But, you hurt others on purpose.” 

 

『I just wanted to get close to somebody...』

 

  
“You want them to like you.” Kumagawa held onto his own body, covered with cuts. Wounds that he inflicted on himself, wounds that other people inflicted on him. “It’s different, more egotistical wanting to be liked. You’ll accept anything, you’ll let them do anything to you, it’s like you’re begging to be liked.” 

 

『Shut up...』   
  
“You know, most people at least have the decency to try to prove that they’re a good person even after all of that abuse. They try to be righteous. They try not to harm or trouble others. But, you’re the opposite aren’t you? You want everyone to like you for being a bad person. You want them to enable you, to validate you, to spoil you, to coddle you…” 

 

『You think I want to live this way! You think I’m choosing these things! You think I wanted to become someone so pathetic? Bad people are the ones who live… I had to...』

  
“If only you were just trying to survive. If you weren’t so wrapped up in yourself, you wouldn’t have gotten it all twisted…”    
  


The curtains fell down on top of him, obscuring his crumpled up and broken form. Another scene from the past. Another Kumagawa Misogi took the stage. 

 

『Junko-chan I’m going to kill you now...』He said on the other end of the phone, and then hung up.    
  
“Ah, is that so…” Junko muttered into the receiver. She had no idea what that was about, but she felt it was familiar nonetheless. Her memories were trying to grasp at straws, or rather they were grasping as screws.    
  
Then he suddenly appeared in front of her. All sixteen Ultimate Despairs were behind her, screwed to the wall. It was like the god of death had appeared, just for her. The despair of death she had longed for her entire life.

  
As he wrapped his hands around her neck, Enoshima Junko smiled. 

 

『 _ Ryoko-chan. _ 』   
『 _ Ryoko-chan. Ryoko-chan. Ryoko-chan. Ryoko-chan. Ryoko-chan. _ 』   
  
His cheeks felt wet.    
Even though she was already gone, even though she had never existed in the first place he was wrapping his hands around Ryoko-chan’s next, the girl he promised to protect. The girl who had nothing to do with any of this. 

 

『 _ Ryoko-chan. _ 』

  
He was afraid just like her, that he would forget her name if he stopped repeating it. He repeated it over and over again, muttering it under his breath as he strangled the body in front of him.    
  
『 _ Ryoko-chan. A girl I promised to protect. Yasuke-chan. My first friend. _ 』

 

『If only you didn’t exist. Both of them would be happy right now.』   
  
“Haha, we agree on that. We agree on so much. Do you wanna be besties?” Junko muttered as drool trailed from the corner of her lips. She did not resist at all, as if she wanted this to happen.    
  
『 _ I can make it that way. I can make it so Enoshima-san never existed. I can make it so all of her memories never happened. If I do it maybe I can see her again. Ryoko-chan. My friend. The girl I couldn’t do a single thing for. _ 』   
  
Outside, it was raining bodies.   
Students flung themselves off the school.   
Before they could ever even hit the ground they disappeared.    
In their place where they would have fallen a chalk outline was drawn, as a screw turned itself in the ground. Kumagawa felt like it was raining inside too. Why were his cheeks so wet?    
  
He would undo all of this. He would make it so all the bad things never happened with All Fiction. Then Yasuke and Ryoko he would have them both back, the first friends he ever made after transfering to a school, the first people to accept him, all three of them would get to hang out like normal friends together. They made plans to go get ice cream together when this was all over. 

 

『You’re just in the way… You’re in the way of everyone’s happiness.』   
  
“Story of my life… Literally, someone right a novel with a popular main character like me it’ll be a best seller.” 

  
Kumagawa realized she was just baiting him into killing her. It was just like Mukuro. He didn’t care. 『 _ Ryoko-chan. Ryoko-chan who accepted me. Ryoko-chan who cried and held onto me. Even though I’m unreliable Ryoko-chan who believed in me. _ 』He repeated it over and over again. 

 

“Hey, you’re basically skipping to the final round and slaying the ultimate boss as a level one character, this is like the best thing possible for a loser like you so why are you crying…?” Enoshima Junko finally asked him, and then hesitated for a moment as his tears fell onto her face. “Huh… you weirdo.” 

 

『 _ Why won’t she just die already? You’re wasting my time! I have to save that girl, Ryoko-chan! If only you hadn’t been born. If only it was Ryoko-chan then everything would be okay! There’s no time, I’m on the verge of forgetting. Ryoko-chan. Even if it’s painful I don’t want to forget, I don’t want the fact that I met her to become undone. _ 』

 

『Everything should go back to the way it was! We were all happy like that? Weren’t we?』

  
“Dunno.”   
  
She was so calm that it annoyed him even more. Yet, he could not even strangle her properly. His hands were shaken too much. Even though she was the one being hurt, he was far more broken up by it. 『 _ All three of us are going to be together. We’ll have lots of fun. I just know we will, right Ryoko-chan? _ 』

 

He wouldn’t forget.   
He wanted to remember.   
He didn’t want the fact that they had met to be forgotten. He was special. He had a special power. It had only been a curse up until this point but now he could perform a miracle. He was going to bring it all back. He would fix things the way they should be. A world where Ryoko-chan and Yasuke-chan’s love story came true.    
  
But no matter how many times he tried to undo, nothing at all changed about the reality in front of him. Kumagawa realized why. It’s because he had nothing to do with any of this. Whether he had become involved with them or not, Ryoko and Matsuda’s fate would not change.    
  
He had interfered and made the whole thing about him. He decided on his own they were a trio of friends. It was never about him, it was just Ryoko and Matsuda’s tragedy. He was Rosencrantz and Gildenstern and yet he thought he was Hamlet.    
  


“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you might just be crazier than I am.” 

 

Junko seemed amused at that.   
He was happy.

She could die with a smile on her face.    
Now that he thought about it, he did not need friends, he did not need happy high school memories. 

 

『 _ What was that dumb girl’s name again? This is for that girl’s sake… yeah whoever she was. _ 』Kumagawa squeezed tighter this time with the intent to break her neck. 『I don’t care anymore, just die already.』

  
Before he could finish, Mukuro summoned the last of her strength and grabbed onto his ankle. Kumagawa MIsogi hesitated, looking at the girl he promised never to hurt again.    
  


The present Kumagawa turned to face Ajimu. 『See, I decided to save Junko because Mukuro-chan asked me to. Even though it gave me nothing but trouble from that point forward, I did it for her sake.』

 

“Don’t you remember what you said? Isn’t it sad that her sister was going to die without ever being happy once?” 

 

『It moved my heart! I sympathized even with someone like Junko...』

 

“You sympathized with yourself. You saw yourself in her and couldn’t bring yourself to kill her anymore.” Ajimu said, when the curtains drew back again Kumagawa saw hitting on a duplicate of himself, strangling himself. “Junko-chan had nothing to do with your decision from the beginning.” 

 

『Don’t say it...』

  
“Did you really fall in love with Junko-chan? Or did you fall in love with yourself inside of her?” 

 

『Please, please don’t...』

  
“Did you fall in love with a girl who found the world so boring that even someone like you looked interesting by comparison? The part of her that always needed you in her life, because she would lose her mind from boredom.” 

 

『Junko...』

 

“Is the only person it’s okay for you to be hurt. You can be the worst of yourself, and because she’s such a despair freak she’ll eat it all up. How flattering.” 

 

Kumagawa Misogi drove a screw right into Junko’s face. He could no longer even bear to look at the person he supposedly loved. He did not want to be accepted anymore, he did not want to be forgiven anymore. Just stop loving me and let me disappear, he thought silently to himself. 

 

🧸

  
“Haven’t you figured it out by now, you can genuinely love people still use them. No wonder you understood the way Junko-chan used her sister.” 

 

The two of them were walking in the middle of an alleyway. They came across a much younger Kumagawa Misogi, his hair pure white and so long his bangs fell in front of his face. He sat in that alleyway waiting to die. 

 

『This is our meet cute, Ajimu-san.』   
  
“That’s right. Now, undo this too. Make it so we never met. After that, we both can disappear.” 

 

『Even though I didn’t have a family, or even remember what having one felt like I wanted the two of us to become brother and sister. I thought it’d be fine as long as I was by your side.』   
  
“But, I tried to kill myself, and you couldn’t stop me.”    
  
『But still, there was just one person who looked at me without turning up their nose. Back then she was the only one who ever smiled at me, the only one that looked happy to see me around, the only one who treated me just like a younger brother.』   
  
“You’re still talking about that? I only used you.”

 

『I was fine with that. Losing things, hurting Medaka-chan and Zenkichi-chan, it all had to be done.』

  
“What’s the matter?”

 

『You’re not Ajimu-san. She’d never say such sweet things to me.』Kumagawa turned around and drove a screw into his chest. He watched the memory play out in front of him exactly as it had in the past, and then turned to face what had been pretending to be Ajimu. All he saw was his own self screwed to the wall. 『The person I love and hate the most, you’re… just me. Just my own voice pretending to be Ajimu-san.』

 

Kumagawa grabbed onto his own chest, and pulled at his uniform. He looked like he wanted to reach into that chest, slowly pry his ribs apart and rip his heart out.『I don’t want to forget about Ajimu-san. Even if it all turned out bad in the end, I chose to love her, I wanted to be a family.』

 

Kumagawa Misogi, distorted with a screw smiled. “Then you remember don’t you, you piece of shit. You remember exactly what she did to us.” 

 

_ “Kumagawa-kun. I don’t want to die. You’ll save me, won’t you?” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. You’re my only real friend.” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. You’re the only person that feels real to me.” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. Don’t ever leave my side, I’d die without you.” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. Nobody else would want you but me.” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. You’re so fragile. You’re lucky I find broken boys so cute.” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. Stop chewing your nails it’s disgusting.” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. You really are stupid aren’t you?” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. Your clothes are really out of fashion.” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. You’re so skinny. Didn’t I tell you to eat more?” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. Don’t talk to Kouki-chan anymore, he’s a bad influence on you.” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. Do you always have to follow me around like that?” _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun.Doesn’t it look funny when a super unpopular guy like you is side by side with a popular girl like me! It’s funny, it’s funny!”  _ _  
_ _ “Kumagawa-kun. Stand up.”  _

 

He saw on stage his middle school self wearing a pitch black uniform with a high collar had collapsed on the ground in front of her. 

 

『I… I can’t...』   
  
As she approached him, every footstep of hers caused him to tremble in fear. Even though she was speaking in a restrained emotionless voice, barely above her normal speaking voice, he looked like he was being screamed. That was how conditioned he was to her hostility.    
  
『This is stupid. I don’t want to fight against Medaka-chan and Zenkichi-chan anymore. I’m sick of playing with them so let’s-let’s go back to how things were! All we need is each other, right?』   
  
His face was driven into the ground. “To you, it must have seemed like I was waiting to hear some excuse. I’m sorry for giving you the wrong idea. It’s not your fault, Kumagawa-kun.”    
  
She grabbed him by the hair and dragged him up to her level. There was no hostility on her face at all, she was able to do this all with a pleasant smile on her face. The same smile that once comforted him so much in the past. “If only Medaka-chan had found you that day instead of me. I’m sure she would never have abandoned you. She’d never give up on trying to save you, no matter how useless you were. Isn’t she such a good girl?”    
  
Her fingers reached into the inside of his mouth. She pulled her face right up against his, close enough to kiss him. “I didn’t realize you wanted to go back to being a worthless kid in the slums so badly? If you bore me, I’ll just leave you on some street corner like any other mutt. Doesn’t that sound like something a bad girl like me would do?” 

 

『I don’t… I don’t want to fight anymore.』

  
She dropped him right then. All Kumagawa did was curl up and cover his head. 

 

Ajimu sighed. “My, my, will you listen to yourself. Ha. Even when you’re pathetically begging like this I can’t help but like you, Kumagawa-kun. Teehee, maybe I’ll abandon you next time. Let’s see. Let’s make it a surprise, it’ll be more interesting that way.” 

 

Kumagawa grabbed the screw and ripped it out of his own chest. Even with a hole in himself. He walked forward and wrapped himself along the other Kumagawa Misogi. “You and I both know, you’d be so much happier if you had never met her.”

 

『But… she was the one who made me, me.』   
  
“Look how fucked up that turned out. Great job, Ajimu-san. You gave birth to a little baby nihilist, an edgelord who thinks he’s deep, who thinks he’s the first traumatized kid whose above all of society and thinks he has something interesting to say.”

 

『I don’t want to forget about Ajimu-san. We were happy once. There was love there. And… I used Ajimu-san as a reason to live too in the end-』   
  
“But it wasn’t enough. She got out of your life so she’d stop hurting you, but she didn’t even try to take responsibility and make it up to you. You weren’t good enough for that…” 

 

『I...』   
  
“You wanted her to save you. Don’t be so spoiled.”    
  


🧸

 

He could not save anyone.   
He could not be saved.    
He sunk further and further, wanting to return to the womb.   
To his point of origin, to his point of distortion. 

 

Kumagawa picked up his screw and leveled it between the eyes of a white haired child. He stood over his younger self, ready to make it so he never existed in the first place.    
  
A child crying all alone. A child who was always being abandoned by others. A child who no one expected anything from. A child who did not know a single thing, not even who he was. 

 

He dropped the screw on the ground. Kumagawa collpased to his knees. He reahced up and tried to wrap his arms around his younger self. His hands dragged down the face of his younger self instead, and he could not hold onto him properly. 

 

『N-no, this isn’t saving you...』   
  
Kumagawa’s cheeks were wet again. His eyes were flooding with emotion. He kept trying to comfort the child in front of him, but it was more like he was begging to be comforted. 

 

『I’m sorry. I can’t… I can’t kill this kid.』

  
Kumagawa rubbed his cheeks against the child’s face, trying to dry his tears. The child just stared forward, emotionless, like he did not even recognize the gesture. 

 

『I’m so sorry. It was lonely wasn’t it? Everyone abandoned you, I don’t want to abandon you too.』   
  
“You really are a selfish one, Kumagawa-kun. I mean you erased Junko-chan, Mukuro-chan, and Ajimu-san so easily and yet you break down crying over yourself like this.” 

 

He walked up and put a hand on his own shoulder. The second Kumagawa leaned in close, his entire face covered in shadow except for his smile. He dripped black ink on the ground behind him. Every footstep sounded like falling rain.    
  
“Well, I guess it can’t be helped. Anybody as insane as you probably can’t even see other people. Anybody going through that situation would end up as self-centered as you did. Wait, what happened again? You were just born under a bad star, and because of that you were chosen as the cult’s sacrifice or something? You were raised in one of those creepy murder cults? Isn’t that a little dramatic.” 

 

Kumagawa turned his head and looked at his own face. It was impossible to tell now, where light ended and shadow began.   
  
“Are you sure that’s what happened? You have the worst backstory! You’re the one who suffered the most, more than anyone in the whole world! You’ve endured the worst,  so it doesn’t matter if you’re the worst person ever. Isn’t that what you always tell yourself? Hey… Hey, what really happened.” 

  
The curtains drew back, and Kumagawa was surrounded by several other children. He wore a white robe same as always, with a red apple symbol on the chest. He sat back from the group and watched the other children play with each other outside.    
  
In the distance he saw a shrine. He laid back in the grass. Later that day, his parents gave a passionate lecture about their religion that Kumagawa himself did not understand, but if he was asked he said he believed it all without question.    
  


『How come everybody is always smiling, Yuuki-kun?』He asked the child next to him.    
  
“It’s because this religion is creepy. They always have to smile when newcomes come around so they can lure them in,” The boy with a bad attitude answered. “I tell people to run away if I get some time alone with them. If my parents found out, they’d beat the crap out of me.” 

 

『I won’t tell anyone, Yuuki-kun.』   
  
“If you do the first thing I’m gonna hit you way harder than they’ll hit me!” 

 

『Uwah! Scary!』

  
When he was young, an illness turned his hair white. His parents did everything they could, and eventually their desperation was preyed upon by a cult. Now they were in the upper echelons and actively recruiting people who were in predicaments just like theirs. Kumagawa got better all on his own, but they called his recovery and his suddenly healthy and hardy body a miracle. 

 

They stopped paying attention to him. The cult was one of the many that preyed upon those who fell through the gaps in japanese society, but they were not the kind of crazy death cult that showed up exclusively in horror movies. They did not look into the stars when he was born and decide he had been born under the wrong star, and then decide to torture a child as a part of some insane ritual. They did not carve out all of his sins into his flesh. It was not nearly that dramatic.    
  
It was just a brutal and unflicnhing reality that a child was subjected to over and over again. There were several other children like him.    
  
The compound was isolated like it’s own country. The truth was completely meaningless there. Whatever the leaders said was the truth, became a more important truth than reality. That was the same even with the adults who were in charge of watching the children while the parents were away.    
  
“I saw it! Kumagawa-kun stole food!”    
  
Yuuki pointed at the boy who who was always talking to him. The boy who avoided others for the most part. This always happened. At this kind of place, where corporal punishment was inflicted on those who disobeyed the cutl’s strict rules, one child often became the scapegoat so the others could look good in comparison. It was simple social dynamics. Because Kumagawa was always smiling at inappropriate times. Because his face was weird. Because he was awkward. Because he was shy and couldn’t talk to others.    
  
Everyone was always smiling. They said the cult was like one huge family. In this family, Kumagawa was the least favorite child, that was all it was. Perhaps the other people in the cult truly were happy, but he had no idea.   
  
He was just being blamed by the other kids. He was given corporal punishments. Sometimes he was locked in the dark. Sometimes he went without meals. They considered him a troubled child. They told him again and again that his parents were such wonderful people, and they truly pitied his parents because he was always causing them so much trouble. 

 

He endured it as best as he could, but the rules kept changing. Slowly, Kumagawa began to accept it. He told himself a story to ease the pain. That he really was a bad child. That they all hated him. That they singled him out. 

  
His parents just kept telling him over and over again to get along with the cult. They defended the higher ups, and told him to get along with the other children. He knew why they never stood up for him. They only ever held him and told him not to cry.    
  
It was a small, and steady accumulation.    
It wasn’t nearly anything as dramatic as it was in his fantasies.   
It was not even as unlikely as a meteorite hitting a plane as it was hijacked.    
It was just an accumulation of misfortune.    
Then one day, Kumagawa was brought to the shrine in front of all the others.    
  
In front of twelve other children, a man grabbed his hand and forced it on the ground. He put a hammer in Kumagawa’s hand, and handed him a sharpened screw. “This isn’t punishment. I have to show you, in order to be good you have to learn to endure suffering just like our savior.”    
  
Kumagawa looked at all the children around him watching him.    
  
“Yuuki-kun told me. That you told a pair of reporters visiting today that everyone here was crazy, and to run away while they still could.” 

 

Kumagawa looked at all of them begging for help. They were all supposed to be a happy family. The cult was supposed to look out for him. They were all such good children, so why was he always suffering alone? 

 

He looked at them begging to be saved.    
  
“Screw your own hand to the floor. Do it.” 

 

Kumagawa looked at the screw in front of him. He picked up the hammer with a shaking hand, and then drove it straight into the back of his hand. Then slowly, he spun the screw around digging further and further into his flesh. When he looked up he smiled weakly at the faceless man in front of him.    
  


“You’re always smiling like you’ve done nothing wrong, but all of you… all of you are born so dirty with sin. That’s why I have to educate you. A child like you won’t grow up to be of use to anybody, otherwise.”    
  
Kumagawa wondered if this religion was so happy, then why did they all seem to hate themselves so much? He wondered what kind of belief would teach you that this life was nothing more than a punishment. That it could not be any happier than a trial sent to you by god. 

  
Kumagawa was handed another screw. “Now, do it again.”    
  
Kumagawa picked up the hammer. He realized in that moment whether he endured pain or not, he was never going to be happy. The people inside the cult told him over and over again, that all he needed to do to find paradise was to endure the pain of the world and still be good and pure, but no matter how much he endured nothing ever got better. Paradise must not exist, he realized in that moment.    
  
He ripped his hand from the floorboards on the shrine. He swung the hammer back, and hit the adult in the side of the head. The man toppled over but Kumagawa did not stop there, he kept swinging.    
  
The other children who had just been watching his punishment stood as still as always. Kumagawa picked up the hammer and turned towards them. He smiled. A pure white smile that quickly became splattered in blood.    
  
When the adults found him, they screamed and said he was possessed. They just ran away. Not a single one noticed that he was crying and screaming, that he was begging for help.    
  


『It’s not my fault! Somebody besides me did this!』   
『They killed all of them! Somebody help me!』   
『Don’t leave me alone!』   
『Don’t abandon me!』   
He just cried, one jumble of meaningless utterances after another.   
『Don’t leave me I’m not a failure!』   
『I’m a good child! I will be! It’s not my fault everyone else was just picking on me.』   
Kumagawa walked forward and picked up a tattered rabbit that one of the children had been holding. 『Don’t worry you won’t die. I’ll protect you, Yuuki-kun! So don’t leave me too!』   
  
Yuuki-kun’s corpse gave him no response at all.    
Kumagawa’s heart was torn apart and his memories fragmented, until all that was left behind was a miniscule scrap of self. He ran away from the compound, and then lived in the shrine for a little while, forgetting who he was or why he was even there. He did not even notice the blood stains on the ground or the smell of rotting and decaying that he lived with. He simply forgot all the painful things and everything else. 

『Huh? Where did everyone go? Goodbye.』

 

Kumagawa’s shadow extended in front of him, smiling back at him. “You really do take that narrative seriously, you’re the only one who suffers in the whole world. Everybody is just out to get you, to make you miserable. You don’t care about other people’s pain at all, even though those kids were in the cult too…”   
  


『Is that the truth?』   
  
“Do you even care, you liar? It’s always like this. Any time you do something bad, you just conjure up your oh so tragic backstory about how everybody has hurt you in the past and justify yourself. Does it really matter that much, is there any amount of suffering in the past that would justify being the kind of person that can hurt others with a smile on his face?” 

 

『I...』   
  
“You don’t care about being a good or a bad person, you just want everyone to love or hate your current self, to make up for how you were neglected.” 

 

『It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. That moment, I used my screws. That moment, I used my screws. That moment I used my screws. That moment I used my screws. That moment, I became twisted-』

 

“That’s right. You killed. You killed yourself, you killed others. You abandoned. You abandoned others. You were abandoned by others.”   
  


『What do you expect? I wanted to live! I’ll become a bad person, I’ll hurt others, I’ll do anything in order to live.』   
  
“Because you find identity in that! At least Komaeda-kun is genuinely unlucky! You create your own misfortune! Because you can’t justify being so pathetic unless you really are the most unfortunate person on earth!”    
  
Kumagawa fell on his knees. The shrine unfolded around him and he felt the hallway rush by. He was no longer outside, he was in the middle of the snow. He was like a black stain, he would slowly turn the whole page pitch black and blot everything out. His other self stood in front of him. 

  
  


“I want to protect them! I want to save other people, because I was never saved! How fucking noble of a petty villain you are. Even though all everybody does is treat you like crap, you still want to save them! All you’ve ever wanted was to love others and be loved! You’re not a violent person, you’re just fighting hard to protect other people.” 

 

『What a story.』   
  
“Everything is a story. You know, people who are able to form normal relationships don’t go ‘I want to protect you’, they just say they like someone without making a big fucking deal about how much of a hero they are.” 

 

『I can’t save anyone.』   
  
“Because you don’t care about saving anyone.” 

 

『I’m abandoned by everyone.』   
  
“Because you abandon them first. People only exist to comfort you because you just are always suffering so much, if they hurt you then they’re no good.” 

 

『It’s not my fault.』   
  
“Maybe you truly were the victim once, but now you just want to keep playing victim forever. You pick fights and victimize yourself now. Even when you hurt others, you contrive a way to be the victim.” 

 

『It’s not as though I’m unaware I have rotten luck. What a terrible life.』   
  
“You truly were born, just to make everyone else around you suffer.” 

 

Kumagawa had no idea what was truth, and what was a lie anymore. He did not even know what was inside of him. He was unsure if what he was hearing right now was his own voice even. If he were to look in a mirror he could not properly recognize his own face.    
  
He was capable of accepting and embracing everything around himself, and yet at the same time he was unable to see himself. How could he? Other than his feelings for others, it was almost frightening how little he valued himself. But that was how he wanted to be seen.   
  
He wanted others to look at him and think, even though he suffered the most that he was always smiling. That was the narrative he had for himself. His brain rotted away from shonen manga. He understood that a hero saved other people, but he did not want to put the effort into being a whole and fully consistent three dimensional person around those people.    
  
He was nothing but hollow after all.   
So, why didn’t he just die already?   
He wondered why he couldn’t die when there was nothing inside of him.    
He was fine with being murdered every moment for the rest of his life for all eternity.    
  
Yet, even seeing his absolute worst self. Even with the revelation of how awful he was. Even if he knew he changed the truth to suit him on a whim, and did not really know how much he had suffered in the past, and if it really justified the awful person he became.    
  
He still could not kill the child in front of him.   
He still wished that white haired boy would live. 

 

In the first memory he saw Kaiki was still standing in front of him, in a pure white field, looking at a boy as fragile as a snowflake who could melt away with a single touch. A boy who did not look like he could withstand even basal body temperature. 

 

“Bad people are the ones who live.”    
  
Kaiki finished the words that Kumagawa had misheard. In his memory now they were crystal clear.    
  
“They live by saving themselves.” 

 

He had asked that question over and over again. How was someone as unfortunate as him was supposed to continue on living. He was always prostrating himself at the feet of others. He was begging them to need him. He was trying to save them, in the hopes that he would prove himself worthy of being saved.   
  
“Even if you saved other people, that doesn’t make them obligated to care about you. You would have accomplished nothing in the end, even if you weren’t so grossly incompetent.”   
  
His shadow taunted at him.    
He knew he was wrong. Perhaps he was wrong from the very beginning, a misguided desire. What he was drowning in was not his own misfortune, but rather his own self justification and pity. If he was questioned he would just say not a single person on earth would sympathize with him, so he had no choice but to pity himself. 

 

『I couldn’t become anything else? No, I could have become a better person. I may have been able to reshape my way of life, and become someone who didn’t hurt others, just like how Nagito-chan gave up the normal life he desired so badly because he did not want to hurt other people...』

 

There was not a single person he could save. He was never interested in saving them from the start. All he wanted, was for someone to care about him, to exist to save him. He clung onto that childish fantasy of heros and shonen manga with all of his heart. 

  
The realization that it was nothing but fantasy, lies, that it was all empty from the start. Didn’t that mean he had wasted his whole life up until this point? That he had been living the wrong way all along? It was all for nothing. 

 

『Eh? So what?』   
  
Kumagawa tilted his head to the side. 

Despite sinking to the bottom of it all, despite having his head pushed under the surface of the water and being forced to confront the murky depths Kumagawa just smiled the same way he always did. 

 

『If I learned to be a selfish person, if I learned to be a bad person, then I can unlearn those things can’t I?』

 

Kumagawa could not believe he seriously said  _ you really were born to make everyone around you suffer.  _ Those words sounded so false coming out of his mouth. It was too much even for a lying hypocrite.    
  


『If I make everyone else around me carry the burden of saving me… then, this time I just have to save myself.』   
  
Kumagawa fell back in the snow and watched the night sky. From above him at the exact same time, a meteor fell from the sky and crashed into a plane. As depressing as that scene was, to Kumagawa it was a sort of hope that descended from the sky like a falling star. 

  
He knew if that boy were here in front of him. Even if he had secretly wished for everyone around him to be destroyed by his bad luck, Kumagawa would never tell that boy to die. Therefore, he could never tell himself the same thing either. If he expected Komaeda to suffer, then he had to do the same as well.    
  


『Bad people have to save themselves… how true.. 』It sounded less random, less arbitrary, then the fact that some people got saved and some did not. 『I finally understand who can save a villain like me, but it’s too late now isn’t it? If that’s how my life has toccome to an end. It was an awful life, but hey… for the first time this feels...』

 

Kumagawa rolled over in the snow and smiled. Embracing the pure white cold, he was somehow able to find a little bit of warmth inside of himself. Kumagawa who always suffered the worst. Kumagawa the scapegoat. Kumagawa who was always picked on. Kumagawa who was always the victim. He smiled, feeling satisfied just this once. 『My life wasn’t so bad after all, huh?』

  
  


🧸

 

“Ya-hoo, Kumagawa-kun!”    
  
Kumagawa lay asleep on his desk. The curtains in the window in front of him were pulled back. He was sleeping on a familiar desk, in his familiar middle school classroom. As he slept, a girl sat on the lectern watching him fondly.    
  
“For you to be able to meet me now in this classroom would mean that by now I’m definitely dead, right?”   
  


He gave no answer. He just kept sleeping At first the girl walked over and sat on his desk, lifting his head and letting his rest on her lap.    
  
“It’s okay, you were really tired right? We can stay like this, for just a little bit longer.”

 

Then an entire month passed by without Kumagawa even waking. The girl who had been quietly watching his face all that time with an unreadable expression on her face, suddenly her eyes came to life.    
  
“Kumagawa-kun, is lazy, avoidant, and also prone to sulking. If you’re not careful he might just sit there the entire time and do nothing. I can more or less predict his actions so, I’ll just throw in a chop for good measure. If it connects, hooray for me.” 

 

She chopped the top of his head lightly. Kumagawa this time, slowly raised up his head. 

『Anshin’in-san.』   
  
“Just so you know, what you’re seeing right now is just an afterimage. Something akin to a video letter I recorded in the one in a quadrillion chance I would actually die. If you thought something like, Anshin’in-san’s all alone, so I gotta go to be by her side again in the afterlife that was really stupid of you. I can’t see you from her, and we can’t talk to each other.” 

 

『...Oh, right. I guess dying to see you again was pointless from the start, then.』   
  
“If it’s Kumagawa-kun he’ll say, something something I tried really hard to do is just pointless so I’ll encourage him with this. ‘I want to win against them’, right? Remember those words.”

 

『It’s really hard to banter like this when you can’t hear me. Actually, this just feels like as one sided as it always does with you-』   
  
“Think of me leaving my inheritance to you instead of Medaka-chan or Hitoyoshi-kun as proof that I’m rooting for you. It’s the first and only bias action from me, not equal. Don’t give up on winning, Kumagawa-kun.” 

  
Kumagawa let out a sigh so heavy, his entire body seemed to creak with the effort. Yet even afterwards, it did not look like he had been relieved at all, even a little bit, he was still as always being crushed by burden he made up for himself.    
  
His eyes were pure. But, that was the same as saying there was nothing inside of them at all. He did not think he could declare he was going to win like he always did, he did not believe in himself anymore. He did not believe in anything anymore. He did not know anything. He did not trust anything.    
  
He hated to lose that was true, but that was just his own petty feelings. He did not think there was enough left inside of him anymore, not even to cast a shadow. He had thrown it all away. He abandoned it. He closed his eyes and ignored it. He lived his whole life that way. 

『Anshin’in-san. It’s true that I said that I want to win. I really want to. But you know, wanting to win and being able to win are two different things.』   
  
It was his fault, probably.   
That was what he thought.   
The one who saw everything in terms of wins and losses was him.    
If he could accept that it was his fault, then maybe at least he would stop hurting others .   
  
“I’m sorry. I’m just an image so I can’t hear you.” 

 

『I’m sure they don’t even think they want to win.』   
  
“I’m sorry, I’m just an image so I can’t hear you.” 

 

『I’m sure they don’t even think that they’re special or talented. They just worked harder than I did. They actually tried to be better people, and they became that way.』   
  
“I can’t-”

 

『Anshin’in-san, even you don’t really think I could win, right?』   
  
“I can’t you!” Ajimu cut him off, that entire time she had gotten closer and closer to his face wearing the same carefree smile as always. She backed off and folded her hands behind her back and walked towards the window. “I can’t hear the howling of a loser. I get that you may have been born a loser, Kumagawa-kun. You may have been born under an unlucky star, but who decided someone like that couldn’t ever win.”

 

『I… It’s not like someone decided it. It’s all my fault so I just gotta live with the consequences. You may not be able to understand that but...』   
  
“I can’t hear yooooou. By the way,” She opened the window in front of her and leaned outside of it, for the first time in their classroom Kumagawa was able to see the night sky above them. There were thousands of shards of light that he would never reach or be able to hold in his hands, so he thought nothing at all about the sky unfolding above him, containing everything. “I wonder which loser star you were born under? Could it be this one? Or that one? Or maybe it’s that eerily shining star over there?”

 

『How should I know…? Well, let’s say it’s that star then. At any rate, even if I answer you won’t be able to hear me. You’re so selfish as...』   
  
Ajimu ignored him and held finger guns up at the sky. She playfully said, “Bang!” and then in an instant, Kumagawa saw an explosion in the night sky. The star came crashing down to earn right in front of them, but before it could hit them, Ajimu caused it to break apart into tiny pieces.    
  
Kumagawa reached for one of them. He held it between his fingers. It looked exactly like the fragments of hope that they were supposed to gather in the neo-world program. “Alright, all done. Now that loser star has vanished.” 

『....................!!!!!!』

  
“You know Kumagawa-kun, even if you become perfectly aware of your bad points that doesn’t mean you finally understand yourself. You can’t see the whole picture from just looking at the shadow. Since you’re a first-class loser, and lack self awareness I’ll tell you.”    
  
She turned around and threw her arms around him. The person who he wanted to be held by for so long. The words he wanted to hear from her. The words he thought he had to become someone important to earn.   
  
She gave them to him.   
For no reason at all.   
He did not have to do anything.    
  
“You’re like a star of hope for those who know despair. How much courage would your victory give to the weak? Think hard about that. You were like a cute little brother to me. I’m sure that ‘wanting to win’ and ‘being able to win’, ‘wanting to be good’ and ‘being able to be good’ they’re all one and the same.” 

Ah, he was so simple.    
So disgustingly simple.   
That was all he wanted, for someone to hold him and tell him it was okay. He was still such a child after all of this, wanting to be patted on the head and held for just a little longer. 

Ajimu, who had been with him his whole childhood.    
Ajimu who he once loved.    
  
Kumagawa put his hand on her shoulders and pushed her away. 『It was fun, Ajimu-san. It was fun, being a kid and growing up with you, it was fun just like I promised.』   
  
It might have been a lie, but he thought it was better to say goodbye with a smile. He walked towards the door once more. It hurt so much to part from her, but it had to happen eventually. He could not stay the helpless child forever. He had to say goodbye to his adolescence. He had to break up with the past, even if it was like a clingy ex-girlfriend.   
  
Because his clingy current girlfriend was waiting for him. 『I promised I would grow up with Junko. So, bye, bye my adolescence.』   
  
Even if he really was the worst person in the world. Even if he made everyone around him suffer, he could not disappear so easily. If he could not disappear then he had no other choice but to keep on living, as a good person, as a bad person, it hardly mattered anymore.    
  
Just as a person, he had to keep living as Kumagawa Misogi. 

Ajimu suddenly tilted him forward and reached into his chest. He watched her pull something out that looked like red strings. 

  
How selfish of him, thinking the bonds between himself and others were so weak, thinking they could disappear so easily if he just cut them all off and ran. He was connected to so many people, but he did not think about them at all. How must they have felt? Kumagawa marveled at all the things he thought he had lost, still inside of his chest.    
  
He was not empty.   
He did have a heart.    
The heart was just a lump of meat in the chest. The ‘human heart’ was just a metaphor people came up with, to describe the capability to feel love. It was just imaginary. It was all made up.    
If that was so, then even a liar like him could learn to have a heart, to care about people properly. 

In the real world, Kumagawa’s body suddenly began to crack and bend. As if he was possessed his chest rose up all of his own. He returned to his own two feet, every column in his spine creaking as he straightened his back.    
  
His eyes rolled back into place. As he woke up, his eyes watered, but when he wiped the tears away he forgot about what he had been dreaming about. 

『Tch, aren't meaningless fakeout deaths a tiresome trope by now in Shonen Jump? Everybody knows you're not going to kill off the important characters.』  
  
Kumagawa looked at his feet, having no idea how he had woken up or how much time had passed. He saw just in front of him body there was a broken and twisted up body on the floor.    
  
『Kiyo-chan, I’m so sorry.』  
  
Kumagawa reached towards the corpse not thinking at all about what kind of evidence he would leave behind. When he saw the horrified expression Korekiyo held on his face he reached forward, and brushed his hands over Kiyo’s eyes to relax his expression.    
  
『Kiyo-chan, I would have liked to become friends with you so...』  
  
He came crashing back into this life. He crashed down from the sky, not caring about whose plans he crashed landed on, or what he screwed up by coming back. He was a sort of hope that descended like a shooting star.    
  
The small, unassuming, and incredibly petty star of hope known as Kumagawa Misogi. A star could that could only be seen, by those for whom everything was already jet black. A star that could only shine it abject darkness. 

For the first time, Kumagawa Misogi did not curse his bad luck. If that bad luck helped him understand others just a little bit more. If it brought him a little closer to those people. Then that was as good of a reason as any.   
  
He tightened his fist around that star, crushing it between his hands. He watched it crumble into brilliant, colorfuls pieces and felt that warmth. 『So, I’m not giving up.』  



	47. Overkilled Red

_ Ilikeyoulikeyouloveyoulots. _

 

🧸

 

**Chapter 2: Hang the Witch** **  
** **Deadly Life: Part One**

“Toko, Toko…” 

Fukawa Toko always dreamed of waking up to someone calling her name like that. To wake up to the breathy whisper of her name, the word spoken slowly as if each syllable carried a heavy weight of affection, it was something she thought she would only experience in literature.    
  
After all even if she would never fall asleep in the embrace of someone who loved her, she could at least fall into the comforting embrace of fiction. In reality she would never hear her name called that way. She had only heard her parents mutter her name under their breath to make it clear how much they loathed her.    
  
That was when they called her by her name, and not ‘that thing’ or ‘the eyesore’.    
  
Reality often falls short of fiction. For example, most mornings after are not warm, and people do not glow like the first rays of the sun falling on their skin. Morning afters are usually, wet, sticky and uncomfortable.    
  
Teenage lovers, and teenage serial killers, they experienced the same kind of awkward feeling of waking up the next morning    
  
She had had some kind of nasty dream. It seemed like she was about to be killed, and like she was also trying to kill someone. Her entire body was being controlled by the sheer will to hurt as she had been hurt, and at the same time she was the one being hurt more. She killed herself over and over again every day and night, until her personality was messily cut in half with a pair of scissors. She ran, and she ran, and she ran, and she ran, but sooner or later the figure chasing after her turned out to be herself, and she thought a so called writing prodigy should have been able to come up with something better than the oldest twist in the book. She felt like she was going to die. She felt like she had been dead all this time and she was alive for the first time. For Toko though, being alive, or being dead, either way she knew she was going to feel awful so it made little difference to her. It an awful dream. What an awful life. What an awful girl.    
  
As her eyes fluttered awake she could not remember a single thing about that dream, even as the tumultuous feelings still churned in her chest and she felt the corners of her eyes watering. As her eyes fluttered shaking off the last sands of sleep, her dream crumbling away before she could even properly look at it, she saw a familiar face right in front of her.   
  
Togami Byakuya - of course it was him. He was the only one who ever called her by her first name. She wondered if he had ever allowed her face to be this close to his.    
  
“You’re just an object to me, so why shouldn’t I call you by your given name? You belong to me now, so you’ve given that name to me too.”    
  
For most people even the relatively shameless Toko calling one by their first name without honorific was a sign of closeness, but for Togami it was a sign of distance.

Once upon a time, Fukawa Toko would have given anything to have Togami be the first thing she saw in the morning. Yet from this close, she could see the worry lines on his face, the anger in his eyes, she started to understand his feelings in a way a stalker watching from a distance never could.   
  


“Byakuya-sama, don’t make such a sad face over someone like me. Misery’s not a fine tailored suit, it doesn’t suit you at all…” It was strange watching someone so beautiful make such an ugly face… no, that was not it she just did not want him to be sad.    
  
“Toko, don’t suddenly wake up and recite a line like this is one of your books. Just say something stupid and infuriating like you usually do.” 

“Byakuya-sama, if you wanted to wake me up there’s no need to shake me like this, you could have just k-k-kissed me.” Toko said, puckering her lips to tease him. “Even if I was dead I would have come back to life.”   
  
“You should have just stayed dead, then!” Togami scoffed.”Ugh, why is it always you? Why do I keep throwing away so much time on you?”   
  
“It’s probably because I’m a garbage can with arms and legs. That’s why you waste so much of your valuable time on me.”    
  
They were able to talk the way they used to, like they each of them did not even hear the other. It was a strange way of talking like they were both simply talking at each other, because they were the only one the other had to talk to.    
  
Even though they had been so far apart for a whole month. No, it was because of that. Their relationship had always been a long distance one, what other relationship could a stalker and her victim have? 

“Enough of this! Toko, you useless goods what have you done? You should know what happens to murderers here.”   
  
Huh?   


That was right, she had never asked what she was doing sleeping on the floor, why Togami had woke her up, why he looked so distressed. She forgot about the whole world like it was just the two of them again, just Toko and Togami.    
  
“Listen to me, this is an order. Run away! Hide yourself somewhere in this school, and leave the rest of me.”   
  
“W-wha…?”   
  
“If you truly consider me your master then listen to me just this once. Leave the rest to me. You’re my property, someone trying to take you away from me is just petty theft. I won’t stand for it.” 

Toko finally readjusted her glasses and saw the scene behind Togami.    
At first it was blurry and then it came into focus, it reminded her of one of those slow panning shots from a horror movie. Elswhere, someone was playing the strings of her heart like a violin.    
  
Restless. Restless. Restless.   
Her heart throbbed.    
Her bodily functions grew abnormal.   
Her mouth fell wide open without saying a word.    
It was like reading a book, and slowly turning the page when you already know the ending. Suddenly the author understood the feelings of her readers, of being a part of someone else’s story, being just a mere character rather than an author, she never even wanted to.    
  
Korekiyo Shinguji.    
Her underclassman.    
Always looking bemused at the world.   
The boy who said.    
He loved her.

A nostalgic view.   
For a serial killer.   
A terrible.   
Detestable.   
View.   
Death.    
Nothingness.

….   
Killed.   
I killed?    
Have I killed?   
Waking up every time and repeating those three questions in her head.    
Hearing the last echoes of Jack’s laughter in her ears.    
A brutal sight. A devastating sight.    
Korekiyo Shinguuji was alive. He wanted to live his own life apart from his sister. Now, he was dead. 

  
He hung on the wall of his own talent lab like he was a perfectly preserved mummified corpse on display. He looked like a piece of art himself painted in blood. He was crucified on the wall, scissors driven into his wrists, and both shoulders pinning him there. Behind him the words ‘blood lust’ were written in bright pink blood.   


Despite the brutal way that he hung there his body did not look damaged at all. There was almost no blood splatter from either of his wrists or shoulders where he was pinned. His face was expressionless as a death mask, but that was how he had looked in life as well.   
  
Sleeping?    
Could you call it sleeping?   
The body was definitely dead.   
So dead it was overkill.  
Overkilled red.   
Except blood was pink.  
Toko wondered if she had ever seen somebody who looked so dead before.   
Korekiyo was dead.  
She repeated it again and again in her head but refused to comprehend it.   
  
The fact that he looked so content, so comfortable in death. She hated it. She hated the relaxed expression on his face. It was wrong. Wrong. Wrong.  Having known what his smile was like it made him all the more terrible. Korekiyo wanted to live, that was why he got close to her, that was why he opened up to her. He was stupid, crazy, and creepy but he had wanted to live.    
  
It was funny, in death he had more color than in life. His face had turned a shade of purple.    
  
Desipte seeing all of that, Toko felt nothing in her chest at all. She felt nothing for the life she had cut short. She felt no nausea or disgust. It was only at that moment that Toko accepted she must truly be a murderer.    
  
Korekiyo was the first person she had ever killed. It felt truly, like she had taken a life, someone who had been alive before her scissors cut him. 

It’s not like she was inhuman. She had a heart. Nobody had pulled it out of her chest, and then snipped away the connections to her veins and arteries with a pair of scissors. Her heart was just ugly and selfish. 

Togami’s reaction was the exact opposite of hers.    
She had never once seen him lose his composure like this.   
He pushed her away and stumbled backwards, his hand trying in vain to mask the expression on his face.    
  
I feel sick. I feel sick. I feel sick.   
Eiffel Sick.   
How french.   
  
He clutched his chest in nausea. He choked down an absolutely indigestible object. His eyes frantically looked around, trying to see anywhere, but the corpse that was right in front of him.    
Toko had never seen him look so fragile.   
It was hard to breathe.    
It was hard to live.    
She thought he might die.    
Then she would have killed two people.    
  
His eyes were freezing.    
His heart was burning, threatening to melt everything. He swallowed, and kept swallowing empty air, making a horrible noise with the back of his throat.    
  
Toko remembered, that Togami once told her he was a murderer too. He killed his family, or at least made them as good as dead to earn his seat as heir. He killed, but he did not kill for stupid reasons like her. Still, for both of them living was synonymous was killing. Death was something right next to them.   
  
Even if they would never be able to embrace a lover, they had embraced death over and over again. And yet, it hurt him this much. He was excruciating, looking like his skin was peeling off slowly.    
  
Togami really did have a heart. Toko realized this only after she had broken it.    
A boy who said he was stronger than anyone.    
A surprisingly fragile boy.    
This is what surviving left you as. It didn’t make you stronger. It just broke you down little by little. Yet, Togami was still someone who bragged he could survive anything. He would always survive, he would keep breaking, and keep going.    
  
He looked like he was wrestling with his own internal organs for control. He ran out of the room, and to a trashcan in the hallway threw his head over it, and tossed out everything in his stomach. Toko lingered in the doorway watching him. He drew a deep breath and rose up, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief he kept in his front pocket. He readjusted his sleeve and Toko noticed one of his cufflinks was missing.    
  
“Byakuya-sama, I… I broke our promise.”    
  
“You didn’t. You weren’t the one who killed them. You can’t break a promise to me, you’re just property…” Togami tightened his fist. “I told you to rely on me, I’ll convince them otherwise and show them the true culprit. The winners are the ones who live, Toko… I… I don’t want to lose anything, anymore.” 

She wasn’t the killer?   
Togami was going to save her?   
It was everything she ever wanted, so why did it feel so wrong?    
Toko lifted up her skirt, and felt for the scissors she kept in a holster around her thigh. They were all missing, and she felt fresh blood from a wound that had been carved up, another talley mark in her thigh. 

**A body has been discovered! A body has been discovered! A body has been discovered!**

**Evidence Discovered!** **  
** **> Shinguji Korekiyo’s body. ** **  
** **> Missing Scissors ** **  
** **> Crucifixion** **  
** **> ”Blood Lust”** **  
** **> Neck scars** **  
** **> Lack of blood on the body’s wounds  
** > **Missing Cufflink**

 

🧸   
  
In all only ten people showed up to the body discovery alarm. The rest must have gotten used to turning a blind eye to the fact that they were in a killing game. They continued pretending their daily life and deadly life were not one in the same.    
  
Monokuma showed up and griped how only half of them showing up to the scene of the crime wasn’t technically a rules violation because only half of them were required to show up to the trial.    
  
Maki, Kaito, Kokichi, Shuichi, Kaede, Rantaro, Togami, Mukuro, Makoto, and Hitoyoshi Zenkichi sitting in the corner tied up in chains by Monokuma as punishment. All of them glanced back and forth at one another in distrust. 

 

Even Kokichi looked sickened by the atmosphere for a moment. Until a button was pressed and his face rebooted. He cracked a smile that was somehow much more sickening than the sight of a dead body. “What’s wrong Akamatsu-chan, did you get bored and decide to start the killing game up again?” 

  
“I…” Kaede who always faced everyone head on with a smile, pulled at her sleeve and looked away from him.    
  
“It’s really suspicious of you to immediately start pointing fingers, Ouma-kun.” Saihara Shuichi stepped in front of her.” Shuichi paused for a moment. “And then Ouma-kun says ‘you’re right, I’m the killer nyeahahahaha…”    
  
“You’re right I’m the- What? I’ve become that predictable. You’re that tired of our detective criminal routine already…” Kokichi began to sulk. “That’s a terrible impression of me, you didn’t even get my laugh right.” 

 

People usually told off Kokichi when he spoke up just to cause trouble, but this was the first time he looked truly hurt by someone else’s words. Perhaps because it was Saihara who was the one who said it.    
  
“I can’t become tired of something that doesn’t exist. You’re not even a criminal, and I’m not much of a detective.” Saihara said in a gloomy voice, already feeling useless even though the only time he was ever depended on was when murders like this suddenly happened. 

 

Kaede hid behind him. She threaded his fingers between his behind his back, in a discreet way so only the two of them would see. He hated how happy it made him, that she was relying on him like this now of all times.   
  
He loved Kaede’s strength, he loved how she was always shining, she was his light. But, he might have fallen in love with her weakness even more, he loved the shadow she hid from everybody else.    
  
“Well fine, if you don’t want to play with me then I’m taking my ball and going home.” Kokichi declared in a bratty fashion, and then started to walk away.   
  
“H-hold on, you’re not even going to investigate?” 

 

“Does the great detective really want the help of a criminal like me? Besides, if I investigated that would ruin the fun of going to the trial and accusing the first three people who looked at me funny,” Kokichi said, folding his hands behind his head. 

 

As he walked away Kaito looked back at Shuichi with a pained expression. He looked like he really wanted to stand next to Shuichi and Kaede, the heroes. Yet, he did not want to leave Kokichi alone. It was not affection or anything sappy like that, Kaito just did not think that guy could be trusted alone.    
  
“Damnit… Get back here, no slacking off on my watch!” Kaito said chasing after Kokichi.    
  
Maki looked away like she was indifferent for a moment, and then grinded her teeth chasing after Kaito the same reluctant way. “You have the absolute worst taste in people.”

 

Kaede peeked her head out from behind Shuichi’s shoulder. “Those three are the last three I would ever expect to get along.”   
  
“Weirder things have happened, like you and me.” Shuichi muttered, the Pink Piano Princess and Mr. Gloom. 

 

“Da! Da! Da! Da! Da! Da! Da! You’ve got a stinky rotten corpse. I can’t say what reference that was because I don’t want to be sued for copyright infringement, but imagine you just opened a treasure chest and heard that music.” 

 

“Um… you shouldn’t make jokes like that,” Makoto nervously spoke up.   
  
“God, you’re no fun Naegi! I bet all the gamers in the audience loved that reference right now. Fine, if you don’t want to play along then I’ll take my ball and go home too.” Monokuma shoved the Monopad into Kaede’s face. “Here take this already you damn main characters!”   
  
“M-me…?” 

 

Kaede fumbled with the Monopad in her hands. She did not want to look like it. Shuichi knew in his heart she was not the killer this time, but Kaede still felt nothing but self disgust at the sight of a corpse. She probably blamed herself regardless for another one of her friends she was supposed to save.    
  
Shuichi steadied her hands and took the monopad from her to read it.  _ The body was discovered early this morning. An autopsy revealed several abrasions on the neck, and several cuts on the body. The cause of death, and the time of death are both unknown. So good luck with that one kiddos!  _   
  
“This is kind of useless…” 

 

“You’re the useless one!”   
  
“W-well, I’m not denying that but, you’re not even telling us the cause of death?”   
  
“It’s the mystery genre! Don’t you think some things would be better off left as a mystery!! What kind of detective are you anyway!” Monokuma snapped at him.   
  
“Not a very good one admittedly but…” ‘

 

“Why are you distrusting your sensei? What have I ever done to you besides constantly threaten to murder all of you?”    
  
“Umm, well that’s it exactly.” Shuichi could not believe he was letting the stuffed bear push him around of all people.    
  
Rantaro who usually was out of tune with everybody else, on his distinct oddball frequency suddenly tuned into the conversation. “Saihara-kun, I think he died because someone stabbed him,” Rantaro said pointing at the body which had been stabbed in several places with scissors.    
  
“Thank you, Amami-kun.” 

 

“We should help each other out, because we’re friends after all. Oh wait, am I stealing Akamatsu-san’s line?” Rantaro said, scratching at the back of his neck. 

 

“It sounds so fake when you say it,” Kaede said, staring at him from behind Shuichi’s shoulder.    
  
“Haha, you’re so nice to everyone but you’re mean to me Akamatsu-san. Am I that special to you?”    
  
“You’re the one whose always teasing me like that. Bullies who start acting like they’re the ones getting bullied the moment someone stands up to them are the worst kinds of people.” 

  
“Awe, I’m the worst in the lil missy’s eyes. If I can’t be liked by an idiot like her who likes everyone then I’m a failure of a human being.” Rantaro did not seem too bothered by this. He accepted her insults pretty easy.    
  
Shuichi looked in distress between the two of them, like a child whose parents were fighting. “Amami-kun it doesn’t matter if you’re a failure, because you belong with us then. I’m a failure of a detective after all.”   
  
“You’re not even going to deny that I’m a failure? Now even Saihara-kun is picking on me. My mellow isn’t going to survive all this harshness,” Amami said, perfectly calm as always, a body of water that never rippled. 

Saihara felt Kaede’s fingers nervously pulling at his sleeve again. She averted her eyes from the body. For a moment he thought how unlike the usual Kaede this was, the one that faced everything head on. Then, he hated himself for growing suspicious of her because of what had happened last time. “I know y-you can’t trust me anymore but… just like last time could we investigate together?”   
  
“Even though you were secretly the killer the entire time last time,” Rantaro reminded her.  
  
“Yeah, that’s why I’m the worst for asking."  
  
“You’re not the worst, I’m the worst-” Shuichi quickly tried to stop her from talking down on herself.    
  
“Don’t turn this into a competition for who’s fault this is, otherwise you two will never stop tripping over each other trying to take all the blame Saihara-kun.” Rantaro was as blunt as always with both of them.    
  
“I-I’m scared. One of our friends died, one of our friends became a killer, no matter what happens two people are dead and I can’t do a single thing for them. I can’t even make up for the people I killed.” Kaede said, still holding onto the fabric between his sleeves, pinching the material between her fingers as if she was holding onto a single red string as her lifeline. “But last time you were so dependable.” 

“Come on Saihara-kun, this is your chance to show off and look cool in front of both of us,” Rantaro said, clasping a hand on his shoulder and urging him forward.    
  
“Th-there’s no way I could do that! Me looking cool is impossible!” Shuichi snapped, and then nervously messed up his blue hair with his hand. “B-but, you’re the only one I would want to investigate with. So you don’t even need to ask me something like that.”    
  


They agreed to split up into two groups of three, Amami, Saihara, Akamatsu and then Naegi, Ikusaba and Togami. When they tried to get Zenkichi out of his chains Monokuma snapped at them telling them Zenkichi was on time out for breaking school rules. 

“Didn’t Fukawa-san discover the body with you?” Ikusaba asked Togami directly.    
  
Togami turned back his eyes fogged up ice that showed nothing underneath. “She got sick at the sight of blood, and I told her to go back to her room until the trial started.”

“That was nice of you, Togami-kun!” Makoto spoke up.    
  
“Yeah, far too nice…Are you the same Togami-kun that regularly calls me a dog and regularly tries to hire me to kill people who annoy him?” Mukuro said watching Togami closely. 

When those three left Shuichi began his investigation properly. He walked right up to the body. He was strange like that, he was so afraid of living people, but he could touch a dead body like it was nothing. He placed his hands on Korekiyo’s neck for a moment, and then went to the words written on the wall in blood and tried to chip off the dried blood with his nail. Shuichi brought his fingers in front of his mouth, and muttered to himself as they curled around his lips.   
  
“Oh, Saihara-kun is doing his mutter mutter habit…” Kaede said standing back.   
  
Rantaro standing next to her, “Haha, what a nerd.” 

“The blood on the wall is still wet, so it’s more recent but the blood from the wounds on his neck is completely dried up. No wonder Monokuma hid the time of death this is confusing…” Shuichi said. He gave the body one last look over and then looked back to the both of them. “There’s one more thing I want to look at.” 

 

The three of them walked all the way to the top of several stories of staircases. They found a hole in the wall that had already been covered in caution tape. Shuichi walked over to the railings and put his hands on the wood. The part he touched was broken unlike the rest of the railing.    
  
“Why is this broken if the murder took place down on the bottom floor…?” Shuichi asked, but both Kaede and Rantaro just shrugged back at him.    
  
“You’re the one who has all the brain cells between the three of us,” Rantaro said.   
  
Shuichi walked back to the first floor where the body was hanging and noticed one thing which everybody else had overlooked in the spectacle of the body. One of Korekiyo’s display cases had been completely destroyed leaving only shattered glass and an empty display case behind. Shuichi walked over to it and picked up in his hands a piece of red rope. Red rope which had been torn to pieces was mixed up within the shattered glass. 

 

“Did the killer do this…? Were they tied up? Was Kiyo tied up?” 

  
“Maybe there was another body here besides Kiyo’s…” Rantaro remarked.    
  
“Huh?”    
  
“I mean, the whole reason to kill someone was to perform a ritual to revive someone from the dead right? Maybe that’s the remains of the ritual, and the revived person escaped and now there’s a zombie among us…” Rantaro made spooky fingers before his face flattened out. “Well, I should be safe because I don’t have a brain but I’m really worried about you Saihara-kun.” 

 

“Don’t foreshadow my death like that!” Shuichi had read plenty of detective novels, enough to be suspicious about that statement. The three of them left the scene where the body was found to collect alibis.    
  
In front of the dorms, Kaede hesitated. “M-maybe you should do this part all alone, Saihara-kun. Everyone will probably just think I’m the murderer again. It’s not like I have the right to suspect them anyway.”    
  
“Akamatsu-san…”   
  
“This is horrible of me but, I don’t want to even look at them.” 

 

Shuichi thought Kaede was right, it was nothing like the her he had known in the past. He told her to wait there for a moment, and disappeared inside of his dorm. When he returned he reached out for Kaede.    
  
At the sight of his hand approaching her, she closed her eyes. When she opened them she saw the brim of a hat blocking her view. Shuichi pulled it down further over her eyes and adjusted the hat on top of her blonde hair. “It’s okay to be afraid, I mean I’m afraid of everything. I’m just pretending I know what I’m doing because you’re here.” 

_ If you’re scared I’ll be brave. _ _  
_ _ If you’re brave then I’ll stop pretending not to be scared.  _   
  
“If you’re scared then just look at me. It’s just the two of us here.”   
  
“And Rantaro,” Amami said behind them.   
  
“The two of us and Amami-kun.” 

Kaede immediately noticed the hat that Shuichi had not worn for a month still smelled like him, but did not say that aloud because she thought it would be weird. She peeked out under the brim of his hat, and looked up into his eyes. Eyes of blue that faded into grey, and blue bangs falling messily around them, that was the face of the boy who liked her.    
  
Kaede pinched the brim of Shuichi’s cap and nodded silently. The three of them left together to go collect alibis. Shuichi remembered when Kaede used to happily talk to everybody as if they were all already friends, now she hid her eyes away from all of them.    
  
**Evidence Discovered!** **  
** **Broken Glass** **  
** **Broken Rope** **  
** **Broken Railway** **  
** **Dried Blood** **  
** **Fresh Blood on the Wall.** **  
** **Ambiguous time of death.** **  
** **  
** **Alibis Collected:** **  
** **Kokichi:** “At the time of the murder? Well, obviously I was killing Korekiyo.”    
**Kaito:** “Don’t listen to him, he was up all night in the game room with me. We were having a showdown at our final destination.”   
**Maki:** “He’s making it sound way cooler than it is. Kaito challenged Kokichi to a fight, but Kokichi only agreed to play him in smash bros.” 

 

**Miu:** “The three of us were in the lab all night getting hot and sweaty together! And all wet and sticky!”    
**Kazuichi:** “Don’t phrase things like that on purpose! We were just working on an engine together, the only thing we got sticky with was grease. W-we had permission to be in the lab from the student council of course.” 

**  
** **Monaca:** “Monaca couldn’t be the murderer because she was too busy not getting murdered. Hey, since Monaca is the cute and innocent type why hasn’t she died already? Isn’t she the first one who should get picked off in a horror movie?”    
**Keebo:** “Don’t listen to her she just says creepy things on purpose to mess with people. She was with me the entire night. We had one of those human slumber parties.” 

 

**Tsumugi:** “I was up all night sewing together cosplays in my room. B-but someone else can give me an alibi. If I was the killer this would have gone… all according to keikaku”   
**Rantaro:** “That joke doesn’t really work if we’re speaking japanese.”   
**Tsumugi:** “Keikaku means plan!”  

 

**Zenkichi:** “I was running away from Monokuma all night.”   
  


**Togami: “** Toko and I are each other’s alibis. It’s amazing that a minor character like you thinks you can talk to me, let alone suspect me.” 

**Makoto:** “Umm… Mukuro and I were together… Doing what? That’s kind of hard to answer.”    
**Mukuro:** “Adult things.”    
**Komaru:** “Umm, I’m right here? Can the murderer please kill me now? Oh, actually I’m Tsumugi’s alibi, I went to her room in the middle of the night to ask her to fix a tear in my sleeve and we started talking about manga.” 

 

**Rantaro: “** Wait, what about Kiyo’s alibi?”   
**Shuichi:** “Um… he’s the murder victim.”    
**Rantaro:** “Oh, right…” 

 

“And the three of us were in the piano room all night. Everybody has an alibi then for the entire night except for Enoshima-san and Komaeda-kun who are both missing,” Shuichi said, puzzled by this turn of events.    
  
“Maybe it really was a ghost who did it,” Rantaro laughed as easygoing as always. 

 

🧸

  
Togami stood in the middle of the library awhile, unmoving.   
This quiet space.   
Not a single sound.   
Not a single person.    
A room that Korekiyo had visited so much in the past. 

 

Naegi Makoto and Ikusaba Mukuro stood in shock behind him. The entire library itself had been upturned, several shelves were knocked over and the books were tossed about everywhere. A few of them looked stepped on, even kicked.    
  
As an author myself the scene brought a tear to my eye.   
At least it would if I was a person capable of crying, I’m sure it would.    
  
There were several books open on the table. All of them dealing with occult matters, ghosts, demons, rituals, summoning demons, if Korekiyo were still alive, or Tanaka Gundham and Sonia nevermind were here the scene would make perfect sense.    
  
Sadly, this is not one of those straightforward mysteries. This is one of those pretentious mystery series that’s written by someone who is far too up her own ass about mystery novels, an author that thinks she’s way better than the genre that she’s writing in.    
  
“You wouldn’t have thought to investigate this room if it weren’t for me, now do you trust me?” Togami said, looking back over his shoulder at both of them. His tightly framed silhouette was neat and composed, in comparison to the complete mess he was standing in front of. “Aren’t I the one who makes the most sense to serve as Kirigiri-san’s replacement for you two?”    
  
“It’s not that we don’t trust you Togami-kun,” Makoto began to explain lightly, his voice sensitive as ever. “I j-just don’t think anyone can replace Kirigiri-san. There’s no one that’s replaceable, you’re Togami-kun and she’s Kirigiri-san.”   
  
“Everyone in this world is expendable. Even me. That’s why I have to fight so hard to establish my worth,” Togami coldly rejected Makoto’s kindness again. He seemed to define himself in opposition to everything Makoto was. 

 

“Togami-kun, we can’t trust you if you don’t trust us,” Mukuro said, “You’re just going to keep pretending like we don’t already know that body was hung up the exact same way Jack commits her murders.” 

  
“Now you’re just being uncouth. Can’t you reign her in a little better, Naegi?” Togami said, with a pointed glare at Mukuro. “I could just as easily have accused your pet murderer of killing that boy, and you of covering it up.” 

 

“W-wait, Mukuro’s not my pet. Don’t say stuff like that.”   
  
“Yeah, I’m not even worthy of being Makoto’s pet, let alone his girlfriend. I’m just taking advantage of his kindness.”   
  
“You don’t talk about yourself that way either!” Makoto snapped at her.    
  
Togami picked up a book. The only one in the room that had not been torn off the shelves.  _ The Case Study of Genocide Jack.  _   
  
He looked at them both sharply.   
His smile sharpened like a knife. 

Togami had the look of a thief poised at any moment to backstab.    
Even though he was supposedly born into wealth.   
He had that air about him, either he had to take or everything would be taken from him.    
That was the harsh reality that he learned at a young age.    
  
He was so protective. He was ready to step over anybody in order to survive.   
Even though he had nothing to protect in the first place.    
  
“This is the book they tore up the library looking for. It’s a case file on all of Toko’s murders. Anyone with this could perfectly recreate the scene of one of her murders and frame her. It was missing from the library this morning, I found it hastily thrown away in a dumpster.”  

 

“N-none of us want to think Fukawa-san is the murderer,” Makoto said.    
  
“Toko would never kill someone without my permission. She’s not allowed to act on her own. That’s why I’m going so far to prove her innocence.”   
  
“What? Property? You’re talking so weird again Togami-kun,” Makoto said, not getting it again.    
  
Togami had already decided that no matter how much time Makoto spent with him.   
No matter how good his intentions were.    
They would never understand one another.   
The same way that Togami would never understand what it was like to be born a child who was loved. Makoto could never understand what it was like to be an unloved child.   
Everyone loved him.   
Even a heartless serial killer like Ikusaba Mukuro had fallen for him.    
He was wanted, desired, even in the middle of a killing game.    
  
Even if Makoto called him a friend Togami would deny it.    
He wanted Makoto to know what it felt like, to be denied love from a person.    
If he really wanted to understand Togami so badly.   
Then again, who wanted to understand bitter loneliness?    
It was an emotion that all the weaklings avoided. They all banded together to lick each other’s wounds.    
  
Togami’s entire body was covered in wounds that would never heal.    
Yet, no matter what he would keep living.   
Even if he bled out from all of his cuts.

Even if someone cut his heart out with a knife.    
He would prove he could live even without all the things Makoto had.    
  
“Then you’re lying about being Fukawa-san’s alibi…?”  Mukuro questioned him.    
  
Togami refused to answer. He had nothing at all in his eyes. He really did look like a child born with nothing, he no longer even had his toys to play with.    
  
“Mukuro, don’t be mean. It doesn’t help us to accuse each other,” Makoto said, turning to look up at her.    
  
Mukuro’s voice lacked all the emotion that Makoto’s had. “I have to be mean, because you’re too nice. It’s like you’re sick in the head.” 

 

“I don’t need something as useless as trust. Let me prove it to you. I’ll show you Fukawa-san isn’t the killer. I won’t lose.”   
  
Winners are the ones who live.    
Those words were all the boy had to hold onto.    
He slowly closed his hands, but his fingers grasped at nothing at all.    
  


Togami smirked, the rest of his face seeming to disappear behind the glare of his smile. “Naegi, you don’t want to lose any more of our classmates after Kirigiri-san, right?”    
  
Mukuro recognized the look he gave Naegi at that moment.    
The eyes he concealed behind those frosted glasses, it was the look of a predator. 

Mukuro knew because those were her own eyes.   
The eyes of a girl who sunk her teeth into countless prey.    
  
She noticed too, beause she was used to being around corpses.    
Togami’s body was excessively pale, his appearance even colder than usual.   
He looked like a child who had been abandoned all night in the snow.    
A frozen heart.   
He was frozen to death.

His tall and thin body tried to stand up anyway.   
It looked like trying to shove a skeleton in a suit.    
  
  


 

“You’re acting strange, you’re almost too noble right now,” Protecting Toko, suddenly talking about wanting to prove himself to them, not wanting to lose any more classmates. They were the words Makoto wanted to hear, but they would never come out of Togami’s mouth. He was playing the part of the prince finally, but princes did not exist in reality.    
  
Mukuro knew they could not live in reality.    
Not even Naegi Makoto, the prince who saved her.    
He was just an unbelievably soft kid, Mukuro learned that.    
  
“Well, I am nobility. I know it can be hard to swallow that I’m just better than you, but try not to let your inferiority get in the way of our teamwork.”    
  
“Mukuro, we shouldn’t suspect each other…” Makoto called after her in a soft voice.    
  
“I know that. I already know, the person whose most suspicious is me.” Mukuro punched the wall right then, a crack resounded through the room. She looked at the back of her hand and saw one of her fingers bent out fo shape.    
  
  
A broken paw.   
She needed to be put down.    
  
“I knew Kiyo-chan was in trouble, but I didn’t help him in the end. Why do I keep playing hero? No matter how hard I try I’m not going to become someone like Makoto, I can’t become anything other than a murderer.” 

 

Makoto watched her hand with concern and when Mukuro tried to hide it, he took it away from her and held it between his own two hands. He held it so deliately, like there was something precious between his hands    
  
“I don’t want you to become like me. Dating myself, that’d just be weird.” Makoto muttered that only someone as vain as Junko would think that it was a good idea. “It’s not like I want you to change… I mean the hand I’m holding onto right now, that’s the hand of the person I fell in love with, exactly as she was.” 

 

No matter what she became Makoto would accept her.   
But that was why, Mukuro could not let Makoto embrace her.   
His love that forgave everything, accepted everything, it was far too heavy for a person like her.    
  
“I bet you’re thinking it would have been better if you died. Now you’re being the stupid one. Not a single person would benefit if you had been the murder victim.” Makoto said as he wrapped his hands around her fingers, and tried to fix her ring finger that had been bent out of shape. “I’d be the worst one off, because I’d never stop crying.”   
  
“I guess I can’t die then.”    
  
“Wow, you’ve domesticated her. She’s even letting you bandage up her paw without a fuss. I never thought Ikusaba would become so weak as to rely on you of all people.”   
  
Togami joked, causing Mukuro to glare at him.   
The two of them went out into the hallway to go searching for a first aid kit to set her finger. Mukuro knew better, but she had punched wanting to break something, and wanting to break herself. She wanted to break a little bit, ever since looking at the broken Korekiyo.    
  
Togami lingered in the library alone.    
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. “What terrible weakness…” He placed the silver knife over his fingers, and then slowly curled them around the blade, until blood began to seep through. “Isn’t that right, nii-san?”

 

**Evidence Discovered!** **  
** **Library** **  
** **Book on Genocide Jack** **  
** **Toko’s Alibi Falsified** **  
**

****

****

🧸

 

Kaito watched Kokichi with his legs sticking out of a trash can. One of his legs gave a kick in the air as he continued his dive.    
  
“I thought we were investigating? Why are you in the trash?”

 

“I’m returning to where I belong,” Kokichi said in a voice so serious it had to be a joke.    
  
“That’s it I’m pulling you out of there.”   
  
“Noooo! The trash is warm! It’s comfortable. It’s safe!”    
  
Kaito ignored his protests and grabbed him by both legs, wrestling him out. Maki watched the both of them, there was a look in her eyes that said there were about a thousand things she would rather be doing right now but she did not move to leave them either.    
  
Kokichi knocked a cup of ramen noodles from his head back into the trash can. “Why are you following me around anyway? I already told you, I don’t want to play with you guys. You’re all so mean to me. This game isn’t fun anymore. I want to go home.”    
  


“Wait, so you don’t like the killing game…?” Kaito had a look in his eyes like he wanted to believe in Kokichi. That made him the easiest kind of person to lie to.    
  
“Nope, that was just a lie.” The corners of Kokichi’s mouth twisted up into a smile. “The idea of an idiot like you sympathizing with me is disgusting, I don’t want to pretend to be a good person around you, even as a joke.”    
  
“You’re my sidekick. That’s why I follow you around. If you don’t want to be any help in this investigation fine, but you’re still my responsibility,” Kaito said, finally answering his question.   
  
“Nope!”    
  
“Don’t just nope me!”    
  
“You’ve been noped sucka!”   
Kokichi wanted to laugh.

He was a liar, but he had no intention of playing around with Kaito’s little fantasies.    
He was not that much of a lier.    
  
“Th-then, if you’re not my sidekick then I’ll be your accomplice. You take the lead and I’ll follow, and Harukawa will too.”    
  
“Wait, what?” Maki looked up from her  _ I’m not a part of this stupidity  _ face.    
  
“Hey, we’re the ones keeping your secret. If we’re not heroes that makes all three of us accomplices.”    
  
“Why do you always have to drag me along into your nonsense? Why me?” Maki bemoaned her fate.    
  
“Hey, here’s an idea, if you want to know about murder why don’t you ask a murderer like Harukawa-chan,” Kokichi shrugged at both of them, and started to walk off like he had gotten bored. “You two leave me out of your little love story, I don’t want to get cooties.”    
  
“Haaah? The hell are you even talking about.” Kaito grabbed him by the black and white scarf on his neck, and pulled him up by the back of his neck like a kitten.    
  
As he dangled there Kokichi kicked his legs on empty air. “No faiiiir, you’re using your height to cheat.”    
  
“I don’t need to cheat. I got this tall through hard work and effort, and drinking lots of milk.”   
  
“Awe, but I hate milk.”   
  
“The hell are we even talking about? Come on, if you’re not going to investigate then just do whatever the hell you want but you’re not getting rid of me so easily.” 

 

“You’re so stupid, even death won’t cure you. Fine, if you want to be my accomplice then we’re going to commit a crime. Maki should already be familiar with that, you know, because she’s a murderer.” 

 

Maki glared at Kokichi in a way that said  _ if Kaito weren’t here you would get it.  _ Maki was the exact opposite of a talkative person, but her glares always said a lot. She thought she was concealing her emotions, Kokichi almost found it funny how much of an open book she was.    
  
He was dropped by Kaito, and the three of them snuck into the dorms together. Kokichi pulled out a silver lock pick from his pocket, and got working on the door to Togami’s room.    
  
“What are we investigating in there…?” Kaito asked.    
  
“I told you this isn’t an investigation. Do I look like some stupid goody two shoes detective to you?”    
  
“You look like a brat,” Maki said.    
  
“Awe, you’re so nice. You know for a murderer,” Kokichi said as he pulled open the door. “This is obviously the heist of the century. I’m going to steal everything the richest kid here has, and then go down in history as a legendary phantom thief.”    
  
“And you think Momota lives in a dream world,” Maki muttered.    
  
Kokichi looked around the room. The bed and sheets were several times more expensive than anything they got to sleep in. There was a gold robe that probably went to about Togami’s upper thighs hanging off the bathroom door. He had rows upon rows of spare glasses on a shelf on the wall. There was an extremely expensive coffee machine that none of them were quite sure how he got it there.    
  
Kokichi flickered back and forth.   
He danced.   
Like the shadow of a flame.    
Skipping like a child.    
Playing at being a hero.

Vanuquishing evil.    
Playing at being a villain.    
Corrupting good.   
Going wild.   
Joking around.    
Almost crazily.   
He looked like he was having fun.   
As if nothing at all was serious to him.    
It was not that he did not notice the tense atmosphere.   
He did not even see it.   
It got in the way of his fun.    
He wasn’t going mad.   
He never had sanity to begin with.    
He breathed madness.   
He laughed.    
Like an innocent child, butterfly free of sin.    
A wholly pure existence.    
Feeling nothing.   
Taking nothing seriously.    
No, maybe that was the joke.    
He had lied.    
He took everything seriously.    
He was less innocent than everybody else.   
He was more damaged than everybody else.   
He was the only sane one here.   
They were the mad ones.    
  
Kaito watched him. He understood nothing and it pissed him off, but he could not look away either. He could not understand him, but he could not stop wanting to understand him either. Even if he knew Kokichi was never going to let himself be understood. If he asked, Kokichi would just laugh at the notion.    
  
Kokichi finally stopped, pulling a letter out of the trash can. He smoothed out the paper and held it in front of Kaito’s face.    
  
“What girly handwriting.”   
  
“Wow, Momota-chan you can’t even read? Even I can’t laugh at that, it’s just too sad,” Kokichi said, but that was a lie because he was snickered. His laughter escaped from him as he hissed underneath his breath.     
  
“Shut the hell up, I can read! They don’t let idiots into space you know!”   
  
“Awe, it’s too bad then. You’re never going to achieve your dream if they won’t let you into space.”    
  
Kaito decided to ignore Kokichi (the smart option, and the one he almost never took) and read the letter in front of him. 

 

_ Tonight in the talent lab of the Ultimate Anthropologist, a murder will take place. _   
  
“Togami-kun was warned about the murder, isn’t that suspicious that he just happened to find the body?” 

 

“You don’t trust anybody in this world, do you?” Kaito said, once again pulling Kokichi up by his checkered black scarf. Kokichi was used to being manhandled by Kaito now. However, this touch was different from all the others. It was hostile and intimate at the same time. Kokichi hated it. He wished Kaito would just hate him entirely, that would make everything easier for him to carry out his villainous machinations.    
  
“Do you?”    
  
Kokichi mirrored the question back at him.    
Between the two of them, there were no feelings. There was no meaning, or lack of meaning. There were no truths and lies. There was no clarification needed, or clownification, no puzzle to be solved, no mystery to unravel, no illlusion to dispel, no cynicism, no realism, and above all else, there was no romance.    
  
Kokichi wondered if he had ever looked so closely in another person’s eyes before. So that they appeared like mirrors. The true comedy of it, however, was that in spite of all the things the two of them weren’t, they were still  _ something  _ when they were together. It was the kind of comedy that bred sorrow, demanded compassion, the meaningful comedy he hated the most.    
  
He wanted nonsense. He wanted it to be nothing.    
He preferred when things were light as air. He wanted to be floaty.    
He hated gravity. He loved levity.    
Just as Kaito would never make sense of Kokichi, Kokichi could never make sense of Kaito.    
Kokichi fooled everybody else with his lies but he found himself baffled by Kaito’s lies.    
Yet, being with Kaito felt like looking into his own face and talking to himself.    
A conversation had with a reflection in the mirror.    
When he was a child he had a distinct memory, of looking into the mirror and not seeing his own face looking back for a moment. He thought he saw someone else.   
He thought he saw a friend looking back at him.   
A friend far away in a place he could not reach or touch.    
Only to realize he was just looking at himself.    
Only to be reminded that he was alone. 

 


	48. Prince and the Punk Ass Villain

🧸 **INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION 🧸**

 

“This is all your fault!”

 

Fukawa Toko had never considered her relationship with Jack, never even questioned it. A bully that liked to pick on her, a curse that has followed her around since childhood, proof that she really was always the monster that both of her mothers saw her as.  
  
Every child who has been struck against the face, so hard that their cheeks could still feel the after effect of the hit. Not just for a few minutes after, but for a long time, in every touch, the mere sight of a hand coming close was a reminder. After the initial disbelief of being hit cleared away they all thought the same thing _was it my fault?_

 

Parents punished bad children and were kind to good children. Happy families were made up of good, and happy people. That was the common sense of the world that children observed. If they were not happy then there had to be something wrong with them personally.  
  
Toko thought this several times, if she were a better daughter she could have endured it all and stayed kind. If she was better at talking to people, if she was more pretty, if she could read the room better, if she was not so stinky, she might have made a friend at school to help her endure it all rather than provoking bullies into picking on her. That boy who pretended to smile at her, she was so excited for the first time someone actually listened to her she just kept talking and talking. She should have noticed he was only trying to be polite. She just talked his ear off. She caused trouble for him. She murdered him, in the end. 

 

She was the one in the wrong, she knew that. She had been a victim A suffering innocent child that needed to be protected. Then, she crossed the line or rather she cut through it. She could not go her whole life being a victim, so she became a victimizer instead. As a child she was begging to be saved from that house, waiting for her prince to come. Now no one in the whole world could save her.  
  
She had never read a single story where villains were saved. The kind of person who could save villains, they would have to be wrong in the head just like her.  
  
She knew she could have done more. That day she woke up with a grade school kid’s body pinned into the walls by scissors, she could have turned herself in. She could have tried to talk to Jack, tried to control her earlier than this.  
  
It was hard, being a bad person and also a victim of trauma. Nobody would argue that she had not been victimized, but she was no cinderella. Her suffering was not beautiful. She did not remain kind. She became petty, mean, cruel, vulgar, paranoid, unlikable, she just kept getting uglier. Fukawa could not be a princess, all she could ever become was a killer. The girl pure of heart did not save herself by finding love, she fell in blood lust instead. 

The whodunnit.  
If she were to ever write a mystery novel it would be a tedious and boring read.  
Because the culprit would be obvious from the first page.  
She was the killer.  
Murderer.  
She knew this, she had known for so long and yet she still could not accept it.  
_What a fragile-seeming kid._  
Anyone who saw her younger self with small braided pigtails, and large round spectacles that twinkled, reflected and obscured like the moon, clutching a book to her chest would think so.  
She never changed from that damn kid.  
If Kumagawa Misogi was “broken” then Fukawa Toko was “breakable.”  
Fragile, on the edge of fragmentation.  
She was always ready to cut herself on the razor edge of a scissor’s blade.  
If she accepted it, she would break.  
Even worse than a crack across the left and right lobes that cleaved her brain in twain. 

There was a difference between cracked and shattered.  
Depending on how the glass was tempered, some glass would just break apart into dust.  
Both of her mothers had broken, but the daughter didn’t want to.  
That’s why she could not be a murderer, someone else needed to carry the blame.  
  
On top of being a murderer, and just bad at being a person in general she was also a coward.  
  
She knew. She knew how awful her words were. That did not stop her from saying them. “It’s all your fault! You killed Kiyo! Why? Why do you have to ruin my whole damn life? What did I ever do to you? If it weren’t for you, I’d still be miserable, but at least I wouldn’t be a miserable fucking psycho!” 

 

She screamed at the girl on the other side of the mirror. The girl that she imagined was Genocide Jack. She never once tried to talk to Jack before this point, and these were the first words she greeted her sister with.  
  
“Kiyo called you my sister. I can see it now. You’re just like them, you’re just like my mothers. You’ve abused me just like they did. You only exist to hate me. The one you really want to kill is me isn’t it?”  
  
The mirror gave her no response. It became as ugly, twisted up in anger, wrinkled like a witch features sharp enough to cut, but those were just her own emotions reflected back. She did not expect Jack to talk back to her. She liked to point out that she was not that crazy. 

  
“If you have to kill anyone it should be me. It’s not like there’s anything good about living. I’ve never even been happy once. Everything would have been better…”

 

If she died.  
If she starved when they locked her up in a dark room.  
If she drowned when they dunked her head in water again and again.  
If she bled out when her head cracked against the porcelain bath tub.  
If she was just forgotten about and her body was left to rot with the trash.  
If she froze when they locked her outside.

If she died before she became a murderer then maybe someone would sympathize with her. They would find her body and say _that poor child._ The words she had longed to hear for so long. Someone could have loved her after death. Just like Snow White she would be buried on a bed of flowers and they would pity her for what her cruel mother had done to her. 

  
She lived to be a murderer instead.  
A loser with no friends.  
The most unpopular girl on earth.  
She could barely make eye contact and talk to other people without stuttering like a fool.  
And to top all of it off she was now screaming in the mirror like a crazy person.  
  
“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. Of course you’re my family, because for me, family isn’t someone to be loved but someone to be hated.” 

 

The whydunnit.  
Why did she become a murderer.  
Because she hated.  
Everyone smiled but her.  
Everyone had a family but her.  
They all lied to her.  
They pretended to be kind to her but whispered behind her back.  
Liars.  
It’s everyone, lies all the time.  
They lied telling her she could become happy.  
They lied telling her parents loved their children.  
Really, all lies.  
All the desire for love in her young heart, just became hate.  
She told herself she was overflowing with love.

That she just wanted someone to love.  
Really, such a liar.  
The only thing inside of her was hate.  
They hated her so she hated herself.  
They would not love her.

So she hated everyone else.  
When she was younger she shut herself up in her closet to read.  
The only space in her house her parents never found her.  
She never left.  
She shut herself away from a world that she only hated.  
And no one found her.  
And no one saved her.  
  
She could not even save herself. Fukawa Toko pressed her flat palm against the mirror. “I hope I get executed. I hope they catch me. I don’t care about justice or anything like that. Justice and revenge are such tiresome literary tropes anyway.  I just want you to die along with me.”  
  
There was such a thing as a lover’s suicide, but what she wanted was a hater’s suicide.  
  
“I hate you. Y-you’re ugly, and none of your jokes are funny. You don’t have any friends, because you spend all day in the back of a crazy girl’s head. You’re basically a neet in my subconscious. You smell. And your fashion sense is bad. And that tongue thing is just gross.” 

 

She wanted to die hating herself.  
She wanted to die hated by herself.  
  
Toko finally punched the mirror in front of her. She knew it was a cliche, but she could not resist the urge to destroy the image of herself in front of her. She watched the reflection of her face falling apart into pieces in front of her, and smiled as freely as Jack did. She laughed like Jack did. 

  
Toko looked at her own bloodied hand and for the first time felt no sickness at all. Blood made her nauseous, because it reminded her of that place. It reminded her of blood spurting from her mother’s arms. The idea that if she became a corpse her parents would not even bury her, they would just throw her out with the trash. 

 

As the sticky and wet sensation spread out from the laceration on her hand, she felt elated.  
Who knew.  
Underneath her ugly skin there was such a pretty color inside of her. 

No wonder both of her mothers went mad.  
No wonder her mind splintered in twain.  
Breaking into glass shards.  
Breaking away at the seams.  
Falling apart.

Sparkling with light as you fell.  
She had never tasted such a wonderful ecstasy before.

Her mothers who gave up on love, who never even bothered to love the child they had left, they must have been so wonderfully happen relieved of that burden. Every frustration they had, any time their misery piled up they could relieve themselves with a convenient punching bags. 

  
Toko only felt one regret for falling apart like this.  
She hated the whole world, but there was one boy she could never hate.  
If she was convicted it would mean that boy had failed to protect her.  
He told her in a trembling voice to shut up and let him handle this.  
That he would not lose her.  
It was for a stupid reason.  
In a world full of liars.  
He never once lied to her.  
He had the worst.  
He was terrible, terribly prideful, terribly rude, terribly impudent.  
He thought the whole world revolved around him.  
But it made her happy to think she was a part of that world.  
He was different from the boy who faked a smile and pretended to listen to her.  
He listened to her and told him how much what she said annoyed her.  
He talked back.  
He insulted her and made no attempt to hide his feelings.  
He never hid a single thing from her.  
When she was by his side she never once felt lonely, because he did not hide any part of himself from her. He told her he hated her. That he loathed every part of her. That she was a woman unworthy of him. That was why she fell in love with him.  
  
She picked up a shard of glass and with the sharpened edge tried to cut the red string in front of her. Even if she broke apart, even if she shut out everything else, that string would still be connected. No matter how hard she tried though, that string refused to break.  
  
_If it won’t break, then I’ll just hang on it._

 

**🧸 TRIAL 2 ACT ONE 🧸**

 

Another murder trial.  
Mukuro did not feel any fear for her own life. Unlike the other students present she knew the rules of the game. Junko explained it to her over and over again. If anything she felt sick to her stomach for understanding the way Junko thought so well.

  
The point of the murder trial was just to have everybody gang up on and kill the blackened, to make the survivors feel like they all had become murderers. The prospect of escape was just a lie. Junko never planned on letting anyone escape, or letting a mystery go unsolved, Mukuro suspected that her sister’s fickle self would never even commit to making good on her threat to kill everybody if they got the murderer wrong.

 

  
It was more despair inducing to watch their numbers dwindle one by one. It was not so much they were surviving, but choosing to die slower. Whoever the murderer was Mukuro did not hate them. She just felt sad, at what an empty thing the loss of life was. 

  
She knew it was wrong for her, a murderer to feel that way. She was just as empty as the act of killing itself. As they descended the elevator Mukuro put her hand over the heart that was still beating for some reason, no matter how many times she tried to kill her own heart.  
  
She closed her eyes and tried to recall the smiling face of her brother to calm herself down. Shadows ate away at the edge of her recollection of him.  
  
She had a hazy memory. Once, she fought against him several times with the intention of killing him. He broke her hand and made it impossible for her to pull the trigger. She felt his fist collided with her face over and over again. There was no talent at all, just brutality, just breaking what was in front of him. One of the last things Mukuro saw as her eyes became too swollen to keep open was how broken his fists had become in his wild punches. It was like he was breaking himself against her. When waves crash into the shore, they break too.  
  
She realized he had no intention of stopping. He would hit her over and over again until she died. Strangely, that thought brought nothing of relief to her. Her entire life she was afraid of being useless, of being dull as a blade, hesitating to pull the trigger because then Junko would throw her away. If she died here she would fail Junko and be the Ultimate Disappointing Sister. Mukuro’s life was just being hurt by her sister again, and again, and trying to find some love in that all on her own. She felt nothing would be lost if she died. She was glad, this boy had broken her arm and made it impossible for her to pull the trigger. Finally, someone had stopped her from killing, her last thoughts were how kind this boy was.  
  
She did not fall asleep from the final time. Rudely, she awoke in the morning. When she raised her hand in front of her face, her broken arm had been set and her hand been stitched up. The laceration and bruises covering her face, he had done his best to stitch those up.

  
When she tried to move her other hand she saw, he was right next to her holding her hand as she slept. Even when she was sick, even when she had a nightmare, even when the two of them were still sleeping in the same bed, Junko had never held her hand like this. 

  
“Why didn’t you kill me?” 

 

『I’m the type of person who when he gets asks questions, just mirrors them back to be infuriating. I don’t know, why didn’t I kill you?』  
  
“Are you stupid...do you think you’re some kind of hero?” 

  
Junko would just kill him.  
She would kill the first person to hold her hand like this.  
Mukuro did everything for the sake of her sister’s happiness, but Junko never so much as smiled in her direction. She thought smiles were something to be earned. That was why she was so surprised.  
  
Makoto, in an offhand way, almost on accident, recognized her one day and greeted her with a smile. He looked like he was happy to see her. He was smiling, just as her. It was the first time she ever felt like she was enough.  
  
Mukuro was not someone that stupid with love, she knew that smile was not for her. Makoto would have smiled that way for anyone. However, the smile Kumagawa gave her in response to her question, it was like something for only her to see, a secret between the two of them.  
  
She understood it.  
_I can’t take it anymore. It hurts too much. I’m too tired. I’m not good enough._ A smile made up with words like that. A smile that had completely given up. His lips stretched and he showed her the most miserable excuse of a smile that anyone had ever attempted. 

 

『Nah… I could never be a hero, I’m just a punk ass villain.』  
  
She never understood why seeing such a poor man’s smile made her so happy. She never understood him. It must have been lonely Mukuro thought, not being understood by your own family. She knew because her and Junko never understood each other not even once.  
  
Suddenly , togami got impatient and snapped at the bear breaking her out of her reminiscence. “I know why you’re stalling the trial. The real criminal hasn’t shown up yet, has he?” 

 

『Toooogami-kun! I wanted to be unfashionably late and make a cool entrance. I just can’t win, can I?』

 

The elevator they had all just stepped out of clanged and fell to the bottom once more.  
Kumagawa stood center stage, audaciously, shamelessly, looking like he had no business at all standing there. He looked more like a member of the audience who had hopped on stage to try to steal the spotlight. Misery clung to him, the same way the shadows clung to the corners of his face whenever he shined his bright smile. 

 

“Misogi-chan…”  
  
Mukuro called out to him.  
She knew where her Orihime-sama was.  
But Hikoboshi-sama had gotten lost.  
He finally returned to her.

 

『No, that’s not right.I’m not Kumagawa Misogi. I’m his younger twin brother, Kumagawa Yuuki. Got it?』Kumagawa immediately backed down from his lie, poking his hip and flippantly gesturing with his wrist. 『Nope, I lied. Gotcha, didn’t I? Correct! You got it absolutely right! Anyway, I am Kumagawa Misogi! Not!』

  
“You don’t seem to understand what’s going on, the one who gets to start these trials is me!” Monokuma said, ineffectually whacking his hammer against the podium he stood in front of.

『Huh? See that’s where you’re wrong, you’re the one who doesn’t understand. This isn’t a negotiation, a suggestion, a trade, or a request! I don’t plan on sharing screen time with any of you! It’s a triumphant return you sons of bitches!  I’ve crawled my way back from hell, and boy are my arms tired!』

 

 _Of course._ Mukuro thought. The moment she needed him, always without fail Kumagawa appeared in front of her. Yet, she was never there when he needed her. He would just smile the same as always, and say something that was both psychotic and a really terrible joke. 

 

『Ahahahahaahahaahahaha! Kiyo-chan, and Kyoko-chan, they were all such good people to think they’re still dead while a villain like me steals the spotlight! There really is no fairness in this world! It’s the absolute worst! But I love it, I love this awful world!』  
  
Kumagawa broke out into laughter. He was not laughing to cover up tears like he usually did, it was a throaty, villainous laugh that echoed out from the bottom of his poisonous stomach. He was downright maniacal. He went mad. He loved every second of it. 

 

『This really is the best! Crawling your way back up from the bottom is the best feeling! None of you elites who sit at the top are ever going to know this wonderful feeling! I hope you get comfy in your thrones before I pull them out from under you! I’m so grateful! I’m so glad I’m alive! This feeling!! Ahaahahaha!』

  
Kumagawa clutched his face from the front. Even with his fingers clawing at, and digging into the side of his face he thought there was nothing he could do to stop himself.

『I’m thankful for those worthless parents of mine for abandoning me! From the bottom of my heart I want to thank them! I want to kiss their feet! Every single person whose stepped on me, whose kicked me, I want to thank you! I thought my luck was rotten, how stupid? I really am the luckiest person in the whole world! It’s only because I fall so much, that I get to crawl my way back up to the top.』  
  
He looked like he wanted to tear all of them down. He was the devil, come to seduce them all into falling. He tossed his head back without a care in the world, unhinged his jaw in an ophidian way, and then hissed with laughter. His tongue was forked and his eyes were slits. He smiled so much, so wide, he looked like he was going to rip apart his lips. His laughter echoed. Because there was nothing inside of him. His bones were a hollow frame with no organs, no muscles, no meat and none of the juicy stuff.  
  
Yet he looked so alive, as if he was laughing in defiance of death. He was more alive than anyone else here. He loved that life with every fiber of his being, every string that made up his messy patchwork self.

 

No matter how many times he was torn he just kept mending himself over and over again. He refused to be thrown out, even though he was ratty and tattered. Even if it was pointless. Even if he would still be broken.  
  
Kumagawa laughed so much he tore himself up and left himself in stitches.  
  
Togami looked unimpressed. “If you fools are going to have psychotic breakdowns mid trial every single time, then can you at least save them for the end when the important people are done talking?” 

 

『Ehhh!』Kumagawa glared back at Togami from the corner of his eyes. 『But I’m the villain, I’m the most important person of all… at least to myself I  am.』  
  
The trial began with an introduction that was simultaneously half-assed and overdramatic.

**TRIAL IS IN SESSION!**

**  
** “How nice of the prime suspect to show up. I expected so much less from cowardly lots like you,” Togami said as he straightened himself. Perhaps he was preparing to play the role of straight man.

『You think I’m the lowest? You think I’m nothing more than a self serving coward? Ahh, such wonderful compliments. Don’t try to seduce me Byakuya-chan I’m a one woman man. 』  
  
Togami bit his lip in frustration. He looked like he was holding himself back from making a retort. He knew how good types like Kumagawa and Komaeda were at sucking others into their inane antics, he refused to encourage their tomfoolery any further.  
  
“Huuuuh?! W-wasn’t that guy dead!?” Kaito stammered. Sweat suddenly slicked down his face and his eyes bulged out from his skull. “S-s-so is this guy like a zombie? Well there’s no reason to be scared right, because shit like zombies and ghosts nobody believes in that anyway! So, nobody be scared okay! If anybody’s scared stand behind me, I’ll protect you!” 

“You’re the only one who looks scared right now,” Maki undercut him with her words.  
  
“Wow, you’re an even bigger baby than me. And I’m the most baby,” Kokichi would never let up the moment he spotted one of Kaito’s weaknesses. “I mean being afraid of ghosts, really? Why would a ghost even want to waste its time haunting your ugly ass?”

 "If the murderer really was a ghost then it definitely could not have been aliens..." Rantaro commented in his usual spacy way, and nobody understood him.   
  
“H-hey, shut up! At least I’m not afraid of aliens,” Kaito snapped back.   
  
“Aliens have infiltrated our government at the highest levels. I would know because I ran into them while my secret organization. We had a secret turf war and everything! Now I’m the number one most wanted enemy on both earth and space! I have to wear a tin foil hat at all times to stop them from reading my thoughts.”  
  
“You’ll never change,” Kaito spat back at him.  
  
“You haven’t changed after all this time,” Kokichi mirrored his reply. 

  
Kaito and Kokichi looked like they had both lost.  
  
Shuichi, Kaede, Rantaro, Kaito, Maki, Kokichi, Mukuro, Makoto, Togami, Toko and the last to arrive was Kumagawa Misogi who took his seat in the fifteenth spot.  
  
The ones who knew Kumagawa Misogi did not even look surprised at his return to the dead. “It’s nothing special,” Togami scoffed, “Kumagawa is just such a failure in life he can’t even die properly.”

 

『Byakuya-chan is being so nice to me today, I’m starting to worry about his mental health.』  
  
“I should start charging for air considering how much all you scum sucking bottomfeeders waste it.” Togami pointed across the trial room like his next words were meant to cut Kumagawa at the heart. “Plus, it’s time to name the culprit do you all want to rack your brains or should I just tell you who it is?”

 

“...” Toko worried her lip, then bit into her thumb nail when that was not enough worrying for her.  
  
“We all have alibis the entire time frame the murder would have taken place except for you, the person nobody even thought to suspect. Korekiyo completed the ritual to bring you back from the dead, and then like Franekenstein’s monster you woke up and immediately killed him.” 

  
Mukuro saw it. Kumagawa who just came back to her so suddenly, as if it was just another one of his whims. He was going to disappear just as suddenly as well. “Wait, you have no proof of that! You can’t say he’s the killer just because he has an alibi, somebody could have lied about their alibi.”

 

『It’s okay, Mukuro-chan… Your little brother is nothing but trouble.』Kumagawa seemed so sincere in his apology, though Mukuro knew he never cared enough to regret anything. If asked he would say it was not his style to regret. He barely had a heart to begin with, he did not want to weigh it down further. Kumagawa suddenly clapped his hands in mock applause.『Yep, you got me I’m the killer. I could never stand up to such wonderful talent. Why don’t we all vote?』

  
“Misogi-chan, you just got here you can’t lose so quickly!” Mukuro whined. For a moment Mukuro searched for a way to protect him, then the image of Korekiyo’s dead body came to mind. Another person she had just failed to save. She pulled her lips tight and whimpered, with her head looking down at her feet. “Save him, Makoto…” 

 

Kokichi hung his head. “I wanted to be the first suspect. Why are you guys always leaving me out? I always got picked last for sports when I was growing up too, I’m being reminded of the trauma that drove me to become a villain.” 

 

“Maybe if you weren’t such a pain in the ass to be around you’d get picked.” Kaito said, taking his lie way too seriously as always.  
  
“I’m not a pain in the ass! I’m a bottom! I like being spoiled too much to put in any effort!”  
  
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”  
  
“Besides, I’m way too cute, funny, and fun to hang out with to be unpopular. You shouldn’t make up mean lies like that!” Kokichi said, his eyes filled to the brim with crocodile tears. 

 

Makoto ignored the clownery, as the only thing he heard in the whole world was the voice of that girl begging him for help, relying on him for once. “There’s a lot of suspicious missing evidence in this case, Togami-kun. Monokuma didn’t give us the time or cause of death, and we don’t even know if Kiyo was planning to revive Kumagawa-kun.”

“There were occult books about revival all over the library. Only one person here would actually believe such a fantastical tale to be true, and that was the anthropologist.”  
  
“W-well, he was kind of a weirdo but…” Makoto quickly stopped himself. “Oh wait that’s not a nice thing to say about someone who’s already dead. You don’t get it, Kumagawa-kun isn’t the type of person who would kill someone without reason he’s way too nice of a guy for that.”  
  
“Nice? You really consider such empty words a compliment? What is nice exactly to you? Anyone can trick you by saying nice words,” Togami said, his eyes cold enough to give Makoto freezer burn.  
  
“R-really, because it seems impossible for you to say anything nice ever…” Mukuro muttered still keeping her head down. 

 

『Makoto-chan you must be really mad at me for dying. To think you’d ever say something so horrible to me, that I had a reason behind my actions.』Kumagawa wrapped his arms around his lower body, and twisted just a little bit to stretch, enough to hear his spinal columns pop.

『Unconsciously, unrelatable, unworthy, and on top of that irresponsible. That’s why I can do anything without regret, even kill.』  
  
“Wait, this is like one of Ouma-kun’s antics. Don’t you find it suspicious that he’s just admitting to it?” Shuichi spoke up, looking at Kaede who was right next to him. He whispered something to her.  
  
“Y-yeah!” Kaede added on a moment later, “If you really killed him then what was the cause of death, and why did you crucify him to the wall?” 

 

『I dunno!』Kumagawa shrugged. 『I thought so little of him that it’s a pain just to remember. Whatever I did, I screwed him up real good.』  
  
“Besides, I have one more damning piece of evidence. Kumagawa, rid yourself of that filthy garment and show us what you’re hiding underneath!” Togami said, accusing him once more. 

 

『I don’t think a fanservice scene like that can be published in weekly shonen despair magazine...』  
  
“Enough rambling from the rabble!” 

 

『For someone who takes himself far too seriously to ever be a clown, you sure do love your wordplay.』Kumagawa sighed. He crossed his arms at the bottom of his shirt and pulled it up over his head. The black jacket he usually wore was missing and that shirt was all he had covering him. His white shirt was soaked through with blood. Kumagawa pulled his own greasy black hair back, his lips too were covered in dried blood like someone had dragged lipstick all over his face in an attempt to make him pretty.  
  
“And so we have found our killer. We don’t need to establish motive, an unreasonable and unruly fiend like Kumagawa doesn’t need one. He hates all of us just for being better than him and would rather tear us down rather than put any effort into his pathetic self.” 

 

『You know so much about me. I wouldn’t expect anything less from my childhood friend since I was two years old!』

 

“You two were childhood friends?” Makoto asked, he sounded slightly jealous. “N-not that I’m jealous or anything.” He was. 

 

“That was so obviously a lie Naegi. When they say a sucker is born every minute, could that phrase be referring to you by any chance?” Togami said, making his exasperation clear.  
  
Makoto threaded his fingers together, searching for a string to hold onto. “You’re not a bad person, Kumagawa-kun. I know you’re not.” 

 

『What the hell is that supposed to mean? If that’s what you think, then I’m going to have to teach you real good about a villain’s style!』Kumagawa looked genuinely offended.  
  
“Kumagawa-chan didn’t do it. I did! He’s just covering for me, his long lost twin brother Kumagawa Kokichi!” Kokichi shouted in front of everybody, because nobody had paid attention to him in a little while.  
  
“That’s not the twist and you know it!” Shuichi shouted, shutting him down. “The ‘I secretly had a twin all along twist’? There’s no way that happens in reality.”  
  
Mukuro whistled and tried to avoid eye contact with anybody.  
  
“If you’re not going to offer any defense then I suggest we vote-” Togami was interrupted before he could finish.  
  
“No you’re wrong!” Makoto finally objected.  
  
Togami looked absolutely flabbergasted. Scandalized. Makoto had just thrown down the dueling glove in front of him for all to see. It was a gentleman’s gauntlet. “Did you just ‘no you’re wrong’ me? You dare disagree with me?”  
  
“You bet I did!” Makoto said with his squeaky confidence. “It doesn’t matter how suspicious Kumagawa-kun acts. It’s impossible for him to have been the murderer. There was no ‘ritual’ to revive someone from the dead, the original motive is that Monokuma would have revived him only after the murder was committed. By the time Kumagawa-kun came back from the dead Korekiyo was already dead to fulfill the conditions for his revival!” 

 

『Ugh… you heroes always have to ruin my fun.』Kumagawa said, the corner of his mouth twisting into a nasty scowl as he grinded his teeth.  
  
“Are you sure we shouldn’t vote for this guy anyway? What if he spreads the T-Virus to the rest of us?” Kaito said through his chattering teeth. “I m-mean, not that I care. I’m the kind of man who wouldn’t give up, even at the end of the world! Why should I be afraid of us all turning into mindless zombies and p-picking each other off one by one.” 

 

“I don’t even need to make fun of you anymore, you’re just doing all the work for me,” Kokichi sighed.  
  
“Then how did he get covered in blood?” Togami shouted, desperate to retain composure and control of the room. 

 

He seemed ignorant of the fact that with Kumagawa involved things were destined to go out of control. Kumagawa stuck his tongue out in a cutesy expression and bonked himself on the head.『N-no reason, I’m just such a klutz you know.』

 

**🧸 INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION 🧸**

 

『Kiyo-chan, I wanted to become friends with you. So, I’m not giving up.』

  
Kumagawa Misogi looked at the battered and bruised body of Korekiyo Shinguji dead on the floor in front of him.  
  
He saw nothing in death.  
He refused to see anything.  
He was like a child shutting his eyes at a scary scene in a movie.  
He did not even want to look.  
If he looked away maybe it would vanish.  
  
Kumagawa loved broken things but he could not love Korekiyo’s broken body. 

His mouth fell open, but Kumagawa could not be bothered to scream anymore.  
He didn’t think of anything.  
He couldn’t think of anything.  
His heart beat unevenly in his chest.  
The heart was a muscle, and Kumagawa felt like the muscle fibers that made up his heart were slowly being ripped apart, as he was pulled apart. 

 

 _I’m dizzy. I’m dizzy. I’m dizzy. This is crazycrazycrazycrazy._ Or maybe he was the one who was crazy.  
  
Kumagawa with no hesitation at all punched his arm into one of Korekiyo’s nearby displays. The glass shattered and some of it dug into his skin, breaking the surface and causing him to bleed but Kumagawa did not even notice. He looted the display for a set of old bandages, stitches, and whatever else he could find that might help.

 

  
It was getting hard to see through the tears in his eyes. Kumagawa always smiled, whether he was stepped on, whether he was kicked, he never wasted his tears on himself. Yet, he saw nothing to smile about in Korekiyo’s death. He doubted he would ever be able to smile again. There was nothing in death, nothing at all.  
  
Life was meaningless, but death was even moreso.  
He went over to the body, and quickly sewed up the several lacerations he saw at the neck. When that was done he bandaged over them as well. Kumagawa saw that the body was not even bleeding, so it was likely his heart was not beeding but he ignored it.  
  
He just needed to fix Korekiyo. Then Korekiyo would be better again. He would pull off that mask, and Kumagawa would get to see his smile.  
  
Kumagawa placed his hands against Korekiyo’s chest, and pressed down. He kept pumping in the center of his ribcage in order to simulate a heart beat. He wanted to force blood through Korekiyo’s veins. He wanted the heart to beat again.  
  
Kumagawa leaned down and pressed his lips against Korekiyo’s, pushing air into his lungs. He hesitated for a moment feeling how cold Kiyo’s lips were, but tried to forget about that too. Hours passed as Kumagawa repeated the process again and again.  
  
As usual the rewards for Kumagawa’s efforts was nothing at all. His declaration of _I’m not giving up_ was never heroic. He just looked desperate and mad. Kumagawa could think of nothing else to do, so he sat down next to Korekiyo’s body and held his hand for a little while longer. He unraveled the bandages around Kiyo’s hand, just so he could feel the touch of the scars which covered the other boy’s hand. Korekiyo was always so impersonal, wearing gloves, wearing bandages, hiding away his hands like that.  
  
He did not move until he heard both Junko and Komaeda’s screaming several floors above him. Even then he looked at the corpse with regret. 『I’m so sorry, Kiyo-chan. It’s not your fault, okay?』He traced his fingers along the scars on Korekiyo’s hand. 『None of this ever was your fault.』  
  
Kumagawa pulled his shirt off and used it to wipe the blood along his arm, and then forced himself to turn his back. 

  
A villain who could not save anyone.  
For the sake of the people he loved that was what he was willing to become. 

 

**🧸 TRIAL TWO ACT TWO  🧸**

“Togami-kun, you’re not stupid…” Makoto began as he went over the information on his own head. Makoto oftentimes found that he had to assemble things piece by piece to grasp the whole picture, like some kind of really frustrating minigame.  
  
“What a wonderful compliment to be paid by you, Naegi,” Togami said.  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that!” It was hard being the only person hear who was not some kind of rude or eccentric. So hard. The struggles of a boring nice guy. “I mean it’s unlike you to put a theory forward with such an obvious hole in it, and Kumagawa-kun will always take the blame to protect other people so…” 

『Protecting other people? Is this a shonen manga? People who think about relationships in such childish ways don’t deserve to have relationships in the first place.』  
  
“Kumagawa-kun is also very contrarian.”

『I am not such a disagreeable person. I love love and peace more than anything else. H-hey, we’re all friends aren’t we? I don’t want to doubt any of you. I can’t believe any of my friends would become killers!』  
  
Shuichi caught onto what Makoto was saying. Makoto’s greatest character trait, he was easy to get along with, and an easy guy to follow. “Togami-kun, we should stop trying to make the evidence fit a culprit in mind and go back over the evidence again. Somebody must be lying about their alibi.”  
  
Kaede immediately spoke up. “N-not that we doubt any of you. I don’t want to be suspicious of my friends.”  
  
“Akamatsu-san, you’re kind of overdoing it a little bit with the whole power of friendship thing…” Shuichi said, looking back at her.

“I agree with Saihara-chan!” Kokichi perked up.  
  
Shuichi immediately shot him down. “I don’t want you to agree with me.”  
  
“Let’s do it! Alibi thunderdome! Two alibis enter, one leaves! The one who survives will be our culprit.”  
  
“If we doubt everybody’s alibis won’t we just pass the blame back and forth.” Maki undercut him.  
  
“Aaaaaand?”  
  
“Hm?” Maki scowled.  
  
“You guys talk about cooperation and teamwork, but you’re all afraid.”

Ouma Kokichi was transparent.  
See-through.  
It was a terrible thing for a liar to be.  
If he took his white jacket off, undid all the buttons, belts, and buckles then underneath he would show them all an exposed ribcage. He was born without skin. He had no eyes only empty holes in his skull. He had no tongue, only teeth.  
  
He reached forward with bony fingers, pointing like a shinigami about to put out the flame on the wick of a candle between his two fingers.  
  
“You’re too scared to point your fingers at others so you hide behind the word ‘trust’.” 

 

He had no skin. No soft organs. No jelly inside of him. He had to hide this all. The only way he could convince others he had a face was if he wore a mask at all times. If it ever fell off they would see how hollow his bones were underneath. Before he dressed himself in all white, he used to wear a black jacket with a skeleton pattern on it, he felt like that outfit was too honest.  
  
“How do you expect to find the culprit when you’re all worried about each other’s feelings. If you’re planning to expose a liar, then you have to corner them psychologically.”  
  
There was something underneath his skin that he could not let anybody else see, he knew it. He hid his forked tongue, and hid his hisses underneath his laughter. His nose was just two slits in the middle of his face. He was someone who could shed his own skin. He could wear a new set of skin at any time. He was never attached to any particular feeling, or any particular mask.  
  
He could care less if his lies were exposed, because he could always keep telling other lies. Other people hid themselves behind comfortable truths. They always spat out niceties like _let’s be friends,_ and _I want to believe in you._ The thing about nice words was that they were easy to say without ever meaning them. They were a shallow comfort. They comforted themselves with kind words, and he comforted himself with jeers, with foul words, with howling maddening laughter.  
  
But they were both lies in the end so what was the difference? Why did they always single him out as a troublemaker?  
  
Even if someone tried to tell him one of those kind lies, he would always see through it. He could not be a part of their friendship circlejerk even if he wanted to be. Well, he wanted to stir up trouble. He wanted to be alone. Yeah, he was glad they left him out. It just hurt a little bit, was all. He never cried, not for real, because all of his emotions were things he could hit clear and reset on. But he still felt pain.  
  
“Only then will you reveal their true self as a liar, hiding beneath a layer of deceit.”

 

Shuichi was speechless.

『Oh, sorry Kokichi-chan what you said was just so boring and stupid that I stopped paying attention.』

 

“What.”  
  
Kokichi’s only response to Kumagawa’s interruption.  
A flat what.  
Everybody else stared in suspicion but Kumagawa barely looked affected by his words. 

 

『I thought you were supposed to be a liar? You’re so easy to read it’s laughable. No, seriously I’m laughing.』Kumagawa did not in fact laugh. He suddenly looked too bored to laugh, like it was too tiresome, not worth the effort. 『Just because you’re too weak to trust others, you see everybody capable of trusting as beneath you. I know I’m the last person who should be saying this, but because I’m loved by hypocrites and liars I’ll say it, Inferiority complex much? 』  
  
“You don’t trust anyone either,” Kokichi hissed back at him.

『Kokichi-chan, I love fools and jokers but if you’re going to be so boring we can’t be friends.』Kumagawa’s smile looked like a sickness spreading on his face. All the color drained away and his eyes turned pitch black, just like oil spreading on the surface of water. His skin was oily, it had a pale glow to it that just made him look sicker. 『I trust everyone here with all of my heart. I trust them to smile and me and despise me in secret. I trust them to stab me the moment my back is turned. I trust them to say mean things behind my back. I’m able to trust because I know, not a single person here could hurt me. How about you?』  
  
“Y-you’re just not afraid of pain. You’re crazy.”  
  
If Kokichi was a snake Kumagawa was a whole nest of them.  
This was not ouroboros a snake devouring its own tail.  
Sparagmos.  
The feeling of being torn to shreds by a mob with their bare hands.  
The snakes head was stepped on and crushed.  
He was dionysus, his eyes like swirling wine, and horns curled the crown of his head.

 

『What about you? Are you afraid of pain?』

 

“...”  It was Kokichi’s turn to be speechless.  
  
『It’s too painful! You’re all my beloved friends! I don’t want to suspect any one of you of being a murderer. Let’s just all decide to die together okay? That’s better than continuing this farce of a class trial.』  
  
“You’re totally not serious! You can’t be that stupid, right?” Kokichi seemed genuinely angry. No lie.  
  
“No, he might actually be that stupid…” Maki said, feeling like she had witnessed a new low.

『I thought you were supposed to be the Ultimate Supreme Leader? Do they just give out Ultimate Titles with happy meals these days? Kokichi-san, you might be boring, but you’re such a cute brat that I can’t help but pity you. If you want I’ll give you a lesson on how to be a real world class villain.』Kumagawa bent his head back at such an unnatural angle it looked like his neck should be broken. His eyes bulged from his skull, and both of them peering from the absolute corners narrowed all of their resentment and unpleasantness on Naegi Makoto. 

『Makoto-chan, you already know the answer don’t you? Kirigiri-chan isn’t here to encourage you anymore. Don’t make me regret leaving my beloved sister with someone so weak.』  
  
“Togami-kun. You said you and Fukawa-san found the body at the same time but was that really true?” 

 

“You doubt me?” Togami looked amused.  
  
“You and Fukawa-san haven’t been talking for a whole month so why would you be walking with her that morning, and why did you go to Korekiyo’s talent lab first thing in the morning anyway?”  
  
“W-well, I…”  
  
“Actually, I have some evidence!” Kokichi said, as he brought up a letter to display to all of them. “Togami-chan received a warning last night that the murder would happen there.” 

 

Kaito, “Why the hell would you wait until now to reveal that?”  
  
Kokichi, “A sense of dramatic timing is important!” 

 

Togami looked absolutely cornered. He tried to readjust his glasses, only for his hand to start shaking. Strange. He looked at his shaking hand. He tried to command it to stop. He was a Togami, he had enough money to move mountains, and part the sea, and yet he could not get one hand to obey him and stop shaking.  
  
He could not even stop one girl from becoming a killer. He could not stop her from taking any more lives, and he could not even become the prince who saved her. He could not become anything, he could only become a Togami.  
  
“You’re all getting this wrong. My life is my most valuable asset. Why would I stick my neck out for anybody else?”  
  
Toko’s eyes widened as she saw them all cornering Togami. She already decided, so why was she staying quiet. Her weak voice finally spoke up. “It’s o-okay, Byakuya.”  
  
“You finally called me Byakuya.”  
  
“You can tell them.”  
  
“No, you idiot. I told you to shut up and let me handle this!”  
  
“Byakuya.”  
  
“I promised you, I wouldn’t tell anyone.”  
  
“It’s okay, I broke our promise first. Our promise ended when I killed someone.”  
  
That day, Togami said he would not tell a single person about the existence of Genocide Jack if Toko never killed anyone again. That was the promise that tied together a stalker and her victim, a serial killer and her murder target, a girl madly in love and a boy who hated love.  
  
Toko never once had someone protect her.  
Nobody tried to stop her parents from hitting her.  
Just this once, two boys Kumagawa and Togami were trying to protect her.  
She was grateful that at the very end finally somebody…  
She wanted to say goodbye to them with a smile at least.  
  
Togami let out all the air in his body, all the bluster, all the braggadacio. He looked barely able to hold up his shoulders about to collapse.  
  
“Everyone, Fukawa Toko is the Serial Killer Genocide Jack. Her calling card is killing victims with her trademark scissors, and then crucifying them and writing _blood lust_ in their own blood. I found her at the scene of the crime asleep but she was my property I didn’t want anyone to steal her and so I…”  
  
Togami choked on the words. He did not want to swallow. He did not want to breathe anymore. Living, even a second more without Toko seemed impossible to him now.  
When had she become a part of his life.  
When had she become one of those irreplaceable things.  
He always hated when people said _I can’t live without you. I never want to lose you._  
Now he understood how they felt. 

 『Ahahahahaaha! That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what a real prince looks like! You’re so noble, Byakuya-chan!』  
  
“You’ve finally recognized your betters.” Togami narrowed his eyes at Kumagawa. “What would you know about any of this? You can’t save anyone. You only exist on the bottom of the food chain, to be chewed up and spit out by those above you. Just shut up already and get stepped on so the worthy can ascend.” 

『I can’t save anyone?』Kumagawa opened and closed his eyes. He laughed. It was a mad party. A baccano. He was drunk on his own laughter. He hiccuped from the alcohol. His tongue flickered back and forth in his mouth, and it would lick and burn worse than any flame.  
  
Then suddenly he stopped. His body temperature dropped and ice ran through his veins rather than fire. He looked like a child left to drown in ice cold water. He was every bit the zombie returned from the dead that Kaito feared him as. The kind that could only sustain their meager life force by letting the flesh of the dead pass their lips. Both of his eyes became narrower than a snake’s. They looked like they had a thin, clear, film covering them that made them impossible to see through.『You suddenly want to play the hero? The noble suffering hero who just wants to save a girl, huh? Then, I’ll be the villain.』  
  
Kumagawa licked his own fangs. The eyes that looked at Togami hungered. Poison dripped from the ends of his teeth. Even if Kumagawa did not take a single step, his shadow seemed to grow closer and closer closing up the distance between them. The eyes of a rotten fish. The dead-eyed look a fish gave as it flopped on the surface of the water, twitching, unable to even swim anymore and slowly suffocating. Togami felt the water rock him back and forth. 『Go ahead try chewing up the evil that I am, standing before you!』  
  
Togami would retch. He would vomit. He would never be able to swallow him whole. Kumagawa looked absolutely satisfied at the prospect of being eaten alive, if he was able to make Togami even a little bit sick to his stomach. That was how little he valued his own life. That was how little he valued anything at all. He had the taste, the smell, the bloody texture of raw meat. That was why he was so filthy.

『And if you can’t, go ahead and bite into your own arms. It’s all the same flavor anyway, though compared to me yours is a whole lot weaker.』

Mukuro noticed because she was always watching her brother, even if it was from afar. All she needed to do was look to him, and she was able to smile. As long as she had him she could bear the rest of the world’s hatred directed at her for being a murderer, to her that was what family was.  
  
She was always watching so that was why she noticed.  
How alike Kumagawa seemed to Togami at this moment.  
How different.  
An imagine in the mirror was not only flipped around, it was also pulled inside out.  
If you were to reach underneath a person’s skin and pull all of their insides out of them. 

Kumagawa Misogi, the dirtied and sullied loser. 

Togami Byakuyai, the golden prodigy.  
  
He was a pauper.  
He was a prince.  
  
He was crude.  
He was well mannered.  
  
He was always licking his own wounds.  
He was always holding his head high with pride.  
  
The winners were the ones who lived in this world.  
The bad guys were the ones who lived in this world.  
  
It felt like they were saying the same thing. When she watched them talk, they convered like two good friends. No, Kumagawa was no friend of Togami, and Togami had no friends. They may as well have been talking to themselves. It was all meaningless, worthless small talk neither enjoyable and unenjoyable.  
  
A reflection of the light.  
Togami Byakuya.  
A shadow cast by the light.  
Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
The connection was something grotesque, terribly warped, terribly vile. It was like a joke, a comical anecdote, an unsightly, unbearable figure. 

That was why Kumagawa knew.  
He already knew, he was just letting the mystery play itself out.  
If asked for his reasons he would just smile and say as infuriatingly vague as ever  _it's more fun that way._  
He knew because he was just talking to himself. 

The prince and the punk ass villain.  『Go on do it, Byakuya-chan. Be the prince, and hang the witch. This trial’s not over yet, it’s going to get a lot more fun from here on out.』


	49. Strangulation Romanticist

_There ain’t no meaning._

_Got it._

_Got it._

_Got it._

_Got it?_

 

🧸 **INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION 🧸**

 

_You’re obsessed and I am too._

 

Fukawa Toko could never read people. Their words, their actions, their thoughts, their feelings they never reached her all alone in her closet. Even if she could not understand the hearts of others, she tried not to feel lonely. After all, in the end whether she shut them out or not they would all hate her anyway.  
  
For one person she opened the door just a crack, to peek through the small slit of light just to see his face.  
  
While Toko could never read people, sometimes like they were characters in a novel she could grasp their underlying motivations. She was a suspicious girl at heart, always jumping at shifting shadows. Perhaps because both mothers always made it so clear the grudges they held against her, she got good at sensing the ill intentions people had, she could hear it drip drip dripping off of them like foul water. 

 

That was why even though it was impudent for a lowly girl like her who could never become Cinderella just one of the wicked stepsisters to lust after a prince, to think she could rise above her station some part of her always thought her and Togami were the same.  
  
As children their heads were forced under the water.  
When they finally made it to the surface they did not recognize their own reflection.  
They were in bodies that looked like adults, but they weren’t.  
They stood up in the dark waters still drenched in longing.  
They were soaked through wet down to their souls.  
Even if outside of the water they were their awkward, ungainly, adult selves whose bodies did not fit when they looked down on the surface of the water they saw two children holding hands.  
  
This feeling.  
Even a writer like Toko could not find the words to express it.  
They both carried it with them.  
Indescribable blue. 

 

_Cause we’re the same in the things we do._

They were both left all alone, adrift in the water. All they had was this feeling to obsess over. Togami despised love, and she loved it, but it was the same in a way. Only able to look at what was inside of them, they were terribly self obsessed people. Part of her was always aware of this but she thought it was okay, if the two of them could be selfish people who were always close by one another perhaps that would be the same thing as being together. If she took off her glasses, closed her eyes, and made a wish perhaps she could mistakenly believe their obsession for each other was love.  
  
She loved the way he talked to her. She loved the way he treated her presence as pollution to his air, smoke in his lungs, and that he wanted it. He knew he was his worst self around her, he tasted poison, in his mouth, lips. On his tongue the sticky feeling of nicotine mixed with tar became too addicting for him to resist. Some people suck on cigarettes all the way down to the butt just to taste cancer, to feel themselves dying slowly. 

  
She stalked him.  
He did not mind.  
He let her.  
Even though he knew she was deranged and could snap at any moment.  
That was the only kind of closeness the two of them utterly deprived of love could swallow.  
  
She thought she understood him. That was why he could never lie to her.  
Toko never understood, shut off in her world of fantasies. She only ever saw what she wanted.  
She regretted that.  
He must have been so lonely. 

  
Maybe it would have eased his pain just a bit for him to know he did not need to be her fantasy prince. He did not need to be a Togami. Even if he was just a blonde boy that she met in a different lifetime, even if he was no one important. If he was just a boy hiding behind a tree far away from the playground because he could not play with the rest of the children. She still would have fallen for him. She still would have seen a child trying to hide away from the rest of the world and hide his tears with an unpleasant scowl. If he became lost, if he hid himself away to cry, if he ran away from everything she still would have found him somehow. When he was alone and apart from everybody else she would always follow him because she was his stalker. 

 

 _He’s more myself than I am._ _  
_ _Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same._  
That was Wuthering Heights. A love that could strangle you, wring your neck out, and still not feel a drop of romanticism. A love where both parties were a love of mutual obsession, mutual self interest and finally mutual destruction. She thought nothing could suit them better.  
  
The love between the strangulation romanticist and the loveless one.  
If she had one regret she wished she had been more honest with him.  
Then he would not have had to lie to her then.  
  
She remembered, the first nail in the coffin before all of this began. The two of them were talking alone in the library at night. Togami summoned her and she obediently followed. He was just being possessive and bossy again but if she closed her eyes she could pretend it was trust.  
  
He asked her to show him her motive, and she did.  
The same motive that mocked her telling her she had no one who loved her in her life.  
No one to kill for, no one to die for, no one but herself. She was the most unlovable girl in the world.  
  
Togami must have noticed the sadness she tried to hide away in the corner of her eyes. His fingers knotted in front of his mouth and he cleared his throat. Strange. It wasn’t like him to be so awkward. 

 

“It’s better that way. That nobody in this world loves you. The mastermind has nothing that could hold sway over you.” Togami reached towards her with crooked fingers, reluctant, as if he was afraid what he touched might break in front of his eyes. He brushed away the messy bangs in front of her face. “And… I’m the same. The mastermind has nothing they can threaten me with.” 

 

A few moments of closeness seemed to be all he could handle. He turned away from her suddenly, breathing desperately like he had been suffocating. “Oh Toko, if only you weren’t hung up on so many useless things like love you might have actually been interesting. Instead you’re just the same as any other idiot out there.”  
  
“Of course I’m boring compared to you, master. You’re more important than the whole world! You’re my whole world!”  
  
“I refuse to be part of any world you’re in.”  
  
“B-but as long as I can be with you I don’t care about anything else.”  
  
“Oh please, you’re exaggerating. Spare me the lovey dovey prattle for once.”  
  
“I’m not. You’re my everything.”  
  
“Toko for the last time there’s nothing noble about me. I’m not the prince you love in your fantasies, if anything I deserve your disdain.”  
  
“Everything. Everything about you is… so you.”  
  
“How poetic. You really are a writer, Toko.”

  
“If it wasn’t your you I’d have nothing. I love your back, it always looks so strong like you’re carrying everything alone. I want to wrap my arms around it from behind. I love your cruel smile. I love those cold eyes of yours, even if you won’t look at me.”  
  
“Toko this is your fifth love confession for today, that’s not mentioning all the love letters you stuffed under the door to my dorm room.”  
  
“Did you read them?”  
  
“I put them into the trash without even looking at them.”  
  
“To think I was worthy of becoming the master’s trash!” 

  
“Don’t you get tired of this?”  
  
“I could never get tired of you master! Let me hug you, so I can recharge on my love!” 

 

“Enough! Don’t get near me you terrible woman! I don’t want your filth rubbing against my skin!” When he chewed her out, she just looked happy, as if she was drunk on this conversation. Fool. There was no woman more foolish than her in all of existence he was convinced. “You’re selfish you know that, you couldn’t care less about my feelings.”

 

“I just want to keep loving the person I love forever, what’s wrong with that?”  
  
“Everything. How sickening.” 

 

The two of them continued on like that for a little while.

Because she thought he would never lie to her she was taken by surprise.  
That night she snuck into his room while he was still asleep (stalker remember) because she had to see it. She pulled the kubs pad from his drawer and turned it on when she returned to her own room.

_“Togami Byakuya if you want to return Pennyworth from the dead, then get to murderizing your fellow human beings!”_

Toko dropped the kubs pad right then. Togami was not the same as her, he never was. He had someone after all. There was someone in the world waiting for him outside this school. Perhaps that was the moment the two of them started to break apart. 

 

Pennyworth Aloysius.  
His hair was once blonde like Togami’s, but it had since faded out into grey. He wore a black suit and tie at all times, with the crest of the togami family on his lapel. His tie was decorated with the silhouettes of pure white bones. He was a sickly looking man in appearance who always wore a surgical mask stretched over the lower part of his face. Togami never saw the lips hiding underneath that mask, whether he was smiling or frowning, and he didn’t care to either.  
  
He hid his aged eyes behind silver glasses. His hair was always fine combed and nearly parted to the side, and yet he still had a rough look about him. Despite all of his finery and his reserved manner, he had one more quirk about his appearance. One of his ears was pierced all the way down with silver rings.  
  
The moment Togami saw Amami Rantaro had the same ear pierced, he could not stop thinking about that man every time he looked at the family disappointment Rantaro’s face. The rebellious child. The layabout. The failure. The one who was everything Togami was not.  
  
He had no idea why being around him made Togami feel like Pennyworth was by his side again. It was completely disarming.  
  
Pennyworth.  
The only person that Togami could call an adult in his life. His mother was like a lovesick teenager. The two brothers that he knew, they were children trying to kill one another.

Pennyworth was aged like old silver. Sometimes he got so tired from his work, he fell asleep mask still on and glasses pushed up to his forehead.  
  
Togami hated him. He decided he would hate him from the moment he met. If Toko was someone who knew that everybody would hate her in the end and decided to be hatable, than Togami was someone who decided to hate everyone first.  
  
They were all his enemies, all of them sitting on opposite sides of the game board. They would all watch him fall and delight in his loss if they were given the chance. He did not just expect betrayal, he welcomed it with a cocky smile. He wanted a worthy compettitor at least to make this game a little less boring.  
  
Ever since his brother died Togami had not been able to feel much of anything. When he was dragged to his brother’s house, and sequestered off into a spare room he remembered crying for his mother the whole night, or at least pretending to cry. The sight of his brother’s death did not bring a single tear to his face. All he felt was a cold sensation underneath his skin, and the warm feeling of his brother’s blood.

 

  
He felt nothing at all. They were no longer brothers after all. The dead of the Togami clan were not just killed, they no longer existed, they were disqualified from humanity. All of his tears had frozen up. Not even snowflakes could fall from the corner of his eyes. He wondered what his brother must have seen in his dying moments. He wondered how he felt knowing he had given his life for the sake of an ungrateful child who could not even shed a tear for him. 

 

All Togami who was born with nothing could do was take from others. Without even realizing it, human beings ceased to be human around him. Not just the Togami, not just his brothers and sisters, everyone and everything.  
  
He did not grow up so much as realize that the world was exactly what he thought it was as a child. It was a toy chest to be played with. He was his father’s toy, his father would get amusement watching all of his children killing each other. Anyone and everyone were just pieces on the board. 

 

Then one day, whether he had fun playing the game or not, the game would end. The board would be flipped, and the pieces would be put back away. Once it ended, everything was over. Everything became black. He knew nothing about life except that there was an ending. That was why he wanted to live as long as possible to avoid that. Even if it meant all he did was keep playing the game. 

 

 _The winners are the ones who live._  
  
If his brother wanted to win so badly that he kept repeating those words until they became a curse echoing in Togami’s ears, then why did he die that way? Togami did not understand, and nobody ever explained it to him. Not a single adult did.  
  
He was glad he was an ungrateful child who could not feel anything his brother did. It allowed him for the first time to throw himself entirely into his work, he became the machine that his father saw him as. Cold, mechanical, precise, that was all a Togami needed to be.  
  
He stopped going to school and day in and day out he worked with the ruins of his brother’s finances, pulling them together into something managable. He went from the victim which everyone in the family was planning to an exploit, to a threat to all of them in less than a month.  
  
Then, a detestable person showed up to interrupt his productive isolation and interfere. Togami wondered if because he was a Togami, ever since birth he had to fight all on his own to survive then why couldn’t they just leave him alone to that? None of them were going to help him in the end. They should just stay out of his way.  


Silver glasses and silver holes punched into his ear.  
That day Pennyworth the head butler of the Togami estate called him master and bowed his head to him. He said since legally Byakuya was not allowed to live on his own while he was underaged he would be attending to him from now on.  
Byakuya wished he would get nose cancer and die from all that polished silver.  
  
“Bow your head lower to me, do you know who it is you’re standing in front of?” Byakuya decided he would let this man know from the start just how much he hated him. He would show him how insufferable of a tyrant he was. _Then no one would ever get as close as big brother did again._  
  
“Of course, young master. I apologize for the disrespect unbefitting of my status. It is my greatest honor to be beneath you.” Pennyworth dropped to his knees and placed his forehead on the ground.  
  
Togami stood up from his chair, and put his heel on the back of Pennyworth’s head. “No, even lower. You’re not even worthy to crawl around with the worms in the dirt in comparison to me.”  
  
“Of course, young master.” No hesitation at all, Pennyworth slammed his head into the tatami mats over and over. Until the floor broke and he could lower his head just a little bit more as Togami had asked.  
  
“Don’t call me young master,” Togami relented and removed his foot from his head. “Just call me Byakuya, I don’t care what scum like you calls me anyway.”  
  
“Young master, to speak your name from such unworthy lips would be treason. If I ever do it please cut my tongue out from my mouth, and sew my lips shut. Wait, I don’t want you to dirty your hands, I’ll do it for you while you watch.”  
  
“Ugh, just leave me alone. Your voice is just noise pollution on my peace and quiet.”  
  
“Of course, but the moment you wish it, I will return to your side without hesitation.”  
  
Togami went back to his studies. He read an entire shelves worth of books on economics that day. He had nothing else to do, no one else to teach him, all he could do was read, read, and read with all the time he had to himself and imbibe books.  
  
At three in the morning just as an experiment he called out the name of the other man. “Pennyworth.”  
  
Immediately, the door opened surprising Togami. “Yes, young master?” 

 

“Don’t you sleep?”  
  
“If the young master is hard at work, then I must be hard at work too. I must devote all of myself, every waking moment to you, to have even a fraction of worth.”  
  
Togami blinked. All he thought was _what a weirdo._ He definitely believed the man’s overzealous shows of loyalty were just a trap to ensnare him. Nobody was going to take care of him, the moment he slipped he would be reminded of that again. 

  
“You’re annoying.”  
  
“I’ll strive to become someone more pleasant so the young master can at least find my company tolerable.”  
  
The child tyrant decided he would break this man.  
The butler would be made an example of to all his brothers and sisters.  
First the butler, and then them next.  
He would step over their corpses like it was nothing, the shattered marble statues of a deposed ruler left in the street to slowly erode away.  
That thought brought a smile to his face.  
  
“The young master’s smile is so pleasant.”  
  
Togami began to make fierce demands for his food for every meal, requiring expensive imported ingredients. He acted every bit the spoiled brat other people saw him as. Even when his butler collected every ingredient and cooked meals to perfection, Togami vomited out the results on pennyworth’s shoes. 

 

“I’ll starve to death because of your incompetence!” 

  
“I’m so sorry young master, please cut out my tongue.”  
  
“I don’t want your gross tongue!” 

 

Togami tore apart rooms that Pennyworth just cleaned. He grabbed shirts out of drawers and threw them around, he toppled over furniture, he broke glass and expensive looking things. Anybody else would have mistaken him for a child throwing a tantrum to relieve his aggression but for Togami this was tactical warfare. 

 

No matter how many rooms he destroyed, Pennyworth always bowed his head in apology. “This is my fault young master, I’m so terrible that it’s already become such a mess again.”  


Togami often summoned Pennyworth by playing hitting all the keys on his piano and screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night. Pennyworth always rushed with fear in his eyes looking like he had run so fast he had left his heart behind on accident. 

 

“It’s my fault, the young master needed me by his side and I was so slow in getting here that he needed to raise his voice.”

 _You won’t kill me with kindness._ No matter what he could never allow Pennyworth to kill him in such a way. He was born with absolutely nothing, which meant the only thing he had was his own heart, his only possession was himself. He could not give himself away to anybody. He did not even wish to be born a Togami, but since he had, all he could do was continue to cling onto this life of his and try to find some value in it.  
  
He was terrified of Pennyworth.  
He started to wish Pennyworth was deceiving him, because the idea that his actions were out of genuine kindness, genuine affection, that chilled him to his bones.  
  
That day Togami left the house he had cooped himself up in for no particular reason. He wanted to see a field of flowers. He went on a walk. All alone he felt peace of mind for the first time in months. He really must have been meant to be alone. When he was around other people, all they did was try to use him, and if not they were just annoying.  
  
He heard the whispers of other people. They disturbed his peace. They were an ink stain on canvas, as he tried to enjoy the beautiful colors on the flowers. They blotted out his world. Suddenly Togami was struck on the back of the head. 

 

“Spoiled brat.”  
“Disgusting bred pig of the Togami.”  
“Child of adultery.”  
  
His would-be kidnappers lashed out at him with insults.  
  
“You’ve been fed hand to mouth all your life, and spoiled rotten so why don’t you call daddy and get him to pay money for your return.”  
  
“My father would never pay a ransom, he would just tell you to kill off his son so worthless that he was preyed upon by low lifes like you,” Togami said matter-of-factly without a hint of sadness in his voice.  
  
Then he saw a shadow approaching the three thugs who had tied him up from behind. Pennyworth grabbed one man by the back of the head, and cracked his head against the wall. The man who was always so gentle with Togami no matter how many unreasonable requests he made suddenly became violent. 

 

Togami watched.  
This man who could have easily beaten him. He was now protecting him. He was reminded of the way his brother had attacked the man who tried to stab him with a knife over and over again. He had no idea what made either man so angry. Togami did not think he had any of those feelings inside of him.  
  
Even when he was kindapped and held for ransom he did not cry out.  
He had no scream inside of him, no noise, no tears, no fire.  
His entire existence was whited out.  
He had no one to cry for.  
No one to fight for.  
He had no one.  
  
“Kidnapping the young master is to be expected of low lives like you, but for insulting him I’ll never forgive you. I won’t allow you to belittle the young master’s suffering! You know nothing about him!” Togami heard a bone crunch as Pennyworth brought his foot on a man who was already down. “You should suffer as much as the young master did.”  
  
He was in pain?  
Somebody saw he was in pain?  
This was bad. This was a weakness.  
  
When Pennyworth finished his beating he walked up to Togami and offered him a hand. Togami struck the hand away and spat at him. “You got blood on my shoes you worthless git.”  
  
He took one wobbly step forward, and then started to fall.  
Oh, he had been vomiting up almost every meal unable to keep his food down in his stomach. He wondered how much of that was him trying to insult Pennyworth. That was right, a little while back food had stopped tasting like anything at all. He never once felt hungry, and eating did not make him feel full.  
  
Togami’s eyes closed as he fell further and further into unconsciousness. He was dead for sure now. Pennyworth would kill him while he slept and blame the kidnappers as revenge for all of his mistreatment.  
  
When he woke up, Pennyworth was apologizing again. “I’m sorry young master, I had to set up an intravenous needle without your permission in order to give your body the nutrients it needed.”  
  
“...?” Togami at the realization that he was not dead, only felt mild disappointment.  
  
“It’s not your fault if my food was better the young master would have eaten it.”  
  
“Pennyworth…?”  
  
“Young master! To hear you call my name gives me the greatest of joys!” 

 

“Why…? I’m not worth troubling yourself over.” Togami was on a hospital bed. His hand was harm. His fingers intertwined with Pennworth. It was the first time an adult had ever held his hand like this. He did not know the hands of adults were so large. 

 

No matter what unreasonable command he gave.  
No matter what terrible thing he did.  
He would just hear of course young master.  
It was like Pennyworth just accepted him for who he was.  
  
“Young master as the youngest of the Togami everything in life has already been stacked against you, but you’ve never complained once. All you do is put your head down and keep working. You’re suffering the worst aren’t you? It’s painful isn’t it? You deserve to run away more than anyone else, and yet you face everything head on. That’s why the young master is great, and I simply want to be a part of that greatness.”  
  
“You’re… not completely useless.”  
  
“The young master acknowledge me as damaged goods.”

 

🧸 **TRIAL ACT THREE 🧸**

 **  
** The damaged goods Kumagawa Misogi watched Fukawa, eyes shaking as if they were broken. 

 

Fukawa Toko folded her hands together over her chest.  
  
She wondered if she finally looked like a maiden pleading desperately like this. She could not beg or pray with these hands, they were only for cutting people apart with scissors. She could not beg with all her heart, because she had cut them one by one, the veins and aortas leading up to her heart like they were red strings, until she was completely cut off from feeling warmth in her chest.  
  
That was the result of waking up every morning with a hatchet hanging over her head. When she tried to speak her mother slit her tongue in too, and forced her to swallow salt on her wound.  
  
Anyone would become ugly in such a house that was true, but she had become especially ugly.  
That was why her salvation.  
Her prince.  
She finally asked him to save her. 

For a moment she hesitated. Her voice became caught in her throat. Toko saw it like a daydream Genocide Jack who had always shared the same body with her, but who she never once met in person appeared behind her and wrapped the braids of her hair around her neck like a noose to stop her from talking.  
  
But no, that wasn’t possible her braids had been cut. Fukawa Toko asked her prince, “Byakuya-sama, please convince them all I’m the murderer. I’m sorry for making such an annoying request, until the end I’m an unlikable and unpleasant girl but this is the last time I’ll bother you.” 

  
Byakuya crossed his arms not even looking at her. He sneered with his usual pompous veneer. “Hmph, this is the first and only favor I’ll do for free, woman.” 

 

‘Finally, you returned my feelings…”  
  
Her eyes no longer looked at reality.  
As if she was in a dream.  
For the first time she was truly happy.

A happiness unattainable in reality.  
She looked like the thought that she might die never even occurred to her.  
She might die a few minutes from now but that no longer mattered.  
As she eternally lived in the moment which Togami finally decided to save her.

Kumagawa Misogi hung his head at both of them. It was a hypocritical gesture for a hanged man himself, but he like to deny. He denied himself. He denied it all. But he denied them especially. 『I see that romance has been well and truly strangled to death here.』

 

Bayakuya’s sharp voice demanded to be heard, if Kumagawa’s words were made up of maddened whispers and idle gossip, then Togami spoke with the force of an entire orchestra. “Fukawa Toko is the famous serial killer known to the public as Genocide Jack. She was able to hide among us due to a case of dissociative identity disorder. It’s her other self Jack who commits the murders. My evidence is collected from the case file on her murders, the second calling card her crucifying the bodies with her scissors was never released to the public and is known only to her.” 

  
Toko drifted forward her hands finding her forehead. She felt like she might split in two any time. Her skull was cracked and someone else was going to crawl out of her, her body was just a broken eggshell to be left behind. Her head bobbed up and down. Waves of emotion moved through her body. She looked like she was waiting to sink. 

 

『Toko-chan, what the hell are you doing? No seriously, what the hell?』Their quiet scene interrupted by him, racuous, he screamed like he wanted to wake the dead. 『You’re being crazy you know that, not haha crazy, but legitimately diagnosably crazy. My feelings are finally returned, because I want him to kill me and he wants to kill me that’s so much nonsense even I can’t swallow it.』  
  
He looked sick, like he wanted to spit it all up. His organs, and everything that sloshed around inside of him. 

 

Toko was going to die soon, but she still took a moment to be self conscious. Because she was Toko. “Now I’m being bullied by Kumagawa-kun of all people. Everyone really does hate me, huh? Even the guys who totally go for desperate easy girls with low self esteem like me.”  

 

『What kind of fan fiction are you writing about my love life? The girl I like has all of the self esteem.』  
  
“Now you’re calling me a fanfiction author as well? I’d rather die than partake in such inferior literature. Oh wait, I’m going to die soon anyway.” 

 

『Enough playing the victim!』  
  
“Even I think that’s kind of hypocritical, Kumagawa-kun.” 

 

『The best literary characters are written with such hypocrisies!』

  
“How would you know, you can’t read? Besides, if you were the main character of a book nobody would ever read it. It’d be a worst seller.” 

  
Toko’s argument for her own death suddenly became a petty squabble between two of them. Her tragedy transformed into nothing more than petty comedy. Kumagawa did not take it at all seriously, but he was trying harder than anyone else here. 『Makoto-chan, come on you’re about to lose one of your classmates again!』  
  
“But if Toko really was the killer then everybody else would die.” 

 

Kumagawa’s smile froze on his face. It looked like electrodes had been inserted to his brain, and fried his nevers making him lose control of his facial muscles. 『I see… Nagito-chan is so much kinder than all of you. That’s why he kept siding with the murderer.』  
  
He bundled up the shirt he was holding onto like a dirty rag, and then threw it away. 『I’m sorry, I can’t be your beloved senpai anymore-』  
  
“You were nobody’s beloved senpai. We didn’t think of you that way. We didn’t think of you at all,” Togami quickly cut him off.

 

『I’m much more suited to being hated than being liked. Toko-chan, I don’t care what you want. Even if you decided right now to accept your death, that has nothing to do with me. I can’t save people like Makoto-chan, this isn’t out of the goodness of my heart, this is selfish desire.』  
  
The bloodied t shirt hit Toko full on in the face causing her to scream like she had been the victim of a slasher movie. Even though the obvious twist by now was that she was the slasher all along.  
  
A moment passed, then another and nothing happened. 

 

『Eh…? Is something broken? Where’s Jack?』  
  
“Maybe she’s shy and doesn’t want to talk in public,” Mukuro suggested. 

 

“W-wait,” Toko stuttered.  
  
『Can you be a dear and wake her up? Please, and thank you.』  
  
“Sure,” Mukuro replied and casually grabbed Toko by the back of her head and slammed her forehead down hard on the podium. It was a blow enough to one hit ko most people. 

 

Toko immediately bounced back up rubbing her head. “You two stop that! When did this suddenly become the gang up on Toko hour? This is a witch hunt, a witch hunt!”  
  
“No, it’s a murder trial,” Togami reminded her coolly.  
  
“Jack won’t come out! No matter what I do! I yelled at her earlier, and now even when I see blood even when a… a… choo!” Toko sneezed, and nothing happened. 

 

Kokichi touched his cheek trying to look cute. “I totally don’t get it, did she go so crazy that she looped back around into being sane?”

 

“N-no, it’s more like she’s pouting I guess or something like that… she probably just hates me now because I said all those mean things to her.” 

 

『It’s kind of amazing you fell in love with Byakuya-chan considering you can’t handle any mean words… or like… anything at all.』  
  
“He’s the common literary trope known as tsundere,” Toko corrected Kumagawa. “It’s just so cute when he rejects every part of me.”

 

『He’s a tundra.』

 

“Enough. You’ve made a mockery of these proceedings.” Togami said, sweeping his hand dramatically in front of him. 

 

『I did. Cool.』

  
“Jack’s motive is clear if you look at the case file. Jack was referred to by two names, the first being Genocide Jack, and the second a similiar set of killings was labeled Genocide Jill. However, Jill’s work was deduced to be that of a copycat killer due to the fact that he took the opposite gender victims as Jack. The real Genocide Jill was Shinguji Korekiyo, the man you killed for copying you.” 

 

Kumagawa tilted his head to the side, his expression could be read as a deadpan _what_. 

『Byakuya-chan, you don’t understand at all. To us villains, aesthetics are everything.』  
  
Toko’s fingers traveled in her hair. She pulled, twisted, feeling it in her scalp. 『Toko-chan, defend yourself! Tell a lie! Do something you complete idiot! If you’re the murderer you at least owe us the decency of trying to get away with it.』When she said nothing, Kumagawa looked around desperately. He was a predator pushed to the brink of starvation. He grinded his teeth. 『Fine then, there’s an obvious hole in your theory Byakuya-chan. There were plenty of people who were already aware of Jack-chan’s identity, if she killed we would all know it was her who did it. The solution is too obvious, ergo boring.』

 

“If Toko was the only serial killer here it would be natural to point fingers at her, but there are actually several more present aren’t they?” Togami opened his hands like a conductor, gesturing at the entire orchestra. “Harukawa Maki, an assassin for the Holy Salvation society. Ikusaba Mukuro, the Ultimate Soldier turned terrorist whose killed countless people. Then finally Genocide Jack and Jill, there were four serial killers hiding amongst our ranks.”

 

“...You.” Harukawa Maki’s eyes glowed red, but her scene was quickly stolen away.  
  
“Five! I have a bodycount in the thousands. I’ve painted whole cities red with blood!” Kokichi said, trying to be a part of this.  
  
“You’re not a part of this, silence child.” He was denied by Togami.  
  
“Awe, but I wanted to be the one to reveal Harukawa-chan’s secret to everybody,” Kokichi pouted.  
  
Kaito slammed his fist on the pillar. Then immediately regretted that because ouch!  - hand hurty. Shaking his hand he fumed at Kokichi. “You little brat, what’s the point of keeping that secret with us all this time if you were just gonna spill it anyway?”  
  
“Would you believe it if I said the true secret all along was the friends I made along the way?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Awe, you’re so desperate to believe in everybody else Momota-chan but you won’t ever believe in me.” 

『We still don’t know the murder weapon or the cause of death. It’s ambiguous, open to interpretation, like a dream...』  
  
“Enough trying to sound deep it only grates on the ears.” Togami lashed with his tongue. “When I found the body, the corpse was pinned to the wall with scissors and all the scissors from her holsters were missing. Kiyo obviously bled to death, even a protozoa like you could figure that out from the state of the body.” 

 

『If he bled to death then where’s the blood?』  
  
Shuichi curled his fingers over his mouth one of them touching his chin as he added on thoughtfully. “He’s right, we still don’t know why Monokuma covered up both the time and the cause of death.”  
  
“It’s because it’s more interesting that way if we have to figure it out oursevles!” Kokichi cried out.  
  
Next to him Kaito looked disappointed. “You should seriously be freaked out by how similiarly you think to that bear, man…”  
  
“She had all night, a night where not a single person left their rooms. She could have cleaned up the blood and disposed of it easily.” Togami said, before bringing his hands together. “I really wish I had some tea to sip, it would be the perfect accent on how much better I look than you right now.”

 

『Cleaned up the blood and disposed of it? That doesn’t sound like the MO of someone who paints her crime scenes in the victim’s blood.』Kumagawa put a hand on his chest, desperately grasping, clawing at what was underneath. His claws would rake his skin until he saw his own blood. He clenched them tight around the fabric of his shirt. 『Byakuya-chan, I know this because I think similiarly to Toko-chan, I’m the worst kind of person that sympathizes with a known serial killer but how about you…?』

  
“Asking me questions? How impudent of you? How much of my precious air do you expect me to waste on an answer?” 

 

『You know her. Better than me. Better than yourself. Because you-』

 

Fukawa Toko clapped her hands over her ears. She had turned one page too far and regretted it. She already realized it. This was the powerlessness of being the reader and not the author. The ending was written before you even opened the first page of the book. She could do nothing but scream. “JUST VOTE FOR ME ALREADY! I’M GUILTY! I DID IT!” 

I want to die.  
  
She must have thought.  
  
The dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall in the summer leaves - it was not for the likes of her. She never should have dreamed of such romance in the first place, she was choking on those dreams now.  
  
Living on would only dirty her.  
She would die soon anyway.  
Growing was in vain, and any loving remains she left behind would be consumed by the soil.  
She was helpless.

A helpless victim of love.  
That was all she ever wanted to be.  
And even that love would eventually fade too. She fell in love loving. She killed in love. Love was a disease. Love split her brain in two. She loved a love she could never keep.  She loved so childless. A loveless child falling in love anyway. She laughed instead of crying. She fell in love when all she wanted to do was hate the people who hurt her. Love, of love, by love, for love.  
  
She could not be loved in life.  
At least let her leave behind a beautiful memory. 

 

『Toko-chan, you know some people become serial killers to cope!』

  
“What the hell kind of inspirational message is that!” Toko snapped back at him. 

 

『Toko-chan, you had no choice but to become what their violence shaped you into! But you’re not a part of that house anymore! You have a choice now!』  
  
“Shut up… No matter what I choose I’ll still be a killer. I thought if I could leave that house, it would one day get better. But… because me living just made everything worse for everything around me. Only bad things happened.” 

 

『So you think it’d be better if you died before becoming a murderer? Toko-chan, maybe only bad things happened because you chose to keep living but… Toko-chan if you had died back then nothing good would have happened.』  
  
Kumagawa sucked in a breath. He sounded like he was about to cry, before he swallowed bitter melancholy.  
  
Fukawa Toko stood on a rooftop. She gazed at the sky. The clouds were all ambiguous shapes representing what she would leave behind. Her mother’s dull love, that made her dull to pain. She turned around dancing at the edge of the rooftop and then took a single step off like the fool without looking and fell down. As she fell backwards she saw her memories fall away from her.  
  
It was nothing more than an unpleasant life, that she could leave behind without regret.  
Losing herself felt like losing nothing at all.  
The book would close on her life. 

  
A single hand reached out for her, snatching by her neck.  
Talking to him was like having your mind pulled out, his fingers wrapping around your jelly like brain and stripping the nerves from it one by one. A person that reminded you god did not exist, because surely he would not have been so careless with all of creation to create a person like Kumagawa. A soulless, vampire-like man. No, nothing like that at all.  
  
The kind of person who would reach out and save villains.  
He was not a hero but a thief who stole her self destruction away from her.  
Who does evil save?  
A selfish man rotten to the core.  
That was the poisonous apple she was being asked to bite into.  
An unpleasant life, she was never happy once and still he was telling her those cruel words. 

 

『Maybe everyone would be happier if you died, but you wouldn’t be. So live, Toko-chan!』

 

Fukawa Toko folded her hands over her face. She did not want a single person to see the expression she was making. She wanted to hide her face away in a book again.  
  
Kumagawa turned his attention back to Togami. 

 

“Hmph? Have you learned human language yet or am I supposed to be able to understand the inane chatterings of a wild animal?”

『Byakuya-chan won’t acknowledge me, huh? I guess it’s too hard to look at yourself.』

  
“Pardon? Excuse? Etu?” 

 

『Byakuya-chan. You smell like blood.』

  
A scent that he would recognize anywhere. The scent of the person he hated and loved the most. His own scent. Beaten, bloody, bruised these words with synonymous with Kumagawa Misogi. 

His antonym Byakuta Togami.  
Kumagawa suddenly moved from the fifteenth to the fourth podium and grabbed him by the wrist, pulling his sleeve missing a cufflink all the way down to reveal a bloodied and cut up arm. 

 

In that moment, like the first time a child glances into the mirror and recognizes their own self staring back.  
  
Between them nothing mattered. The real and the imaginary no longer mattered, they danced with each other, intermingled, became blurry and indistinct. If one was true, the other was false, but if the truth is just another lie then they were both equal in value and equally lacking in value.  
  
They both despised themselves. They despised their own kin and kind. They hated themselves resented themselves, and punished themselves so much that they were the only ones capable of loving themselves. So self absorbed it was like other people outside of the mirror did not even exist to them. They spent all their time looking in the mirror, and yet they still averted their eyes even from that.  
  
That was why, ironically they could acknowledge each other. The prince and the punck, the pauper and the prissy rich kid, Kumagawa reached through the mirror that stood between them, grabbing his arm and wrenching it to this other side. 

 

“What are you a damn dog?” Togami said, dropping his composure, and his proper, well mannered, ‘better than you’ demeanor. 

 

🧸 **INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION 🧸**

 

“I understand now, you’re just my dog.”  
  
Togami declared one day in relief. The problem that Pennyworth presented him had been solved in his head. Humans domesticated animals to perform certain tasks for them. A dog was never supposed to bite the hand of its master. If they were, they would be put down.  
  
A dog could be beaten. Yet, all it would do was whine and beg for the master to stop. No matter how many times it was beaten, it would still be loyal to the master. When the master stopped they would lick his feet and thank him.  
  
He could not trust a human being but he could trust a dog.  
  
“Of course young master-”  
  
“Stop speaking to me. Dogs don’t know how to speak.”  
  
Pennyworth nodded silently.  
  
Togami pointed at his neck. “Start wearing a collar from now on.” He paused for a moment. “Why do you always wear that surgical mask anyway?”  
  
“I cannot risk getting the young master sick with my germs!”  
  
“It’s fine! After all, dogs have much cleaner mouths than human beings.” Togami picked up a piece of paper from his desk and crumpled it up into a ball, and threw it far away. “Go fetch that for me.”  
  
Pennyworth did as he was asked. It was like he had no pride at all. Perhaps he really was not human and was just a dog wearing human skin. Togami stopped acting like a tyrant and just gave his loyal dog normal orders.  
  
He started to eat again, and when Pennyworth advised him to take medication for his problems he did not even suspect that the man was trying to drug him. Togami never left the house unless he had pennyworth by his side as an escort.  
  
One day he saw a father and a son walking together on the street. The father walked between the son and the road in order to protect the small child. Togami looked back to Pennyworth who was keeping a distance of at least three steps behind him because they were not equals and could not walk side by side. He wondered if he should get Pennyworth a leash to prevent him from wandering off.  
  
When Togami fell asleep at his work, he woke up to a blanket that Pennyworth put on his shoulders. In the morning there was someone always happy to see him, but that made sense as dogs were supposed to always happily greet their owners. 

  
Pennyworth brought him a back pack and school supplies even when he did not instruct him to, and gently persuaded him to return to school again. That it was best to pretend to be a normal child when he enacted his plan to usurp the throne of the Togami family. Pennyworth told him one day if he became the Ultimate Affluent Heir, he would be welcome to Hope’s Peak Academy but to be recruited there he needed to attend a normal high school first.  
  
Togami sometimes wondered idly if the girl his age who wrote the books that he liked was talented enough to be called “Ultimate Writer” or something along those lines. If he went to that school, would he meet her there? He thought it would be nice to talk to her just once.  
  
He would probably just insult her for packing her books full of such romantic nonsense. For Togami the future was just surviving another day, he wondered when he had started to dream. 

Pennyworth walked him to school every day at first, but then Togami insisted he could find his way there himself. When he left in the morning, he said.  
  
“I’m off.”  
  
When he came back in the evening Pennyworth greeted him with.  
  
“Welcome back.”  
  
Togami always complained. “The first thing I have to do when I get home is hear your barking, it’s really irritating.”  
  
He finally began to enact his plan for hostile takeover. Somewhere in the back of his head he could still hear the promise that he made that day. The words he screamed at the sky like an empty dog. _If I kill them all will this feeling go away?_  
  
He could feel it. An irritation at just being alive. An itch. In his brain between the wrinkles and the ooze. It was at the back of his eyeballs. He wanted to scoop them out and scratch, scratch, scratch, with his finger. No matter how much money he accumulated nothing made that feeling go away.  
  
He thought it would just always be there. When he was around his siblings, it itched so bad he wanted to scratch his skin off. He wanted to peel off that skin scale by scale, until he became someone other than a Togami. He wondered if he was just simply allergic to his own flesh and blood. His entire body rejected them. Rejected what he was by birth.  
  
His first target was his oldest sister. He decided he would not kill her, just drain her finances until she was completely in debt to him. Then he would find some way to make use of her. The possibility that she might just kill herself after losing her future occurred to him but he did not really care.  
  
His eyes felt itchy, but he would not cry about it. He placed a hand on his neck, the same neck his brother had once wrapped his hands around to try to make the feeling go away.  
  
“Welcome, dearest sister.”  
  
Alfred opened the door to his limo.  
He invited her to sit next to him.  
  
“Are you sentimental just because you’re the baby?” His sister asked.  
  
“I won’t be able to call you that for long. So I thought I’d do it while I still had the chance.” 

His sister smiled. A smile just like his. How sickening. Every feature he shared in common with this family just made him hate his body all the more. The features of your face were a mixture of your mother and father, how gross. “You’re right, I’ve lost everything there’s no a single person in this world I can trust now. But isn’t it the same for you?”  
  
“What nonsense. Is the loser trying to give me advice?”  
  
“No, a warning.”  
  
As she said that they arrived at their destination. It was a pier overlooking the sea. Pennyworth stepped out and opened the door for her. She walked out and waited. Togami stepped out on his own and turned his back to Pennyworth.  
  
Then suddenly his sister called out. “Now, kill him and make sure no one sees it. Throw his body in the water.”  
  
Togami heard a gun cock at the back of his head.  
  
“You, too…?” Togami’s voice shook like he was a child again. Then, it frosted over. “How disappointing, choosing to be on the losing side like this.”  
  
He already had a plan to get rid of Pennyworth. In the back of his mind, some small part of him had been wishing that it would never come to this.  
  
He did not want to kill Pennyworth even if it meant his survival. How weak.  
How weak.  
How weak.  
How weak.  
How weak.  
How weak.  
  
He never should have been born a Togami.  
He never should have been born.  
He wasn’t even good enough to be a bred child.  
He wasn’t even good enough to be prize winning cattle.  
  
Togami felt an uncomfortable itched and wondered what blood sucking fleas were biting up his skin. It was probably just his own family. 

 

🧸 **TRIAL ACT FOUR** 🧸

 

『Why frame Toko-chan? Could it be that you just hate her?』

 **  
** Hate.  
It made sense someone small and petty like him would use such a petty and insufficient word.  
Ever since he was young he admired her books.  
Even if he wanted to, he could never get her out of his mind.  
She was crass, an ill mannered woman unworthy of everyone.  
She was nothing to him.  
She should be nothing to him.  
She refused to be nothing to him. 

Insufferable woman. Leave me alone.

 _But you, but you, but you…_  
No matter how many times he pushed her away.  
_You keep writing such pretty words._ _  
_ Toko was a disappointment compared to her books.  
Life was a disappointment.  
They said those who were never loved were synonymous with those who never lived, but Togami was fine without either of them.  
_Love is an excuse to get hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt._ _  
_ _Love is an excuse to hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt._  
Over and over again until you became allergic to it, until it started to itch. 

 

“You were just pretending to be distressed earlier. A shallow ruse from a boy who thinks himself clever playing his childish games,” Togami pronounced each word with confidence. 

 

『You’re only calling them childish games because you suck at them.』  
  
“Pray tell. How long did you know?” 

 

『Since the moment I first met you, or maybe before you were even born. Hey, can I ask you a stupid question?』  
  
“Everything that comes out of your mouth is stupid, so have at it.” 

 

『Byakuya-chan. Why was someone like you even born? 』  
  
Togami stopped. Kumagawa really was a mistake, or perhaps just a mistaken idiot. He wondered if Kumagawa ever genuinely thought anything he said was really that deep. “To inherit the name of Togami, obviously. Unlike the rest of you who have no reason to take up space in this world I was born for a noble purpose-”  
  
As Togami said that, Kumagawa without hesitation, and with a smile bent one of Togami’s fingers back far enough to break it.  
  
Togami did not scream, because he could not scream. He did not have a scream inside of him. He was almost surprised at how little pain he felt. “You ruffian, I use that hand to play piano.” 

 

『There’s no reason for us all to play nice isn’t it? For example, nowhere in the rules does it say if you suspect someone of being the murderer you can’t put the screws on them.』  
  
“What brutality. The others won’t stand for this.” 

 

『Do you see any of them trying to stop me?』Togami looked back, they all looked alarmed but not a single person moved out from behind their podium as Kumagawa did after all, Kumagawa was the one who led them to the killer. 『If the heroes do nothing, then the villains can do whatever they want. A raw deal, right?』  
  
He hated the way Kumagawa said the word raw, it oozed like fresh blood from meat.  
Another finger broken.  
Kumagawa pulled it apart so easily like he was snapping strings. 

  
“Hey umm… don’t we have a murder to solve?” Rantaro asked awkwardly, feeling like he was losing his place in all of these theatrics. 

 

『I don’t care about that anymore. I just want to bully Byakuya-chan. The rest of you can solve it, or go die, best of luck and by that I mean worst of luck.』

 

“Kumagawa-kun is suggesting it was a frame job? That makes sense why Monokuma would disguise the cause of death the case would become too easy to solve otherwise…” Shuichi mutter-muttered to himself.  
  
“Jeez speak up. If the little missy isn’t going to be the outspoken one then don’t be muttering now…” Rantaro awkwardly stretched his neck. “If I’m the Ultimate Question Mark Question Mark Question Mark it’s possible I could be the Ultimate Detective too.”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Shuichi asked. “You were quiet all this time I thought it’s because you got nervous like the last trial but now you’re so talkative.”

 

“Was that the person I was back then? I guess I really did act that way, but I forgot about it.” Rantaro raised his elbow, and curled a finger around touched himself in the middle of the forehead like he was flipping a switch. “Do you know some people theorize that personality is continuous? That is rather than having one static fixed personality, instead people get happy, they get sad, they change from moment to moment. They just make it up as they go along so to speak.”  
  
“You’re not really giving me a lot of confidence in your ability as a detective here,” Shuichi voiced his anxiety. 

 

  
“Togami-kun used something sharp to cut up his own arm, and then wrote on the wall with blood. He definitely framed Fukawa-san, which means there are two possibilities. Either the warning note he received is a fake and he is the killer, or he was the first to discover the dead body because of the note and chose to hide the identity of the killer instead.”  
  
He deceived them all.  
He hurt Toko, by pretending to be someone who cared about her for the first time in his life.  
Togami Byakuya lied and Kumagawa Misogi told the truth.  
It was like everything had gone backwards. Mixing up, turned around, reversed, pulled inside out and then inverted again as light reflected off a mirror.  
  
Kumagawa broke a third finger, like he was counting down. 『Byakuya-chan. What gives you the right to look down on someone like me? I’m not such a freak that I frame girls for crimes for no reason.』  
  
“You don’t understand anything.”

 

『Neither do you. You didn’t frame her just because you hated her, so could it be because you loved her? But you don’t know what love is. You don’t know what it looks like. You don’t know a single thing.』  
  
The clean and pristine rich, a dirty beggar on the street.  
  
“I’m the heir to the Togami!”

 

『They haven’t given you a single thing, but they took away everything from you.』Togami felt Kumagawa’s grip tighten around his arm, like a snake coiling around until it cut off circulation. His fingers had become twisted into impossible directions. He felt like nothing more than a doll in Kumagawa’s hand, he had become somebody else’s plaything. A doll with no nerves.

『If the winner is the one who gets to stay in the family, then why are you an orphan? 』  
  
His father was still alive, but he was abandoned. He was thrown out to the wolves. Even the wolves were not kind enough to raise him.  
  
Snap.  
To Kaede it sounded like the reverberating sound of a broken piano string.  
It felt like he was always going to break like this.  
Strings could only be wound up with so much tension before they snapped.  
If Kumagawa did not do it to him, then he would have done it to himself.  
Perhaps this was Kumagawa’s way of being kind.  
Because he could not bear to see Togami hurt himself like this. 

“Wait, then how did he disguise the true cause of the murder with nobody else seeing him?” Shuichi asked.  
  
“Do you really Togami-kun is the type to get choked up by the sight of a dead body. That guy’s the opposite of me after all. Even if we both killed our siblings. He killed them on purpose and I let them die. The world’s messed up like that, opposite motives and the same result.” Rantaro still looked awkward as he tried to explain. Everyone who met him thought there was something off about Amami, his green hair stood out like he a phosphorescent neon. Yet, he was usually better at ducking suspicion than this. “Whatever the killer used, he swallowed it down his throat passed off his nausea at revulsion for a dead body and then tossed his cookies outside.”  
  
“Why did you have to ruin cookies like that?” Kokichi whined.  
  
“Not like I blame him.Living is like, having a lump of lead go down your throat and sit on your stomach. It’s like you’ll never feel good again. Even if the person you like likes you back, even if you rise up and become the king of this world, the pain is never going to go away. Even if you throw yourself away and become someone else the pain is still there, like it’s all that defines you.” Amami Rantaro looked like he was empathizing with Togami, while at the same time looking like he was lacking in emotion. It had nothing to do with hiis brain’s functionality. It was not a matter of whether he had a heart or not. He wasn’t defective. He had no missing pieces. This was just the result of being broken from the start. He could remember his sister being pulled away from him all that he wanted, but there was no dramatic moment in his life where he felt himself shatter and become a hollow shell of his former self.  
  
Rather he was just this way all along.  
His true self, not continuous but rather static, and unnaturally so to the point of appearing apathetic.  
  
That was the feeling Shuichi got in that moment. Tension that made his heart dance, sweat that he could feel rolling down his skin as his anxiety made him more acutely aware, it was the same feeling of nerves you got right before confessing to the person you loved.  
  
He was filled with nothing but unease and the fear of rejection.  
Like there was something Rantaro was not telling them, like there was something he had not told him all along.  
  
“In other words, Togami-kun’s got it tough. No wonder he’s such a jerk, haha…” Rantaro gave a light and breezy laugh. “Still I feel kind of bad for him. The reason he’s such a jerk isn’t because he’s not  a meanie at all, he’s too kind, and being kind just means getting hurt and hurt.”

  
Snap.  
The image in front of Togami’s eyes became unclear, all life’s vivid colors blurred, they danced back and forth. He looked directly at Kumagawa but could not see him, it felt like chasing a shadow. 

Was he just breaking down?  
Was he losing it?  
Losing it here of all places?  
Losing to Kumagawa of all people?  
Not to any of his siblings, to the business compettitors that tried to crush him, but some loser who would never amount to anything. Consciousness floating on the edge of his awareness started to leave, and his existence blurred away completely to nothing.  
  
His broken fingers… who was doing this?  
Did he do it to himself?  
Was this self harm? 

 

“I won’t lose to you,” Togami muttered, elsewhere, distracted, “The winners are the ones who live. I was testing everyone, if they couldn’t solve a simple trick like that then they all deserved to die.” 

 

『The winners are the ones who win, then how are you still alive Byakuya-chan?』  
  
“What nonsense is-”

 

『You’ve never one once in your life. Do you really think the world is kind enough to kill off the losers? Isn’t that how it was for you your entire life you were told _you can only be the best, or be useful to the best_ and your entire life even though you did everything they told you to do the people around you left you, they hurt you, they betrayed you, you just kept losing. 』

 

“I haven’t lost…” 

 

『You lose, and lose, and lose, and lose, and lose, and lose. Everyone around you dies, but you can’t die. You fail them, but they’re the only ones who suffer. You become evil, but you never get punished. You see everything as a game because secretly you want to see the big red letts GAME OVER flash on the screen. 』

  
“I haven’t lost a single thing-” 

 

『You’re the richest person in the whole world. You have been groomed all your life by everyone around you for success. Your life was just a successive conga line of groomings. You’re intelligent but you can’t understand other people. You’re cold, but you can’t kill yousrelf completely so you end up being driven by petty emotions rather than logic. You stand above others, but what you really want is someone to be loyal to you as an equal.』

  
“I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m nothing like you!”  『You’re a self defeating loser just like me!』

Togami Byakuya screamed.  
It wasn’t muted.  
He could scream after all.  
He screamed like the innocent virgin in the horror movie after the slasher cornered him.  
  
Restless.  
He made a fatal error.  
An error was killing him.  
A mistake in the genetic code.  
His birth.  
Laughing out so desperately.  
  
He was laughing… or uh, was it Kumagawa? He had a feeling they were both melting. His heart beaitng hot in side his chest, melted away his ice cold skin. The two of them melt and mix together. Then, it would not matter anymore, dirty, clean, rich, poor, winner, loser, nobody would be able to tell the difference between them. 

 

『Just accept it, it wasn’t a game, or a test, or anything like that. You’ve been going on and on about how you’re better than others, but your actions are just spurred by: plain jealousy towards Toko-chan, ordinary remorse for what happened to your siblings, your own boring sense of guilt. That’s all. You’re not special. You want to be loved like everyone else, you hate it when you’re not, like everybody else.』  
  
He was jealous…?  
Toko who belonged to him.  
Toko who loved him so much that she always followed him around.  
Toko, who fell in love with Byakuya.  
Who claimed that he was a person more important to her than the whole world.  
He did not want to return that love, but he did not want to lose it either.  
So chidlishly, childishly, ever so childishly he got possessive.  
He was like one lover making the other completely dependant on him so they could not run away.  
  
No. No. No. No. No. No.  
He would not do that to Toko.  
His feelings towards her he wanted to show her…  
He wanted to show her the world could be pretty as the words in her book.  
He would show her so please.  
Come out of that closet please, and show me your face. 

 

Violently, he pushed Kumagawa away. He easily overpowered him.  
  
“The mystery’s unsolvable, you have no way of determining whether I’m the killer. There’s no evidence left that could show you the real killer’s identity either. I won’t help a single one of you losers.”  
  
Togami threw his arms out wide as if he was performing on stage. He was able to throw all of his crumbling self into one final performance. 

 

  
“Let’s make this a game then! How about you just vote randomly? Go with your gut? Was I the killer or was it someone else? Naegi is here so you all have his luck.”

 

『If you’re not the killer and they all vote for you, you’ll die with the rest of us.』  
  
“That’s what makes it a game! I’m betting my life on the line too! Come on, you wanted to be my friend didn’t you Naegi! Play with me! I never got to play with people my own age as a child!” 

 

『If you want to die so badly slit your wrists in your bathroom without dragging everyone else into it. Selfish prick.』  
  
Kumagawa reached out to him. 

 

『All of your siblings died so that you could live, are you really going to throw your life away that easily?』

  
“I-”  
  
He wanted to take Kumagawa’s hand, but also not.  
When a dreamer reaches out to touch the mirror even a little, probably all that’s there is emptiness - a hollow, scattered feel, a cool touch of the smooth glass on your fingers lacking both heat and friction.  
  
Touching a mirror would be like acknowledging, which one of them was real, and which one was fake. Which was the original and which was the reflection.  
  
Togami did not want to realize how fake he was. That it did not matter who was damaged goods, and who was the ultimate affluent progeny, because neither would amount to anything in the end.  
  
The moment he touched the mirror he would realize how fragile he was, that his world was made of glass. Even if he was a prince his palace was glass. It could all so easily break apart at any moment.  
He broke Toko.  
Simply because he wanted to.  
He could not resist the urge to break her.  
He wanted to break his last chance at love, so he broke her.  
And now it was his turn to fall apart.  
  
Togami was scared.  
He was scared of looking in the mirror that was all it was. When he opened his eye just a crack he saw Kumagawa’s face, that scumbag smile of his was the same one his scumbag older brother occasionally wore.  
  
A light from the past. A memory.  A precious memory. He had one of those? He got too tired to walk and his feet fell from underneath him. He saw his brother’s back moved away from him and convinced himself he would be left behind. Yet, Togami’s hand reached forward, he reached out even though he could never reach him.  
  
His brother stopped.  
He walked back to Togami and lifted him off the ground. Saying no words at all of affection or closeness, he simply let Togami ride on his back. It was the first time anybody had ever told him. _If it’s too much, then let’s walk together._

 Togami remembered now, what he had forgotten. The reason he did not want to lose. He never wanted to lose his brother. He wanted to be together with the person he loved, and keep on loving them forever just like Toko did.  
  
He wanted to live with him. 

🧸 **INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION INTERMISSION 🧸**

 

Pennyworth pulled the trigger.  
  
His oldest sister fell backwards, crying tears of scarlet as a bullet lodged itself in one of her eyes. When she fell away from him in slow motion, Togami reached towards her without even realizing it.  
Subconsciously.  
Some part of him must have wanted to take the hand of his sister.  
He had survived several attempts on his life since he was young so why had he not been able to kill that part of himself yet.  
  
His sister did not die so easily, she picked out a sidepiece from the pocket of her dress and shot at Pennyworth. The side of his head exploded, but Pennyworth rushed forward to subdue her. He pushed her face into the ground and twisted her arm behind her back.   
  
“It’s only natural to try to kill your brother as that’s what the Togami bloodline dictates, but I won’t forgive you for attempting to bribe me. It’s an insult to the young master to suggest any one of his possessions could be stolen so easily. No matter what money you offered me the young master would triple it by the end of the day.”  
  
“That was really rude of her dog, raising her arm against her dear younger brother. I don’t think she needs such a rude arm.”  
  
“Of course, young master.” Pennyworth twisted and twisted her arm behind her back until his sister screamed. He heard bones snap, but Pennyworth kept pulling after that. Until flesh started to tear and rend, and by sheer strength alone he ripped off the arm away from his sister.  
  
Blood from his own family splashed on his face at such a grotesque display. Togami Byakuya smiled. “You’re making a mess, idiot.”  
  
“My apologies young master, I’ve stained your clothes. That suit is worth more to me than my own life, I should have taken better care of it.”  
  
“You should at least value your life a little bit dog, you’re not completely useless after all.” Togami just put up with it, as Pennyworth suddenly drew out a handkerchief and wiped at his face like a fussing mother.  
  
His sister should have lost her mind to pain already, the same way that she lost her arm and her eye just now. Instead, as she watched Togami from her one remaining eye, laughter bubbled up from her broken body. 

  
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to watch the moment an inferior person like this broke and completely lost their mind. I thought it might be interesting.” Togami said, an amused smirk playing upon his lips. It was fun, watching your opponent lose so ultimately.  
  
“You like him don’t you? You like that thing…”  
  
“Pennyworth isn’t a thing. Don’t degrade what belongs to me so easily.”  
  
“Look at his head,” his sister dared him to, “I blew off just enough that you should be able to see it.” 

 

Togami felt a strange sensation of fear. Even though he knew now that Pennyworth would not betray him even like this, he felt unease having his back turned, and slowly having to turn around. There was a hole in Pennyworth’s head, and that hole was sparking.  
  
A cracked skull.  
What should have been an exposed brain, had exposed metal, wires mixed in with organic material instead. Togami’s eyes widened not comprehending anything of what he saw. “Penny...worth?”  
  
“That’s not his name. That’s the name of the butler from batman. It was given to him after he lost the name Togami. He’s father’s youngest brother, the baby of his generation.”  
  
“No…”  
  
“This is your uncle. He was so desperate not to be thrown out he let himself be used by the family. He submitted himself to human experimentation. That is the result, the reason he doesn’t hate you is because he can’t, they removed all negative emotions from his brain.”  
  
“Shut up. Those are just the words of a loser-”  
  
“Did you really think anyone would love you when you’re so ugly?” His sister taunted him. Her twisted up body spat those words at him as a final show of resistance. “If he had an ability to choose for himself he would hate you, but now he’s just a belonging of the Togami family.”  
  
That’s right.  
Nobody, he had nobody.  
Nobody would choose him, because he was born one of the unchosen.  
His entire life was just this, over and over again.  
  
Pennyworth but a hand on the side of his head as if he was trying to plug up the hole. He looked to Byakuya with a quiet, unreadable expression. “Please, don’t worry about me young master. This is just what happens. Either you’re the best, or you die, or you become a tool to serve the best.”

 

The only person capable of being kind to Togami, had a busted up head.  
He was not choosing to be around him at all.  
He just belonged to him.  
He was just a possession.  


“You don’t have a family anymore and you can’t even feel sad about it…” Togami’s small hands tightened, balling up.

He knelt down in front of Togami, and took his hand. He pressed his lips to the thumb of that same hand. “I’m really happy like this.”  
  
“You are…?”  
  
“I’m happy to be owned by the young master. Please don’t make such a sad face, I will never betray you, I only belong to you. I am your possession.”  
  
Togami knew those words were meant to comfort him, but all they did was drive the final stake in his heart. From that day forward Togami no longer ate with Pennyworth. He no longer spoke to him unless he needed something from him. He no longer said “I’m going off” when he left the house.  
  
He ordered Pennyworth not to welcome him back when he returned home. He ate all of his meals alone in his study. When he was studying late at night he locked the door so Pennyworth could not drape his shoulders in a blanket.  
  
He continued to give Pennyworth cold orders, and Pennyworth carried them out. He never once disappointed or failed him. He was not capable of doing that, because he was a well made object. 

  
The itch in Togami’s skin went away.  
He just stopped feeling everything, including the itch.  
He slowly returned to being a machine.  
Togami thought it was better that way.  
Because, no person in this world would ever choose him.  
He would never belong to a family.  
All he could do was own possessions. All he could do was take from others.  
  
He had to keep living because he was the heir to the Togami family.  
Nobody would want him to live simply as himself.  
Nobody would ever call him Byakuya.  
It was best for that child to disappear.  
Just go die already. 

 

He wanted to die alone. 


	50. Scissors X Screws

 

🧸 **TRIAL ACT FIVE 🧸**

 

『I may be a liar but you’re a bigger one. This was all just a game? Trying to kill everyone here? That’s so clearly fucked up - you’ve pretty much gone fully humpty dumpty.』  
  
Kumagawa smiled. 

 

『Stop lying about playing games, about wanting to live. You just hate us. You’re angry at everyone here who has more than you have aren’t you? Don’t you loathe and despise people like Makoto-chan for being blessed with a normal life? Then, you should just say so, but instead you don’t want to be that kind of person. You don’t want to feel lesser than others.』  
  
Togami was still clutching his head, pulling at his hair like a certain white haired boy. His eyes frantically searched back and forth. He looked like he was watching a set of scales, trying to weight wins and losses, successes and failures, but that was wrong. The scales were already tilted for him to begin with. He was just pretending otherwise, he just wanted to see himself as the best so he did not have to feel like he was the worst.  


『You lost, you’re inferior, you minus.』  
  
Suddenly everyone’s Monopads rang all at once. Togami’s student profile updated, his status changed as he was reclassified from special to minus. He peered at Kumagawa from behind a broken expression.  
  
He was warped, a bitter shadow of himself.  
The moment he saw the shadow it was impossible to look away. He could not stop staring at the boy on the other side of the mirror.  
Even though the moment they reached towards each other, they would combust, and a world would be destroyed.  
  
“What did you investigate? How did you figure all this out? You’ve outplayed me from the start…” 

 

『Oh, I didn’t investigate a single thing besides Toko’s room.』  
  
He went to check if she was okay.  
And then he saw it, a letter lying on her desk.  


『I just know you, because we’re besties after all!』  
  
Togami once dragged Makoto with him on a day off. He wanted to be a part of Makoto’s normal life, but no matter how hard he tried it was like he was watching himself from outside his body. He saw another boy standing next to Makoto having fun but it was not him.  
  
Makoto tried to be his friend, he tried to understand him.  
The only one who understood him in the end was Kumagawa Misogi. The first person to see him as a loser, the first person to see his pain.  
  
“Umm…” Rantaro scratched at his neck. “It’s kind of awkward interrupting but, were you just going to risk all of our lives on trying to force Togami-kun to have a change of heart?” 

 

『If we can’t save him now, then he won’t ever be saved. We can’t just survive these class trials, we have to live to spite the mastermind.』  
  
“Sure yeah, inspiring or whatever but…” Dissatisfaction dripped from his lips. Amami’s always pleasant face, formed into an unpleasant scowl. “I’m sure you had a speech planned and everything, if I was capable of being reached I’d be touched but… you were risking the life of your little sister too, weren’t you?” 

 

『Huh…?』  
  
“You’re the one who always whines about never being chosen. Yet, right now you’re choosing to help someone you don’t even like, over the life of your only sister. Is that the kind of brother you are?” 

 

Kumagawa remembered the words that still lingered in his heart. The he just wanted Mukuro to cling to him, to be protected by him, but this time he did not even bother to protect her. 

 

“No, Misogi-chan don’t listen,” Mukuro said. “I was once willing to kill all of my classmates, so it’s only fair that I’d be willing to die with them too.” 

 

Rantaro finally looked at Kumagawa. Kumagawa felt this was probably the first time someone looked him directly in the eye, because he could see it hidden underneath the whites of his eyes, rage, seething rage, so much resentment that not even a whole ocean could bury it.  
  
No wonder he acted like he had no emotions, like nothing really bothered him.  
He probably could not feel anything else, could not even process it.  
Disgust.  
Disgust for himself.  
For his own weak self.  
Who failed to save his sisters.  
  
He felt seen by Kumagawa for the first time. Rantaro smirked, even though he did such a good job playing at being invisible. He had finally been noticed. “Look at how your sister talks about herself, like her life doesn’t have any value at all, you’re the one who made her feel that way by not choosing her.” 

 

『Rantaro-chan…?』  
  
“That’s no good, Kumagawa-kun. You should always choose your family first that’s what makes them family. As a big brother myself I feel like I gotta give you a hard time about this.” The shadow of a smile stretched across his face.

 

『What’s wrong… your face is so?』  
  
“You care about your sister so little that you have time to worry about me, and not her!” 

 

『It was a suicide! Kiyo-chan left a suicide note!  That’s what Byakuya-chan swallowed, that was why the rope was torn apart at the scene. He was hanging from the tallest railing when I found him, I broke the railing trying to bring him down. I’ve known this whole time, but I wanted Byakuya-chan to confess!』  
  
The trial came to an end.  
They all voted for Korekiyo just like that, with no time left.  
He was the murderer guilty of killing his most important person, himself.  
Everyone fell silent, somehow the emptiness of seeing Korekiyo’s funeral portrait and knowing no murder had occured, just a preventable suicide. The feeling that Korekiyo was no longer among them, that his presence was missing from the group. It was a disappointment worse than watching the horror of an execution.  
  
The one who looked the most broken up about it was Rantaro. “This is way too sad. We shouldn’t have voted at all. If we let Korekiyo die like that because none of us reached out to him, we don’t deserve to live.” 

 

『You’re contradicting what you just said a second ago.』

 

“Let’s stop already. I don’t want to survive if it means watching my classmates die. Who cares if we don’t find the killer, or we don’t live to escape. This is just too much.” 

 

Kaede lifted her head. She stopped staring at her feet. The only thing that could break her away from her self loathing, concern for a friend. “Amami-kun, you’re not acting like yourself…”  
  
“Then, who am I acting like? Logically, the only person I can act like is myself isn’t it?” Rantaro curled his fingers around his forehead, scratching himself. He bled, but did not even notice it. His excoriation. He reached up to his earrings to touch them, but ended up grabbing too hard and ripped an earring right out of his flesh. “I’m just the friendly Amami-kun, you know? Aren’t we all fiends?”  
  
Rantaro Amami. There was something off about him. Yet, he had a friendly face and a gentle smile. He never got mad at others, and because of that he was easy to get along with.

 

『Do you know something about Kiyo-chan’s death?』  
  
“Does it matter? Case closed. Let’s call it quits. It’s depressing to stay in a place like this anyway.”  
  
“That’s a lie,” Kokichisaid, he knew what Rantaro was doing. Someone who calculated this much would not suddenly fall apart at the end. He was just putting on a show for all of them. He was playing at being torn apart by guilt. He was tearing himself apart on purpose for the fun of it. He had already won the game against Togami after all, so this was just. “A big fat lie.”  


Rantaro curled his finger in one of the green curls of his hair, and as he twisted it around cocked his head and looked down at Kokichi from an angle just seemed off balanced. “What was that?” 

 

“There’s only one explanation for how Togami-chan knew about Kiyo-chan’s death before anybody else did. How you knew Korekiyo’s death was a suicide when only Kumagawa-chan found his original body before Togami-chan tampered with it. You planned on him dying.” 

  
Rantaro slowly pulled his fingers away from his face. They looked like, a pair of curtains parting to show who was really standing behind them all along. All the anxiety, all the fear, the shows of guilt it disappeared from his face all at once. There was nobody standing there. It was like the person named Amami Rantaro had disappeared. He vanished. Just like that. His face looked like nothing at all.  
  
Kaede, pleaded with him. “No, Amami-kun I don’t want to believe that. You were always so kind, I want to believe in you.”  
  
“Nghghgh… Hnnn….” Rantaro gave a small smile, like the cat that swallowed the canary. “Am I supposed to laugh now or something? Reading the room it seems like now’s the time to do that but… I just don’t have it in me.”

 

  
  


He wanted to laugh but his throat was empty. All that was left were the echoes of what was once laughter. He had been able to smile at one point in his life, so he could still command his muscles to move his lips in such a way.  
  
  
Rantaro instead of laughing like Kumagawa or Komaeda did, he just yawned. That was it, the emotion on his face, the dark circles under his eyes, he was just tired. “It was exhausting you know, pretending to be a human being around you guys all this time. You were all such kind people, but I just found that kindness tiring.”  
  
There was only one way to describe that face, that looked human but wasn’t.  
_I feel creeped out._  
What was with him?  
What was going on?  
The human brain subconsciously keyed in to read every gesture, they say most conversation is non-verbal but everyone around him could not read a single thing about him.  
He was invisible. A ghost. He was like Dorian Gray who remained beautiful while his portrait became more and more twisted, giving up his humanity to attain such a beauty.  
  
His smile was still pleasant as always. He did not break down or go mad the same way Komaeda might. Everything about him was deliberate, as if he could control even the slightest twitch of his skin. As if he was not living in his body, merely moving it around. 

 

He was an outsider to everyone, even himself.  
It’s not that his walls were too high.  
They had already toppled long ago.  
All that was left was ruins, the ghost of a person.  
The shell that was left behind, a body that might have at one point been a person.  
It’s not that he was hiding his emotions.  
He just did not have them.  
He was able to hide them perfectly because there was nothing to conceal.  
_Creepy, creepy, creepy, creepy, creepy._  
  
“Just who are you…?” Kaede asked, she was the only one brave enough to fight back her fear.  
  
Rantaro knew from the bottom of his heart that Kaede was a kind person. She was concerned for a person like him even now, she would continue to be kind to him after she learned the truth. She would try to save him from his own self destruction.  
  
That was why he had to destroy her.  
  
No he was not that dramatic. He could not dramatize even if he wanted to. Acting required too much effort on his part, and he was a passionless existence. His heart just wasn’t in it.  Someone might see his emptiness and mistake him for Kumagawa, but he was the exact opposite. 

  
He did not want to save a single person, least of all himself.  
Kaede just annoyed him. It was grating, watching someone who resembled his former self. So he told her off, for petty and undramatic reasons.  
  
“The one who manipulated Korekiyo into killing himself. Oh, I was manipulating Togami-kun too there was a chance he might have snapped and killed Kiyo, to be honest I didn’t really care how it happened.” 

 

Other people’s lives, he was utterly indifferent. 

 

“I was a little worried when Kumagawa-kun came back, I thought he might see through me but he’s just too worried about other people to focus on a nobody like me.”

 

『I know nothing at all. Well, actually that’s how I am but still…』  
  
“Monokuma you heard that. I’m the crimminal here. I deliberately manipulated Korekiyo into killing himself, but they all voted him the murder. I’m the blackened and I got away with it. Let me go now, seriously, I’m getting impatient here.”  
  
Kaede’s voice was a sharp note that rang in his ears. “That’s not true right, you just want to see your sister again! You didn’t want to hurt other people! You were just too scared of losing them.”  
  
“No, you don’t get it at all,” he corrected her his voice completely flat. “I want to love my sister even if it means hurting others. Even if it means killing them. The whole world did nothing as they were taken from me one by one, so as far as I’m concerned everyone but my sister’s should die.” 

 

Rantaro looked completely sane, as if he was saying something rational. But rationalization was the wrong word, it implied he knew what he was doing was wrong but justified himself and convinced himself otherwise.  
  
That was not the case, Rantaro completely embraced what he was doing. He accepted it with no struggle at all. He was all precision, control, and deliberation. He could not fall apart now because, he had all the time in the world to die after he found his sisters again.  
  
He was sure by the time they saw him, they would not even recognize him. The original Rantaro died a long time ago, when he dyed his hair and pierced his ears. He did not want to be recognized either, because he knew he was not acting as a good big brother, only his selfish desires to do something for the sake of his sisters because he had been so powerless in the past. 

 

“We’re your friends! We want to help you!”  
  
Kaede shouted at him.  
  
“If you’re my friend then go ahead and die for me. That’s the quickest way to help my sister.”  Shade, an echo, a reflection on the water. That was all he was now. “I’m really sorry guys, it’s nothing personal.”  
  
He was so impersonal.  
He had distanced himself from everyone.  
He disconnected from everything.  
He did not make a single ripple.  
He was not even a bystander.  
If anything, he was just a voice.  
They could hear his words but it was like nobody was speaking them at all. 

Amami Rantaro was just here and nowhere.  


“Hey, Akamatsu-san, why are you so hurt? What does that feel like?”

 

“What…?”  
  
“Was what I said just now strange? Well, I guess it’s definitely strange. I couldn’t be your friend even if I wanted to, because you see I don’t really know who I am anymore. Even if I wanted to explain myself, or make excuses for my actions, or open up to you guys and let you see the true me I couldn’t.”  
  
This is it, he said.  
This was all he was. 

 

“Amami-kun, why do you keep saying sisters?”  
  
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I had thirteen sisters.” Amami Rantaro looked at the bloodied silver earring in his hand. “Each of them were taken away from me one by one, my younger sisters were just spares that could be sold off at any time. When they left, they took a piece of me.”  
  
“For a reason like that…”  
  
“Who better than you family to destroy everything for?”  
  
Amami Rantaro, grew up in a pure white room.  
His father forbid him to leave it when he was studying.  
He was their pet project, their perfect heir.  
  
“Rantaro. Remember this. To have power, status, position, and fail to use it is the behavior of a fool.” 

  
His parents only cared about maintaining power, about keeping their position, so once they had their hare the rest of the children only existed for furthering their ambitions.  
  
Rantaro did as he was told.  
He obeyed every order.  
Because his parents threatened him. If he did not, then the one punished would be his sister in his place. Once he fell asleep studying in that all white room, and his father dragged his sister in front of him and beat her instead. They could not touch the heir or risk harming him. 

 

Even after he did everything they said.  
They sold her.  
They sold her to a man with a sick smile on his face.  
Then his father divorced and remarried, and adopted another child, and fathered another one.  
Every time he got close to his sister, and everytime he lost her.  
Thirteen times, he was useless, unable to do a single thing for them.  
Now, he would do anything for the sake of his sisters.

In that pure white room his four poster bed, and the floor was covered in sheets. White sheets, and folds, surrounded him wrapping around him like a cocoon. He wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else. He wanted to fly away to where his sister was. He wanted to grow the white wings of a butterfly.  
  
But he was still trapped in that room.  
So he hung himself in that room.  
He killed himself.  
He killed the ‘pet project’ of his parents.  
He destroyed their perfect heir.  
He sat at the windowsill, all he wanted to do was hold a butterfly gently on his fingertips. The butterfly’s wings flexed back and forth, it fluttered and took off. He reached for it, but it was already so far away by the time he had decided to reach out.  
Butterflies landed on his corpse, and feasted on his skin.  
Until there was nothing left. 

There were so many, the whites of their wings blotted out his existence. 

  
“Hmm! Manipulating someone into a suicide that’s an interesting scenario, too bad it doesn’t count as a murder!”  
  
Monokuma suddenly ruled.  
  
Rantaro betrayed everyone, he betrayed himself, and yet he had gained nothing from it. He removed his hand from playing with his earrings and started to look desperate. “N-no, you can’t do that. I won the game. I followed the rules!”  
  
“It’s my game. I make the rules. I ruled you didn’t kill him.” 

 

The end result of all of his efforts, empty.  
It was suited for a person like him.  
You could not create nothing from nothing.  
Rantaro did not react at all, he did not even feel disappointment, he just grew quiet.  
  
“Still, what a disappointing way to end things! I lock you kiddos up out of the kindness of your hearts and you can’t even put on a good show! You just did nothing for an entire month until some guy got so bored he offed himself.”  
  
“I… I should be executed. I still think I’m the one who killed Kiyo…” Toko muttered, her lips still trembling as she tried to swallow self loathing. 

 

Kumagawa quietly waited until after they had left the courtroom in disappointment.  
Then he spoke up. 

 

『I have an idea! What if I kill someone right now, then we can just have another murder trial and execution!』 

  


🧸 **THE AFTERPARTY🧸**

 

Years before this story began a child was born. He was not born under any particular star, or for any particular reason. The child was no more than an ordinary boy just like everyone else.  
  
That boy became involved with a cult that believed that the moment humans are born, there is evil in them. Since it was impossible to clean themselves even through good deeds, and living itself was the accumulation of more sin, they would force “all the evils of humanity” onto one person. This child was randomly chosen as the “vessel” and they were blamed as the true source of all human evil.  
  
If one person embodies all the evils of humanity, the rest cannot be evil no matter what. This childish theory is what they believed. And so they continuously cursed, spat, ridiculed, beat, tortured and blamed this child for every ill fate in the world brought upon by humanity. It took a huge toll on the child.  
  
They were shocked at this senselessness? Why should this happen to them? Who should they blame? They only felt anger and hatred towards the world and the people who mercilessly persecuted them.  
  
Their innocence broke slowly into madness. They despised humanity so much that it became their natural function. They don’t know how to love because they never felt love. Eventually this child had accepted this cursed role… an ordinary child without any special talent…  
  
Transformed into exactly what those humans wanted even till the end of their life.  
A destructive spirit.  
The embodiment of evil.  
The one who bears the sins of others.  
  
Or perhaps that was not how the story went at all.  
I am an author after all I contain multitudes of stories. Not just me, but everybody else.  
Perhaps that was just how the boy perceived he was being treated and he concocted a story.  
He told a fairy tale for a villain rather than a hero.  
  
He changed the story to suit him.  
He did not change the story at all.  
He was an unlucky victim.  
He was a perpetrator.  
Everyone hated him.  
He just hated himself all along. 

Who was he really?  
Kumagawa Misogi himself did not seem to know the answer to this question, or maybe he did and he was hiding it. Even if I knew what the truth was, I would not tell you. The author is a self admitted liar, and Kumagawa Misogi lies compulsively. A liar is describing a liar. Trusting either of us is a bit silly.  
  
Not that it matters anyway.  
No matter how many stories he made up about himself, no matter how many lies he told the end result was always the same.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi was the worst.  
He was a villain, regardless of his origin story. 

 

Villains believe in fairy tales as much as heroes do, they are the true idealists of this world.  A boy who was a victim of a great injustice, tried to make sense of it somehow and pretend the world is just after all. He tried to become the person who deserved it. The real world has no stories at all. There is no justice, and no evil. That’s why it’s so boring. He’s the logical extreme of my childish unwillingness to separate fiction from reality and accept that the world is a neutral force where bad things happen without any rhyme or reason, and especially no poetics.  
  
In a way, becoming a villain who despised the whole world was also his own twisted way of trying to love it. The villain desired for the world to be just more than anybody else. All injustices in the world were because of him, he was an evil for the heroes to defeat, and by being the worst, suffering the worst, he believed he could uplift others.  
  
Everyone thinks they’re alone in their suffering.  
Everyone thinks they’re suffering the most and no one can possibly understand them.  
If they were able to see him the one who suffered the most, the most vile person, still living with a smile would his despair give them some kind of hope?  
  
Even if it was a petty hope like “At least I’m not as bad as that guy.” 

 

Kumagawa Misogi was willing to become the villain if it eased the suffering of someone else.  
Komaeda Nagito desired for Enoshima Junko to become the villain to relieve his own suffering.  
  
Therefore he was damaged goods.  
Therefore he was no longer human.  
  
Kumagwaa Misogi was a mystery, wrapped in a delusion, hidden behind the mask of a charlatan, twisted up in a lie, and then cloaked in a torturously long metaphor and yet one thing was clear. He was the worst. That was why he could endure the worst. That was why he could do the worst. 

 

『Toko-chan, don’t make that face.』

 

Fukawa Toko saw nothing but shadows, and then a hand reached out from the abyssal darkness and all five fingers closed around her face. This was the only touch she was familiar with. She had never known soothing or comforting touch, she had never even been so much as patted on the head.  
  
She did not understand people at all, but she understood violence quite well. It was the only words the parents who wanted to ignore the blight upon their household ever spoke to her with. 

 

『Toko-chan, don’t show your murderer such an unhappy face. It’s rude.』

 

Unhappy?  
Was she unhappy she had no idea what her face looked like even more. She had been looking away for so long she had forgotten. She did not smile when she was happy. She did not smile when she was sad.  
  
In a way she always envied him, Kumagawa who was able to laugh and cry freely. She could never be so shameless. The shame of being born, the shame of being ugly, the shame of being alone, she was ashamed of it all.  
  
Even though he said he was killing her with sadistic flee on his face a moment ago, she felt a wetness on her cheeks. Kumagawa was crying uncontrollably while wearing such a terrifying mask, and his tears fell on her face onto her face like rain from above.  
  
Even if you wore a mask your eyes were still exposed. If you covered them up you would go blind.  
  
“I’ve had enough, Kumagawa-kun. I don’t want to be a killer anymore. I don’t want to be anything anymore. I don’t care.”

 

『Y-you should.』Despite Kumagawa holding her so forcefully, his grip on her was actually weak. As they trembled and he stiffened to keep the shaking to a maximum, Toko felt those hands were terribly weak. 『Just giving up on everything? Now’s not the time to become a nihilist, and the most boring kind of nihilism too! I’m disappointed, If you die here you won’t see Byakuya-chan again.』  
  
“It doesn’t matter. And Byakuya doesn’t matter. I’ve had enough, I give up.”  
  
He let go of her hand.  
_Sssshh, Shhhh._  
The gentle sound of his crying.  
A fierce outpour.  
A sudden show.  
So that was the kind of person he was.  
Rainy devil, devil of the pouring rain, and the crying devil.  
A wicked witch and a crybaby devil.  
They were enduring the same pain, abandoning everything, giving up on everything.  
That pain was the only thing that they shared. 

 

Fukawa Toko wrote words on paper, and tried to cover up all of the bleeding parts of her body with those pages. The pages filled with her words became like bandages to soothe her childish body covered in scars. She who was born and raised without the things necessary for a child to grow was always hungry, so she crumpled up the paper she wrote on and tried to eat that instead to fill up the hole in her body.

 

She stuffed a whole bunch of things in, but it was never enough. No matter how many pages upon pages she wrote they kept falling off of her scars. As they fell away the wind blew and they were scattered away. Her bleeding wounds stained the pages turning them all red, making her words illegible. Not only that her skin itself was as thin as paper, her veins underneath appeared as clear scarlet, she became so sensitive even the slightest of cuts would cause her to bleed.  
  
It wasn’t enough.  
She just wanted for a single moment in her life to feel healed.  
It was never enough.  
People in stories got better, but in reality they just broke down more and more.  
She started to cover others with the same scars.  
It only made her feel worse, to realize she was just as violent as the two women who beat her.  
She could only respond to violence with more violence.  
It was like an incurable itch. She scraped her skin with the edges of scissors.  
To be cut apart, to be shredded.  
  
That was their entire lives. Violence, on top of violence, with violence, and some more violence. They became violent towards other people. They became violent towards themselves. It was all they knew how to do, and yet there was always a voice whispering in the back of their heads. _You’re no better than the people who hurt you, you know. I’m sure someone was violent to them in the past too, I’m sure someone hurt them but that’s no excuse._ A lingering regret haunted them. If they had been better, if they had tried to face things head on instead of running away, if just one person had extended out a hand could they have turned out different? Then that voice was squashed down with a block of lead that fell on their hearts.  
  
No, it was probably always meant to be this way.  
Bad children.  
Are punished.  
By their parents.  
If they were good they would have found a way to live without hurting others.  
Toko understood, and opened her eyes. She looked at Kumagawa and saw the wide eyes which dominated his entire face, they rippled, they made waves, they rained, all with her at the center, all for her.

 

『If you can’t be beautiful no matter how hard you try, then just be ugly. If nobody loves you then just be hated. That’s why, don’t make that face… Don’t make that dark, gloomy face…!』  
  
Kumagawa’s fist suddenly smashed into that dark face, as if he was trying to destroy her gloom just by breaking through it. Toko fell backwards, like a doll carelessly tossed away. Kumagawa had hit hard enough that her glasses broke, the wire frame broke into pieces and fell away from her. Toko’s back hit the window and she fell backwards through the shattered glass.  
  
She landed on the inside of the school building all the way out in a hallway. A few desks broke her fall. She simply leaned her back against him, waiting for Kumagawa to come find her posing like a doll.  
  
Toko wondered if her face had caved in and collapsed in on itself. If that happened all that would be left was an empty black hole in the middle of her face. If someone crawled in that what would they find? Nothing at all, probably. She heard Kumagawa’s footsteps and lifted her head slightly. 

 

『Stop making that face like you want to die, or I’ll kill you.』  
Kumagawa’s logic, as insane as always.  
He saw Toko, on a pile of ruined things, shards of glass, a broken body, blood, looking like thrown away trash, all things that were Fukawa Toko.  
  
He hesitated for a moment seeing in the shards of glass, several splintered images of his own face looking back at him. 『 _No… this is my face isn’t it?_ 』

 

“That’s fine. You can kill me. When I die, don’t cry for me please… I don’t want to hurt anyone, anymore.” 

 

『What the hell are you? Some kind of beautiful, tragic maiden? If Cinderella was kind that just meant she kept all her hatred in her heart and never expressed it once, she was rotted out to the core.』Kumagawa grabbed her by her short hair and twisted her head jerking it forward until it collided with his knee. 『I’ll show you the ugliness of suffering.』  
  
The next moment she was kicked. She heard a noise like her crunch and figured her nose had been broken. She did not care much. Her nose had always been pug ugly. As she landed, her skirt fluttered up exposing her legs, all the lacerations on her body.  
  
Where was she again…?  
Fukawa Toko got on her knees like a beggar in front of Kumagawa. Her head fell forward until it was almost touching the ground. She looked around her. Her caved in nose filled with a familiar scent. She could no longer tell if it was blood or flowers. The wind blew. A few drops fell from her bloodied mess of a nose. They became red rose petals that were carried off by the wind.  
  
They were in a garden of roses. Roses were most beautiful when they bloomed, but that was when their thorns were the sharpest too. All of these cuts that covered her body she must have scraped herself on the thorns, trying again and again to reach out for beauty.  
  
Kumagawa had pushed her in a tangle of rose bushes, a maze of thorns. She was the kind of person who cut flowers head’s off at the stem with a pair of scissors carelessly. Now, the flowers were getting their revenge. They would wrap their roots around her corpse, and the whole garden would consume her.  
  
Perhaps Kumagawa was right. There was no such thing as suffering beautifully. The thorny path of the martyr, just meant impaling yourself on these thorns over and over again. There was no enduring suffering. It was just pointless. It was just meaningless pain. If you were to pick the most beautiful roses from the garden and weave them around her head, it would still be a crown of thorns that cut her. Those who were cut by thorns just grew their own thorns in return.  
  
She could probably think that way but…  
She just didn’t care anymore.  
  
Kumagawa was violently beating her and no one raised a hand to help her. They must all hate her. The only person trying to save her was breaking her piece by piece. What a violent life. What a violent end.  
  
“Give me pain enough for thirteen deaths, please, Kumagawa-kun…”  
  
She pleaded. Her hands on his feet. Kumagawa picked up and drove his heel into two of her fingers and she heard a loud crack. 

 

『I’ll make it so you can never write again.』He threatened with a low growl.  
  
“That’s what I deserve…” 

 

『You wanted to live so badly you went crazy and started cutting other people into pieces, don’t start pretending to be a good innocent girl who never wanted to hurt anybody now!』Kumagawa raised his foot high into the air again, and dropped it down on her head. Her head collided with the ground but all she felt at this point was a dull thud. Then again. Then again. 『Toko-chan, you… you will be loved! You will be loved! You will! So don’t die yet. Kill me before I kill you.』

 

Toko tried to open her mouth but she tasted blood and suddenly had to swallow her disgust which made it impossible to speak. 

 

『You’re such a selfish girl! Killing you like this is no fun at all! Fight back a little bit! At least give me some entertainment in the end.』

  
Kumagawa only ever cut himself on other people. He was the kind of guy who broke his own fist when he threw a punch at someone else. That sickly empathy of his was like a switch that could never be turned off. He was precisely aware of the pain other people were feeling, because he suffered that way too sometime in the past. He tried to break others, but he was the one who ended up the most broken.  
  
What a mess.  
Kumagawa scaremed.  
He danced madly.  
On top of her head.  
He looked drunk on blood instead of grapes. 

 

『Jack-chan, I’m seriously going to kill her. Serious, serious, even a jokester like me is capable of being serious you know.』  
  
“...”

 

『The sight of blood doesn’t make you faint anymore? Then what about if I paint you with your own blood!』

 

“...”  
  
She always hated it.  
Blood.  
The color red.  
Red flowers.  
Rose petals spinning, twirling, dancing on the wind.  
Her mothers who had each carried a small flower in their stomachs.  
One was a bloody red, the other was born by mistake.  
If only both of their stomachs had been cut open.  
Her mother cutting her hair with a pair of unsteady hands.  
It was just by accident at first.  
The edge of the scissors nicked the back of her neck.  
The moment her mother saw red trickling out, taking bloom, something inside of her changed.  
She turned the scissors around in her hand and drove it into Toko’s neck.  
Her mother looked back and smiled at her, before driving it into her own neck as well.  
Toko choked on her own blood.  
Every time she saw blood she remembered that moment.  
The taste of her own blood just made her nauseous.  
A failed murder suicide, nothing happened, their wounds were stitched up and she was sent back to that house. Her daily life was like this.  
It was just this, over and over again.  
She was so sick of this life.  
She was sickened by it.  
She grew sick just at the sight of blood.  
Her body was covered in the bloody scars drawn carelessly on her skin by other people.  
She hated the reminder of herself.  
That all she ever would be was a girl painted in red. 

An all red girl, crying scarlet tears, and cutting herself as she tried to wipe her tears with flowers.  
Then he came back to her, dressed in pitch black.  
And a pure white smile.  
  
She did not hate blood, or the color red.  
It was not that everybody in the whole world hated her.  
  
“I just hate myself.” 

 

『Don’t hate yourself, Toko-chan. There’s someone else to hate. There’s someone else making you suffer. This isn’t your fault, it’s mine. Okay? Okay? Okay? Okay?』

 

Toko folded her hands over her face, trying to stop the scent of blood from reaching her. She tried to keep down the nausea inside of her. She writhed back and forth, like a caterpillar incapable of becoming a butterfly. “N-no, stop it Kumagawa-kun! You finally came back to me! I don’t want to kill you too! R-r-run, please.”  


Her head suddenly dropped. All the strings that were holding her up were cut with one stroke of the scissors, and the red curtain fell down on top of her. The folds of the red velvet, looked like a beautiful flower unfurling, about to bloom. 

This was…  
This was… 

 

“This was one bitch of a life but I ain’t ready for the curtain to fall just yet! Tadaaaaaaa!!!!!” Someone else spoke using Toko’s voice. 

  
She jumped up suddenly, as if her broken body, gravity, her bruised bone and snapped muscle tendons none of them mattered. She felt no pain puppeteering someone else’s body around. Genocide Jack spun around in the air, dancing as freely as one of those flower petals her skirt fluttering around her.  


  
“Don’t get your blood on me. I’m the Cinderella of the slaughter flower garden,” Jack said, as she gave a polite curtsy holding the ends up of her long skirt, before she suddenly broke into pieces laughing. “Ahyahyahyahyahyahyahyahyahyahyah-hahahahyahyahyahya!” 

 

『You’re acting rather genki for someone who was sulking up until now. Haha, your feelings were hurt, that means you have feelings! Sucks to be you!』  
  
“Hey, Gloomy can’t hog all of the angst. That’s unfair. A compelling character like me needs to shed a whole bunch of tears, because that’s what the guys are into these days!”  


『As a guy I can tell you what we’re not into. You. Because nobody loves you. It was a joke, funny right? Cruel jokes are the best!』

  
Jack picked up school supplies which had fallen onto the floor. Pencils were no good, a protractor not pointy enough for her tastes, a stapler been there done that, she found two pairs of scissors and then suddenly holding them with only her pinkies through the loops, rushed forward swinging them wildly like they were a pair of claws. 

  
“Ahyahyahya-haaaaaate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! I haaaaaaate you, crummygawa.”

  
Kumagawa’s pant legs tore, and his legs exploded in blood. HIs pinstriped pants were dyed pink and soaked through. Even though he had been dealt such a serious injury he remained stabbing as if he had not even noticed. What was one scar on top of so many?  
  
“Blabbedy,-bla-bla-bla, shut the hell up you lanky, oily haired bastard.”

 

『I’m blushing.』  
  
“This is the first time I’ve ever hated someone like this. You’re my first hate. Firsts are magical for a girl you know? I never should have killed anyone before this, I should have saved up my first time just to kill you.” 

 

『Now, now, if you keep talking like this Junko’s going to get jealous.』Kumagawa flippantly waved his hand in front of his face as if he was fanning away the vapors. 『I’ve always wondered, Jack-chan whose minus do you think is stronger? Yours or mine?』

  
“You’re more of a gloomy bastard than my other and really that’s saying something.” Jack wiped the blood from her face with delicate fingers, daintily, lady-like even. “You wanna bet on which one us is a bigger fucking psycho?” 

 

『Yep. Pretty much.』  
  
“You just came back from the dead and you’re all rowdy. Boys like you are so naughty. It’s getting me all hot and bothered. Tempting a pure maiden like me to cheat on her precious Byakuya, you really are the worst, go die!” 

 

『Let’s kill each other for no good reason!』  
  
“Totally on the same page! It sure is nice having friends!”  
  
Jack was just negative emotions. She was made up of all the tears of a crying girl who could never cry. She was the shadow that most people never even were aware of. Sure, it was lonely, but unlike that delusional, gloomy girl, she did not believe in disney movies. She did not believe things would get better by wishing on a star, or that happy endings existed.  
  
Really, that girl was messed up. And this was coming from a serial killer alter ego. She knew so little about happiness the only image she had of it was what she watched in disney movies.  
  
She expressed everything that Toko repressed, like the other side of a coin, like the girl on the other side of the mirror. That was all she was, that was all she was capable of. Sure it was annoying having all the negative emotions dumped on her.  
  
Only being able to feel hatred because that was what Toko felt for herself.  
Going mad so Toko could stay sane.  
She could never be an individual no matter how much she tried, so no use whining about it.  
If she laughed about herself then maybe Toko would learn how to cry finally.  
If she killed then maybe Toko would learn to stand up for herself.  
She was the fairy godmother, that appeared before a girl crying over a tattered and ripped up dress. A twisted fairy godmother with no wand at all only a pair of scissors.  
  
Still she could not help herself from wanting to protect that crying girl, and kill everyone who had made her make such a sad face. It was probably just because that was her function as a splintered part of Toko’s ego. She too was just carrying out some kind of subconscious person. Yeah, that was probably it but…  
  
Jack had this feeling, that if she did not love and protect that girl then nobody would.  
That’s why when Toko asked her to disappear, she tried her best to do that too.  
Damnit, this was all wrong.  
She was acting out of character.  
She was just supposed to be a heartless monster.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi crossed his arms and between each finger she saw him holding a sharpened screw. She mirrored the gesture crossing her arms as she raised up her scissors into the air. The two of them rushed at each other from opposite ends of the hallway. 

  
They looked like lovers racing towards each other to embrace in a field of flowers. Except, both of them were trying to kill each other. The only thing they were embracing was death, but that too they embraced like a lover.  
  
It was all they had.  
All they knew.  
Kumagawa grabbed for her, to screw her and pin her down against the wall. By the time he reached her Toko was no longer there. She bounded from the floor and jumped behind him. Kumagawa shuddered at his own stupidity. He seriously, seriously, kept making these mistakes.  
  
Jack landed an elegant kick on his head, like she was a goddamn fighting princes. He saw the scars that she had carved out on her thigh right before the moment of impact. Then, her foot came down hard on the back of his head like a falling guillotine. If you were to x-ray him at that moment, you could probably see the bones of his neck breaking away from his spine, as his eyeballs rolled around and bounced in their sockets. 

 

Jack sliced through the air as nothing more than a rampaging beast. Screws collided with scissors. Sparks flew. She heard the sound of metal crying out. Jack jumped off the walls, the ceiling, she completely surrounded Kumagawa with her agility alone.  
  
Yet, Kumagawa was completely unmatched in his ability to take a hit. Jack usually knew exactly how many snips it would take, before a body fell apart. She knew how delicate and fragile a thread a human life was, that was why cutting through it delighted her so.  
  
Kumagawa bounced along and she followed.  
As long as she never dealt him a fatal wound, he would not die.  
He had all fiction.  
No matter how many times she cut him apart he would repair himself.  
An eternal hell.  
She cut his eyes out, and they grew back in.  
She busted him against the walls, completely destroying the hallway, and then tossed him out the window, and Kumagawa’s body was so light and fragile it spun around carried by the breeze. He tumbled helplessly about. Kumagawa coughed, and instead of blood he coughed up countless screws, like he had swallowed them down and was choking on them before this.  
  
Kumagawa reached in his mouth, put a finger under his tongue and further to the back of his throat, and pulled out one more screw.  
  
Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!  
Nothing but pure malice!  
A one sided beatdown.  
He was her parents.  
He was the teachers who never noticed the signs of her abuse.  
He was the kids who saw that she was shy and lonely, and just bullied her more.  
Instead of wondering why she was always so scared of other people.  
They just gave her a reason to be afraid.  
Why did she end up like this?  
Why was she born if neither of her mothers even wanted a child.  
She wasn’t born just to be hated.  
Whose fault is this?  
Who did this to me?  
  
“Senpai, you’re… You’re no good.”  
Toko’s voice came out of Jack’s lips.  
  
She had no choice but to despise Kumagawa Misogi  


 As she jammed a pair of scissors straight through his stomach, and pinned him against the wall. Just a few more and he would be crucified. She needed to hang the crown of thorns on somebody else’s head. She was tired of being the whole world’s victim, let somebody else suffer for once.  
  
That’s it.  
Kumagawa was a star she was wishing upon. 

An underhanded wish that she had long repressed, sunken in shadows, nothing like the wish a princess would make. Ah, but Kumagawa can’t shine without darkness.  
  
Kumagawa grabbed her by the hand, and slowly pulled her hand back and the scissors back out of the same wound they had entered. His long body spinning around, he kicked her right in the uterus and pushed her back against a wall.  
  
The two of them ran each other again for another meaningless clash of metal on metal. Jack grinded her teeth, and growled out over and over again. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I fucking hate you so much.”  
  
She dropped the scissors and just punched him. She no longer needed artistry for her kills, she just needed to be violent. They scratched at each other’s eyes. They pulled each other’s hair. She slapped him, and he sucker punched her in the gut. It could barely be called a fight anymore just a scuffle between two children. They grabbed at each other’s clothes, each trying to drag the other down.  
  
Finally it ended.  
Jack came out on top. She sat on his chest, hearing his shallow, pained breaths. She brought the sharp edge of her scissors to his carotid artery and whispered, breathlessly, through quivering lips, like she was a shy girl in the throes love, “I hate you…” 

『I don’t hate you.』

  
People only scowled when they saw her.  
The world only showed her its ugliness.  
But, Kumagawa Misogi grinned like he was happy to see her. 

He smiled like the innocent child she was never allowed to be.  
  
Jack’s face distorted.  
Toko’s eyes peeled open.  
Then Jack.  
Then Toko.  
Threw the scissors side because her fingers were trembling too much to hold them.  
  
All of her life was suffering. All of her life was like being stabbed with thorns. She was stabbed again and again with scissors, until her insides were in tatters. She drove scissors into other people so they could get a taste of what it felt like.

  
But not him.  
Please, not him.  
He didn’t deserve it.  
He was just a kid.  
A kid, broken like she was.  
A kid who didn’t need to be hurt any more.  
She needed to stop herself from hitting the crying child in front of her.  
She needed to be different from her parents.  
  
“Don’t say that! Killing you after you say that is gonna be like breaking the skull of a goddamn puppy after he brings me my shoes.” Jack grabbed her hair, still shaking with the same anxiety that Toko always felt, she pulled at her hair with her own fingers like Toko did except the two Kumagawa had broken. “Lame! Lame! Lame! Lame! I can’t believe I’m as lame as all you peace loving dipshits! I can’t kill you even if you kill gloomy because… that’s what she wants.” 

  
『What is this character development? Sheesh, you’re not the type of character whose supposed to get sudden character development.』

  
“I know, I’m totally losing my appeal... I can feel my ranking’s plummet in the popularity polls as we speak! I’m a girl who only knows what to do, so I don’t… I don’t know how to fix this…”  
  
Jack curled her fingers around her face.  
She looked like she was trying to hold herself together, because Toko could not. 

 

『Okay. Then I’ll take a bad role for now. Let’s provoke Jack-chan.』  
  
As Kumagawa lied there on the ground he looked the same as he always did. Which just meant that he must have been helpless all the time. What an utter failure. She did not even need to crucify him, he would just hang himself up on that cross of his own free will.  
  
The only thing hurting was his body.  
It was just more pain to him.  
Nothing he wasn’t already used to.  
  
Kumagawa’s white smile, now red.  
He spoke in between coughing up blood.  He recited the letter he had found in Toko's room from memory.

 

『Dear Genocide Jack San』  
『It’s nice to meet you.』  
『Well, I guess that’s a strange thing to say. But this is Fukawa Toko.』  
『Allow me to start by thanking you. I imagine I’ve been forcing a lot of hardship on you. I’m truly sorry for causing you nothing but trouble.』  
『While I made you kill people in my place and carry the guilt of being a killer, I was living a carefree, peaceful life of a girl in love.』  
『How sinful can I be?』  
『Twistedness is something a human needs to survive in this world, but instead I made you become twisted in my place.』

『No matter what happened, I ran away into that closet, I hid my face away in a book, I didn’t see. I turned my eyes away from a world that was too ugly to look at. I was like a child clutching at your skirt and hiding behind you. So you killed. I understand why you did nothing but kill, it’s because you matter how hard you tried you couldn’t turn away that intolerable child begging you through tears to help.』  
『I understand that the most difficult step of the counseling process for children who were never loved by their parents, is getting them to admit to that fact. That is to say it’s better to believe you were unlovable, then admit you aren’t loved by your parents. I probably thought that me turning into a serial killer is proof that I’m a bad person that deserved to be punished by her parents. So, let me say this.』  
『My life is shit.』  
『I hate those shitty parents and their shitty genetics that made me so ugly.』

『I have never once been loved. It wasn’t just that they hit me, or drowned me, they abused me in the most heinous way by not loving me. I’m sure they had their excuses, like if only that man had loved me I would have been able to love that child. But, a parent’ slove for a child isn’t a duty to be fulfilled, it’s not a feeling you get when you’re with the man you love and get married out of obligation because that’s your track in life.』  
『I never once faced that, because all the misery of being unloved, all the violence my parents exposed to, I threw them all onto you. How unfair can you get? I made you my shadow so I could stand in the light. I think that’s why I hated him, Kumagawa Misogi. When I think of how he always faced his pain head on, and then look at myself and the way I put it all on you, never having to know my own suffering, never having to feel pain, never having to fight, never having to kill.』

『I hate myself so much. But I don’t hate you. Anybody would have gone crazy in that household, anybody would have become violent, but you went crazy in my place so I didn’t have to. I couldn’t stomach it so I forced you too.』  
『This is a terrible story I’ve written.』  
『No, it’s more terrible than a terrible story. You’re not some fictional character I made up. You are you. I’ve repeated the cycle of abuse on you. You. My younger sister who only ever tried to protect me, I made you become a killer in my place. You weren’t responsible for being born, the same way I didn’t choose to be born to such terrible parents. This might sound crazy but, I don’t want my illness to be fixed, I don’t want you to disappear. So please, Genocide Jack stay with me. Stay inside my heart. I’m begging you.』  
『My heart is your home.』  
『It must have been so lonely, right? You were always trying to help me, but I never once acknowledged you. This is the first time we’ve talked even though you’ve been with me all this time.』  
『I know there’s not much space in my heart, but let’s live together as a family colliding and crashing into one another inside of it.』  
『I want to live a little more like he does, loving his scars, and his dysfunction. No one confronts their own weakness as much as him, and I find it him dazzling. Almost blindingly dazzling. Like a star in the night sky I can never reach, but I want to reach for it anyway.』  
『The only way I can leave the terrible house I was born into, is by finding a new home.』  
『I’m sorry for being such an awful big sister.』  
『I’m sorry for making you worry, all this time.』  
『Can we try again?』  
『I know how insane this sounds but, could the two of us become a family?』  
『Please write back your response, even if you’re just calling me a gloomy, whining, annoying girl who never showers and bullying me like you normally do. I want to get to know my one and only sister.』  


“What a big mistake calling someone like me family. I guess that’s what happens when you’re born as a mistake because some playboy had to stick his dick in two different women at the same time… your whole life is mistake, after mistake, after mistake…”  
  
Genocide Jack fingers searched her face trying to feel what kind of expression she wore.  
She had no idea what this feeling was.  
She was the avatar of her stress, her envy, her anixety, her suffering. But, if she was every repressed desire that Toko ever had, she must have been the envy of her desire to be loved as well. That was why when Toko fell in love with a prince with a cruel tongue.  
She fell in love as well.  
When Toko wanted to love herself.  
She loved Toko in the way Toko never could.  
Toko was just shoving her loneliness, and her stupid complex about that damn household in her face again, it was just another burden to carry, so why did Jack suddenly feel so comfoted.  
  
“What the hell is this!? I’m so happy! I’m so happy I want to cry. What’s a miserable bitch like me doing, suddenly being so happy? I didn’t even stick my scissors in some hot guy! Ah, it’s because… she called me her sister.”  
  
She was alone all this time.  
She didn’t realize she was lonely until just now.  
No she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let that sister die. Even if she had granted every single request of her sister’s before this, she wasn’t going to obey this time. She had enough of being an obedient younger sister, it was time to be a brat.  
  
“Yeah, I get it now. What this feeling is. My emotions are telling me this, to kill you. And you’re something of a cute boy yourself, so I can kill you as I like, no remorse.” 

 

『Ah. I see. So you’ve decided to start trying to love each other. Is that family? To travel the harsher path, to bloody your hands for the sake of protecting your sister. How beautiful, I truly think it’s a splendid thing - NOT! Only a total tool would say something like that.』  
  
In the distance Komaeda sneezed. He did not think much about it, if someone was talking about him they were probably just insulting him behind his back like he deserved.  
  
『You think you can find your resolve at last minute and win, you think because you’ve grown you deserve to be rewarded? The world isn’t as sensible as shonen manga. Good people die, and bad ones are the ones who live.』

 

Kumagawa suddenly picked himself off from the ground, it looked like a demon possessing his body was forcing him to stand controlling his limbs against his will. She heard his bones creak in agony with the effort, but none of that showed on his face.  
  
She swung out with her scissors but Kumagawa moved faster, twisting his body around in the air and slamming his foot into the side of her head.  


For the first time, all the super high school level murderous fiend could do was defend. All she could do was protect a body that did not belong to her. She was a killer, but she only knew how to kill. She had no idea what to do with the man in front of her who refused to die.  
  
『You’re not going to get better! You’re not going to change! Even when your personality split, you couldn’t become someone else. That’s the person your awful parents gave birth to, that was the person who grew up in that twisted household, so why do you think there’s something you can do about it? It’s already done, it’s over, angst about your oh so tragic backstory, it’s simply your character background! It doesn’t matter if you decide to love your scars or not, it doesn’t change anything.』

 

Kumagawa slammed her face into a wall and dragged it. Blood smeared in a trail as they went. He threw her outside when they reached the end of the long hallway.  
Everyone could see them again.  
Everyone was watching her get her ass kicked by the weakest guy here, great.  
Her pride as a killer was completely flushed down the toilet.  
All for the sake of her lazy ass older sister who could not fight her own battles.  
  
『Your perspective doesn’t matter. Reality won’t change. It doesn’t give a damn about your optimism, your cynicism, or your romanticism. You can try to love each other all you want, but at the end of this something bad is going to happen and you’re just going to go back to hating each other again. You’ll go back to living like this moment never happened. You’ll never be able to reconcile with the violence that others have inflicted on you, I guarantee it! You’ll never be able to love yourself, because everyone has only ever told you how ugly and hatable you are. Their words are written down underneath your skin, they’re permanently etched on you. Even if you somehow beat the odds and become happy, and marry Togami the man of your dreams it won’t matter, because it’s not going to erase your crappy past! We will have nightmares about it for the rest of our lives! You won’t be able to believe you’re capable of loving your children because your parents never showed you how. You won’t believe your husband, or your children are capable of loving you because you don’t know what a family’s love looks like.』  
  
A screw cut the side of her face. She saw Kumagawa appearing above her, as he slammed his foot down on her head. She needed to get away. Protect Toko. She stumbled. She dizzily reached around and grabbed a clump of grass pulling herself forward and crawling away from him.  
  
So this is what it felt like being the victim in a serial killer movie. It was much more fun to be Freddy or Jason than to be the annoying teenager running away.  
  
She tried to fight back but Kumagawa was everywhere, his actions completely unreadable. He did not move like any person she had ever seen before. He fought like total nonsense, like he was just making it up as he was going along. Was he trying to look cool?  
  
He grabbed her by the neck, and held her up in the air as he kept speaking. There was no mercy in his words, no pity, no sympathy, he was the kind of guy who had sympathy for the devil but not for her apparently. 

 

『You were killing all those people to protect Toko-chan? What nonsense. An ugly girl could never kill for such a beautiful reason. Still, I’m sure killing me will put Toko-chan’s mind at ease. But it won’t amount to hope, despair, or love for your sister and you won’t be protecting her. It’s just you venting. Nothing more than a distraction from the truth. You cheer up a little bit, that’s all. Causing pain to other people cleared up your jealousy, and seeing someone else suffer made you forget about your suffering. That’s it. You can’t protect a single thing, you’ll just keep hurting and being hurt, because that’s all your capable of.』

 

Then he tossed her aside carelessly.  
  
“I’m sorry…” Jack muttered.  
  
Toko woke up again. She woke up, still confused and not remembering what Kumagawa had said at all, but the weight his words left was still in her heart.  
  
It was always like this.  
She suffered at the hands of someone else waiting for her prince to come.  
She always wanted to be a princess.  
But a helpless princess was a terrible thing to be.  
  
He held a screw above her head.  
His dark hair was a mess, and everything from his skin to his close was in tatters. She had pried off some of his clothing while fighting as Jack, and she saw the scars already hidden underneath. Another way the two of them were alike.  
  
That was right, she was killing herself.  
She asked Kumagawa to do this, to try to kill her.  
So, why did it feel like this?  
Everything Kumagawa said was right, she could not be fixed like in a story book, life would not be so generous as to reward her if she did the right thing from now on. Living from now on would be a punishment, as she bore the weight of everyone she had killed every day. As she prevented herself from finding happiness because she did not believe she deserved it. She could not see a single good thing in her future, it was just prolonging her suffering.  
Nothing good ever happens.  
If I died then nothing would happen.  
It would all just end. 

So why…?  
_Why do I want to live so badly?_  
  
“S-stop…” She begged in a faint voice. “I can’t become a princess, and you can’t become a villain Senpai. So please stop hurting me, stop hurting yourself.”  
  
She begged.  


『What great last words! Poignant! You really are an author!』  
  
As he said that Fukawa watched a screw fall towards her and closed her eyes.  
Darkness.

But she was not dead.  
She opened them.  
Arms wrapped around her.  
Her head rested against the chest of someone else.  
Togami Byakuya carelessly threw his back in front of her, Kumagawa’s screw dug into his shoulder.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi - smiled.  
  
“...Ah, ah…”  
  
Byakuya. Byakuya. Byakuya.  
Byakuya. Byakuya. Byakuya.  
  
She felt warmth all around her body, wet and sticky from the blood that poured out of her wounds but - it didn’t bother her one bit.  
Her body was warm, but her chest burned her.  
“Byakuya, why…?  
  
“I thought I told you not to annoy me with your stupid questions anymore…”  
  
Togami had lost everything.  
He betrayed her, tried to kill her, tried to die alongside her, and now he decided he was going to try to save her. He was so selfish, but it was exactly that selfishness that he fell in love with.  
  
“This is what you wanted right? A prince to come rescue you? You really are unpleasant, all you do is complain, I’m sure even if you lived a trouble-free life, you would still be miserable complaining about everything like that…”  
  
Togami had been lying to her all along.  
He did not smile like he was a greedy animal about to feast. A carnivore that killed to live, and bared its teeth as proof of that. That smile was a lie.  
His real smile.  
So small, so naive, just like a child.  
Just like the boy she had never once met, the boy who just wanted to have a family.  
  
“But, that’s just you isn’t it? If you weren’t that way, you wouldn’t be my Toko anymore.”  
  
He reached forward, awkwardly, unsightly.  
Like he had no idea what he was doing.  
He patted her head.  
This one act.  
Caused her heart to be engulfed in flames.  
Burning away whatever was left of her.  
Right.  
She always wanted - someone to do that to her.  
She wanted someone to stroke her gently, like that.  
She wanted someone to see her scars, and reach out and touch her anyway.  
  
“Hey, Byakuya.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
She had been giving him these declarations of love all this time, but as Komaru said it was always from a distance, she loved him from far away. That must have been lonely. She was loving him like a fantasy to comfort herself, like a prince from a fairy tale. She wanted to just this once confess her love so close to his face.  
  
“Can we date with the intention of being married?” 

 

“I see,” his penseve response. “I don’t know what love is, so I can’t love you back I’m sorry. I can’t pay you or anything, I can’t control you, all I can ask is for you to put up with my unreasonable selfishness for the time being. Until I learn what love is, can you stay by my side?”  
  
“What if you never do…?”  
  
“Then never leave me,” She wondered if this was some fantasy, because she did not know how long she had dreamed about these words. That’s right, she did not need a romance, she just wanted a person she could be together with. A person she could call home. “It’s not an order it’s just…”  
  
“Ahhh… I’ve been rejected.” 

It hurt.  
She wanted to become the girlfriend of the man she loved.  
She seriously wanted that, not in fantasy but reality.  
Confess, then get rejected, that was how real life romane worked.  
She was so sad.  
But she said it, “I love you.”  
Byakuya was able to hear that someone loved him.  
“Unnn.. uhhh!”  
What…?  
“Unnn… ng….nhhhh…”  
Wanting to love and be loved in return, it was all so sad.  
She cried of a broken heart.  
A heart needed to break first, before it could be mended.  
She wanted someone to love her.  
She wanted to be loved back.  
She wanted to love them.  
Even if it hurt, even if it made her sad she wanted it.  
By the time she realized.  
By the time she realized she was crying.  
Without a care if anyone saw her.  
Like a child.  
As if she was crying in the place of the child locked away in that closet.  
Who buried herself in a book, because she could never cry.  
She wailed, loudly, not caring if her crying was ugly anymore.  
And Togami, gently patted her head not saying anything else.  
Just like he said, he stayed by her side.  


Mukuro watching this entire scene, finally realized something. “Wait, where have Nagito-chan and Junko-chan been this entire time? There’s no way my attention hungry sister would stay this quiet for this long.” 

 

🧸 **WHERE THE HELL HAVE JUNKO AND KOMAEDA BEEN? 🧸**

 

The reason that people were allowed to skip the trials, is because as soon as a trial was started it was broadcast to every monitor over the PA System.  
  
“Dreams don’t come true so easily.”  
“No, duh. I mean I can barely handle reality.”  
“So, in other words all wishes that other people hope for are nearly unattainable.”  
“Well yeah, but not all unattainable things are wishes.”  
  
A mere fragment of conversation between Komaeda Nagito and Enoshima Junko. Between the perfect human being and the human failure. 

“I think I could become like you, that’s why I feel a certain affinity.”  
“I doubt I could become like you, that’s why I like you.”  
  
Another sample of their conversation.  
It was a far-fetched hope.  
It was despair inducing.  
Truly. 

 

It’s not like they were getting along, they were comfortable in their hatred. As they sat in the science lab, Komaeda had before long started resting his head in her lap like it was the natural plae to put it. He did not think he even wanted to, his body just moved on his own.  
  
Like he was pulled towards her when Junko pushed him away.  
Like he had to be near her in order to complement her.  
Without the other one neither of them could define themselves anymore.  
They would lose sight of themselves again like they almost had just last night.  
Junko herself, combed his hair with her red nails. It was gentle, and he found how soft she was suddenly acting, entirely unpleasant, which was probably why she was acting that way.  
  
Junko, “Hey, wake up already. I’m the one who should be so bored that she fell asleep. I can’t believe they didn’t see that Amami-kun twist coming. They should have known that if you weren’t there somebody else had to pull a Komaeda.”  
  
Komaeda, “Can you not use my name as a verb please? It’s rather impolite of you. Then again expecting any kind of decency from the human incarnation of misery and despair is just stupid of me I suppose.”  
  
Junko, “You’re finally admitting it.”  
  
Komaeda, “I call myself stupid all the time. Pretty much every sentence. I know you’re a selfish person who won’t use her talent to give hope to others, only for her own sick and twisted desires but can’t you listen to other people for once?”  
  
Junko, “Huh? Did you say something? I don’t speak loser.”  
  
Komaeda, “This coming from the girl who is dating Kumagawa-kun.”  
  
Junko, “This coming from the guy who is dating Hinata-kun.”  
  
Komaeda, “Hinata-kun isn’t a loser! He’s reserve course trash, who values himself so little that he threw his own body away and became someone talented, and even then with all the talent in the world he’s just too self involved to ever be helpful to others but he’s not a loser.”  
  
Junko, “Didn’t Senpai make a speech about that? Way to date the only guy who was worse than Senpai.”  
  
Komaeda, “Are we seriously doing this? Are we going back and forth between hope and despair, and then gossiping like we’re just two trashy teenagers.”  
  
Junko, “I mean what are we.”  
  
Komaeda, “We have to stop being teenagers at some point.”  
  
Junko, “Not if you’re me. Lol.”  
  
Komaeda, “Don’t Lol me.”  
  
Junko, “Upupupupu.”  
  
Komaeda, “Don’t literally laugh out loud.”  
  
Junko, “Hey, you had parents right?”  
  
Komaeda, “They’re dead. You already knew that, on top of being the worst villain mankind has to offer you’re also just plain mean.”  
  
Junko, “So, how do you feel towards them?”  
  
Komaeda, “About what?”  
  
Junko, “About bringing you into this world! Damnit!”  
  
Komaeda, “What about you, Enoshima? Though I probably don’t even have to ask.”  
  
Junko, “I’m sorry.”  
Komaeda, “For being born.”  
Junko, “Me, I just dig Dazai more than Akutagawa.”  
  
Junko said, going back to chatting.  
They were trying to distract themselves, but it was pointless. In the end your thinking doesn’t cease. No matter how much you willed it yourself. It kept going, automatically. That was what made it so unpleasant.  
  
The two of them sat around chatting in a casual mood. At the person they almost could have become. Junko if she chose to obsess over hope, Komaeda if he chose to give into despair. Yet, no matter how hard they tried they could not stop thinking about themselves, they could only be reminded of themselves, they would never be anybody else but themselves. 

 

All they ever wanted was to be someone else. They hated themselves as much as everyone else did, but that was the one thing they could never do.  
Even around someone who was so like them, it only made the differences, their own individuality more pronounced.  
  
“You’re so unfree,” accused Junko.  
  
“I hate to disagree with someone with talent, but you’re the most wrong person on earth. So. I think it’s okay. To say you’re wrong.”  
  
“Yes you are. You restrain yourself.”  
  
“Better than having others restrain me. What exactly do you think it means to be free? Does freedom mean killing people.”  
  
“You’re like Amami-kun.” Enoshima Junko pointed up towards his lifeless face broadcasted on the screen. “Do you know why even though he’s a total creep like you nobody noticed? It’s because he has self control, but almost too much. He’s restraining himself all the time. Every part of him is chained down. You can’t see them but they’re there.”  
  
“I find it disturbing that someone like you who thinks nothing of other people, can understand them so well.” Komaeda glanced up onscreen and saw Rantaro’s lifeless face. If he had died in the first round, and been left out in the moist air to rot for an entire month. He would look more alive then he did right there, standing around, looking so tired that breathing and having a beating heart was just another chore. “No, you’re wrong it’s the opposite. Amami-kun is too free. He let go of everything and that’s why he’s like that. He says he’s doing it all for his sisters, but it’s really easy to care about them from afar. He’s just projecting his feelings onto them, and continuing to love them from afar to distance himself from his own emotions.”  
  
“I suppose you would know something about that.”  
  
“I can only love in a one sided manner, and you can’t return Matsuda-kun’s feelings of love for you no matter how hard you try. I idolize everybody and everybody loves you like an idol.”  
  
“I guess if I had restrained myself, I would have turned out like you.”  
  
“Does that mean if I hadn’t restrained myself, I would’ve turned out like you.” 

 

“Yeah, I’ll pass on that.”  
“Yeah, that’s a big no thank you.”  
  
Junko laughed and Komaeda didn’t.  
  
They continued their idle chatter, and at one point the trial ended and they didn’t even notice. They just discussed things that had nothing to do with the murder. That had nothing to do with anyone but them.  


Ridiculous things that served no purpose in life. That would neither help nor harm the world. Some topics she brought up. Some topics he brought up. Those two who could not so much as hold a conversation with others without getting bored or confusing them, were talking like normal people.  
They conversed like good friends.  
It was all meaningless, worthless, small talk.  
They both thought it was neither enjoyable nor unenjoyable.  
They just reflected how they had lived the past nineteen and twenty years.  
A reflection of the light.  
  
Then Zenkichi came and interrupted. He saw the blood that was on both of them, dried up by now. “I left you guys alone for five minutes, and the first thing you did was try to kill each other didn’t you?”  
  
“Noooo….” Junko said like a child with her hand stuck in the cookie jar.  
  
“Don’t lie to me.”  
  
“Awe boo, now Hitoyoshi-kun is going to lecture us like his boring goodie two shoes self."  
  
“There’s no need to do that. Kumagawa-kun is back. I… I don’t have to do anything.”  
  
"Yeah whatever put a pause on that breakdown for later. Can't deal with this right now.”  
  
"You knew he was back so why have you just been sitting there watching the whole time."  
  
Junko winked.  
Which was a pointless gesture because she was missing an eye.   
"You have to stay and watch a show until the end. Leaving halfway through is just plain rude."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Gotta go, bye. TTYL. Except not really because I don't like talking to you, because you're unpopular, and I'm way out of your league. Later bitches!"  
  
  
Junko grabbed Komaeda’s hand and dragged him along behind her, not caring if he wanted to follow or not. The two of them raced down the spiral staircase of Korekiyo’s talent lab and out to the front of the school.  
  
When Enoshima Junko saw her Senpai dressed in all black.  
She reached up to touch the coat she had been wearing around her shoulders for a whole month.  
  
All this time, he was the only one she wanted to talk to.  
She just wanted to hear his voice.  
She just wanted him to call her name again. 

There’s no need for a teary reunion, just say something stupid and I’ll laugh at you again.

『Junko…?』  
  
Enoshima Junko immediately slapped him hard enough that he fell to the ground.  
  
“You idiot! Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, lame, lame, lame, lame!” 

 

『That was about what I expected.』  
  
Enoshima Junko dove into his chest tackling him to the ground and refusing to let go. She beat her hands uselessly against him, and Kumagawa just watched her, completely consumed by her like he always did. 

 

『Junko, say my name. You’ve never said my name, not even once.』  


“Loser, loser, loser, loser, loser, loser, loser.”  
  
She buried her face in his chest, and whispered so only he could hear.  
  
“Misogi.”  
  
She remembered.  
Her precious star.   
The rain cleared up, and her Hikoboshi returned.   
She finally had a light all of her own.   
  
**DEADLY LIFE END**  
  
  



	51. LOVE SUITE: Only Thorns on This Rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A special bonus chapter after the trial focusing on romance at hotel kumasutra!

When he picked himself off the ground Junko was still clinging to him.  
She refused to let go.   
  
『Haha, did you miss someone like me? That’s like missing a cavity.』   
  
That was all he was.   
A hole.   
In her tooth, in her heart.   
  
The idea of someone missing him was ridiculous. Seriously ridiculous. So ridiculous he just had to laugh. At that precise moment however, Enoshima Junko suddenly remembered how furious she was at him for dying on her.   
  
She wanted to scream at him, everything she was feeling, but nothing came out of her mouth. She must have felt nothing. Junko came up with a second strategy, he should have to feel what she did all this time, not being able to talk to the one person you wanted to talk to the most.   
  
“Hmph.”   
  
The silent treatment.   
The most mature option available to her. 

 

『Why are you ignoring me? I know my face is completely forgettable and my stats are so mediocre it’s painful, but I thought my one redeeming feature was that I was so annoying I was impossible to ignore.』

  
“Hmph.”   


『Junko, come on. Let’s talk about panties.』

  
“Hmph.” 

 

She refused to talk to him, but she refused to let go either. Kumagawa simply shrugged, dismissing it as more of Junko’s weirdness for now. Kumagawa’s standards were so low that obviously Junko’s dangerous and unstable behavior always struck him as just weird. Just a quirk. Oh, she’s so quirky when she’s constantly trying to kill me. What a laugh.   
  
He finally noticed Komaeda standing quietly behind them. The reason he failed to notice before was Komaeda, breathing through his mouth, his hair reflecting silver in the light, wheezing, choking on his own breath, trying to talk but the words all spilling out at once he was usually such a loud existence. Komaeda said he was just another face in the crowd, but Kumagawa was starting to wonder what Komaeda thought normal people were like if he thought he had an unremarkable face.

He probably thought normal was just “the opposite of him.”   
  
Kumagawa had never seen Komaeda so quiet before. It was immediately worrying. He smiled at him pleasantly, in a way Komaeda never could without coming off as creepy. 『Nagito-chan, you did good staying alive. I would have been so sad if you died before I got the chance to kill you.』

  
“Trash…” 

 

『Yep! That’s right, Nagito-chan is trash. But you know I got some of the best sleep in my life in the dumpsters when I lived on the streets. And sometimes people throw really cool things away as trash.』

 

Kumagawa really thought he could just walk back as if nothing had ever happened. He could greet Komaeda the same way as he always did with the same bright smile. 

  
Komaeda fell silent again. Kumagawa really was bright. A different kind of brightness than Hinata-kun. If Hinata-kun shone like the sun, then Kumagawa was just a single star in the night sky. Komaeda wondered why then, Kumagawa seemed much brighter than him. Bright enough to blind him. It was probably because even after all this time, Hinata-kun still pretended to be a good person, he helped other people begrudgingly. He wanted to be what Makoto was but lacked Makoto’s genuine nature. Then there was Kumagawa, who always carried that darkness with him.   
  
The contrast between his bloody, violent beatdown of Toko, and his genuine wish to save her. It was so obvious what he was feeling, even if Komaeda had never seen that look on someone else’s face before. Komaeda did not know what it looked like when someone smiled like they were happy to see him, until Kumagawa showed him that smile. Kumagawa did not just wear his heart on his sleeve, he nailed his heart there, and all the veins on his body, and he bled all over so everybody else was forced to know what he was feeling. His feelings made a mess of himself and everybody else.   
  
Komaeda had been burned by hope so many times. He knew hoping for some things was impossible. A meteorite striking an airplane was highly unlikely, but no matter how much he wished for it his parents were not going to stand back up again after being crushed.   
  
Nobody was ever going to fill that empty household. When he was a child he held out hope for such things, that he might one day be able to heal. Then a faceless doctor under harsh white lights told him he had lymphona with a palpable disinterest in his voice. There was no healing, there was no getting back what he had lost, there was only living out the remainder of borrowed time. If he was not the one to die, then his luck would kill someone else. It was practically stolen time.   
  
He genuinely thought that the reason Kumagawa had died was so someone like him could live.   
To put it in simpler and less Komaeda terms, he was used to losing things, resigned to it even.   
  
Never once did he imagine he would ever get them back.   
That Kumagawa would smile again at him like this. 

 

He was in the stars somewhere. That was where he had found Kumagawa again. He never wanted to return to earth. He did not want gravity to pull on him anymore. Just keep floating, like a ghost, like you have no weight.   
  
Kumagawa reached towards him. 『Nagito-chan, are you ignoring me now too? That’s rude, you can’t treat your murderer like that. 』   
  
Kumagawa’s hand.   
Komaeda focused on it forgetting the rest of the world.   
He never noticed.   
How small and fragile they were.   
Because they were covered in scars, Komaeda assumed they were strong.   
The hands that reached out to save him countless times.   
Kind, warm hands.   
They were shaking, like he had arthritis.   
His bones were creaking.   
A hand like that, afraid of everyone, still tried to hold his.   
When even the greatest of talents, the ultimates, did not even look his way.   
Of course they didn’t.   
Not them.   
Not normal people.   
Nobody would ever want to take his hand.   
The cold, dead, hand of a reaper.   
Nobody but Kumagawa.   
  
Komaeda suddenly slapped that hand away as forcefully as he could. He screamed, shattering the silence. “Don’t touch me you murderer! Kirigiri-san was executed for the victimless crime of burning worthless trash like you, and now Shinguuji-kun had to die to bring you back. You’ve killed two people now, and you just tried to kill Fukawa-san right in front of us, and it’s like you feel nothing at all.” 

 

No, that was not it.  
He was the one who felt nothing. After all Kumagawa was so kind as to offer his hand. Kumagawa smiled like he was happy to see him. Kumagawa came back to him after all this time. Yet, he could not be happy about it. He could not smile back. He could not throw his arms around him like they were old friends. 

 

『Kyoko-chan…?』  
  
“Don’t say her name. Do you really think a single person here would have wanted you back instead of her? You, who makes everything worse, who screws up everything or the Ultimate Detective who could help us out of this mystery game? How many more people are going to die now because someone completely useless like you go revived?” 

 

Kumagawa did kill someone. He killed Iihiko to protect his own worthless life. On Jabberwock Island he killed only once in fifty three rounds, Komaeda Nagito. Kumagawa already knew he was a murderer, and yet it still hurt to hear it, to be reminded. That he lived causing the tragedies of other human beings, and dragged them into his own just because he did not want to be alone. For a selfish reason like that he could not be kind like Komaeda was.   
  
Komeada was probably being kind even now. He was so selfless. Even if he wanted to greet Kumagawa like a friend, he had to think about everybody else first, and tell off the murderer who almost killed someone right before their eyes. He was being the hero so Kumagawa could continue playing the villain, how thoughtful of him.   
  
Junko suddenly wrapped her arms around Kumagawa’s waist and buried her face in his chest. She looked back, almost as if to gloat, posessively, eyes cutting through Komaeda like they were shards of crystal glass.   
  
“I. Told. You. So.”   
  
She said in a sing-song voice.   
Her voice echoed in his ears like a melody caught in his head. He remembered what she said before, that the moment Kumagawa came back he would immediately go back to pushing him away again. He acted like they were such good friends only when Kumagawa was not around him.   
  
Komaeda fell silent again and Makoto spoke up. “Umm, I think Komaeda-san has a point. Kumagawa was going to come back anyway because of all fiction, so shouldn’t Kirigiri-san come back?”

 

『Aha yeah, because of me Makoto-chan is separated from his best friend. What a terrible villain I am... 』

  
Kumagawa remembered, when Makoto called him his friend. When he said he never once thought of him as abnormal. That was why it hurt ever so slightly. He pinched the corners of his face trying to get himself to smile more, wider, more convincing.   
  
“That’s unfair! Kirigiri-san should get to come back!”   
  
“No luck kid.” Monokuma shook his plush head. “That’s what Korekiyo asked for when he offed himself, if you want to complain why don’t you break out the ouiji board and channel somebody who cares.” 

 

“Why would Kiyo want Kumagawa back?” Makoto said thoughtlessly.   
  
Mukuro looked in worry between her own brother who was starting to sulk with only Junko to cling to, everybody else who was too scared to say a thing, and Makoto who was too wrapped up in his own losses.   
  
She was happy too.   
She wanted to tell Kumagawa she was happy to have her brother back.   
Her family that she valued more than anyone else in the world.   
More than Kirigiri.   
That was just terrible of her, wasn’t it?   
Makoto was a good person. Makoto and Komaru were the good siblings who never harmed anyone, innocent in a way that she could never be. He deserved to have his friend back. Yet, she could not sympathize with him, or his pain over Kirigiri. Even though he comforted her when she cried over her brother. She was such a heartless girl.   
  
Maybe Junko didn’t make her this way. Maybe she was just born that way, that’s what made her suited to be Junko’s sister. 

 

When she looked up, Kumagawa was already gone. She looked back regretfully at Makoto for a moment and chased after him. 

 

🧸

  


『Junko, how come you’ll insult Nagito-chan and not me? We’re basically the same person.』

 

“...”

 

『Come on, the audience wants to hear our trademark banter. We need to lighten the mood. It’s been nothing but angst lately.』

 

“...”

  


『Well, maybe they were just laughing at all our pathetic problems, so their moods are already lightened. If my life is one huge joke, then I hope somebody is laughing at least.』  
  
“...”

 

『Hey, is that optimism or pessimism?』  
  
“...”   
  
『Guess you’re right, it’s nothing at all. 』   


“Misogi-chan!” 

 

He heard a voice like Junko’s behind him, it must be Mukuro. Kumagawa reached out to her for a moment, and then Rantaro’s words echoed in his ear. _What did you do to protect your sister?_ He immediately withdrew his hand. 『Mukuro-chan, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be comforting Makoto-chan? He needs you.』

  
“Misogi-chan… I… Do you need me for anything?”

 

She had no idea how to ask because it was all too complicated. She could not articulate. How she tried to be like him. How every time she tried to be like him she failed. How she might hate her sister now she didn’t even know anymore. How she wanted to save him just once, because his other sister never even tried. How he was worth it in her eyes. All of those feelings and Mukuro had killed her own heart and detached it from her so many times that when they all came flooding back she did not make any sense of them. 

 

Junko still hanging off of him, Kumagawa looked back at her. 『It’s fine, I’m the older one you know. Even if I don’t look like it with this adorable face. I can take care of myself.』  
  
He already asked too much of her. He should just stop being her brother, call it quits and make sure Junko never got near her again. Junko and him could just disappear together. But… he thought suddenly telling her they could no longer be brother and sister anymore with no explanation would only hurt her worse.   
  
“Then, there’s nothing I can do?”   
  
“Isn’t that how it always is? God you’re so useless.” Junko spoke up, peeking her head out from underneath Kumagawa’s arm. “I mean Komaeda-kun just bullied him in front of everybody back there and you didn’t even stand up for him. Poor senpai, hated by everyone, he can’t even get the girl whose an obsessive freak about her family to love him.”   
  
“Th-that’s not. Junko-chan, no don’t…” 

 

“You don’t want Senpai anyway, because he’s not squeaky clean like you’re Naegi-kun. Deep down, you think he’s just bad don’t you? That because he was a bad child he became like this. If he was good like Naegi-kun, he wouldn’t have turned out this way.” 

“N-no, I really wanted to help. Because Misogi-chan is always alone…just like I was when he found me.”  
  
“Then, why didn’t you help him? Was it because you’re fat? It’s definitely because you’re fat, right?”   
  
Kumagawa watched the conversation with a bemused smile on his face the entire time. Then suddenly he turned around to Junko and grabbed her by the neck, lifting her into the air. His hand clenched tight around her. Junko could easily beat him in any kind of game, or strategy, and she could outsmart him, but the one who was in control of sheer physical violence was him.   
  
Especially when she genuinely did not see that reaction coming. 

 

『Apologize to Mukuro-chan right now. Actually, get on your knees and lick her feet. Perform Dogeza. Ultimate Dogeza. You’re talented and cool right, you should at least be able to apologize in style.』  
  
Mukuro knew those two were always fighting, but she never saw Kumagawa resort to violence this quickly before. It was like the time with Toko, he just got violent with no hesitation at all without trying anything else. 

  
“...”   


『Maybe it’s better you’re giving me the silent treatment, because nothing but filthy sewage comes from your mouth. I should just make you stay silent for good, for Mukuro-chan’s sake.』  
  
Mukuro suddenly threw her arms around him. She pulled him back. Even though she was much stronger than him, she felt weak, useless, so little like a little sister.   
  
“Misogi-chan, I don’t want this. I told you every time you hurt others, you’re the one who breaks worse. A-and, it’s not good for families to fight so please don’t do this for my sake.” 

 

Kumagawa relented. His fingers slipped away from Junko’s tie, and he dropped her back on the ground. Junko was smiling the whole time, because she was a freak. Kumagawa glanced back at her, holding everything back.『Junko’s not your family. She’ll never be. Just… Makoto-chan and Komaru-chan are a much nicer family right? You deserve someone kind and warm like them.』  
  
“And I’m a cold bitch,” Junko added on unhelpfully.

 

When Kumagawa took a step forward, Junko jumped and completely wrapped herself around him again, refusing to let go. He just continued to walk forward. He knew if he looked back even once at Mukuro, his resolve would weaken and he would just go back to clinging to her.

While the two of them were walking, Monokuma suddenly appeared in front of them. He waved a pair of tickets in his hands. “Here’s a little reward for coming back from the dead.”

 

『Shouldn’t I be punished for that? Nobody wanted me anyway.』  
  
“God, way to ruin the mood kid. Just take the damn love hotel tickets and shut up.” 

 

🧸

 

Kumagawa sat awkwardly on the heart shaped bed. His knees were tucked underneath them, and his hands were in his lap. The silence was deafening, without Junko’s loud laughter filling the air he just wanted to drive screws into his ears and remove his ability to hear entirely. 

 

『Junko, how can you keep the silent treatment up this long? You love hearing yourself talk way more than you love or hate me.』

 

“...”  


『Just call me an idiot like you usually do.』

 

“...”  


『All that time I was dead, I just wanted to talk to you again.』

 

“...”

 

『Hey, I know. I’ll give you a good set up, and then for the punch line you can just punch me straight in the face.』  
  
“...”

 

『You’re supposed to say something like ewe, sick, what kind of masochist is this guy? A pretty girl like me with a pure heart really got stuck with him?』

 

“...”

 

『Or maybe, hey why are you following me around all day? Are you one of those stalker types who thinks just because he’s an idol’s biggest fan she’ll do him?』

  
“...”

 

『Now you’re supposed to say ‘What kind of image do you have of me? I care a lot about my image you know, i’m not going to be trash talked by you of all people’』

“...” 

 

『I’ll just annoy you into submission. JUNKO JUNKO JUNKO JUNKO. PAY ATTENTION TO ME! YOU HATE ME DON’T YOU? IS THAT WHY YOU DON’T WANT TO TALK TO ME? ARE WE BREAKING UP? PLEASE, EVERYONE IS GOING TO THINK I’M A LOSER IF I GET DUMPED BY YOU! YOU’RE MY ONE AND ONLY CHANCE OF HAVING A GIRLFRIEND!』

 

“...”

 

『Being annoying is boring. Oh, since Junko hasn’t talked about how bored she is now I’m the one complaining about it.』

 

“...”

 

『Junko...』  
  
He muttered her name hesitantly, as if his lips were loathe to give up and let the name escape.   
She’s the only one after all.   
The only one he will ever refer to by her first name.   
Kumagawa is friendly and approachable, and refers to everybody as if he’s fond of them but that in itself is a form of distance. Getting along with everybody just means that nobody is special, no one except for her that is.   
  
She watched him bite his lip and grinded her own thighs against each other in frustration. He really has no idea at all what he does to her. He’s self aware, but also he’s not. Or maybe he’s too aware of himself and not aware at others. He looks away from them like he’s just some damn shy kid averting his eyes. She wanted to grab him by the collar and scream in his face so he’ll just get it already and this game can end, but she won’t. 

 

『I told you before, if you’re worried about something then just talk to me first instead of pulling this passive aggressive despair bullshit.』

  
Passive aggressive?   
She was regular aggressive thank you very much. 

 

『It’s not your fault. Yeah… yeah, it was my fault. You were lonely. You wanted to talk to me but I wasn’t there for you. 』

  
Then Kumagawa does this thing, this annoying habit of his where he understands her own emotions better than she does. She wondered why she was even born with self awareness in the first place if FUCKING Kumagawa of all people is aware of the emotions she never felt.   
  
Either way.   
  
He always does this. Kumagawa fights back but he’s also the first one to back down. He gives up too easily, and that’s something saying his entire life before this has been nothing but hell. 

He was disgustingly lacking in pride.  
And disgustingly comfortable with himself, the wretch that he was.   
And she was disgustingly in love with him.   
Ugh.   
Vomit.   
  
She wanted him to fight back against her. The first time she had a big fight with him like this, it was after he lost to Medaka. She wanted him to stay that night. She wanted him to prove her wrong. She thought about it several times back then, if after rejecting his entire being he had stayed and pushed her against the wall she would have spent the whole night with him. 

He gave up. He relented to her. Far too easily.

Some part of him was too scared of hurting her to go all the way. Kumagawa lets everyone know that he’s a violent monster, but Junko’s surprised they all buy into his act so easily. It’s not that he’s secretly a good or a bad person, he’s just a liar. In front of others he pretends to be a laughing villain with pointy teeth, and in front of her he pretends to be a soft little rabbit and both of them are lies.   
  
That way nobody knows how violent he really is. How gentle he really is. What’s scarier than his petty and impulsive emotions was the silent anger he buried deep in his heart. No matter how hard he tried, the child he buried underneath the garden was never going to stay buried.   
  
She could see it. His eyes wide like a child - his darkness as deep as the ocean, the blue of his eyes just a surface which hide unfathomable depths. She wanted him to show her the worst of himself, to be that way only with her, but instead he pretends to be soft. 

  
Kumagawa rolled over in bed next to her. He did not even take any of the covers, because he was used to sleeping alone in the cold. He probably viewed sleeping next to her as sleeping alone too. 

 

『We can talk in the morning okay? Or… even a month from now. It’s fair because I made you wait that long...』

  
He tried to be sweet.   
Even if it’s pleasing to the lips, poison is nothing but poison.   
How pointless.   
Sure, tomorrow morning they would wake up, and then talk about their feelings and cry, and then go back to playing happy fucking couple with one another. Then they would fight again, and make up again, and their relationship would become nothing more than a predictable pattern. 

No thank you.   
She wanted more from him.   
She wanted everything, naturally. 

He could go play house with someone else.   
  
Kumagawa is good at that. For an idiot he’s remarkably clever. He can remake himself any way he chooses, so he chooses to be approachable, friendly, easy to get along with. He shows them a smile that seems to embrace and accept every part of them. No matter how many stones are thrown his way, no matter how his face is broken, it will always like rippling water return to stillness.   
  
It’s like her, but infuriatingly not like her because she knows Kumagawa has something real underneath all of that. He just chooses to hide it away from everybody else. 

She does not care how low she has to sink.   
If she could see that side of him, even if it meant losing him.

Junko had closed her eyes in frustration the entire time to ignore him, but she finally opened them. She rolled on her side and saw the rise and fall of his shoulders. An entire month flashed by in Junko’s memory, of waking up in an empty bed every single morning, and without fail still expecting Kumagawa to be there next to her. She remembered reaching her hand out and feeling the hole he left in her bed. 

 

When did she get so used to having someone next to her? It was just flesh, just a bundle of nerves and muscles that moved with electrical pulses, really not any more tangible or real than a machine. Yet it had such power over her, such warmth… if she wanted to feel warm she could just stick her hand on a stove and watch it burn slowly.   
  
Her heart beat seems in tune with the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders. Yes, this was all she wanted. She just wanted to wake up next to Kumagawa again, maybe even forever, even though forever was boring.   
  
But the problem is Junko doesn’t know what she wants.   
She doesn’t know, so she can’t put it into words, she can’t talk to him.   
She can’t use her mouth for anything. 

Her bright red lips like flower petals. They were beautiful but nothing else.   
Junko hated flowers.   
Once their stems were cut, all they could do was look pretty and be admired by others.   
All that was left for them was to slowly wither away.   
They could not become anything other than flowers.   
If human beings envied flowers for their beauty, then she envied humans for their ugliness.   
  
Her sleeping prince. Her mouth was good for one thing after all. She could wake him up. Junko had sat up at some point with her head leaning over his face, to inspect every detail of him, she memorized Kumagawa’s face the way she would a map of the stars. Then slowly, as if drawn to him gravity she lined her face up with his. Some stars exploded, and some collapsed in on their own weight, she wondered idly which one he would be in the end.   
  
Her mouth kissed him gently. She saw his eyes slowly flutter awake again.   
She really was an angel waking him up this way.   
Letting his dirty mouth come into contact with her lips.   
Even though it was like swallowing muddy water.   
She was an angel, and he was a demon for seducing such a high and mighty girl like this.   
But, it could just as easily be the other around.   
  
She pushes herself face first into Kumagawa. Her head goes under the surface, and for a moment she cannot even breathe, she’s so caught up in the act of kissing him. Desperately gasping for air. Choking on mouthfuls of water. Tasting salt. Bitter, and yet strangely refreshing.   
  


Kumagawa’s eyes blinked at her in disbelief. He did not even try to kiss her back. She never wished on a star, not once in her life, but now she might just because she wishes with all of her heart this idiot could learn to take a fucking hint.  

 

He closes his eyes eventually, and made a clumsy attempt to kiss her back. She felt the parting of his lips. He sucked on her lower lip. The lipgloss she wore today was cherry flavored she wondered if he would notice. He was pulled into her ebb and flow. She saw the corners of his lips perk up, that all too familiar smile that he always wore.   
  
Then suddenly, she bit hard.   
In surprise, Kumagawa pulled his head back and knocked his teeth against hers.   
She hated precision, and despised perfection.   
She wanted to be clumsy and clueless like every other teenager on earth.   
  
Junko tasted iron at the back of her throat. She had no idea whose blood it was, Kumagawa’s, or hers, probably both mixing together. Kumagawa regarded her with suspicion, like she might take a knife and simply cut his lips off if they continued. Then he kissed her anyway. 

  
His lips. A twist of her hips. He’s pinned back on the bed. There’s no escaping her now. A butterfly caught in a spider’s web. Spiderwebs were considered pretty for their delicacy. Humans loved breakable things, then was she so wrong for thinking they were more beautiful when they were broken?   
  
Her intention from the start was to do this. To have him trapped under her the rest of the night, so he could not wake up and leave her in the morning. If he walked away, even for a moment he might just die somewhere where she cannot see him.   
  
Sloppy kisses. His cheeks. His eyes. His neck. She basically slobbered all over him. She kissed him, without a single drop of romanticism. Junko just wanted to mark him. Her bright red lipstick. The moment anyone saw it, they would know. Nobody else but her could be so red.   
  
Her lipstick smeared and his face a red blushing mess. She envied the way blood could flow to his cheeks and glow bright like flower petals, red and inviting like an apple dangling from a tree just tempting her.   
  
She could not her heart beat at all, unless it was pounding in her ears. She bit his cheek, hard, skin breaking under her teeth. When he flinched away in pain she giggled, delighted, and licked the blood that trickled out.   
  
He tasted like rust and everything else that was bitter about the world. 

She had no idea if being with Kumagawa was heaven or hell.   
If hell was made to punish her, then he was the gateway.   
  
He was so warm. She just wanted a little bit of his warmth, even if it meant catching fire, and kissing cinders and ashes from his lips. She was okay with hell if it was him. He should just set fire to her, and lick her all over like she was getting scourged by tongues of flames.   
  
He grabbed her, his palm on her forehead and pushed her away to get her to stop biting him. He pushed her away from his warmth. Even pushed away she still comes back a moment later.   
  
She nuzzled against his shoulder sweetly for a moment. Then, she turned sour and bit right into him. She could be the salve that he needed, or the salt in his wounds. She could be medicine or poison. This time she does not let go, not even when he tries to push her away. She felt her teeth break his skin, and then a tearing of flesh when he finally grabs her shoulder and pushes him back.   
  
His blood drips from the corner of her lips. She’s just some pale and empty thing, no different from a vampire, without a trace of life in her eyes. Three drops fall and stain the white sheets underneath them. She’s pleased with herself. Then she’s not. It’s just one scar on him among many after all, as insignificant as a single star in the night sky.   
  
She loves him so much that it hurts. She spent a whole month, just hurting from his absence, longing, but she cannot hurt him back the same way. Disatisfaction drips from her lips next.   
  
Hot, hot, hot. Sweltering heat. She was cold a moment ago but now she’s drenched with sweat, and her clothes feel like they’re sticking to her skin. That was how warm Kumagawa was. She could easily burn herself on him, and that’s what makes it so fun. She sat on top of him, her hips alligned with his, palm flat against his chest.   
  
This was probably going to hurt him a little bit but that was fine. These were just bodies after all. Just tools. Just flesh. It’s not like it was _her_ she was giving away. She was not debasing herself, because Junko was somewhere else. She was unattached to her own body, always floating away observing the scene from a third person perspective. When she moved her fingers, she felt a lag, as if this body was not fully hers, as if she did not inhabit it. It’s not Kumagawa she was hurting, and not herself either. This was just meat both of them hauled around.   
  
They could bite each other, they could bleed as much as they wanted. And neither of them would feel an ounce of pain. 

 

The clothes were in her way again. Everything was in her way, but the cothes especially. Her hand dipped down lower in his chest, and with her thumb nail she invited herself in popping one of the buttons.  
  
For a moment she considers what it would be like to be held completely naked by him, as if lying on a bed of coals. No, she would just be ash, and then nothing left. She was sure Kumagawa wanted to see her naked, without pride, and without a mask but… 

To be exposed.  
She wanted to be looked at, but not seen.   
As if people were looking at a photograph instead of staring at the real her.   
She wanted to have sex, but she didn’t want to be naked.   
What a difficult girl.   
  
His shirt unbuttoned her fingers traveled to his waistline, and her nails curled around and jerked his pants down. The zipper breaks and the button flies off, but it might be physically impossible for her to care less in that moment.   
  
She’s just a beast, and he’s carrion. She wants to take and lick the meat off the dried up bones of his corpse. She’s prowling over him. Her hair is down, and it falls in cherry pink tresses surrounding him. Everything before was just playing around. She was just a kitten teething him.   
  
She slithers her fingers under his the elastic of his boxers and now the real game begins. She supposed she should be flattered that he’s this eager for her, but who wouldn’t be with her curvaceous body pressed against his, so laithe, so lacking.   
  
She knows to do it so quick and dirty is just going to hurt. She wanted to hurt. She wanted to hurt, and scar, and break, like he did. She wanted to cut herself on happiness like it was soft wool, and then watch the pink blood drip from her fingertips. 

 

 Fire, fire, fire, she’s burning up inside wanting to get to him. She wanted to feel him warm and inside her. Hell, hell, hell. It had to be hell. Hell was being with him. Hell was being without him. The two of them did not a garden of their own, or to take a bite out of the same fruit. The two of them together could set that garden alight, with the sparks they made rubbing their bodies against one another. The flowers burned, so bright, so colorful. 

  
His pants are pulled down to around his knees and he just stared at her again. His eyes are the water to her fire. They threaten to drown her, to put her out, if she stares at them too long. 

『Is this what you want?』

  
As Junko reached and pulled down the zipper of her skirt, and just dragged it down as well she gave him a look that said _Are you stupid or something?_   
  
He seemed to get it because she gave him that look a lot. 

 

『Junko, you’re so dramatic. We don’t need a love scene right now. Can’t we just talk?』

 

 _Make me._   
She mouths without saying the words.

  
Kumagawa’s eyes ignite.

『Fine then, I’ll just make you scream. If you want it that badly.』

  
There’s something black, a thin dark film, like oil floating on the surface of the water. He glared - a stare so violent she wanted to coo and call him adorable. All that anger he buried like far beneath the water she knew all she needed was one crack and it would all come pouring out. 

Then even water would burn, then even he would burn her.   
  
He must have taken it personally.   
That she would use him like this.   
Did he think they were lovers?   
He’s so sweet, so saccharine it’s sickening. Sugar was its own kind of poison. She knows that because she spent her life sipping the clean surface of the water. and it made her dirty.   
Enoshima Junko, inhuman monster, with incomprehensible motivations, becomes human only around him. He’s the only one she pretends to give a damn about. It would be nice if the story was like that. 

  
Kumagawa grabbed her by the wrist and slammed her down. Their positions suddenly reversed, like taking a tarot card and flipping it around to invert the meaning. Didn’t he know, she was always above him and he was below her. He was supposed to be a masochist and she was a sadist.   
  
He pushed into her with no warning, and suddenly her heart is in her throat, and there’s a snake coiling in her chest. When she breathes it feels like her rib cage might collapse in on itself. She choked on the noises she was about to make, and bites her lip to prevent the pain from showing on her face.   
  
The more she withholds from him, the harder he’ll try to take it from her. That’s the game, make her say something, make her say his name, make her ask for more, or maybe make her beg for it to stop. She wondered what it was like to do this with a completely expressionless doll, because that was all she was. 

 

She doesn’t want gentle lovemaking. She does not want comfort or intimacy. She wants pain. She wants the real Kumagawa, the interplay between his violence and his sex, because she’s the only one in the whole world who can love him for what he really is.   
  
To gently encourage him, she dragged her nails down his back. Just to see him bleed. To see red streaks on his back like the wings of an angel were torn off and this was all that was left behind.   
  
They should be covered in scratches when this was done. They should bleed all over, like they had just done it in a rose bush. They should be ruined by thorns. They should burn each other when they touched.   
  
The man and woman in the garden should have burned it out of spite. They could never be happy in that garden again after all, no matter how hard they tried, so they should at least get to enjoy watching it burn. It was too terrible being born outside the garden, unable to see color in a single thing, not even the petals of flowers. 

  
She wanted all the life inside that field of flowers to burn up, and she wanted to burn up with them. She knew if she provoked Kumagawa enough, he would burn her, he would lose his mind just like he did with Toko.   
  
He pushed into her, and her back arched. It was getting difficult to tell if it was in pleasure or pain. She bit him again, just to be petty. To show him that even underneath him, even with one eye, even with half her brain rotted away and leaking out of her ears she was still completely in control in a way he never would be.   
  
Forcefully, he shoved his thumb in her mouth and pried her jaw apart holding it open. She tried to bite on his fingers but he was stronger. It was strangely erotic, his fingers playing with her mouth like that. Then she grabbed the side of his face and scratched, going for his eye so they could match.   
  
He gave up trying to push her away and hold her close at the same time, and finally lost himself. His fist slammed into the side of her head. At first she’s disoriented, her pupils shook before fixating on him again. Then, a smile slithered on her face, showing her fangs dripping with delight. The snake got her way again (like she always did). She smiled finally, the first expression that she made the whole time and kisses the knuckle that just hit her.

 

『You’re fucked up.』

 

 _No doi._   
  
She wants to say, but doesn’t.   
  
The next moment she knees him hard in the gut. She started to think really hard about how many ribs she could break, or if it would be possible to dislocate any of his bones without interrupting their lovemaking.   
  
Kumagawa stops her first, slamming her back down harder against the bed. His body was suffocating her, drowning her, and yet it was so warm like sleeping with a blanket of stars laid on top of her. She felt a surge of pleasure, or maybe pain, as his hips bucked wildly again. At this point each of them was just trying to control the other. She wanted to ride him, and he wanted to toss her off and then crush her skull. She raises a leg up, and hooks it around his hip inviting him closer just to taunt him.   
  
His fingers combed through her hair, appreciating its length and beauty for a moment touching it as gently as one would the silk on a spiderweb. Then, he pulled hard. She returns the favor, wrapping her fingers in between his, and pulling his hand close to her only to break the ring finger.   
  
It didn’t hurt.   
They were just meat after all, with broken bones underneath. 

  
Her heart shuttered as she thought about rolling around in ash with him. The ash filling up all the cracks in both of their bodies. Even when he was gone she could still feel his heat. It clung to her like ash while her body was sticky with sweat.   
  
He was all around her. On top of her. He smothered her. Her eyes saw only red. If it was not red, then it was just ash, it was nothing. Better to burn herself up with him then slowly wither away like she was the whole month.   
  
She might have regretted it.   
They could be happy.   
If she was a girl who was capable of smiling when she was happy, and crying when she was sad. She should have just been happy to have him back.   
Instead she had all these mixed up, bitter emotions inside of her that pooled underneath her teeth like venom.   
They could help each other.   
They were just lashing out.   
His body was already covered by gashes, as if lashed by a thorny vine.   
  
She pushed his wrist back trying to break it, and he bashed his head against hers to get him to stop. She only saw the aftermath of him and Toko attacking each other like they were seriously trying to kill one another. She was jealous. She slammed her fake hand against his nose, trying to strike him with her palm, and he bashed his forehead against hers again. 

  
She was still coiled around him like a snake. He still stared at her with those stupid deep blue eyes of his, and she thought how pleasing it would be to gauge both of them out. Their hips grinded together as they tried to feel something out of the awkward positioning of their bodies.   
  
She twisted her body and climbed on top of him. Kumagawa flipped her over again. The two of them were scratching at each other, desperately grabbing, trying to push the other to fall so they could be on top.   
  
They stopped paying attention and fell off the bed. Kumagawa fell first, and Junko on top of him.   
  
Her head was still dizzy inhaling fumes from what the fire burnt up.   
A garden. Flowers of every kind. Roses of different colors. They were watered with drops of blood. That was why the roses needed to have thorns. If you reached out for them you would prick your finger, and she liked that, not the roses but the thorns. She imagined her pretty little hand, covered in scratches, patched up with bandages.   
  
If only her whole body could be that way, kissed by thorns all over.   
A garden.   
Even she thought it was beautiful.   
But no matter how hard she tried she could never be part of that garden.   
The two of them could not play in the flowers like laughing children. Like everybody else did.   
She could not see colorful flowers even in her dreams.   
She just trampled over them.   
Roses are beautiful precisely because you can feel the pain of their thorns.   
But, she could feel neither, nor the colorful beauty of their flower, nor the pain of their thorns.   
She wanted to smile at him when he came back to her.   
She wanted to cry when he was taken away from her.   
She wanted to talk to him again.

She couldn’t.   
They was why his warmth just burned her.   
That was why their love was just a shared despair.   
That was why for both of them violence was easier than intimacy.   
That was why this was all messed up.   
That was why her loving anybody was cruel.   
That was why all of their stars were crossed.   
That was why they only ever fought each other.   
That was why they were going to kill each other one day. 

 

She saw stars finally. All of them, all of them, were in the darkness of Kumagawa’s eyes. They shined so bright there. For a moment she wanted to stop all of this and just appreciate this feeling that coiled up like a snake in her breast, that reached inside of her and squeezed her heart until she exploded.   
  
Then her hand slammed into his jaw, making her teeth click He grabbed her head and slammed it hard against the floor underneath him. He was on top of her again. She fantasized what her neck would look like, bruised purple by his fingers. He just stared down at her, eyes as still as water. Her fingers reached for his face. Then slowly, like a spider crawling along his body. A spider atop flowers. Cruelty amongst beauty. Her fingers traveled to his neck. 

 

『You’re just jealous aren’t you? Even if I hit you until you're bloody you won’t feel a thing. That’s why you bullied Mukuro-chan all these years, you’re jealous she was born a normal girl and you were the defective one.』

She caressed his neck, and the way it dipped down into her collarbone. 

『You wanted to inflict despair on the people you loved the most? Even I think that’s ridiculous. You just hated them didn’t you, you hated your childhood friend who hid his tears away even when he could cry, and you hated your sister always following you around reminding you of everything you didn’t have.』  
  
Her nails brushed against his cheeks, the narrows slopes of his face, gaunt. His sunken in eyes, the shadows that swirled underneath them and colored all the narrow crevasses and cracks in his face a darker shade than black. 

『You just can’t love anybody. Not even someone as cute and lovable as me.』

Her fingers tightened around his neck. They were just getting worse and worse, he provoked her, and she provoked him, and both of them were the type who would die before they backed down. 

『At least I can love someone. As long as you're around I'm not the worst.』  
  
As she strangled him, her nails tore away at the back of his neck. Both of them were brought to their highest point and they felt like they were about to topple and fall over. There would be no afterglow with them, just their own burnt up skin.   
  
Kumagawa with his last breaths rasped at her. 『You were just mad someone else killed me weren’t you? You didn’t miss me at all.』   
  
That could be it.   
Maybe she was not sad he died at all.

She breathed in and smoke filled her lungs. It was black, heavy, and toxic. It poisoned her insides slowly, but she kept breathing it in because it she was going to wilt away no matter what.  
  
Kumagawa. Her Kumagawa. Warm, bright, and always smiling. Suddenly, his voice dropped and became so cold blooded he might as well just be dead. 『Kill me then. Do it.』   
  
“...”

『I should have never come back. This is what you want isn’t it? This is what’ll make you happy. I don’t want to hurt you anymore. Then do it, let’s become happy together!』  
  
The suspension bridge effect.   
Throw your lover off a bridge and jump with him and you’ll be in love forever.   
  
Every time they were around each other.   
All they did was hurt each other.   
But that was living, living was hurting.   
They were only truly alive when they were with each other. 

“No!!!!” Junko grabbed his collar, and screamed in his face. She lost control of herself. She spoke with a voice that did not sound like hers. “No, no, no, no, no, I don’t want that!” 

No, that wasn’t it.  
He was the one who was supposed to burn her.   
She ended up burning him, or more like the two of them caught fire from their feelings.   
The smoke was too thick, her eyes blurred, irritated by it and she could no longer see him. Just the vague shape of the two of them together. It was getting all confused, the lines were blurring.   
  
For a moment she thought hearing her finally break, Kumagawa would throw his arms around her like he always did. She almost expected it, him close enough to warm, not close enough to burn. 

Instead, cold wet tears fall on her, dousing her flames. It took her a moment to realize that even on top of her like this, he was crying. He was the same crybaby loser that he always was.   
  
She waved a hand in front of his face. As if he was just distracted. “Hey, I’m talking to you now. No biggie, right? It’s just another one of our stupid fights where we try to kill each other. Don’t all couples go through that?” 

 

『I… I thought it was okay, because it was you. If you’re worse than me then I could do whatever I wanted… I… I hate that I think that way. I hate how easy it is for me to hurt people.』  
  
“Misogi, god, whatever I don’t even listen to you when you talk like half the time. I really don’t care. Can’t you be emo about something more interesting?”   
  
『Why… why is it you?』   
  
“Huh?”

 

『Why is someone as horrible as you the only one who wants me around? Th-that’s ridiculous. Seriously ridiculous.』

 

Oh.  
So this was what pain felt like.   
This was hell.   
Junko clenched her hand at her side and said nothing. She remembered what the hallucination had said to her. _Please stop loving me._ _  
_ This was not coming down from a high, so much as it was crashing from heaven and falling all the way to the bottom of the ocean.   
  
Kumagawa cried in front of her so easily. The tears she wished she could shed. It was not fair. He was crying and feeling so much. He just got to spill his gross feelings that he got to feel all over her. How dare he… just live like that. Just to get to be so alive. His pitch black self, his dull watery eyes, they were far more vibrant than any color on any flower destined to wither. 

 

『They all hate me so why don’t you hate me? Why don’t you hate me enough to kill me?』  
  
She wanted him to comfort her. She wanted to come back and be his usual self, and distract her, and make her laugh, and lie telling her everything would be okay again. Kumagawa could rise up from the dead easily, but not a single thing about him was fixed.   
  
She was just hurting him. Her love hurt him. Seeing her love as the only thing that gave him value, that was just the logic of an abuser. Not despair, just boring abuse that any human being on the planet could do.   
  
Kumagawa bore all their hatred at once. He felt it all the time, stabbing his body like several screws from every angle. Slowly digging into him and twisting up his flesh. She was acting no different than every other person in his life.   
  
“Ugh, Misogi. You’re making me be nice! Now I actually do wanna kill you,” She said, contemptuous, bratty as ever. Then suddenly she reaches up to him, her arms wrap around the back of his neck as she encourages him to rest his head in her chest. Kumagawa collapses on top of her. “There, there, just cry your stupid baby tears all over me I guess, stain my clothes even worse than you already did. I’m gonna have to burn this outfit when we’re done but it’s whatever.” 

 

He choked up and sobbed, burying his face in deep like he was hiding from her.   
  
“Of course I hate you. I hate that you can cry like this whenever you want. You were gone, and I couldn’t even cry for you once. I couldn’t despair over it… I just felt like something was missing.” 

 

『...』  
  
“I guess I don’t hate you, huh? Hate would require feeling something. I just don’t give a damn. I’m uncaring, unfeeling, I thought I… I thought lo… you… so much… but I couldn’t.” 

 

 『It’s normal not to cry over a person like me. Nobody else did.』

 

“I wanted to talk to you again more than anybody else, but then when you’re finally back I just ignored you.” 

 

『I’m annoying to talk to, and not nearly as funny or clever as I seem to think I am.』  


“Misogi would you quit it with the self loathing, you’re taking my spotlight away from me. This is some really juicy Junko angst.”

 

『Oh, sorry.』  
  
“I thought if I pushed you too far and you hurt me, I’d be a real girl. I’d be able to break down crying like Fukawa-san did. I thought if it was you, I’d be able to cry…” 

 

『But you do cry. All the time.』  
  
“I didn’t even cry when I was a baby. My parents thought I was sick. I probably was.”

 

『You’re just the kind of person who laughs instead of crying, right? Just like me.』  
  
“I… I’m like you?”

 

『Yeah, lame right?』  
  
“Totally lamosaurus rex.” 

 

『Junko, sometimes I think you try too hard on the gyaru lingo.』

 

“Besides, I think I changed my mind about the whole killing you thing anyway, yeah I must have gotten bored of that, murdering your boyfriend is so last season.” 

 

『Stop being so fickle! Either kiss me or kill me! You’ve got to commit to one, I’d rather you kill me then just keep changing your mind all the time.』  
  
Kumagawa and Junko, changed their clothes that were already half off of them and torn in several places. Junko in particular, started to undress in front of him and did not even think about if he would see her naked or not.   
  
Kumagawa pulled open the drawer and grabbed a carton of cigarettes. He let a few spill out and then picked up one. Junko her hands in her hair turned back to him. “Smoking after sex, isn’t that a bit of a cliche?”

  
  
  


『What are you talking about? I don’t smoke.』  
  
Kumagawa said just as he lit one up. 

She was about to ask what the hell he meant, until she saw it. Kumagawa put out the butt of the cigarette on his own hand. His face did not even flicker. He closed his fingers around it, twisting it further into the burn.   
  
She wondered if Kumagawa saw her perfect skin and wanted to burn it up too. If that feeling could be called _passion._ _  
_ _  
_ Even if she did not hurt him he would just hurt himself. Pain was all he knew, it was what he was familiar with. For a moment, she wondered if that was his only attraction to her, he just wanted someone to hurt him again the way Ajimu-san did.   
  
He twisted up, he breathed in smoke, flecks of ash got in the corners of his eyes and he teared up all over again. The pain on his face was so vivid, she was jealous all over again. Even though he was dull to pain and used to this he felt so much.   
  
It was just a body after all.   
He was just as distant from his own body as she was hers, that was why he could throw himself in front of a pair of scissors like it was nothing.   
  
Junko walked over to him, forgetting about her hair. She picked up the cigarette from his fingers and took a drag. Then suddenly, with no warning, she kissed him again. It was tar, nicotine, smoke, it was just bittersweet addiction to an awful taste in her mouth. When she drew her face back, they both exhaled smoke. “About what you asked earlier. Why just me, and why not everybody else? I mean, not that you should be complaining about having the most popular girl in the world at your side, do you know how many would kill to be in your spot?” 

 

『Are you that popular? The only person you talk to is me, and Komaeda. That’s the loser’s club.』  
  
“They just… they’re not…” 

 

『Yeah, yeah, I get it we’re cool and they all drool, or whatever other vapid thing that’s going to come out of your mouth.』  
  
“They don’t burn like we do.”   
  
They burnt each other.   
They burnt themselves.   
All of their feathers were plucked from their skin and fell from the sky like ashes.   
But that was so they could be reborn.   
And even though our love is doomed.   
And even though we’re all messed up.   
  
“I started to finally think about tomorrow, not because I think you’ll make me happy or anything, but I want to see tomorrow with you..”   
  
And even though our love is cruel.   
And even though our stars are crossed.   
  
“I know we always fight but… you’re the only one worth fighting.”

 

Junko’s words were just clumsy now. She lost the confidence of her usual cadence, her uniquely clever way of speaking, her words were artless they all just spilled out of her lips.   
  
“You can just leave if you want, i-it’s not like I want you here anyway. I only want you here if you want too. I-I’m too cool to me clinging to someone like you anyway.”   


『Junko this isn’t the time for tsundere.』  
  
“It’s not tsundere, I’m just speaking from the heart. My heart is just tsundere.” 

 

『That doesn’t sound real. Maybe you aren’t a real girl after all.』  
  
“How unlucky for you Kumagawa-kun, you finally got a flower of your own but there’s only thorns on this rose.” 

 

『I’ve always chosen the thorny path.』Kumagawa’s fingers tense up in his hair. He pulls it back, away from his eyes. She gets a view of them, shimmering pools of water. 『But… this time I want to walk it with you.』  
  
It was a mess but they were both choosing this mess.   
Did that make it better?   
Maybe it made it worse.   
  
Junko held her hands up on the top of his drawn up knees as if she was asking permission for entry. He lowered his knees just a little bit, to invite her and only her in. She leaned agains thim, trying to line up their awkward bodies, hers too curvy, his too laithe and make them fit against each other. Even a snake was capable of this. They could slither through the cracks in someone and wrap themselves around someone.   
  
“You’re just going to be all boring and sulk for the rest of the night aren’t you? Oh poor you, it’s so hard having an amazing beautiful girlfriend who actually likes my loser ass even though she’s way out of my league.”

『Junko… saying things like we don’t need words, and we can understand each other just like this, that’s all nonsense anyway. Even if it’s a lie, can you just say those words to me?』  
  
Junko’s lips pulled into a tight line.   
She could not tell her own sister she loved her, even if it would be the entire world to her.   
She could not tell Matsuda she loved him, even when he was dying and begging at her feet.   


She shivered. Cold, unbearably cold, like no fire would ever warm her. She could stand in the middle of one and not get burned. Junko suddenly buried her face in his chest again in fear. She had to hide from the rest of the world if she was going to let a crack in her mask appear, or maybe she was just hiding from her world (Kumagawa Misogi).   
  
“Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine…” 

『Yeah, I get it. I’m a toy, and you don’t want someone taking your toys even if you throw them away.』  
  
“My home…”   
  
Kumagawa, breathless like all the air had been stolen from his lungs. He wrapped his arms around her finally. She was finally there. The place she wanted to return to.   
  
It was like nothing mattered.   
It was all meaningless.   
And she smiled at that thought. 

『Ah, sorry I’m slow so it took me awhile to realize. I want you, in heaven and hell.』


	52. LOVE SUITE: We Are Not in Love

“Kumagawa-kun…”

  
Stuttering, bloody mess that she was Fukawa Toko spoke up to her would be murderer. Even with a shallow, vain, and big boobed girl hanging off of him he was still the star she wished on. 

 

『You’re more of a masochist than I thought, Toko-chan. Don’t you think we shouldn’t talk anymore after this?』Kumagawa’s smile was a sickness on his face, as he turned his head around and she heard his neck joint pop from the unnatural angle. 『Don’t you think we said enough already in blood?』

  
“Kiyo’s note, what did he say?” 

『...You don’t want to know.』  
  
“D-don’t bother trying to lie to me! I k-know you’re not a nice guy whose sensitive with a girl’s feelings. Y-you’re the kind of heartless guy who strings ugly girls like me along so you can stick them with their gambling debts and run.” 

『Toko-chan, you know so much about me just by looking into my eyes. Could we be fated-』 Before he could finish that sentence Junko suddenly wrapped around even tighter and chomped on his ear as hard as she could. 『Ah-ahhhh! Junko’s giving me a kiss.』  
  
“You two are so indecent. At least I have enough shame to hide my ugliness away from everybody instead of rubbing it in their faces.” 

 

『I’d love to tell you, especially if it filled you with ugly feelings and made you despise anymore… but I can’t… and the reason is… I dunno.』  
  
“At least come up with a reason! Good characters need good motivations, this is why no one likes you?” 

 

『It doesn’t matter does it? He can’t say anything to you anymore. He’s dead. All his words are meaningless now.』

  
“N-no,… I’ve never been able to say talk to people well, because they’re all such big stupid ugly jerks and I hate them for being mean to me, b-but also if there was something really important I had to say I’d write it down so maybe Kiyo… was like that too. He was always so quiet.” 

  
A beautiful lie

A boy smiling gently, in a field of flowers.  
An ugly truth  
Those flowers petals unfolded and what was underneath were just eyes staring at her. 

『I wanted you to save me, but you can’t. So I’ll save you.』

Kumagawa’s face emptied out as he repeated the words. His eyes were completely listless, as detached as Junko’s usually wore. He had the expression of someone dull to darkness, if only because he saw it so many times the sight of it got boring. He could not even feel regret anymore, just disappointment.  
  
Toko still crying buried her face in Togami’s chest. “Why? How is that saving me? W-why is he so stupid? W-why am I crying over someone like him? Jack s-should just kill him for dying on me, and thinking he could make it okay by writing sappy last words.” 

  
Toko made her usual insensitive comments. Her voice was broken up by the hiccups and gasps that her messy crying caused her. There was no spirit in them. She sounded like she was reading lines off a script, acting like her character should act.  
  
Because she did not know this pain not really. She had no idea what it felt like to have lost someone who was actually kind to her. She never allowed herself to get that close in the first place, and now because she had.  
  
She cried ugly tears without a single drop of romanticism in them. Toko clutched Togami’s chest hard enough to tear the fabric, but he did not complain once. He regarded Toko as an overly emotional idiot and even he did not think she had all of these tears inside of her. 

  
As he saw Toko crying over someone who was not him, Togami bit his lip in jealousy. But he did not say a thing. He had once imagined hurting her in such a way, and now he could only watch helplessly as she was hurt.  
  
“Kiyo promised! He promised me he was going to help me find reference material for my next book. How am I supposed to write now? How can I write when I know Kiyo won’t be there to read it?” 

 

『Don’t you think it’s cruel, Toko-chan. You pretend to care about him so much only after he’s dead. If only you were a better liar, then you could have at least pretended while he was still alive.』

  
“Silence!” Before Toko could even say anything, Togami suddenly grabbed him by his collar using his height against Kumagawa to his advantage. “Don’t believe a single word he says, they’re all all lies. You shouldn’t even believe the contents of that suicide note, he probably made it up just to upset you.”

 

『That’s it! That’s it! I’m just a villain who makes girls cry!』Kumagawa said, looking almost giddy. 『All I say are lies, so this is a lie too of course. It doesn’t matter if it’s all broken now, if she’s a stalker, and you betrayed her. Even if it’s a love that became twisted over time, doesn’t mean that there was love at some point?』

 

Kumagawa told another lie.  
A hopeful lie, but the hope would become undone when the lie was undone.  
A despair filled lie, but the despair would become undone when the lie was undone. 

 

『Do you know why betrayal is how a minus shows friendship? It’s because we’re so stupid, we only know we’re close to people after we realize how much betraying them has hurt us. We can only grow closer by licking each other’s wounds, but that never stops us from hurting each other all over again. It’s all so meaningless.』

  
Junko glared at Togami with his hands around Kumagawa’s collar, with eyes of genuine malice. He had never seen an expression before in a girl who was always just aloof, and detached from everything. 

 

When kumagawa easily shrugged Togami off, the two of them started to walk away. 『Well, I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone. A beautiful scene like that has no place for me, I’d just be a stain on the canvas.』  
  
Kumagawa, the only color you could paint him in with was black.  
Darkness.  
A far away darkness.  
The boy she was wishing upon, the boy she forced her burden upon, he walked away from her so easily. He let Togami who had betrayed her and tried to frame her for murder be the one who saved her, while he became the enemy.  
  
Toko thought it was a cruel thing to look at the world as if it were just a book after all. As long as he constrained himself to a role, Kumagawa could never be free like that. She reached out for him, but Togami stopped her grabbing her hand by the wrist.  
  
“We are not in love.”  
  
He called out to Kumagawa.  
Toko knew it, even though Togami jumped in front of Kumagawa for her. There was still something different, in the way Junko and Kumagawa walked next to each other. They were perfectly aware of how ugly the other was, and yet Toko saw an unintentional smile creep upon Junko’s love.

  
Perhaps what she wanted was not a storybook romance at all.  
She did not want someone to escape all the pain in her life.

Just someone to walk the path of thorns with.  
To take a stroll in the garden together.  
Even if she could not see any color in the flowers now, if there was someone looking at them with her maybe the colors would change. She loved reading more than anything else, but until just now she never realized how lonely it could be. A story was something meant to be shared with other people.  
  
That was why she had been writing all this time. Not because she wanted to escape pain, but because she just wanted one other person to read it and understand her. That way, pain could be shared without having to hurt one another as her and Kumagawa did. 

 

Yet when she tried to express the words she coughed again and again. When she opened the hand that she had coughed into, she saw the broken up pieces of a butterfly, as if she had unwittingly chewed one up and swallowed without even realizing it. 

 

🧸

 

Togami promised quietly to walk her back to her room. Neither of them knew what to say about what had just transpired, Togami had tried to kill both of them, Toko had tried to die and yet awkwardly they were still alive.  
  
Amami Rantaro.  
His hair wet with sweat. His face broken of any composure. His always shining green hair, now hung off of him like it was nothing more than seaweed. He himself looked like he had just been dragged out of the water.  
  
In other words he looked like Komaeda. That was what Toko immediately thought. She was a rather unkind person.  
  
A living corpse. A body with nothing inside of it, no organs, no bones, nothing. A body that felt no pain. It seemed enviable to never have to feel anything, especially since Toko was always driving herself half insane with her own paranoia and frantic emotions and yet there was soemthing deeply unsettling about the way Rantaro was.  
  
Now that his plain had failed everything collapsed in on himself. It was like he was just delaying the inevitable, he was always going to collapse like this, but he delayed, delayed, until some future point where he achieved his goal. Where it would be okay for him to break. Yet, all of that strength he held out with for so long disappeared like he was never there in the first place.  
  
He was never being strong. He was never not broken. He just pretended otherwise. The fact that he felt so little, about betraying the two friends who had been so kind to him, about killing nineteen people for the chance to save his siblings was because something within him had been broken for a long time.  
  
He had not thrown anything away, he was just always like this. Rantaro’s movements were sluggish, as he reached out towards Togami. He looked too tired to move. Too tired to even breathe. It was psychologically hard for him to even stretch the few muscles on his face to make words. All there was were those shadowy eyes, just like Kumagawa’s, a far away darkness. 

“You… are you… happy?” 

 

Togami thought he was mocking him.  
The question was innocent, childishly so. Rantaro had thrown away his every chance to become happy, but Togami there was still something human inside of him. He had yet to throw away the child he had once been, because as much as he tried to throw away Toko, as much as he tried to throw away love, it found him again.  
  
Love was like his ever-persistent stalker.  
Not that he would ever admit that out loud. 

He wondered then if it was possible for Togami who was the same as he was, to become happy.  
  
“I imagine you’re quite unhappy, hoist by your own petard. I didn’t even need to defeat you, you sabotaged yourself right from the beginning, and yet you acted like you were in the most control.” 

 

“Ah… I… I thought I could become anything.” Rantaro thought he was throwing himself away for a greater purpose, but if he had given all that up and could not even save a single one of his sisters what did that say about him? About his sacrifices? They must have never been much in the first place. “I can’t become anything… like… this…”  
  
His words were distant, as far apart as stars. He looked like it would take years for any light to reach him. He stumbled forward with a strange look on his face as if he were scrutinizing himself in the mirror, as he tried to reach for Togami again.  
  
He took one more step and then collapsed. He would have hit the ground like a thrown away doll, if Kaede had not moved so quickly to save him.  
  
“Akamatsu-san, are you sure that’s alright? Amami-kun he… the only reason he got close to us all that time was so he could hurt you.”  
  
If Amami had betrayed him that was one thing, but he could never forgive anybody who hurt Kaede.  
  
Kaede quickly turned back and shouted at him. “Are you going to run away because you’re scared of him, Saihara-kun? Just like you ran away from me?”  
  
Shuichi did not expect Kaede to throw it all in his face so quickly. It was unlike her to say something so unkind. No, perhaps this was the way she really was. Shuichi caught up to her side, and lifted Rantaro’s other arm around his shoulder so she would not have to carry him home alone.

  
  
“I… I just don’t trust you alone with Akamatsu-san,” Shuichi muttered quietly. “Just once, I want to be the one who protects her instead of the other way around.”  
  
Kaede from almost a moment ago seemed to disappear as she smiled sweetly at Shuichi. “You’re always so dependable. If only this guy weren’t such a lazy good for nothing, I wouldn’t have to rely on you so much.”  
  
“Mmm…” Rantaro’s mouth made a noise as if he was in a restless dream. He looked up, peering through the clouds clouds in his eyes to see Kaede shining bright as ever above him. That brightness of hers, it just irritated him now. Now that everything was over. “Just… leave me alone.”  
  
“You can’t just waste all that time on us and expect us not to care about you, little prince!” Kaede snapped at him. She was so loud too. It echoed in his body. It was hard for him to believe that there was a personality, memories, and a soul, crammed into something as empty as his own skull. She was far too loud for him to disagree with right now.  
  
Rantaro looked up at Kaede, straining his neck to its absolute limit but what he saw instead was his younger sister looking back at him. He no longer remembered what she even looked like, so he stared at a faceless girl who was so innocent she could not even wear a mask.  
  
“I… I’m going to become your prince.”  
  
Rantaro murmured, through the heat haze.  
  
“You’ll be my only princess, little sister. So please don’t cry anymore. Big brother is a prince who will show up, every time you cry. But big brother is lazy, so please don’t cry…”  
  
He said as he reached forward and placed his hand on Kaede’s cheek. He could no longer distinguish between this moment, and his memories in the past, and drowning in those memories as he was he wondered if it even mattered anymore.  
  
If there was no future where he could find his sisters.  
Time did not need to go forward.  
If he could not become his sister’s prince.  
Then he did not even need to remember who he was anymore.  
  
Slowly, Rantaro became detached from everything. He looked up into the sky and saw that the stars were beautiful, but he no longer cared at all if they were real or not. 

 

Toko and Togami decided to leave him alone. When they returned to Toko’s room they found the entire room torn apart, and a bear waiting for them with a pair of tickets in his paws. 

  


  
  


🧸

  


The “love suite” they were offered looked like nothing more than a mausoleum from the dead. White drapes fell from the windows blotting out all light. A four poster hung white curtains that overflowed. The bed itself was draped in white sheets that spilled out everywhere, there were multiple layers of white sheets that made it impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. There were so many folds in the white cloth, that every movement sent out waves of billowing fabric. 

 

Toko described it as a mausoleum because this room was decorated for only one purpose, to slowly gather dust. Graves were supposed to be perfectly still, perfectly silent, and last an eternity.  
  
Perhaps that was the only eternity that existed out of fairy tales, once someone was dead they were dead forever. Eternally rotting away. Eternally collecting dust. Eternally suffering. She wondered what the two of them were doing living, breathing dust, inside of a mausoleum. They were no better than the living dead. 

  
Togami stood, tall and broad shouldered. In comparison Toko was a quivering mess, curled up in the folds of an armchair in the room and hiding away from the world. Even though the world only consisted of just the two of them at this moment.  
  
Togami, high shallow cheeks, tight lips pursed in frustration as always as he tried to hold back everything he was feeling and completely failed, she imagined how he would look even with glistening tears rolling down his cheeks. Togami had a face that would remain beautiful even when crying, no, it would only enhance his beauty. She almost did not want to look, because she knew she would compare them and find herself lesser, unworthy.  
  
Just like Togami could only be beautiful, she could only be ugly, especially when she cried. Tears mixed with snot and cascaded down her face. This must be why she never wanted to cry before this, because once she started crying about Korekiyo she could not stop. She wondered if Korekiyo thought of this while he killed himself, if he expected even a single person to cry over his death. 

  
Togami walked over to her, and picked up the white cover she hid herself under. As he slowly pulled it away from her she grasped at it, not ready yet for the curtains to part and to step on stage. Her eyes burned. She was not crying because witches could not cry, they would melt themselves with their own tears. There was just dust, and fragments of the departed stuck in the corner of her eyes, a grit she could not remove no matter how much she picked at it with her nails. The light was too bright, the few rays of light that made their way into this room made the pure white sheets glow, and the dust unsettled and upturned by their moments sparkle in the otherwise empty and stagnant air.  She pushed her glasses up further as her fingers clumsily wiped her eyes. Togami simply watched her, the features of his face so still they could be carved out of marble and immortalized forever.  


“Toko, why are you making that face?” He asked her like a curious child.  
  
“I… I don’t know…” Toko thought she was well versed in human misery, enough to write a book on it (in fact she had written several) but to think she could sink lower, “I’ve never… missed anyone like this.” 

 

She thought she spent her entire life as a pining maiden. That was the Toko of her fantasies, her comfort was that her love would only exist between the dust covered pages of fiction, that her longing would never be fulfilled. Yet, this feeling was almost unbearable, like an apple whose core had rotten out entirely. The kind a wicked witch would use to put a princess to sleep. Wanting to see someone who you would never see again, it was agony. No amount of poetics or prose could change that. She was not drenched with longing, she was drowning in it.  
  
“M-master’s right in front of me, and I c-can’t stop thinking about him. M-master’s willing to talk to me again, and I only want to talk to the only person it’s impossible to talk to.”  
  
Korekiyo saw beauty in living. He longed to see the world as a beautiful place, even though it had only shown him its ugliness just like Toko did. He died. Toko lived. Toko felt that beauty, love, it must belong to the dead and not the living. 

  
“I’m s-sorry,” All the tears and snot she kept accidentally swallowing whenever she opened her mouth only made her stuttering worse, “I’m an unfaithful, perverted, slutty, and terrible woman who…” 

 

Behind his glasses Togami’s eyes slowly closed. That face that was always pinched up in annoyance, from the strain of holding everything on his shoulders alone, finally relaxed. He placed a hand on the arm of Toko’s chair and leaned over her, suddenly with no care that she was crying, pushed his lips against hers.  
  
He must have tasted exactly what she did at that moment, salted, dirty water and everything unclean about her. The silver bridges of his glasses clicked against hers when he tried a subtle turn of his head, startling both of them. Togami withdrew just for a moment. As she caught his blank expression she reassured herself this must be some mistake, there was no way he would kiss her.  
  
She was not a princess, nor was she a mermaid, there was nothing magical about a kiss shared between the two of them. Byakuya’s bangs obscured his eyes as he removed his glasses, she felt his knuckles tickle the bridge of her nose as he reached for hers as well. 

 

“Bya…” 

  


He was pulled back towards her by invisible strings, as he pressed his lips against hers, at that connection their mouths were knotted together. Toko felt herself sinking away from him, as if she were a melting witch.  
  
His body followed hers. His fingers gripped at the folds of the white cover sheets, and as they drifted together towards the floor he dragged the covers along with them. As she saw out of the corner of her eyes the folds of white behind Togami’s back, they looked like a pair of butterfly wings, shriveled up and folded behind him.  
  
A white butterfly resting on top of her. As she watched Togami’s lashes, long and delicate just like a girl’s flutter all she could imagine were the furtive wings of a butterfly opening and closing.  
  
The two of them continued to kiss even on the floor, a cloying, kind of kiss that desperately reached for something to hold onto. As Togami pulled at another curtain, white light flooded into the room from an open window. Their shadows painted them in pitch black on the floor, two silhouettes hopelessly tangled up in each other. 

  
“Fu… Fu…” 

 

Toko could not tell if Togami was genuinely breathless, or he was trying to say her name. Both of them seemed equally unlikely to her, like something that could not happen even in dreams.  
  
They broke away again, staring at each other. Toko kept wondering when the spell would be broken. Togami would realize the princess he thought he was kissing was just a witch in disguise. Yet, he kept staring at her as if transfixed.  
  
She really was wicked for enjoying this. She enjoyed deceiving him into thinking she was a worthy woman to look at. She was a worm who had dug her way into the apple core of his heart. Togami suddenly lifted her, and she felt lighter than air. The white cloth that hung everywhere in the room, as it billowed with their sudden movement she imagined butterflies taking flight.  
  
Togami carried her like a prince would, holding up her back, and the crook underneath her knees. He let her head rest against his chest as he carried her all the way to the bed. For a moment, his blue eyes were fogged up with an emotion she did not recognize. Then suddenly, a knee against the bed and slid in between her legs as he gently laid her down, he kissed her again and she let him.  
  
“Fuu… Fuu…”Even though he was beauty and she was beast, he seemed willing to become a beast just for her sake. His fingers clenched, clawed at the fabric of her clothes. When Toko thought about Togami seeing everything that was underneath, the scars her parents left, and the ones she carved into herself after Jack killed again she immediately crossed her arms over her baggy uniform. 

 

“Y-you’re such a lech. I bet that family tradition of yours is just an excuse for the family head to sleep around with whoever they want. Y-you’re only after my body aren’t you?”

  
Togami took a step backwards, and slowly tugged at the bow around his neck pulling the knot free. His shirt came unbuttoned, and undone next. She saw him without a single crap of clothing on his chest, hiding nothing, his body well muscled for how lean he was. He reached forward once more, flicking a thumb over her chest. Toko saw him with his free hand, suddenly close his fingers over his mouth, as his face flushed like he was sick. Toko wondered, if he was just disgusted by having to touch someone like her. 

  
Toko leaned forward, resting her head on the center of his chest. She tickled him with his lips, until he fell back underneath her, sending another wave through the white folds of fabric that surrounded them.  
  
Toko stopped just for a moment and tried to take her top off as well. Even then, she felt the need to hide herself, she grabbed the white sheets and draped them around her shoulders like they were a long white dress. As she tumbled backwards with Togami, they became wrapped around her further and further. She could hide that she was an ugly worm, if she kept herself in her cocoon like this. 

  
A mess of sheets, and their own half dressed bodies, and hiss mouth continuing to kiss hers. She had no idea why, just tasting her once should have been enough to tell him she was poison. Let, she felt his tongue on the inside of her mouth, licking the venom off of her fangs. His hand moved towards her face, and Toko flinched because hands only ever came this close to inflict harm on her. He paused, fingers moving so delicately like he was trying to remove a butterfly without breaking the web. 

 

He.  
Touched her.  
And Toko truly wondered.

If this was how touch was supposed to feel.  
  
Togami’s eyes, silent and discerning as always regarded her with caution. It seemed even in a dreamlike reverie like this, he could not do anything but watch the moment unfold in front of him like a distant observer between those glassy eyes with him. Even though he was here with her too, living in this moment, because she could feel the pounding in a chest held so tightly against her own he still looked so distant.  
  
Togami.  
More fragile than anyone else.  
More emotional.  
He was a butterfly, that could easily be crushed.  
Between the fingers of an uncaring hand.  
  
“You don’t have to be so gentle, you know…”  
  
Toko said, because she was not a princess and he was not a prince.  
They did not want to protect one another.  
Especially when all they could do was hurt one another.  
All they needed was to be together, in this one moment.  
Togami was so afraid to melt, that was why his skin even with the heat and friction between them as they rubbed up against one another, was so cold he felt like the living dead.  
  
Togami nodded along, and then slowly lifted her skirt up like a curtain. He reached forward and pulled one of her thighs to the side. On the inside of that thigh, was several red marks some partially faded with age all carved out with a pair of scissors. Togami leaned forward, and placed a kiss on the inside of her thigh, causing her whole body to shudder as if she was being tickled by the wings of butterflies all over.  
  
He towered over her. The man who stood taller than the world. The man who was her world. As he looked down she finally saw something reflected in those blue eyes, it was none other than herself, her face hot, her hair tousled. She was so ugly, and yet Togami did not look away.  
  
They had already seen each other’s ugliness.  
That was why.  
“In here it’s beautiful isn’t it…?”  
  
“...”  
  
Togami said nothing, only waited for her. She slowly let her legs part around him, and let him come closer to her.  
  
“Please.”  
  
She was the farthest thing from a princess, just a beggar at this point. All she could do was throw herself at Togami’s feet, and wash away the dirt from them with her hair. No amount of perfumes would ever cover up her scent, the closer he got to her, the closet he got to the fine powder and the filth of the dead clogging up his throat and suffocating him. Yet, he drew closer and closer.  
  
Close enough she could finally feel his warmth. She was finally able to reach someone so far away, that had been a twinkling star before this. Togami was so warm between her legs, his weight leaning over her as if she was being smothered by those same stars.  


“I-Is this real?” 

 

Fukawa Toko asked.  
  
It wasn’t, of course.  
All of the above was just Fukawa Toko’s delusion.  
Toko was a capital R, Romanticist.  
She was in love with life, or at least she wanted to be.  
When life failed to meet her expectations she imagined something more beautiful.  
A world where ugly girls were told they were secretly beautiful all along.  
Where unwanted people were finally held and made to feel like they were precious things.  
Romanticist is just another word for ‘liar’  
Did you really think such a beautiful love scene could take place between two ugly people? 

 

Byakuya Togami was used to seeing his mother cry. When she was like that, she existed in some distant and far away place that he could never reach. No matter how hard he studied, or how he reassured her he would be the next heir nothing he could do could ever get her to stop crying.  
  
That was why, he had absolutely no idea how to deal with crying women. When Toko kept crying in front of him, and ignored all of his gentle words and reassurances, he kissed her to stop her from making those noises with her mouth.  
  
“You can’t just kiss a girl to shut her up!” Toko said, spitting him out.  
  
Togami was taken aback, as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve without thinking. He would not have shown such a lack of decorum if he was not surprised. “That’s what happens in your stories all the time.”  
  
“Th-that’s a story, I want something real.”  
  
“I-want-something-real she says, as she continues to spout vague romantic nonsense.”

 

 He leaned in again, brushing his lips against the corners of her eyes but she arched her back and tore herself away from him. He was too soft. She would cut him. With scissors. If he tried to comfort her with lips that pink with life, they would bleed. She could not hold a butterfly in her hands, because their delicate wings would tear apart in her fingers. 

 

She was not someone who could be kissed. It wasn’t that she was hated, she just didn’t know how to love or be loved. She was not someone who could feel warmth. She was a witch who lit the skin of others aflame. All she could do was burn. 

 

 _Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting._  


She was doing something far worse than casting any witch’s spell. She who was so far beneath him, was taking advantage of his kindness. That had to be it. That had to be what was going on. She defiled him.  
  
Her every touch dirtied him. She was like a beggar at the foot of a church, prostrating before the statue of a god. She dragged her hands down the white marble of his legs, and left pitch black streaks. 

 

 _Dirty. Dirty. Dirty._  
  
She used his body. As if he were an object. She was using him for little more than her own comfort. Just as she always had in the past, she did not see the boy in front of her, rather she drew over the image of her perfect prince. That was why, even with his face so close and kissing her she murmured into his lips.  
  
“Who are you…?”  
  
She had forgotten what Togami’s face looked like a long time ago. The man she loved so much. This was why her love could only disgrace him. As she tried to kiss him, her greasy hands slipped and she suddenly slammed her forehead hard into his before their teeth knocked together.  
  
Togami drew back. His glasses cracked from the impact. He removed them. His appearance was already disheveled. Her fingers pulled apart his finery, she could only wrinkle him, only make a mess of what she touched.  
  
Togami leaned forward and tried to kiss her again with blood dripping from his forehead, down to his lower lip. She found nothing at all appealing about the taste of blood in her mouth. It smudged all over her lips, like a crude approximation of makeup.  
  
He tried to pick her up like a prince would, but Toko hated the touch of others, she hated to be surrounded by their bodies, being held close just felt like she was being smothered by them. The moment his arms were around her, she started to kick and scratch like a panicked animal. 

 

A blanket of stars was wrapped around her.  
Yes, what a pretty thing, sparkling so bright.  
She could not stand the light.  
All the stars did was burn her, she was left as nothing more than a shadow of her former self.  
  
Togami dropped her immediately. Toko reached towards his face, but flinched away when she saw the scratch underneath his eye made by her. She cut. She cut him. She cut him again. Before she coulkd fall into a panic Togami wrapped his hands around hers.  
  
“Toko, don’t fall to pieces over every last little thing…” He ordered her firmly, as if the strength in his voice would be enough for the both of them.

  


  
But she was already in pieces. Long ago, someone killed her and then spread her wings unwillingly against her will. They kept her wings open by pinning them in several places, and kept her under a glass case for all to see.  
  
“Do you want this?”  
  
“I want this, I want you…” She said as enthusiastic as she could. The next words she swallowed. As she swallowed them down, they tickled her throat like the wings of a butterfly desperately trying to climb out.  
  
She wanted both of them to be normal.  
She wanted to be able to love and be loved.  
She wanted them both to find the love they could not find in other people in each other.  
Neither of them wanted to continue on as unloved.  
  
Togami wanted the same.  
He wanted to learn what love was.  
He wanted to be shown that love by Toko, and in return show her the love she never had.  
He thought nobody loved him, but she did.  
  
“Tell me what you want, and I’ll give it to you. Just this once, I’ll spoil you. Every last thing in this world belongs to me after all.”  
  
“That line was a little much.”  
  
“Should I just cry, and fuss over every little thing like you do.”  
  
“Those are my only character traits! Don’t make fun of them!”  
  
They weren’t talking. They just exchanged empty words. Like, _you’re nice,_ or _you’re cute,_ or _you’re so pretty._ Words that anyone could say, and not the words that they needed to hear. They did not know what those words even were anymore.  
  
Togami pressed her against the bed, and she felt all the air leave her. Not because she had been swept off her feet, but because she wanted to hyperventilate letting someone else get so close to her. She felt them flying around in her ribs, they were desperately trying to escape the cage inside of her. As he kissed her, Togami ran his tongue along her cheek trying to be romantic but all she could think was that he was licking the scum off of her skin. 

 _Muddy, muddy, muddy._  
  
The image of her in his eyes, was nothing more than pollution in the water. 

 

 _Rotten, rotten, rotten._  
  
He must have known from this close, how foul she was. She was sure he could smell it on her skin. She wondered then why Togami did not tell her. That she was awful, foul smelling, putrid girl. He was always so honest with her in the past. Togami would never lie to her, that was why as long as she was around him she knew the truth even if it was harsh and cruel.

  
If Togami did not point out how she looked nothing like a girl, just the remains of a girl slowly rotting away then was he lying to her? Was he trying to tell her a kind lie? She was forcing him to be kind to her, because he felt sorry for what he had done. There was no way he would want anything to do with her otherwise.  
  
He would never get this close because he wanted to.  
Nobody would want to lie down in the mud with her.  
She wanted him to stop being kind. 

  
“You don’t have to be so gentle, you know…”  
  
“Toko, are you sure?”  
  
“D-don’t you know, I’m a d-dirty girl.”  
  
“Toko…”  
  
“You said you would give me what I wanted, don’t you want me to be happy?”

 

Let’s become happy together.  
That was all either of them wanted, that was why they thought if they lined up their misshapen bodies and various missing pieces they might find some way to make it work.  
They just wanted it to work.  
They both did not know why it was not working.  
They were innocent in a way.  
They were like the pure white sheets which covered the whole room.  
That was why it was so harsh.  
That was why it was so painful. 

 

When Togami pushed into her, Toko tried to close her eyes and picture a garden. A garden where the two of them could be alone together. Even if the outside world was ugly, inside of here it could be beautiful.  
  
She wanted to close her eyes and see colorful flowers, but all she saw again was white. She turned her head and felt a sharp pain. It was wrong to let it show on her face, he would pity her, he would start lying to her again.  
  
He wanted Togami to be honest with her. She wanted to be scorched by his scorn. She desperately bit her lip, holding back her reaction. No matter how hard she tried she could not picture a single flower in her mind. There was only the dirt that she was being pushed down into. The dirt she would be buried in one day. The dirt they were both becoming filthy with. 

 

It was a garden of thorns. They would only cut themselves, trying to hold onto one another inside of it. Toko was not a girl in a drab school uniform, she was a rose bush slowly growing out, branches from her skin, and then leaves sprouting from her fingers. She was a bundle of thorns Togami could never embrace without hurting himself.  
  
They pricked each other’s fingers.  
They bled.  
They were cursed from the day they were born.  
They did not even need an evil fairy, or stepmother, because their own parents cursed them.  
  
Toko saw from between the thorns butterfly wings, began to bud up like flowers. They broke free from their cocoons. They took to the air and the breeze scattered them. The butterflies all around her, landed on top of her unkempt appearance, her torn clothes, and her disheveled hair. Their wings opened and closed, opened and closed.  
  
Her heart fluttered. But the butterflies in the sky were utterly indifferent to her.  
There were so many of them, and she finally realized.

Among them, she was just another insect.  
She lost herself in the storm of butterflies.  
  
“Stop…”  
  
“Yes, of course…” Togami immediately did as she asked.  
  
The next few minutes, Toko hid herself underneath the sheets. From between her legs something dripped out, staining them red. Togami tried to help wipe her, but she batted his hand away and did it herself. 

 

Togami his shirt still off, leaned back against the headboard of the bed. Toko wrapped the white sheets around her, making herself look as small as possible. She no longer wanted to come out of her cocoon, butterfly or caterpillar she would still be an insect either way.  
  
Beautiful things like love and romance changed nothing, or at least not the way she thought it would. 

“This is wrong… this wasn’t supposed to be… no maybe we’re just wrong.”  
  
“I’m certain I’ll regret asking but, what were you expecting?”  
  
“In the books, when the two who don’t know what love is embrace each other for the first time they ummm… they learn from each other.”  
  
“How do they learn it from each other if they don’t know it in the first place?”  
  
“Do you always have to point out the plot holes in my books? Some things are more enjoyable because you can suspend your mind from the restrictions of reality,” Toko muttered, glowering at him.  
  
That was the problem, in a story just reading it she felt like she could escape the confinement of her body. All the butterflies inside of her could be let free. They would no longer agitate her, or tickle her organs inside of her. She thought she could escape this body, but no matter how hard they tried to disappear into the moment they were restrained to their bodies. They still felt it. What awkward, unlovable things they were, and being so close to another body just reminded them.  
  
It felt so real it could not have been a fantasy, but Toko had never been good at dealing with reality. 

  
“If you stopped reading such illogical books, then I wouldn’t need to.” Togami said, voice neutral.  
  
He really must have felt nothing at all for her.  
Did he do this out of obligation?  
He felt no embarrassment letting himself be seen like that.  
No emotion shown in his voice anyway, all she saw were those eyes the same as always, fixated on her from some faraway place. 

 

She flipped over and buried herself in her pillow. She wished someone would just smother her already. Togami reached forward and took a strand of her hair, running his fingers through it. He fell quiet. He was probably just thinking to himself, how greasy her hair was, how unseemly it was to touch.  
  
“How useless I am. How do I intend to rule the world, if I can’t stop one girl from crying?” 

  
Togami voiced a question to no one in particular.  
He really was trying to comfort her.  
All they had left was each other, and yet they could find no comfort at all in one another.

Neither of them even knew what it was, to be embraced when they were sad. They did not know the warmth of another. They only knew the world of ice, the same world that froze over Togami’s heart.

  
A first kiss.  
A first time.  
It was not enough of a magical spell to melt either of them.  
  
“Why… me? Why is a big fat jerk like you, the only person who doesn’t hate me?” Toko asked, though her tears that never seemed to stop.  
  
“It’s who we are…”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“We, who hurt each other so terribly, will sit here licking each other’s wounds. We damaged goods will seek the other out in comfort…”  
  
Togami was so different than her, and yet his voice reverberated inside of him with the same hollow sadness that hers had. A butterfly landed on his lips, as he closed his mouth.  
  
“What terrible weakness, I’m exposed, I could be betrayed so easily.”  
  
The butterfly that landed on him, its white wings slowly turned black as if ink had bled all the way through.  
  
“But, being betrayed by you... “  


_It’s._

_Not._ _  
_ _So._ _  
_ _Bad._

 

The words that should have brought her the greatest comfort, only made her sad. That was all they could do? They could only know they were close after they betrayed one another. They could only draw close to lick the wounds they had inflicted on one another. 

 

“Byakuya…” Toko spoke the words she should have said a long time ago, “I don’t want it to hurt anymore.” 

  



	53. Intermission One: I Want a Love Story of My Own

**BOOK ZERO  
INTERMISSION ONE: I WANT A LOVE STORY OF MY OWN**

I hate writing all these love scenes! 

You know how when you’re single it feels like every one of your friends is in a relationship? That’s what writing this is like. Not that I have any friends. Not that I’m lonely. After all, I have read over one thousand shoujo manga, so my experience in love far exceeds most normal people’s. I have fallen in and out of love almost one thousand times.  
  
But, Tsumugi, you say.  
That is if you remember my name. If you forgot it I wouldn’t blame you, I am the most forgettable girl in the world after all. You would not even pay attention to me if I did not wrest control away from you as the narrator.  
  
_Falling in love with fictional characters isn’t real love! That’s abnormal._

But, people fall in love with fictional characters all the time. There is nothing more normal, more mundane. Even when they fall in love with living breathing people, they fall in love with a fictional character right in front of them.  
  
When you interact with someone a set amount of times you begin to write a story about them in your head. You read them, and think that you know them. What you fall in love with is not the whole person, just the person as they exist in your own head. You fall in love with the fictional person of them.  
  
Look at my NOTP Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi. 

  
Enoshima Junko believes that Kumagawa is a special person, who came into her life out of nowhere, and then changed her just by being himself. However, that has nothing to do with Kumagawa himself, that is just Junko’s own narrative forced onto him. Part of me pities Kumagawa a little bit, always being forced to play prince to the world’s most spoiled princess. 

 

 _If the world could make someone like Kumagawa Misogi, then maybe it’s not so bad._  
  
This might sound hypocritical coming from me.  
Because I will choose fiction over reality every time.  
But…  
I think this girl needs a reality check.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi believes that Junko is a special person. That meeting her was the only stroke of good luck that he’s ever had. That because Junko is the way she is, she could smile at his chaos. 

 

 _No one needs a fucker that only loses._  
  
Those words were said to him once and have always stuck with him, except Junko needs him. There’s actually someone in this world that wants him around. The idea makes him so happy. 

 

_If I could meet you then all the suffering in my life before this point was worth it._

But that’s just your delusion Kumagawa, Junko wants no part of it.  
  
They both fell in love with each other’s masks. The crude, unpredictable Kumagawa Misogi who lives his life laughing at despair, and the beautiful, enigmatic Enoshima Junko who always looks at the world disinterested through melancholy eyes. 

 

It’s obvious in the end they’ll just kill each other so what’s the point of telling their story?  
I need a break.  
I’m sick and tired of writing other people’s love stories.  
What I really want is a love story of my own. 

 

This is just fiction, that is to say a lie. Don’t get invested in any of the characters featured, because in the end I’ll pull the curtain back and tell you that none of it actually happened. Then why am I writing this? This is just a waste of time, like all love stories. 

  
I had someone I loved.  
Warm and kind.  
His smile was a reminder that spring existed.  
He was the only person that made me desire to be a real girl.  
I wanted to live in reality with him.  
It was all a lie.  
He was a fictional character too, just like me.  
In the end all people are just empty bottles filled with stories. 

  
From sheer desperation to kill his existence, a young man fell off a rooftop.  
From sheer desperation to glorify her empty one, a young woman fell in love. 

 

🧸

 

**Intermission One: Two People Standing in a Field of Flowers**

 

There was a girl I once knew. She was so plain she barely deserved any descriptive prose, she was just a girl in glasses.  
  
She was so plain most people were surprised when they finally noticed her. When she was in a crowded store, nobody notices she was there. When she wanted to check out, she had to try really hard to get the clerk’s attention. When she went to theme parks with friends, she was so plain they lost sight of her. 

  
When teachers took attendance in class they skipped her. She had to make sure she got counted or she would be marked absent. When people were splitting into teams she was picked last because she was plain. When she went into town she got stuck behind people on the street who did not notice her because she was plain. When she went to the book store no one tried to help her because she was plain. 

 

She was so plain she only ever wore white underwear. Which if you follow the theory of personality analysis by using underwear, meant she was a blank white sheet of paper confident that nothing would ever color her or stain her. 

 

Tsumugi Shirogane. If she was a fictional character she would never have any fans. The day to day events had no narrative potential whatsoever. She knew her life would never become a story. She would never be a character in someone else’s story either.  
  
Living that way she was not someone qualified to be alive.  
That’s not being alive.  
It’s inertia.  
Just keeping on.  
  
She was not particularly miserable, nor was she struck by any kind of tragedy. She had a normal amount of friends, normal parents, and a normal happiness. She laughed when she was happy, and cried when she was sad.  
  
But all that time she felt like a zombie, simply performing the correct responses for the people around her. 

  
Every morning she asked.  
_Who made me this?_  
Then she looked in the mirror.

_Ah, it’s my fault._

  
A girl I once knew. She had tragic, sad eyes. As if she had seen too little, a night sky without any stars and at the edge of her pupils a formless abyss, the concept of nothingness. Large faraway eyes, as if all the things she had lived through meant nothing. Those eyes, beautiful and lost. Those eyes, piercing and soft. Those eyes, sane and mad.  
  
One day, Tsumugi Shirogane’s empty eyes filled up with the image of a boy dropping out of the sky. She had brought an umbrella in case of rain, but instead a body fell directly on top of her crushing the umbrella she was holding her head, and nearly her as well. 

 

Rain was falling.  
Tears were falling.

And so was one boy. 

 

  
  
For a moment she looked up at the school rooftop and thought it might be an accident. The rain may have caused him to slip when he was all alone on the roof. He had piercings, and he smelled like tobacco. The kind of delinquent character that would sneak away to the rooftop.  
  
Later that boy told her he jumped on purpose.  
He thought of falling outside where the dead leaves piled up.  
He thought falling might save him. 

 

She leaned over and looked at his face, which looked untouched even though he just threw himself off of a rooftop. Perhaps beautiful people never got ugly, the same way ugly people could never be beautiful.  
  
He wore baggy clothes. They did not look to be a size too big, but rather it was like there was not enough of him to fill up those clothes. He looked like a picture that someone outlined but forgot to color in. He was tall and thin with no substance. His messy hair was not its natural color but rather dyed green, it was slicked back by the rain. He wore it long with an unven cut and made no attempt at all to try to shape his bangs, she wondered if he wore his hair that way to prevent people from seeing his face. 

  
On his ears there were twelve silver earrings, and he wore a pendant just underneath his shirt. As his shirt got soaked by the rain, it fell off of him further revealing more of his chest. He was far too skinny for his frame. His hips twisted into a slender waist, with curves just like a woman’s. In the crevasse of his neck, in the indent of his clearly visible collar bone, there was a silver piercing in his skin.  
  
His eyes were sharp, and came to fine pointed ends. His lips were pale, and the rain only made them paler. For a moment she wondered what it would be like to see those pale lips bloom with color, to see that nearly white face colored in red, feverish love. 

 

 _To think…_ _  
_ _Someone this beautiful…_ _  
_ _Really exists._  
  
She forgot about school that day, and took that boy back home instead. Nobody would miss her. To be honest if the boy had attempted suicide she would not blame him. She had considered it several times, the only thing that stopped her was the fear that nobody would ever find her body, because nobody would go looking for it.  


 

🧸

 

He awoke in her bed and did not react at all to an unfamiliar place, or an unfamiliar face in front of him.  
  
“Most people would be afraid of waking up not knowing where they are…” She said.  
  
“I think it’s much more scary to wake up not knowing who you are,” He said.  
  
“You’re one of those guys that hits on girls by pretending to be deep aren’t you?” 

 

He laughed at that. His laughter fell out of him like rain drops, so gentle and calming. “Haha, give a guy a break would ya? I’m more shallow than anyone could ever imagine, you could stand in a puddle of me and not get wet.” 

  
Ever since he woke up, the room felt a bit colder. She felt like her heart suffered from frostbite just from exposure to him. She thought there was less air, like a vacuum had opened up, and it was his fault. They say suffering makes fools of people, but it looked like it just made him empty. He looked like he was in pain, no he looked emaciated, worn down day by day. 

  
“Amami Rantaro, for when you write my obituary.”  
  
“Lazy boy, write your own obituary.”  
  
That was Rantaro’s existence to her, or rather his nonexistence. 

  
Still sitting wrapped in her blankets, his shirt and sweater on the floor to prevent him from catching cold as he slept, he pointed a finger up at the sky. “I know I jumped from up there, but it’s not like I wanted to die or anything. So you didn’t save my life.”  
  
“You wanted to kill yourself but you didn’t want to die,” She repeated in a dull voice.  
  
“I just wanted to kill the idea of myself.”  
  
“I’m sure if this were a book that would resonate with someone…” _In reality though that was just nonsense._ Tsumugi Shirogane sighed, but secretly underneath it all she was excited. A strange boy had literally dropped into her life. There were so many manga that started out this way. “I don’t remember saying I saved your life…” 

 

“Hm?”

 

  
  
“What if I’m the girl who kidnapped you, instead of the girl who saved you?” There was a book by Steven King, where a woman kidnaps an author and breaks his legs so he cannot escape, but at the same time saved his life from certain death.  
  
“That would be much more fun.” The smile he gave her then, sent chills down her spine far more than the way his head cracked when he fell, or the way blood seeped out of him only to be washed away by the rain. He layed back in the bed, and rolled onto his side, like a cat he was already making himself comfortable. “But you don’t look like the type.” 

 

“What do I look like?”  
  
“You don’t look like anything at all.” 

 

 _Mean!_ “I’m plain. I know it, so you don’t have to worry about being polite.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to be polite.”  
  
“Why not! I like it when a boy is nice to me you know? I just want to be spoiled by a prince for one day of my life, then I’ll go back to my boring life tomorrow.”  
  
“Really, in my experience I’ve found girls prefer it when you talk dirty to them.”  
  
“Eek!” Just the mention of that brought red to her face. She had no experience at all. That boy seemed painted with every kind of experience, and it made his whole body dirty. Even the rain could not wash those colors away. She watched as clear beads of water fell down his naked chest. “Why are you even thinking about that at a time like this?”  
  
“Because you have a half naked man in your bed right in front of you, and you won’t stop staring. Which, thank you.” This boy was definitely a play boy, or he at least had perfected the act of one. He seemed to be playing with her at least. She got the sense he was only saying those things because he thought it would give her a reaction. “You wear plain white underwear, just like I thought.”  
  
“How could you know a thing like that!”  
  
“It’s just everything about you. Those glasses. That face. It says I wear plain and ordinary underwear, that aren’t exciting at all, and tell you nothing about my personality.”  
  
“Who analyzes people’s personalities by the color of their underwear?” She fit into the shy girl with glasses archetype but that was not enough to make her a character. “Why is it plain girls always end up wearing glasses?” 

  
He reached slowly forward towards her. His too thin fingers, curled around the bridge of her glasses. The way his rough skin rubbed up against her nose, it tickled her. “You could take those off.”  
  
“Characters with glasses can’t take them off! Not even once! It’s like they say, glasses are just like underwear.”

 

“You should take off your underwear too.”  
  
“If you keep acting like an empty headed idiot you’re going to force me to get tsundere and beat the crap out of you.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s tsundere, that just sounds like regular abuse.”

 

The boy looked at her like she was something he had never seen before, and just for a moment she was so happy to be a part of those eyes. If she could just be one star in his sky, she thought that was enough. 

The strange thing was, watching him almost die in front of her had not been an unpleasant sensation. She always thought if she was faced with a bloody scene like in an anime, she would just get nauseous and faint.  
  
But what was the reality? She wasn’t feeling much uneasiness, fear or self blame. Instead, watching him fall and break, made her feel some kind of catharsis. Her heart was beating faster than it had been a moment ago, for sure, just by being around him.  
  
She absolutely could understand how this boy felt. Her life had long been ruined too. So much so she wanted to die. Not by others. _The one who ruined me was none other than me._ Except she was sure she could never have actually stepped off that ledge. She had been extremely poor at expressing any feeling since an early age, or following any impulse. She never got too angry, or too sad. It was not like she had especially powerful self restraint. She just did not trust the manifestation of her emotions would ever reach other people. Suicide never became more than a thought bouncing around her head, because she knew nobody would find her.  
  
Whenever she felt an emotion too strong, she just gave up and convinced herself that feeling this way did her no good. No matter what other people did to her she never got angry. Though that habit helped her avoid a lot of trouble, in the long run, it felt by avoiding her feelings she was just avoiding life.  
  
In a way she was envious of him, to actually be able to act on his emptiness. 

 

 _Give me a break_ , Tsumugi sighed. Just what had I been born for? In all her years of life, she’d never once felt a proper feeling of being “alive.” With no particular goals, nothing to live for, no happiness, she lived just because she didn’t want to die.  
  
She was a person unable to desire anything. She’d lost that ability so long ago, she didn’t have any memory of ever having it. Or maybe she was that way from the beginning.  
  
“You’re weird…” Rantaro said looking at her.  
  
“I’m the exact opposite of weird.”  
  
“You’re right, you’re unusually plain.”  
  
“Is that really the only way I’m ever going to be exceptional?” Tsumugi said, letting her head fall in despair. That was just a joke though, because there was not enough inside of her to ever feel the despair of losing everything.  
  
“I was conscious for a few seconds after I hit the ground, and I saw you walk close to me.” 

 

“And you fell in love at first sight?”  
  
“No,” Rantaro quickly turned her down and crushed all of her dreams. “Most people would freak out if they saw an attempted suicide right in front of them, they’d cry or scream for help, but you didn’t say a thing… and you were smiling.”  
  
Everything about her was normal, but her reaction wasn’t. She was so calm witnessing the death of a person in front of her. She was perfectly indifferent. She felt no fear, and no reason to cry out. Instead, she just noticed a separate, unknown emotion that she’d never experienced before.  
  
He was indifferent to death. The idea of death bored him.  
She was indifferent to life. The idea of just living bored her.  
They were the same, but they were different. 

 

 _This is my life._ She thought as she reflected in Rantaro’s eyes. Seeking nothing, she lived her life page to page by a book, but there was nothing written on those pages, she did not try to fill in the blank pages herself, and slowly, the paper started to rot away.  
She knew it wasn’t a tragedy.  
Life had no genre at all.  
It was confusing like that.  
  
“I thought if I saved a stranger’s life, then my life would turn into something interesting.” 

 

  
  
“You’re going to murder me in the end aren’t you?” He laughed, and then with his green eyes that shone like the earth in the stars he looked at her like she was the only thing in the world. “I think I’d be happy getting killed by a plain girl like you.”  
  
“Everything you say is abnormal.”  
  
“Everything you say is way too normal.”  
  
Rantaro was wrong in the end. I didn’t kill him. I just ripped his face off. 

 

🧸

 

They talked the entire day about nothing in particular.  
  
“Shouldn’t a good little girl like you be at school right now?”  
“Nobody will notice I’m gone. They might not even mark me absent.”  
“If I’m gone for a whole day, I’m sure every girl at school will dry their eyes out crying with worry over me.”  
“You don’t need to brag!”  
“Don’t I? Thinking about my life in comparison to yours makes me feel really good about myself.”  
“All normies like you should just die!”

“I already tried that and you wouldn’t let me.”  
  
“You don’t look like the type to read fashion magazines.”  
“Oh, it’s just my hobby. Wait, what do you mean I don’t look like the type!” 

“You dress like you’re trying to be invisible.” 

“I like how clothes look on other people, just not myself.”  
“...”  
“This is where you’re supposed to say, _you were beautiful all along you were just hiding it. You deserve to wear clothes as beautiful as you are._ ”  
“It’s not very nice to lie.”  
“When do you suddenly care about being nice, huh!?” 

  
“You have a lot of books.”  
“I’ve always wanted to live in one of the worlds that exists in those books.”  
“Really? I bet even if you did live in one of those worlds, you would be nowhere near the magic. You’d live the same little unexciting life as ever, even if the scenery changed a little.”  
“Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you have to say it!”  
“Is that so? I think lying is always worse than telling the truth.”  
“How did you trick any girl into liking you?”  
“That’s my secret. I just annoy girls until they get so fed up they kiss me to shut me up.” 

“Well I’m not going to do that.”  
She already knew it wasn’t the world that was uninteresting, it was just her.  
Other people lived for their day-to-day experience, she just experienced interchangeable days.  
The fact that she was casually chatting all day long with someone who had tried to commit suicide, and was not bothered too much by the idea that he might die, or might even kill her, was indicative of a fundamental problem.  
  
She had a feeling even if he suddenly drove a knife into her heart, she would not even respond. If only she could feel a little bit of hurt like a normal person would, her life would be a little bit richer.  
  
Now that she thought about it, she had never spent all day on a rainy afternoon like this just talking to someone. Rainy afternoons she took the day off from school, and spend the entire day reading alone to give herself a feeling of being cut off from the world.  
  
She sometimes imagined that the world had ended outside of her house. Unable to bear the silence, she would crank up her stereo to the maximum, play a game, listen to music, and watch an anime she liked at once as if she was attempting to fill the empty air around her with noise.  
  
She was older now and she knew that the world would not end. There was no one important enough to end the world, it was mostly indifferent to her and everybody else.

 

The boy continued to be riddles upon riddles, wearing a mask of being a boring nobody with a terrible personality. She wondered if he was just talking to her out of obligation and nothing else.  
  
“You should stay the night. If you leave now, you might just try to kill yourself again.”  
  
“If you want to get me in bed I suggest taking your clothes off first, and do you have better music I can’t get laid to that anime crap!”  
  
“No, that’s not what I meant at all! Also it would be super romantic to make love to kiss kiss fall in love, shut up. I just didn’t want you to die.”  
  
“Really? You seem like if I left now and died tomorrow, you wouldn’t get too bothered by it.” 

 

 _How did he know that._ “I…” 

 

As she fumbled, he reached up and pressed a finger to her lips to quiet her. She felt annoyed with him for using one of his playboy moves on her, and annoyed at herself for falling for it. If her breath was so easily stolen away she should have suffocated a long time ago, preferably in the womb. 

“S’fine. Not like I want to make some girl cry over my death anyway.” 

 

“Really? You seem like the type who makes girls cry all the time.”  
  
“I would never. I swear it on my dick.”  
  
“Swear it on something else, please…” Tsumugi whined, again. Maybe she did not need to work up the courage to kill herself after all, his flirting was going to be the death of her. She knew though it was not like he was flirting because he liked her, or any reason like that, it was just how he communicated with other people. It could be any girl sitting next to him and he would act the exact same way.  
  
“I don’t want you to cry. I mean it.”  
  
“Then, why do you keep teasing me so much?” 

  
“I was only trying to make you laugh. Playboy’s honor.”  
  
“You have no honor at all,” She glowered, “And I’m sure you were only trying to make yourself laugh.”  
  
She had never spoken this directly to someone before. She tended to go with the flow and just agree with what others were saying. She could not think of a single argument she had ever started in her life. Even if someone had bad taste in anime, she just agreed to pretend to get along with them.  
  
But maybe she just wanted to think this person was special. That because they had some kind of fateful encounter, she was going to get drawn into some kind of special life by him. It wasn’t that she fell in love, it was that she wanted to fall.  
  
“You don’t have to worry about me dying. I jumped because I knew I was going to survive. I wish had I landed somewhere prettier though, my whole body is sore.”  
  
“You hate that you landed in front of a plain ugly girl like me is that it?”  
  
“I don’t think you’re ugly. Well, I don’t think you’re pretty either. You’re a perfect five out of ten.”  
  
“That’s hardly perfect…” She muttered, and then. “There’s such a thing as being too honest.”  
  
“Nope. The truth is always best.”  
  
Tsumugi looked away dreamlike. She was someone who never looked at reality, that was why she had eyes that never saw anything. “You could have fallen… into a field of flowers.”

 

“Huh…?”  
  
“Think about it! It’s the perfect meet cute! You fall into a field of flowers and find a plain average girl there. She thinks she’s never going to live a romantic life. Suddenly, a boy who is prettier than any boy in any magazine falls in front of her, and he won’t even tell her why he jumped. Slowly, she nurses that boy back to health and then he becomes her reason to live-”  
  
“Um, Tsu. I think I’m losing you.” 

 

“Right, s-sorry. I already know that I don’t say anything interesting. I should stop rambling.” 

 

“I don’t like flowers anyway,” He said and for the first time she saw a genuine emotinon flash across his face.  
  
He looked sad, in a way she could not be.  
He was suffering from a loss that she could never feel.  
He lost something that she never had in the first place.  
He carried everything inside of him, all those feeling wore him down.  
She was just a windsock, everything fell out of her slowly.  
She wanted to cry for the first time in her life.  
She wanted to cry, not for herself, but for him.  
She wanted to shed the tears he could not.  
  
“Flowers bloom only to wilt away, and some flowers never bloom at all. It’s unfair don’t you think?”  
  
He looked like a flower that had bloomed in a crack in a concrete sidewalk.  
Like a daisy, a flower that was often mistaken for a weed.  
He did not look like he belonged anywhere, or to anyone.

His roots could not reach the earth, so slowly he was dying.  
  
“When a flower is dead, when it gets stepped on too much, when it’s shriveled up it’s no good. It’s not even a flower anymore. People just throw them away.”  
  
Tsumugi shook her head at Rantaro’s words. “A flower is still a flower, no matter what it goes through, no matter where it decides to bloom.”  
  
She wanted to say something that would truly touch his heart. She wanted to be the first person to say those words to him. She wanted to be the only one who said those words. “Well, if you’re not going to kill yourself then you don’t have to stay the night.” 

  
“Mm..”  
  
“What, did I say something wrong?”  
  
“Eh, n-no. Not really. It’s not like you said anything. You… are you hiding something?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
Rantaro stood up suddenly. She fell back from where she was sitting next to him at the edge of  the bed. He crawled over her. He looked like he might devour her, and for a moment she wanted him too.  
  
But she was too fragile.  
She was just a normal girl in the end.  
She could never deal with this kind of closeness in reality.  
Not for any particular reason, she just felt like if she had too much of another person inside of her she would break. She would no longer be able to continue being herself.  
  
She felt his hands as he crawled over her. He left handprints. For a moment she was afraid his touch might sear her. “You… even though you like me, you’re running away?”  
  
“W-we’ve only known each other for a day.”  
  
“It works that way in your stories doesn’t it? Isn’t that what you want?”  
  
“I’ll give you payment, for letting me stay the night.” As he said that, Tsumugi immediately got the feeling that this boy had done this before. He grabbed her long hair and twisted. His neck curved to perfectly match the shape of hers. She felt the slow motion of his hand sliding down her.  
  
She felt him lick at her lips, and all she could think about was the feeling of his piercing rubbing up against her. She closed her eyes tight, denying the reality in front of her. _No way. No way._ Shew as not responding or turning away, she just felt like she was in a dream.  
  
Only the sudden pulling at her skirt, dragged her back to reality. “W-wait… Stop!”  
  
The boy froze then. For a moment with his tongue hanging out, with saliva dripping from one of his piercings he looked away. She thought, even if he had experience, he did not know what he was doing either.  
  
In this strange tangle of their limbs together, they were both equally clueless. 

 

 _I get you._ _  
_ _You don’t know how you feel._  
  
He pushed her off, and then rolled away. She collapsed in on herself. Whatever romance might have bloomed from this fateful encounter, just died before it could ever grow into a flower. _I’m just… taking my anger out on her._  

 

 _I want to hold on._ _  
_ _I want to run away._ _  
_ _I want to give up._  
_I cannot give up._ _  
_ _I want to touch you._ _  
_ _It’s painful._  
  
“I’d do anything for you…” Tsumugi said, out of breath. “Please, just look at me that way again.”  
  
Rantaro rolled over even further away from her as if he was trying to find the furthest corner of the bed. He wanted to get lost in the sheets. _Why… why is she telling me that?_ “No, I’m sorry that was wrong of me. I know this sounds terrible after I came onto you, but just let me stay the night, I won’t do anything else.” 

 

“Why…?”  
  
“If I fall asleep when I’m alone, I have nightmares.” 

 

That was why they fell asleep back to back without even looking at each other.  
Tsumugi dreamed of flowers.  
She felt that there was always a garden of flowers inside of her, but tonight it finally bloomed.  
A flower was born in silence.  
A flower fell away in silence.  
There was nothing more meaningless than flowers, just as he said.  
She choked on the sweet scents that filled her up.  
Yet, here in this moment, at this place, she felt like the whole world was in bloom.  
A boy in front of her stood in the flowers.  
She wished the sky would rain down flowers.  
Just so he would walk over to her, and offer his umbrella.  
Color hardly belonged to flowers alone, and yet flowers were the most colorful.  
Flowers of every color.  
Then the two of them.  
Two flowers, standing next to each other.  
They were just two people. 

She knew what bees felt like.  
Always dreaming of kissing the mouth of a flower.  
As she stared at his lips.  
Despite knowing they would not live long.

Flowers shine their brightest lives.  
She wanted to tell him that.  
The world wasn’t beautiful or ugly.  
It wasn’t anything at all.  
It was all meaningless.  
And yet, flowers still bloomed.  
They died, but they also lived in the first place.  
She took his hand.  
She felt his thorns prick her fingers.  
Yet, that bleeding, scratched up hand, was the warmest she had ever felt.  
It was the first time she had ever wished desperately for something to be real.  
She, who wanted nothing to do with reality.  
Wanted to see those flowers with him.  
The real thing.  
  
When she woke up the next morning he was gone. She did not feel any disappointment at all for being left, she was not hurt. In fact even though she was obsessed with stories in the back of her mind she knew that she could never be part of a story to begin with. _There’s no such thing as a fated meaning, or people understanding each other after one day. He just needed a place to sleep for the night and then he left._  
  
That was the boring reality of it all.  
Reality was so relentless.  
It would never let her dream even a little bit.  
  
That same day she realized Rantaro went to the same school as her, and he was so popular that he was the type of guy who would never even look at her as he passed her in the hallway. The breakfast club was a nice story, but it was just that, a story. 

 

People did not suddenly understand each other like that.  
They probably never understood each other.  
  
There was a girl next to him, with her hair dyed frown. The girl tried to link arms with him, and he rolled his eyes but went along with it. She had an expression that Tsumugi had never seen before. After seeing the two hide away to kiss, she went to class.  
  
She didn’t really feel hurt, either. She didn’t feel a shred of jealousy or envy. Because she was never a part of his story to begin with. She just thought _A background character like me better not bother them._  
From the beginning, she never even had the idea in her head that this boy belonged to her. 

 _Nobody is mine._ _  
_ _I don’t have anybody._ _  
_ _Nobody has mei._

BUt that did not bother her. How great it would be if she did desire him. If there was a burning jealousy simmering in her chest, ready to erupt any moment. But she’d searched within herself over and over again for just one thing, and just found a stale gray.  
  
She wrote over and over again, trying to make her life into a story, but she was a book filled with blank pages.  
  
Rantaro would try to kill himself twelve more times after that.  
She would find him twelve more times by coincidence.  
But that’s a story for later. 

Enoshima Junko is supposed to be self absorbed, but I get tired of talking about myself quickly.  
I’m already failing to live up to her name. Not that it matters.   
All of that was just a lie I told you.  
Just frivolous self insert fanfiction. 

 

🧸

 

In the present moment, Amami Rantaro slammed his hand hard against the wall behind me.  
It was a completely unromantic kabedon.  
He had a look in his eyes like he wanted to kill me.  
Okay, that was a little bit romantic.  
  
“You lied to me!”  
  
“I didn’t lie! I just made the truth a little bit more exciting! If anything you should be thanking me for making your story way more interesting, it wouldn’t be fun if you got what you wanted right? Confict is what really makes a character shine. I just want you to shine, Rantaro! Then everybody will see you as beautiful just like I do!” 

 

“Stop that…” His fingers curled against the wall. He looked like he wanted to break a hole in the concrete from the tension in his hand alone, but he was too weak to do that. “Stop talking like her…I don’t want her filthy words coming out of your mouth.” 

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who is her? Did you fall in love with somebody else? I won’t forgive you. Actually, you’re so cute I just can’t help but forgive you. You can kiss and fall in love with as many people as you want, as long as you kill me in the end I won’t hate you.” Tsumugi Shirogane shrugged. “Besides, you should know it’s completely impossible to become someone else. The walls of mind and body are too high to ever overcome that.”  
  
“Says the girl that dresses up like Enoshima Junko.” 

 

 

“Puhuhuhu! I just had a thought, wouldn’t it look super funny if I ran my mouth like a total hypocrite. There’s no way my life could ever be a tragedy so I have to make it a comedy. What do you think? Is the audience laughing at me? Maybe I’ll become a more popular character if I can make people laugh. I should run a popularity poll right now, but I know I’d only end up at the bottom.”  
  
The manic way I was speaking, I was moving, as if somebody else’s voice moved throughmy lips, as if somebody else was puppeteering me around. I imagine it was rather creepy.  
  
Seeing the person you love, act like somebody else.  
What despair!  
Not that he loved me.  
Not that anybody did.  
  
He asked to talk to me. That’s why I came to meet him.  
  
“Let’s have a midnight fling Rantaro! Let’s pretend to love each other for tonight, and then hate each other in the morning. Let’s do something completely meaningless without bodies. Let’s fail to make each other feel any less empty, or replace each other’s missing parts. Hey, hey, have you made up your mind yet? Do you want to kiss me or kill me? I’m in the mood for both.” 

 

I wasn’t talking like myself.  
So asking to meet me was pointless. 

 

“You said if I won the game, you would let me go. You’d give me the information for where my sisters are.”  
  
“You didn’t win…”  
  
“You can’t just make up rules at last second to make it impossible for me to win.”

 

“But you really didn’t kill him Rantaro. He killed himself. I”m glad, I wanted to be the only blood on your hands.”  
  
“You lied. I became your accomplice, and you lied to me.”  
  
This was a little bit after the second round. I thought he would just collapse into a pile of his own misery and we would get a whole arc of some Rantaro-angst. I could already hear the audience falling for that pretty boy, wanting to lick the tears off of his face, wishing he were real.  
  
“Hmm. You might not know this, but villains lie.” 

  
All of the anger in Rantaro exploded forth. He really was different than me. He was still holding onto something inside of him. There was something he could never let go of. But I had already thrown that all away a long time ago.  
  
I saw his hands move towards my neck and smiled. Then, he kissed my neck instead. If there was a flower in my heart (pretty metaphor I know) one of the petals would have just peeled off, and fell away.  
  
Falling…  
Down, down, down.  
  
His lips were honey and I was a bee. I was attracted to their color from far away, I traveled the distance between him and me just to feel inside of them. He tasted so sweet.  
He was a bitter boy. He held onto so much resentment, but that was sweet to me. It was strange kissing in the first person, it had been a long time since I felt like I was actually inside of myself.  
  
I am a third person narrator after all.  
I am a voice without a body.  
The way he kissed me, it made me wish I had one.  
I wanted a body to return that kiss with.  
I wanted a heart to return those feelings with. 

  
When he pulled back, the insanity faded from my eyes just for a moment. He watched me with despair, because he knew the look of my old self in my eyes, was just a phantom, a momentary illusion. 

Like a ghost haunting him. 

There was no going back for either of us.  
  
“I hate lies…” He said without any breath.  
  
“I love them,” I said.  
Neither of us were smoking but I blew smoke in his mouth.  
  
“I don’t care how much you kiss me. I can’t give you special treatment. That’s the rules of the game,” I said as the mastermind.  
  
But he knew, just like this and everything else I was just playing a role. “What do you really feel about me?”  
  
What a mean question!  
He couldn’t be expecting a serious answer.  
Yet, the look in his eyes was so honest.  
  
“I really love you. And I’ll give my life right to you.” I said as I wrapped my arms around his neck, caught between him and the wall. 

  
“You liar.”  
  
“You’re right, I lied. I hate and despise you. I loathe and abhor you. Screw you.” I tightened my limbs around him, like I wanted him to die in my embrace.

  
“Don’t joke around.”  
  
“Kidding,” I smiled at him. He never once called my smile beautiful, but then again I never smiled at him even once. “But you know, I would really let you kill me right here. Then you could escape this game and go rescue your sisters, I want you to be happy after all. I would give my life for the sake of hope. I would give my life for the sake of the despair of having killed me the rest of your life too.” 

  
“I don’t care enough about you to want you to die!”  
  
Jeez, even when I’m the mastermind everyone bullies me and looks down on me.  
Hey, hey don’t say I’m thin skinned.  
As an author I only take constructive criticism. 

 

 _I love you._ _  
_ _I need you to break me._ _  
_ _I don’t want you to apologize for it._

  
Those thoughts flashed through my mind, but I did not think I could actually provoke him into killing me. It was just a fantasy. The two of us were still standing in a field of flowers together. In that dream together. 

“How did it feel? The weight of that shot put in your hand before you were going to crush my skull?”  
  
“I always feel a tiny bit of regret when I’m killing off a character. I’m sure every author does.”  
  
Rantaro looked like he wanted to spit in my face.  
I would totally let him. I’m not even going to try to hide that fact. “You’re a delusional, heartless, madwoman.”  
  
“Thank you.” That was the nicest thing he ever said to me. “Oh, you figured out that I was going to kill you in the first round? You’re less empty headed then I thought.” I said, making total heart eyes at him, like seriously swoon. He was going to need to catch me if he kept sweeping me off my feet like that. Though, most likely he would just let me fall. Which was even more romantic now that I thought about it. “It’s ironic isn’t it? Kumagawa-kun the boy who killed you, is the one who saved you in the first round.”

 

“Whatever. I should have known I would get nowhere with you. Nobody can anymore.”  
  
“Yep, yep! Because I’m gone. I’m just a hollow shell of what Tsumugi Shirogane used to be. Isn’t it so tragic? Somebody else is looking at you with the face of the girl you love? You must stab your own heart every time you push me away and rebuke me. But, then again you do kill yourself every day so you probably enjoy that.”  
  
“It’s pointless talking to you. You’re not even you anymore.” 

  
“Says the guy without a face. That new face looks cute on you, by the way.” 

 

He said nothing.  
  
“Then, who am I?” 

 

I asked in earnest.  
I wasn’t lying, just for once.  
I seriously wanted to know what he thought.  
  
He just walked away from me.  
  
“Hey! Get back here and debate your point! We can’t have all that build up and tension in the air go unresolved and fizzle out!” 

 

He did not turn his head back. 

That was fine though, he did not need to say a thing to me.

 _Those unheard words, and our real feelings._ _  
_ _Aren’t relevant in this relationship._

  
I watched a head float by in the water tank next to me.  
That head didn’t have a face either.  
I lied and told him it was one of his siblings. 

One that looked like him.  
He believed me.  
After all this time he wanted to believe me.  
I can’t help but think what he would be like with someone who gave a damn about him. If love was something that healed rather than hurt. If they wanted him to live with them, not die with them.  
Maybe someone who wanted to finally see his real smile.  
I want that kind of story.  
I mean, it would be a more compelling love story if there was real emotions behind it? So much more beautiful? So much more hopeful? So much more despairing? It would heal so much! It would hurt so much! That’s the kind of story I want to tell!  
  
But that’s not reality.  
In the corner of his eyes I saw tears. 

 _It hurts doesn’t it?_ _  
_ _When love isn’t enough to save the one you need._  
He was sad and I was the cause of it.  
  
It’s sad isn’t it?  
_If only loving and being loved was enough._  
Are you crying all of the tears right now? Are you feeling all of the feels?   
  
But I’m sure nobody is interested in how I feel about things. Let’s resume  
the real story, and stop wasting time on a background character like me.  
  
If you're tired of this story, there's another story on the [dark side of the moon. (](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19132087/chapters/45468589)I really hope that sounded cool I am trying so hard). I reccomend before you start reading Book 3, you read books 1 and 2 of Side Hope. Then, read in alternating order when you finish a book.   
  
Book 1 Despair -> Book 2 Despair part 1-> Book 1 Hope -> Book 2 Despair part 2 -> Book 2 Hope Part 1  
  
And finally to Book 3 Despair.   
  
It's just a gimmick of course.   
A game of alternating between hope and despair.   
But life is more fun that way!   
At least you can pretend it is. 


	54. Just Let Me Have One Normal Day

**Book 3: Suicidal Ideation: Thin-Iced Suicide Lovers** **  
** **Chapter One: Just Let Me Have One Normal Day**

 

****

**  
**  
“There are three murderers among us?”  
“They could kill people so easily. They’re just biding their time.”  
“There’s no way we can trust them.”  
“We should tie them up before they cause any trouble.”  
“I don’t want to be killed.”

Kumagawa half listened to the whispers of the crowd as they gathered at the end of Korekiyo’s trial. Three of them had had their secrets revealed in front of everybody, and then to top it off Kumagawa put on a brutal stage play for everyone.  
  
Writer: Kumagawa  
Cast: Himself, Toko and Jack.  
Lines: I want to die. I don’t want to die, actually.  
  
“Kyaaaaaah! I don’t want to hang out with murderers bro,” Kazuichi cried out the most nervous voice in the crowd.

『 _But I don’t want to be among mad people..._ 』Kumagawa whispered to himself, a half smile, or perhaps a half-assed smile on his face. He suddenly turned around raising his voice to draw the attention of everyone right more. A nobody like Kumagawa could confuse the elite and talented with his nonsense. 『You guys are right. You should hate and despise every murderer here. Once you desire to take another life there's no hope left. To hope and pray for another's death is hopelessly evil. You won't be forgiven, even if you die, even if you atone. There's only despair after that.』  
  
"Hey, didn't Komaeda say something like that like a month ago..." Kazuichi wondered why he was thinking of Komaeda now of all times. 

As he said this he looked at his cute little sister Mukuro. She was one of the murderers the other were gossiping about after all. Yet, she could not speak up for herself, nor did she let Makoto stand up for her. She wanted to bear their distrust, their derision, all on her own. 

『Murderers are just the worst.』He posed like a ringmaster in the middle of a circus, all eyes on him. 『Byakuya-chan, you forgot to tell everyone about the worst murderer here. Junko is the one who created this game. The two of us are mastermind and accomplice of a previous killing game. If she asked me too, kill everyone else and then myself. I’d destroy the world and then lay it at her grave like a bouquet of flowers.. 』  
  
Kumagawa face flushed, he looked drunk on something, love probably. No matter how hard he tried he could not clear the intoxication from his system. 『That’s why we’re the worst- most-tragic-most-despair-inducing couple. I just thought I’d remind you, who it is you should hate.』

Kumagawa and Junko disappeared together shortly after he stole everyone’s hatred away from Mukuro, Maki, and Toko and instead redirected it towards himself. Kumagawa was such an odd thief, he stole other people’s trash rather than their treasure.

Togami lived his entire life wanting to take the throne. He saw it as the reason he was born. If he could not become the king of the Togamis, then he was never going to become human. He would get disqualified from humanity. At that moment Togami saw somebody else sitting on the throne.  
  
A dilapidated and broken throne. It had a crack running down the back of the chair, and the wood that it was constructed from slowly rotted away. At his feet, there were misfit toys, machinery with missing parts, misshapen gears, all lost things of the world bowed down at his feet. The crown of thorns that wrapped around his head was made of barbed wire, he smiled at it scraped and dug at his flesh. The king of the broken and the damned stood before him.  
  
He was filled with the same feeling, the words that once repeated over and over again in his head after he first met Makoto. _This person could accept someone like me._ Which is why he immediately severed his brain stem and stopped himself from thinking.  
  
He needed to be a king. Even if it was a kingdom of only two. Three, if you counted Jack.   
He wasn't going to be a prince. He would become a king. For her sake. 

Komaru found herself gripped by an unfamiliar emotion. She could not understand what she had never felt before. Kumagawa Misogi was just a human, yet she stared at him like he was an incomprehensible abyss staring back at her.  
  
Komaru skipped the first two trials, but when she saw that Toko might get executed she had run all the way to the elevator and banged her fists against the iron grate begging to be let in. The fact that Toko might have killed someone did not even register to her then, she just wanted to say goodbye to her friend who might disappear. 

 _Ah… I really liked that girl._ The thought struck her only after Toko disappeared from her sight. When she saw Toko again, the girl was in pieces crying in need of a friend. Komaru had several friends in her class. She always comforted them, when their boyfriends broke up with them, when they got a bad score on a test, when they argued with their family. She was the kind of person who had no real problems in her own life, so everybody sort of dumped their problems on her. That was her one point of pride.  
  
Komaru would even call it a personality trait for an otherwise bland and unremarkable girl like her. So then… why when she saw Toko crying in front of her did she not do anything? She did not take a single step to get closer to that girl. No one even offered their hand.

 _Because Toko’s a murderer._ The thought stabbed into her like a fresh pair of scissors, and then they opened up inside of her pulling the wound even further apart. _You knew it all along but you never even faced it._  
  
There was no way she could be expected to be brave. People were brave because they had some reason to be brave, they had something to fight for. She had nothing. She was like a character without any motivation besides returning to her everyday life. 

Kumagawa reached out to her instead. Komaru saw him get covered in scratches as he tried to reach through the maze of thorns, she saw him whack wildly at the rose bushes, and the brush, cutting like a madman. Kumagawa and Toko covered in blood like that, they looked naked. Both of them felt more pain in a few minutes that Komaru had in her entire life.  
  
She was afraid. Afraid of both of them. Because just a month ago, Kumagawa smiled normally at her and chatted with her about manga. Toko was always high strung, but if Komaru plucked her strings carefully enough and ignored the sour and sharp notes the two of them could have their own version of a normal conversation.  
  
They talked with her normally. They smiled at her normally. Then, they tried to kill each other like it was normal. What terrified her was not the violence, but how used to it both of them looked. There was no way people who smiled and laughed with her everyday could just turn around and cut into each other easily while still smiling.  
  
In her mind she saw Kumagawa driving one of those screws into her.  
His face was smiling as always-  
That angelic, light headed, free falling smile that made her heart skip a beat.  
That gentle smile was also violent. 

 _They’re not normal. They’re not normal. They’re not normal._ Komaru always considered herself a good and understanding person, at least above average, and yet at times like this she always thought of herself first.

 _Kumagawa lied to me. He’s going to kill me._ _He lied. He lied. He lied. He lied. He lied._ She did not want to sympathize. She did not want to understand them. If she did, she would be as bad as they were. People like that could never be normal. They must have been putting on an act this entire time to fool her.  
  
Komaru looking away from Toko finally discovered the feeling in her chest. _Ah, this is despair._ Komaru thought she had a pretty tough life. After all, there was nothing exceptional at all about her, she never had any reason to be brave, or stand up for herself. She never fought her hardest. She thought everything was trouble. She always muttered to herself _how tiring_ or _it’s such a hassle._ She was a weak person who was easily overwhelmed by life, and everything was too much for her. That was why she thought her life was hard. 

 _I’m so spoiled._ The thought struck her like a knife in the back, and suddenly she felt fatally wounded by it. 

 

🧸

 

When Togami woke up the next morning he expected to hear more of Toko’s crying. He had no idea how to comfort anyone else, so he just let her stain his suit with her tears, reminding her that she would be the one paying for his dry cleaning later. Instead, he was greeted with laughter.  
  
“Kyeeeehahahahahaha!” 

  
Togami felt a sense of dread well up inside him, like a character from a slasher movie might feel when the murderer was right around the corner. There was only one way to express what he felt. _This is going to be really annoying isn’t it?_  
  
“Eh? What the hell? Why are we in bed? Where did your shirt go? What kind of fanservice scene am I suddenly a part of.”   
  
“....”  
  
“What? What? What? Are you telling me you could have slept with either gloomy or me, and you chose gloomy of all people? I know I’m just a split personality, but I’ve got way more personality than she does.”

  
“...”  
  
“Don’t you know better than to stick your dick in crazy? Hey, if you don’t care where your dick ends up how come I got left out? You could have had the most insane three way of your life, literally!”  
  
“WOULD YOU SHUT UP YOU INSUFFERABLE WOMAN!?” Togami finally broke.   
  
“You should have known ignoring a stalker only makes them worse,” Jack was just going to keep talking whether Togami ignored her or not. She knew even if he did not appreciate her, the audience would. “Hey, if we share the same body does that mean I lost my virginity last night too?”  
  
“Why must you continue to torment me?” Togami lamented.   
  
“I just wanted to be special to you, like something you would regret for the rest of your life, your deepest shame, a mistake that ends up killing ya, that sort of thing," Jack was enjoying this a little too much.   
  
In the morning Togami wanted to talk to Toko, and apologize again. Apologize that he was not enough for her, he could not become her prince, nor her enemy. Toko would do anything for him, hopeless lovesick fool that she was, he could always tell that she was genuine when she said that. Toko was the only person who never once lied to him.  
  
He did not think there was a single person in this world that he could trust, but the idea that Toko might plunge her scissors into him one day…  
It wasn’t so bad.  
_If she’s the one who kills me, then I’ll just smile and say goodbye._  
  
A life with Toko in it was a good enough life that he would not carry any regrets in the end.  
Even if she was the one who killed him. 

There was not a single thing he could do for her. That thought shook him. Wait… Where was she. He wanted to talk to Toko in the morning, he wanted to see her, but it was Jack who woke up next to him.  
  
“Where’s Toko…?”  
  
“Jeez, you’re really making me feel like a third wheel in my own body here.”  
  
“Answer the question.”  
  
“You’re no fun.You never let me kill anyone. You never banter with me. You never let me kill the mood with my Genocide Jack brand off the wall humor. Why am I hopelessly in love with you again?” Jack said, and then finally the question that Togami asked her finally reached her ears. Toko did not switch places with her simply by falling asleep something like this had never happened before. This was like Hyde going out in the day and making small talk with all of Jekyll’s nerd friends, while Jekyll went out at night and tried to rampage with his twink body. “What did you try fixing her with your dick? I guess what you’ve got between your legs isn’t magic after all. Your dick was just too bomb for her to handle, looks like Toko’s broken.”  
  
“You’re not going to give me a serious answer are you?” Togami finally realized.   
  
“Nope! I enjoy being difficult way too much kye-hee-hee! Well, for you master I’d be the easiest girl on earth. I can’t wait to slut it up for you.”  
  
“No thank you.”  
  
“What am I not good enough for you?”  
  
“Yes. You may be alters but the two of you are too different to be interchangeable. You’re the more annoying one, like a particularly annoying sibling.” Togami understood that feeling at least. It was always such a bother when your siblings tried to kill you, tee hee.  
  
“Just because I’m a split personality doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. They’re unbelievably twisted, and very stabby feelings, but they are feelings nonetheless.” 

“I know. I was hoping to hurt your feelings because you are getting on my nerves. I want to talk to Toko.”  
  
“That’s the first time anyone's ever said that!”  
  
Jack was as infuriatingly unreadable as always. Toko could not communicate with other people because she did not understand them. She was too afraid to talk to them, or even think about them. Jack never once felt afraid of other people, because she could just kill them if they looked down on her. However, as the opposite of Toko she just didn’t care whether people understood her or not. She just acted this way on purpose, because it was funny to her. 

 Jack looked at her own body. She clicked her pointed teeth. “Tch, this ain’t even afterglow. This is just filthy.”  
  
Togami decided to just get dressed. Jack would only cooperate when she chose to. Strange, he knew Toko so well that he even understood her second personality. He had a casual conversation with a murderer who could kill him at any time. Jack told him once that she could never even kill him. He trusted those words. _Since when do I trust so easily._  
  
As he got dressed in front of her, Jack treated it like a strip tease and stuffed one thousand yen notes into his waist band. He had no idea where she had even gotten them. Togami told Jack to go back to her own room, but she refused. She said if anybody asked why they were leaving their room together or walking together in the early morning she would just say she was stalking him. 

Before they left the room Jack stopped saying she had to write a letter for Toko to read when she woke up again. She grabbed a red pen and wrote a message that took up the whole page. 

 _DUMBASS._  

When they arrived at the breakfast hall together, Jack was so excited she slammed the door open. If only she had a piece of bread to hang out of her mouth as she ran, then she could finally be a normal schoolgirl. All she had hanging out of her mouth was her tongue.  
  
Makoto and Mukuro immediately jolted their heads up to look back at her. They were probably the most concerned because two of their classmates had nearly died, and were late this morning. Togami glowered behind her, arms crossed.  
  
Before Makoto could even open his mouth, Togami cut him off. “Do not  ask us why we’re here together.”  
  
“I’ll give you a hint! This morning, I’m wearing red lingerie!” Then, Jack talked over him.   
  
“Shut up!” Togami snapped back at her. 

“Come on master, I’ll be your sloppy seconds anytime.”  
  
“I will pay you to stop talking!”   
  
“That’s right, I’m just your dirty whore. But since you’re special, you can have me for free of charge master.”  
  
“I already told you do not write me into one of your fantasies. I did not consent to be a character in your love story.” 

"What's wrong?" Jack said, sticking her tongue out at him. "Did your monocle pop off?" 

“W-well, umm… They’re getting along, I guess. So that’s nice,” Makoto strained himself to be optimistic.   
  
Sitting right next to his side Mukuro had a dead look in her eyes. “You’re the dumb lucky boy, and I’m a remorseless killer how do we have the most normal relationship here?”  
  
“D-don’t call us normal. It’s not like everything I do is normal by default. You’ll make us sound boring," Makoto said. 

“A normal and boring life so happy it makes my sister nauseous for the rest of her life. That’s the kind of life I want to live,” Mukuro said batting her eyes at him. For a moment, Makoto realized how much she looked like a normal girl. Until Mukuro cut herself off. “Not that i deserve any of that.”   
  
“W-wait…”  
  
Before Makoto could say anything else Jack spoke up. “I know I’m flirting with master in public so I’m hardly one to talk but could you guys not be so disgusting with your mushy gooshy feelings in public? What kind of murderer needs feelings anyway!”  
  
“Good morning to you too, Jack,” Mukuro said in a flat voice.  
  
“Well, it’s nice being my murderous self, and I know all my fans are appreciating this extra screen time but seriously when are we going to switch back already? I’m just supposed to show up for a few laughs and then disappear again. I’m a split personality not supposed to be a person. Do you know how exhausting it is, being a person, how the hell do you idiots live all day long without wanting to kill someone?”  
  
At this point her classmates assumed Jack was just letting off steam, so they let her rant. Only one person really listened to her.

Naegi Komaru wanted her everyday life back. She realized the moment she saw Toko in trouble, and she did nothing. She did not try to even try to offer empty words of comfort like _it’ll be alright,_ or _it’ll stop hurting._ The only reason she could not do anything was because she had nothing inside of her. She had no talent to speak of, nothing she particularly liked. If she died tomorrow, nobody would be sad except for her brother, but that was only because they were obligated to like each other because they were family. She was the most disposable person here.  
  
If she died nobody would feel like they were missing anything, because she gave nothing to the people around her. There was just nothing inside of her to give. That was why the only thing she had going for her was her normal everyday life.  
  
She wanted it back. She wanted her mother to greet her in the morning. She wanted her dad to tell bad jokes. She wanted to argue with Makoto over something stupid, and then make up with him in the afternoon. She wanted to talk to all of her friends at school about nothing at all. She was fine being a mediocre person, as long as she could keep living that life.

  
But it was all gone now wasn’t it? That was why she wanted to get it back in any shape and form. That was right, even if she was jealous that people like Toko had the strength to become talented, she never really wanted a special life. That sounded like sour grapes, but it was the truth, she was fine being a nobody. She aspired to be nothing. Her only special trait was how absurdly normal her own desires were.  
  
There was not a single trace of normality in this place. Not a single person here could be called normal. Even her brother who used to be a spineless wimp had changed so much, she barely recognized him as her brother anymore. When he had Mukuro next to his side, when he tried to become somebody for her sake, he looked too grown up, it made her feel even more like a worthless little kid.  
  
She was lonely. If she was the only normal person here, that meant she was alone. 

Jack slammed her tray right next to her. Immediately, the girl cut the distance between them with one snip of her scissors, and began flicking her tongue right in Komaru’s face. “Hey, hey, Dekomaru how come you’re avoiding your friendly neighborhood serial killer today?”  
  
“Why am I Dekomaru? What did I ever do to you?”  
  
“Nothing. That’s why you’re Dekomaru. If you wanna stop being Dekomaru do something. The friends that slay together stay together! Not that I like you or anything! If I pick up some tsundere character traits do you think the boys will like me even more?”

“Doing things is hard! You’re expecting way too much out of me. I’m used to benefitting from lowered expectations, because nobody expects anything from a girl like me.” _Wait, why am I being this honest?_ Whenever she was around Toko, she ended up dropping most of her niceties and speaking her true feelings. She had never been that way around a friend before she was careful not to step on anyone’s tone. “How come that guy isn’t Dekumagawa then?”  
  
“Hey, what did that guy ever do to you? Besides exist I guess, that’s a serious crime against humanity right there," Jack laughed, like Kumagawa's entire life was a joke.   
  
“Why do you care what I think about him? You don’t even sound like you like him that much.” 

“Well, you know I’m a loser like him," Jack was an incredibly cool serial killer, a popular character, a unique existence, but a loser nonetheless. She was humble too, that was what made her so great and likable despite the whole serial killer thing.   
  
“I wasn’t expecting you to say that. You seem way more confident than Toko is.”  
  
“I know I’m a four, but I’m a very strong four.  I may be a serial killer, and an alter personality whose concept of self is vague to begin with, but it’s not like I’m lacking in self awareness, I already know that no good can come from having a person like me around. That’s why I can insult him, because we’re the same,” Jack suddenly pressed a finger hard in the middle of Komaru’s forehead. “When you insult him though, it’s like you’re looking down on him to prop yourself up.”

“What’s wrong with thinking I’m better than a person like him. He has all that strength, but instead of using it to protect other people he hurt you,” Komaru got louder as if she was trying to convince herself. “It’s normal to hate somebody who hurts your friends.”  
  
“Oh, you really feel that way for my sake. I’m so flattered!” Her pointed teeth chattered as she giggled. She looked every part the cackling witch. “But you knoooooow, since when were we friends?”  
  
“Of course we’re-”  
  
“Aren’t you glad that I was the one who woke up today, because you didn’t want to talk to Toko? You don’t want to have to treat her like a real person after seeing her almost kill someone, so it’s almost easier to talk to me since I’m such so flat? I mean in both the personality and the chest department.”  
  
Komaru could not say anything in her defense. She just looked away uncomfortable. That was the secret to her everyday life. Always run away, always avert her eyes, if she lived that way she could have the easy life she wanted.  
  
“You’re not mad for my sake, you just want to hate Koo-koo-ka-choo-magawa now."  
  
“H-he. He lied to me. Since when do you understand people anyway?”  
  
“There’s no way I wouldn’t understand people! I mean, I’m cutting them up, and seeing their insides all the time!” Jack called it human disection.   
  
“Well, hate that guy all you want. His black underwear is as black as the pitch-black darkness of the blackest night…” Apparently, personality analysis by the color of your underwear was becoming more popular these days. “But don’t go thinking you’re better than him.”  
  
“I am better than him. If I was that strong I wouldn’t use that strength to hurt people. The… the only reason he’s able to hurt people so easily is because he doesn’t understand weak people’s feelings at all.”  
  
With that, Jack laughed so hard she snorted her morning milkshake out of her nose. She wiped her face, and then kept laughing. “Kye-hee-hee! Ku-meow-ga-nya is the weakest person here. Fighting him felt like fighting a little kid pointing a knife at me. He just doesn’t use his weakness as an excuse to not try.”  
  
“I don’t…” Komaru did not know what to say. When she did not know what to say, she did not even try.   
  
“Hey, I’m not judging you. I just want to live a spoiled life where I get pampered by a prince too. What have you done to be better than him?”   
  
“I… I have friends.” 

“Your brother, and your brother’s girlfriend don’t count.”  
  
Komaru realized she did not have a single friend in this school.  
  
“You’re the most unpopular person here!” Jack said, pointing and laughing. She was less serial killer, and more playground bully right now. “You’re less popular than Kumagawa. He’s got Big Tits and Komaeda at least. You’re less popular than me, I have master. Oh man, Toko’s gonna love this, she’s been waiting her whole life to only be the second worst.”  
  
“P-please…”  
  
“That guy’s so mediocre it’s painful. You’re somehow less than that. You’re below average compared to him.” Jack lipped her lips. “Some people are just simply inferior.”   
  
“Please don’t say that,” Komaru grabbed onto Jack’s sleeve and felt herself sinking to the floor. She would drown. If she kept sinking she would drown. All she wanted her whole life was to live a normal life, to stay on track. She did not expect anything out of life. 

She just wanted to go to high school, go to a four year college, get a salaried job, fall in love with a decent guy, have two kids, and then pass away peacefully in old age when she had grandkids. She wanted to follow the track that everyone else at her age thought was the most boring life possible. So why, why was she falling off the track now? Why was all of that being derailed?   
  
What did she do?  
Or… was this her fault for not doing anything? 

“Hey Jack, how can you kill people so easily?” Komaru tilted her head up. She could not even cry, her eyes were just empty. Like she cried out all her tears long ago, in bed each night when she thought someone would come to kill her and nobody would miss her.  
  
“It ain’t easy, you know how much effort it takes for people to die? Hakumagawa Matata is living proof of that. And double hey,  I’m not somebody who would kill people without a reason. I’ve got a reason and it’s a good one, just give me a second to make it up.” Jack closed her mouth for a moment as if to think. “Killing people is a statement you know?”  
  
“What kind of statement?”  
  
“We live in a society… where people get killed.”  
  
“What…?”  
  
“Kidding, I just wanted to say something deep. Sure, I’m a bloodthirsty maniac. But life is pain, right? To live is to hurt other people. It’s a necessary evil if you want to survive. The act of living itself causes pain for everyone…! Kyeeehahahaha! Just kidding again!” _Even I’m not enough of a tool to say that!_ Jack's alughter seemed to say. 

Komaru had no idea why a girl like that was able to laugh so easily.  
Now that she thought about it though, she was not sure she had ever remembered Toko laughing once.  
  
“You’re not going to tell me no matter how many times I ask are you?”  
  
Jack laughed so hard she started to cry.  
  
“I don’t know why I even bothered trying to understand you.” 

  
Komaru left, and when she did Jack’s laughter slowly died down in her throat. She stopped for a moment to bite her tongue, until she tasted rust. She loved blood, and being covered in blood, if Komaru accused her of being a serial killer just for the aesthetic that would not be wrong. Blood was darker than most people expected it to be, a pitch black kind of red, like people’s insides were rusting away. There was only one person’s blood she didn’t like to see. 

  
“Sis…”  
  
She murmured as she continued to grind her teeth.  
  
“I scared her away so we won’t hurt her.”  
  
“....”  
  
“That’s what you want right?”  
  
“...”  
  
“ I don’t get you at all.”  
  
“...”  
  
“ How can one trembling little girl have so many feelings? You’re way more trouble than what you’re worth, which is practically nothin.” 

  
Nobody spoke back. She just looked like a crazy person talking to herself. To be fair though, she did have a diagnosed mental illness and she was currently talking to herself. 

 

🧸  
  
“How do I despise you? Let me count the ways.” 

『Junko, it’s way too early for you to be this affectionate. Ewe, gross, someone’s getting all lovey dovey.』  
  
“Your breath stinks so much. I can’t believe I willingly kiss you.”

『Oh that smell is because I’m always dying inside.』  
  
“Your eyes are rotten just like a dead fish. It’s like you got two holes in your head. I can’t believe you’re even allowed to look at my perfect body with those eyes? Hey, that’s illegal right? That’s totally illegal.” 

『Well that’s because I live with this hole inside of me, y’know.』  
  
“You’re insufferable. It’s like, take a hint already loser.” 

『Life is nothing but suffering. It’s like take a hint already, winner?』  
  
“How can anyone stand to be around you? I really, really don’t want to be seen with you. Do you think you can photoshop yourself out of every picture we’re in together? Actually, can you photoshop yourself out of existence? Pretty please?” 

『I ask that question every day. I can’t even stand to be around myself.』  
  
“You wear your heart on your sleeve, but that just means you get your icky blood all over me. I like being covered in blood, but I don’t want to catch your loser boy cooties.”

『You can have my heart, my hand, my neck, anything you want! All of the icky feelings inside of me are just for you!』 

“I’m trying to insult you here. Are you really such a failure at everything you can’t even be insulted properly? Let me explain it again for the thousandth time, I’m the super hot popular blonde girl that’s bullying you, and you’re the loser nerd.” 

『Yep! I’m a failure at everything. Every day I ask myself why was I even born? I don’t regret being born though, especially if my presence offends you so much. You totally deserve someone like me, ahahahahaha.』  
  
“Why won’t your mind just break already?”

『I want to become the happiest, most put together person on earth just to spite you now. Hey, Hey, Junkoooo, I looooove you! I’ll make you so happy you’re disgusted with both yourself and me!』  
  
“Your definition of mutual love is twisted. Not in the sexy way either, you’re like totally frickin insane.”

『Who needs mutual love? There’s mutual disgust, mutual hatred, and mutual destruction!』  
  
Junko rolled over in bed, groaning. She was expected to get up in the morning and live another day? That was asking too much of her. She really, really hated Kumagawa for making her think of the future this way. “It’s such a pain, this stupid little feeling.” 

『That’s love for you.』  
  
Junko threw a pillow in his face to shut him up. “Don’t say something so embarrassing. Do you have any shame at all? Do you? Do you? Learn to talk to girls already, you mouth breathing, snot swallowing, nerd!” 

Kumagawa found her outright hostility towards him sweet, because he was Kumagawa after all. Even if she had nothing but hatred for him. Even if she only told him she hated him over and over again, he still wanted to talk to her. Talking to her was better than not talking to her, that was what he had realized.  
  
He knew the reason Junko acted this way.  
This morning she woke up afraid it was all just a dream.  
That he was still dead, and on the other side of her bed was just a cold corpse.  
She would be all alone.

Fundamentally missing something, but unable to cry over what she had lost.  
As if she had forgotten what she was missing in the first place.  
She couldn’t even go mad and die without him.  
She would just miss him, this numb feeling that was not despair.  
That did not feel like anything at all.  
Just the absence of the feelings he would have if he was with her.  
  
The moment she turned her head and he was sleeping next to her, with that stupid expression on his face like he was ignorant of the fact that she could kill him at any moment, she wrapped herself around him and dug her claws into his back. She wanted to scratch him so deep, that it would leave markings that would never heal. She wanted to mark him as hers.  
  
Leave burns all over his skin, like a snake was tightly coiling around him, constricting him, suffocating slowly. She held on as tight as she could, not even saying a word.  
  
Kumagawa ran his fingers through her hair. 『It’s okay. You and I are the only ones alive. Nobody else exists but us, they’re just imaginary people we made up.』

“...” 

『The world already ended, and we’re the last two human beings alive. We killed everybody else and one day we’re going to kill each other.』  
  
“Not to suddenly get like totally deep on you or anything since the brainless teen idol act is kind of my thing, but if you woke up tomorrow and this was all a dream what would you think?” 

『It was a good dream.』  
  
“Liar.”

『You’re right, it would be a total nightmare. But you’re my favorite nightmare you know.』  
  
He hoped some of the lies he spun, some of the nonsense he just made up on the spot had reached her. It probably did not. They were just meaningless words after all. Still, he knew the reason why Junko was kicking up such a fuss in the morning.  
  
She was just like a little kid, she could not be honest with her own emotions.  
『 _You’re never going to be happy like that_ .』  
He sighed internally. How rude of her, making him act like the adult between the two of them.  
He wanted to go back to being a cute little kid.  
『 _Well, it’s not like you want to become happy anyway_.』

Junko rolled out of bed. “Aight. I’m gonna go make myself pretty.” 

『I’d prefer it if you made yourself ugly.』  
  
“If you say a line like ‘you look better without your makeup on’ I’m going to strangle you with the cord of my hairdryer.” 

『If you were just as ugly on the outside as you were on the inside, I’d love you even more.』  
  
“But that’s kind of your thing, Misogi. I don’t want to steal your thing. As an artist, or maybe as a living work of art myself, I find plagiarism to be an insult to life itself.” 

『I think murder is a worse insult to life.』  
  
“Wow? You can think? You’re just full of surprises ain’t ya?” 

『What are you one hundred percent cheek? You think you’re clever don’t you?』  
  
“I know I’m clever. And you wish you could get your hands on these cheeks.” 

That was communication for them. That was talking. Then suddenly, wordlessly, before she could even reach the bathroom she turned around. She looked like she could not escape his gravity.  
  
People always acted like they were pulled into her orbit. Like they wanted to revolve around her. Not her fault, she was just too beautiful, too likable, and her boobs were just too big they generated their own gravity field. Junko herself had no idea who the world revolved around. But the earth revolved around the sun. That’s all there was to it, really, and it’s probably never anything more. And that goes for everyone.  
  
There’s no such thing as getting pulled into someone’s orbit.  
People were just people in the end, that was why they were so boring.

But Kumagawa…  
He was her star.  
The only star she saw in a pitch black sky.   
  
She tackled him down to the bed. She still did not say anything, as the fingers of one hand wrapped tightly around his wrist to pin him down. She made no move to kiss him, or to kill him. All she did was stare at him. She tried to comprehend the light behind those watery eyes of his.

I feel like going off on a tangent. Mirrors don’t always tell the truth. When people look at their faces in the mirror, the light rays reflect off the mirror, refract once into the cornea, pass through the pupil, then refract again in the crystalline lens to project onto the retina. Before it can even reach the brain it all just becomes projection, you know? Then, even when the brain processes it, it’s warped by the filter of self-love.  
  
She was not trying to love him. She was just trying to love the _herself_ in him.  
Strictly speaking, there exists no person who’s ever seen themselves objectively.  
There’s no such thing as being the main character of their own story.  
But every single person on earth is the author of their own story.  
That’s why being an author is incredibly mediocre, and authors who think they’re special are just pretentious know-it-alls, just like me.

When going up to a mirror people keep an angle and expression that makes them look more beautiful, and devote attention to the parts of their face that they were most confident in. Enoshima Junko looked good even in photographs, because to her, every window,  every photograph, even other people’s eyes, they were all just mirrors to her.  
  
What a self absorbed girl.  
  
As she sat on his chest, observing him, feeling the rise and fall of his body, saying nothing at all because there were no words to express the ‘everything’ that she felt inside of her. 

Enoshima Junko did not realize she was being observed from a third person perspective.  
  
Until Komaru stumbled back and let the door fall open. She stopped looking through a crack and saw everything. Kumagawa, Junko, the two of them had not even done anything yet and yet it all felt so indecent. She felt like her virgin eyes had been ruined. 

『Komaru-chan…?』

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.  
What a stupid girl.  
She came here to prove to Jack that she was not afraid of anything. She just did not like Kumagawa for being a bad person, for hurting her friend. That was normal. That was the right thing to do.  
  
Yet, here she was running away. You know that thing that people do when they were afraid. The dorms were empty except for them, so she was glad at least. She ran down the circular hall, an djust made it to the stairs, before she saw her own shoe slipping off of her foot.  
  
What?  
Unlucky things like this were supposed to happen to her brother, not her.  
_I’m plain everything else, maybe I’m plain unlucky._  
  
That was her last fleeting thought before she fell down the stairs. She thought she was going to fall. Suddenly a hand caught her by the wrist. She looked down and saw Kumagawa’s hand covered in scars. She looked up and saw his face.  
  
_He’s just a liar. He lied to me. He just pretended to be nice, but he can hurt people that easily._  
If all of that was true, then why was the look of worry in his eyes so genuine?  
Those eyes that always worried about other people before himself.  
They looked just like her brothers.  
  
“Don’t touch me!”  
  
Komaru screamed as she jerked her hand away from him and fell back. Falling down the stairs was preferable to - wait what? What was she doing? No, no, no, no, no, she was going to die. She was going to die. She didn’t want to die.  
  
Just as she thought that, Kumagawa dove forward and wrapped his arms around her, throwing his back to the stairs. He took the brunt of the hint for her as the two of them fell together. It was only at the bottom of the steps she realized a boy her brother’s age had wrapped his arms around her in just his underwear. She looked down.  
  
Toko was right his underwear was pitch black, as black as his soul. She immediately shoved him away with a foot to his face. “I just said don’t touch me!” 

『Sorry. I won’t ever touch you without permission again. I promise.』

Kumagawa sat up, and just then she noticed the scars that were all over his body. They were too deliberate to be random scars. It was like someone carved them into his skin, so he would be marked for life. Even if he grew up, he would always carry those wounds around with him.  
  
“Unforgivable… No matter what kind of reason you have, no matter what your scars are… You almost killed Toko. Like it was nothing. ANd I’ll never forgive that… ever!” 

『You should hate me. I did a bad thing.』  
  
“I don’t care if you suddenly start acting like a hero again. It’s all fake. It’s an act. It doesn’t make up for a single thing. If you really wanted to be better you’d try being a better person, instead of just pretending to be one.” 

『Yep, you’re right.』  
  
“A good person can live without hurting other people.” 

『That’s why I’m bad.』  
  
“Stop agreeing with me! You’re supposed to deny it! You’re supposed to run away! Just make one single excuse please? Why…” Komaru broke down into tears. She did not want to cry in front of this person, because he knew he would reach out to comfort her. That would just make her hate him even worse. The more human he was, the more normal he acted, the more she hated him. “Why… we’re the same… you don’t have a talent either, so why can you do things I can’t?” 

As he saw her crying form, Kumagawa could not help but think of Komaeda. Komaeda never cried for himself, he only ever cried for other people. Tears like soft rain, beautiful tears, kind tears. The kind that Kumagawa could never cry. He shook his head. 『No, no. Nothing you said was wrong. There’s no such thing as abusing someone or beating someone with good intentions. I’m no better than Toko’s parents… I… I probably just took my frustration out on her, I was so pissed at her for wanting to die.』  
  
He knew nothing good could ever come from his horribly violent methods.  
Yet, he did not stop himself from getting involved.  
Because there was not an ounce of kindness inside of him. 

“Why? Why? Why? I can handle being less than talented people. It’s only natural that there would be a difference between me and them, we were born different. I have no hope of ever being like them.” Even that girl’s views were shockingly like Komaeda. “Why do I have to feel lesser to someone like you?” 

『Huh…?』  
  
“Stop being so kind to me, you liar.”

 She could see there was anger in his eyes, like he was restraining himself, holding himself back.

『Sorry, that’s the one thing I can’t do. You’re right I just hurt people like it’s nothing, but I really would like to minimize the damage.』Kumagawa looked away from her. 『Because if… Mukuro-chan had a sister like you, she’d be much happier than she ever would be with me.』  
  
“Who are you? Are you the person who encouraged me when I was lost? Are you Enoshima Junko’s accomplice who would kill me just to make her happy? Are you the boy who beat Toko half to death with a smile on his face? Who…” 

『Your friend… Ah, but that’s probably impossible now isn’t it?』  
  
“I...Toko… No, Jack, said I was just inferior. That’s the reason I couldn’t make any friends in this game.” 

『What a lovely thing to say. You two must really be good friends.』  
  
“No! That’s a terrible thing to say! Gosh, everything about you is just so wrong Dekumagawa.” 

『That’s a cute nickname.』  
  
“Umm, I’m insulting you.” 

『That’s a cute insult.』Kumagawa smiled at her. That smile crept up his face like a shadow slowly getting longer, but it never reached his eyes. 『What’s wrong with being inferior? What’s wrong with being weak? What’s wrong with being unable to do anything? Even scum sucking bottom feeders have a place in this ecosystem.』  
  
“But I’m…Nobody wants me around.”

『Of course people want you around, because when you’re next to them you look so much better in comparison.』  
  
“You’re just making fun of me! Sheesh! You really don’t know how to talk to girls. I… I’m just a parasite, that’s why I’m going to die in this game because-” 

『What’s wrong with being a parasite? I don’t care if you suck my blood dry, or Toko-chan’s. If that’s what you need to do to live, then just live. Please don’t ever say you’re going  to die.』

Kumagawa reached a hand out to her. He really did always reach his hand out to others, while she could only cling to them. She had no desire to be a hero, to save anyone else but herself, even if she was in the leading role she doubted she would ever act like a hero. 

『Let’s talk about manga until you calm down. You can tell me how much you hate me.』  
  
She just wanted a normal friend to talk about manga with.  
That was why she could not take his hand.  
  
Komaru slapped his hand away again harshly. “You almost died yesterday, and you’re smiling like it’s nothing! That’s not normal! You’re not normal!”

『Aha, I guess so.』Kumagawa already knew it, that he could never be a part of Komaru and Makoto’s normal family, that one day Mukuro would leave him for them. But, at the same time he heard the words _I’ve never thought you were abnormal_ as Makoto’s voice rang in his ears.  
  
It hurt just a little bit.  
So he laughed it off awkwardly.  
  
The next moment Junko’s foot stomped down hard on Komaru. “Who’s man do you think you’re roughing up?” She turned her head back her lips peeling apart in a smile that showed her teeth. "Helping other people is just a form of self harm for you, isn't it Senpai?"

Kumagawa immediately sensed the danger, and put himself between Junko and Komaru. Junko could destroy him over and over again, but if she touched Mukuro’s chance at happiness he...『Don’t get jealous, because Junko hates me the most after all!』Kumagawa was all smiles, but he was holding her wrist hard enough to break it. The fact that she was the only one who noticed how delicate her hand was in his, and how he could break her so easily made her smile.

Kumagawa looked like a dog barking and snapping at the end of his chain while it pulled on his neck.

“Lovers aren’t supposed to hate each other. It’s not normal…P-please don't get violent for my sake Kumagawa-san.” Komaru said, but she remembered as she was watching them through the crack in the door. She was jealous. Of how close they were. They undeniably hurt each other, but that was because they were closer than most people ever could be.  
  
Komaru had plenty of normal friends, she made friends easily, there were even guys who were interested in her, but she was sure she would never get that close to another person her entire life. 

『You don’t get it, Komaru-chan. If I ever showed anyone what was really inside of me, they would hate me and reject me. That’s why I always tell so many self-serving lies. The reason Junko hates me is because she knows me.』Junko’s arms slowly wrapped around his neck, she hung off of him in affection. 『But even hating me, she still loves me.』  
  
“She’s the only one that would accept you? That’s just teenage crap…” 

『Maybe someone else could accept but I like her the most.』  
  
“Why?”

『Because her boobs are the biggest.』  
  
“Really, that’s your reason?”

『...I don’t need a reason.』

"If you just stay miserable together because it's slightly better than being apart, then nothing's ever going to change."

She didn’t understand.  
Not at all.  
Because she didn’t love or hate anybody that much.

 _It’s not normal. It’s not normal. It’s not normal._ She repeated again and again, like a curse. She pushed her way past both of them. She had normal friends, she made friends easily, but she never really thought about it once.   
  
"You're mad aren't you? Lol R U mad? Poor Senpai, he got owned by a little girl. He's totally about to throw hands with a child."

『That's not true. I abhor violence, I'm a man of love and peace.』  
  
"You're not only a liar. You're a fat liar. Fatty mc fat liar," She tightly entwined her fingers with his, their hands became knots holding them together. "You really can't stand being hated by other people can you? Come on, let's play a game! How long will it take Senpai to snap. If you lash out, I win. If you keep holding it in and suffering I also win."

『I'm gonna say something terrible. Playing games with you is never fun.』  
  
"That's the worst thing you've ever said to me, you're sooooo mad. You're cute when you're mad, or rather you're ugly, but kind of ugly cute like a dead puppy with its neck snapped." 

『There's nothing cute about that at all! He said, being forced to play the straight man because his girlfriend's a big weirdo with a despair fetish.』  
  
"You know even if everyone else were to reject you if you were to show them your real self, I'd think you were the coolest senpai." 

『Then, it's better to stay an uncool loser forever.』  
  
They were almost too close, like tumors inside each others brains, like tears in each others hearts that tore the muscle fiber and sewed it back together. There was no way that kind of closeness could ever be normal, and yet some small part of her envied it.  
  
She was always afraid other people would hate her. She thought way too much about their opinions. She never thought...   
Somebody else could love the parts of her she hated the most.   
She would never need to think about these things if she never met these people. She didn’t want to find these things out about herself. She did not want to see other people’s scars. She just wanted to go back to her normal life.  
  
There was no way she could ever understand these people. Whether they were murderers or not, she did not understand people at all. She did not even understand herself. She had no idea why all of these feelings were crawling around inside of her like snakes in her gut. 

 _I was really happy that Kumagawa came back._ _  
_ _Because he was kind to me._ _  
_ _So why did I..?_  
  
_Toko’s scary too._ _  
_ _She’s a serial killer._ _  
_ _But she’s okay once you get to know her so..._ _  
_  
But she was afraid.  
The reason why she led such a normal, comfortable life, was that she was too fragile.  
If she tried to understand these people, if she tried to help them with their pain, she would just break. That was why all she could do, all she desired to do was carry on like normal.  
  
“I can’t take this anymore…” She said as soon as both of them were out of sight. “Just let me have one normal day!” 

 

🧸

 

Mukuro Ikusaba unbuttoned her shirt. She pulled it up over her head, or at least tried to only for it to get stuck for a moment.  
  
“Umm, do you need any help?” Makoto asked awkwardly. He reached up to help her pull it off. The both of them felt embarrassed, as he slowly pulled the fabric over her head and then saw her tousled hair underneath.  
  
They were both unbelievably shy people. Mukuro was a murderer, but she was also a shy girl.

She killed people like it was nothing, but she also was afraid of them. They were so shy, they really could only overcome their mutual shyness when they were together.  
  
They could not climb over these walls for anyone else, that was how they felt. Makoto would remain a blushing nice guy, who let everybody walk all over him. Mukuro would remain a quiet girl staring out the window like there was nobody else in her tiny little world. That was how the two of them would be if they did not have each other.  
  
This was probably stupid to say, but.  
Akwardly glancing away from each other.  
Every time they were together, it felt like it was their first.  
  
Not that this was going to turn into a romance scene. I told you I am tired of writing those. Mukuro had only removed her shirt to show Makoto the scars underneath. Every time before this, they had done it with the lights off, as Mukuro’s nervous but insistent request. He had gotten close enough to see her this way, but whenever he seriously looked at her, Mukuro had such an expression of pain on her face, he could not bear to look at it.  
  
That was why he was a little bit surprised to see. Mukuro’s thin frame lacking any body fat, her black bra clinging to her flat chest, and several burn marks down her arms, with long reaching scars down her chest and back as if she had been chewed up and spat out by a wolf.  
  
Mukuro would never believe him if he said this, but to him those scars looked like a garden of flowers on her body. The moment he saw them, he was captivated by them, he could so easily get lost in that garden. Mukuro told him once about a lone flower she saw blooming in the middle of the battlefield. That was what she was to him, a flower, who bloomed even when she had no light at all. Mukuro did not even realize, how beautiful her colors were, how much her scent filled him up when she was close, how soft she was. How the world was made so much prettier, just by her being in it.   
  
This was the same girl who acted like she never felt any pain at all. Who did not believe she deserved to cry over her own pain. _It should have been me._ Makoto thought, immediately looking at her wounds. _I should have been the one to get hurt like that. It would be better if it was me and not her._  
  
That was his gut instinct every time he saw someone else in pain. “C-can I touch them?”  
  
“Why are you looking at me like that?”  
  
“Like you’re umm… a pretty girl, and stuff."   
  
Makoto, was a boy in love.  
Everything he said was poetry.   
No wonder she fell hard for this guy.  

“No. Like I’m made out of glass. I’m stronger than you, you know," Mukuro batted her eyes at him.  
  
He knew that. Every time he was in danger, it was always Mukuro who swept him off his feet and carried him away like a princess. He really wanted to repay the favor someday. “Th-then you don’t want me to be gentle?”

“No. Be gentle. I want to be spoiled. I'm tired of being the responsible sister, I want a prince to spoil me."  
  
“Where are we going to find one?” Makoto asked, dumbfounded.   
  
She pointed right at his chest.  
  
“I think you’ve got the wrong guy. I umm… I’ll treat you right, for the rest of my life.” 

Mukuro wondered if Hinata also sounded like this when he was flirting. Poor Komaeda. “I’m kidding.”  
  
“It’s really hard to tell you know! You say everything in the same tone of voice.”  
  
“Makoto," Mukuro said his name suddenly, catching him off guard.   
  
“Huh?”  
  
“I just said your name with my voice full of affection. You’re supposed to be swooning!”

“You just said my name like you always do!”  
  
Makoto had too many emotions and she had too few. Mukuro sometimes was reminded that no matter how different her and Junko were, they were still sisters who had been raised side by side their entire life. “You can touch me, but try to control yourself.”  
  
“I’ll try my best.”  
  
“I’m joking," Mukuro said in a voice that did not sound like she had ever laughed once in her life.   
  
“I’m not.” Even if Makoto told her she was beautiful she would never believe him, but all he could do was keep saying the words over and over again. He reached forward and touched only the scars on her upper arm.  
  
“Disappointing,” Mukuro bit her lip. “I wanted you to do something nuaghty, and ruin that good boy image of yours.”  
  
“Eh? But that’s the reason you like me.”  
  
“It’s true. I do like you,"  _Mukuro just felt like saying it._  
  
“Did Junko give you these?”   
  
Then suddenly it was over, the flirting, the unromantic love scene. The reason she had taken her shirt off was to start telling him about all of these scars on her body, and how they made her into a girl unworthy of Makoto’s kindness.  
  
Some small part of her hoped Makoto would come to hate her by the time she was finished. Mukuro closed her eyes and shook her head. She lowered it like a dog would. “These ones are rope marks, from when I was tied up and left alone.”  
  
“Junko did that to you? I… I’m going to give her a serious talking to," Makoto was starting to look scary.   
  
“Down boy.” Mukuro, sighed and looked into the distance. That was where she pictured her sister was, always, somewhere distant. “Junko-chan would never do anything that would leave scars. I did these to myself.”  
  
“What…?”  
  
“These welts are from burning my skin to teach me to resist pain. The marks on my back are from lashings, for the same purpose. I was trained to resist torture.”  
  
“How could you say that was doing it to yourself?”  
  
“I chose to join to Fenrir.”  
  
“But you were just in middle school. They should have turned you away. It’s their fault for training a child soldier.”  
  
“That’s what I wanted though…” Mukuro put her hand over one of her scars on her upper arm and shuddered.   
  
“How do you know what you want? Back then you thought the only thing you wanted was what Junko wanted, there’s no way you actually wanted that.”  
  
Makoto always did this. No matter what she said, no matter how painful it was for him, even if the world would despise him right alongside her he never gave up on her, he never stopped seeing her as a human. 

“It’s not that big of a deal. I’m the Ultimate Soldier, I handled the training better than most adults-”  
  
“You’re just a normal girl Mukuro. You cry when you’re in pain, just like everybody else.”  
  
“No I don’t…” But that was a lie, because every time Mukuro cried Makoto held her. When she lost Kumagawa she clung to him like she had nothing left. She kept telling him over and over again that she felt no pain, she never let him comfort her, but then she always ended up clinging to him anyway.  “You don’t get it. I tortured other people. The people I hurt look way worse than this. Yukizome-sensei… She was such a good teacher, and I…”  
  
Makoto never believed it once when Mukuro said she was able to kill people without feeling any guilt at all. It was obvious she was just suppressing her feelings, and now they all came back to her she threatened to drown in them.  
  
He would not let her drown. “You’re just a normal girl.”  
  
“Stop saying that.”  
  
“You’re just a normal girl.”  
  
“You’re really annoying, you know that?”  
  
“I’m a spineless, sniveling, weak little kid who knows nothing about the world. And you’re just a normal girl.”  
  
Mukuro gave up. There was no way to express what she was feeling. She could not put it into words. She just murmured to herself. “I’m awful…”  
  
Makoto knew she was probably never going to stop calling herself awful. “You can hate yourself. The entire world can hate you, but I won’t. You’ll never convince me to hate you because…” He scratched at the back of his head like they were just having an innocent conversation. “Doesn’t the fact that I can forgive you make me complicit? I’m your accomplice now. I’m just as guilty.”   
  
“No, Makoto. Please, just, find a normal girl, fall in love with her, and live a happy life without me," Mukuro did not want to say those words. She never wanted to let go of Makoto again. She just thought that was what she deserved, Makoto deserved happiness and she deserved... If she could just not ruin his life that was the only good thing she would ever do with her life.   
  
“I don’t want that,” Makoto said again, despite how weak willed he was when he wanted to he could be determined, and impossible to budge. “I want you. Tell me every bad thing you’ve done, if you’re punished, then I want to be punished with you.”  
  
“You’re broken in the head.”  
  
“I think that’s just called love.” 

Komaru sat on the outside of Makoto’s door. She had come to talk to her brother, to feel normal again. When she saw Mukuro talking with him, she did not have it in her to interrupt. So she sat with her back to the door and listened to the two of them.  
  
If Komaru saw all those scars.  
She would be afraid.  
She would be scared of that pain.  
She called Kumagawa and Mukuro abnormal over and over again.   
She never tried to understand them like Makoto did.   
She thought she was treating them normally but... was that normal?   
If she did not know what to do, she just did not try.   
If it was too hard she ran away.  
If it hurt to look at, she averted her eyes.   
Is this what normal people were like... or was she just...?  
  
Komaru hid her face in her hands. “I’m really nothing like my brother, huh?”


	55. People Allergy

**Book 3: Thin-Ice Suicide Lovers**

**Chapter Two: People Allergy**

  _It hurts.  
It's just stabbing, and burning, and enduring it all. _

Kazuichi Souda scratched at his bare forearm. It was a bad habit he had since he was a kid. The environment he grew up in was not the cleanest but that had nothing to do with it. It was people. Whenever he saw people near him he started to itch.   
  
Just people.   
Their eyes, their touch, the warmth when they were close.   
It was like he developed an acute allergy to them sometime in his life. 

Itchy. Itchy. So damn itchy.  
Sometimes he scratched so hard that his entire arm was raw. Sometimes there were flecks of blood and scraped off skin hidden underneath his nails. Ever since his last middle school year he started to wear a jumpsuit all the time, he liked it because it covered his whole body and hid things.   
  
The wounds his father inflicted on him, and the scratches he left on himself.   
If he ever rolled up his sleeves and someone saw a particularly nasty bruise, Kazuichi would lie and say one of the machines he was working on exploded. Even as the words left his mouth he had no idea what he was doing. 

 

 _I already know my old man’s worthless garbage, so why am I trying to protect him?_ Parents were supposed to take care of their children, but Kazuichi felt like he was backwards. He spent his whole life looking after that useless layabout. _If I don’t do anything we’ll both lose this shop._ So he worked tirelessly. Maybe it felt good to protect someone, but it was a wasted effort when the person you protected hit and kicked you behind closed doors.   
  
If he lost his place, he would lose the idea that it was even possible that there was a space for him in this world. A place where he could feel comfortable. A place that did not feel hostile to him. A place where he did not worry about his allergies. In reality, that shop was a place where his father beat him, but in his mind he could imagine himself one day having a family here, working his hardest, and drifting away from both the world and forgetting about other people, their thoughts, their touches, what they had done to him. It would all disappear, and maybe if a girl kissed him sweetly the bruises would disappear from his body too. 

That dream was the nuts, bolts and screws that held his mind together. If you took them out, then the entire framework would fall apart, and he would fall back into pieces again. Humans were not like machines, you could not just disassemble them and reassemble them as many times you want. Everytime their pieces and bits fell apart, they lost something vital, like a spare screw had rolled away.   
  
A missing component, without it there would be a fundamental flaw in the mechanism as a whole. That was how dysfunctional machines were made, after that there was no future. Once you were labeled a defective product it was all over.   
  
There was not a single place Kazuichi belonged in this world, except far away from other people. However, one guy in particular he could not stand. He felt like he was going to break out in hives just by being near him. 

  
“Why are you staring? Surely there’s someone more worthy of your attention, Kazuichi-kun,” Komaeda Nagito said, angling away from Kazuichi, shirking his whole body, slumping his shoulders like he was trying to disappear. “Ah… It’s my fault. I should apologize for being so ugly you can’t stand to look at me.”   
  
“Hey, why don’t you make a book called _how much I hate myself,_ so I don’t gotta hear it every time we talk!” 

 

Kazuichi decided to cut him off, because Komaeda would go on forever with that false humility. _Just cut it out already, I know you think I’m an idiot with everything but machines. That if I didn’t have this talent, you’d look down on me too just like everybody else._ This was going to sound weirdly poetic for a dumbass like him, but Komaeda who worshipped talent more than everybody else, always came across as more of a skeptic constantly scrutinizing him. 

 

 _It’s like he’s trying to find a flaw in his gods._ _  
_ _Like some small part of him really doesn’t want to believe the things he does._   
  
“I really didn’t mean to bother you. I’m just a fussy, bored, lonely self-analytical boy who never thinks of anybody but himself.”    
  
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” A small part of Kazuichi knew he was snapping at Komaeda for no reason, when the boy had not done anything to him today. If it were anybody else but Komaeda, Kazuichi would come off as the bad guy in that situation. Even when people were being unfair to him Komaeda did not seem to notice, he was innocent, like a little kid that way. “You’re in my seat.”   
  
“Of course, I’ll sit on the floor. A dog like me sitting at the table with other human beings is unthinkable, laughable really, I should be begging for you to throw me a bone-”   
  
“I don’t care where ya sit! I just wanted to sit next to my best bud Makoto, okay? So buzz off okay, without the lengthy monologue.”   
  
“Hm? Monologue? But I’m talking to you.”   
  
“No you’re not.”   
Kazucihi just wanted to reject everything about this guy. 

 

Kazuichi slammed his hand down next to Komaeda to try to shove him out of the seat. Komaeda, as usual, did not get it. He just pressed one of his snow white fingers to Kazuichi’s knuckle, and traced the outline of his hands. “You have such a lovely hand. So calloused, and covered in scratches, these are the hands of someone who have toiled hard to create his own hope.”  
  
“Hope just sounds nasty coming out of your mouth,” Kazuichi had to bite down hard on his tongue. It felt like a rash was slowly crawling up his arm from where Komaeda touched him. His skin was ruined, he needed to scratch it until it all peeled off. “Move it already!”   
  
Komaeda finally took the hint. Of course with Komaeda, he did not understand hints until after they were screamed in his face, and even then sometimes he never got it. When he politely tried to leave, suddenly another hand reached out and caught him by the fabric of his sleeve.   
  
“Nobody asked you to leave,” Makoto said. His voice was so inviting, so genuine, it made Komaeda freeze up for a moment, unable to process what the real thing looked like. He had no idea what it meant when somebody actually wanted him around. 

  
“I asked him to leave,” Kazuichi said.   
  
“He’s your classmate. Isn’t that enough of a reason to try to get along with him?”   
  
Kazuichi grinded his sharp teeth. Makoto was probably never bullied by a classmate in his life, perhaps it would have felt too much like bullying a puppy. “Jeez, are you sure you’re title isn’t the Super High School Level weenie, or something?”   
  
“Weenie,” Makoto’s head slumped forward. “That’s erm… not nice.”   
  
He really was sensitive. The kind of type that cared too much about what others thought. _Except it doesn’t turn him into a paranoid nutjob like me._

 

“Why are you so insistent on sitting next to him anyway? Even though he’s your so called best bud, you never spend any time around him. You just sit in your lab all day,” Komaeda said. 

 

  
“See, I knew you wanted to pick a fight with me.” _You’re the one who’s been picking a fight with him this whole time._

  
“No, I was praising you. You have such diligence and devotion to your talent, locking yourself away in your lab like that. It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist to you. Now I see why they say geniuses need to be inherently selfish people.” 

 

 _Itch. Itch. Itch._   
Kazuichi wanted to bite at his skin. He snapped his teeth. “I get it, you think a good for nothing. A gearhead that only likes machines because he can’t deal with people. Just say it already, I can’t take this passive aggressive crap anymore.” 

 

“I’m… sorry, I don’t know what you want me to say.” 

  
“Just don’t say anything,” Kazuichi knew that Komaeda had a fear buried deep down within him. That it was his fault that people treated him the way he did. That there was something inside of him deep down that just made people, “You make me sick.” 

 

 _If I really wanted nothing to do with him I’d just avoid him._ _  
_ _I’m going out of my way to say things to hurt him._ _  
_ _I’m so pathetic._ _  
_ _  
_ He hated him. He hated Komaeda Nagito.   
But in reality, there was something he hated even more.   
Deep in him. He hated, he really hated.   
He hated that coward.   
  
“Stop. Don’t just say anything you want because you know Komaeda-kun won’t fight back,” Makoto said standing between them.   
  
“Awww, shut it! Don’t start acting all cocky just because you have a super scary girlfriend.” Kazuichi knew if he had a girl that believed in him the same way Makoto had, he never would have turned into such a defective product. That was the only difference between them because…   
  
Kazuichi knew deep down he was just a normal guy.   
Nothing special.   
Nothing anybody would want. 

 

Mukuro finally looked up from her meal. “Yes, I’m his girlfriend.”   
  
“Eeeek! I got it, I’ll scram. Just don’t murder me.”   
  
After Kazucihi ran away, Mukuro simply tilted her head to the side. “Am I really that scary?”   
  
“Not to me,” Makoto said.   
  
“Well that’s because you’re the bravest, most handsome person I know.”   
  
“Th-there’s no way I’m either of those things. You just don’t know a lot of people,” Makoto turned his attention back to Komaeda, pulling his arm to guide him back into sitting down. “You should really eat, Komaeda-kun.”   
  
Komaeda’s plate was left almost completely untouched. The pills from this morning filled his stomach instead. 

  
“You’re so kind, Naegi-kun.”   
  
“You don’t have to always say that.” 

 

 _You don’t get it._ _  
_ _You’re everything I’m not._ _  
_ _That’s what makes you so kind._

 

🧸

 

Kaede still remembered.  
  
The piano room. Sunlight filtering in through the windows, giving everything a pale glow backlight. The feel of the keys gliding smooth underneath her fingertips. The room that smelled like flowers, just breathing in you felt flower petals settling down in your lungs. 

 

The bird in the cage. Chirping along as she played.   
Playing until silver moonlight shone through the window instead.   
Every time she won a competition her mother bought her a pot of flowers to decorate that room.   
That was why, that room became a private garden all to herself.   
Herself, and one other person who sat on the bench next to her. 

  
When she played for that person, she felt like she was playing for the whole world.   
When she played for an audience, it was like she was performing for one person in the seats.   
  
Perhaps it was never music that she loved, but listening to it with that person. The notes were just background noise, to the comfortable feeling she felt when she was with them. What she truly loved was that feeling inside of her that came from listening to music together. She just made a mistake in her association and thought that feeling belonged to music.   
  
When she was younger, there was one person always sat on the piano bench next to her.   
Then there wasn’t.   
Suddenly, flowers were no longer flowers. Sunlight was no longer bright and warm, but rather a glaring thing that got in her eyes. The sun glared at her, and the flowers laughed with the breeze.   
  
Her garden was gone, but she wasn’t.   
That was the hardest part. The piano bench always felt empty when it was just her sitting on it. That was why, she tried to fill up the empty air, the constant and crushing silence, with music. She used to play for one person, but now she played for everyone. It was not enough for one person to like her, she wanted to be liked by everyone.   
  
She could never once make that person smile, so it became her responsibility to make everyone else smile. That was how she became a pianist. That was how she became happy.   
  
That happiness always felt shallow to her.   
All she needed to look at the empty spot on the piano bench next to her and she remembered.   
No one would ever fill that seat again.   
Even if she were to fall in love in the future she could never give her heart to them, because her heart forever remained in that garden. That was why being liked by everyone, she was loved by no one.   
  
Kaede was always smiling but some part of her was always frozen in a melancholy past. Until she came to this school, cracks began to form inside of her, ice melted, and flowed out of her in cold tears. It all changed because of this school, the place where she nearly died, and the boy who almost killed her.   
  
Saihara Shuichi sat on the other side of her piano bench. They had been practicing all day, and because of that without even realizing he rested his head on the keyboard and suddenly fell asleep.   
  
Shuichi who was never comfortable around anyone, who did not trust people’s eyes, fell asleep around only her. She looked at the unguarded expression on his sleep as he drooled on the keyboard. She wished he could look relaxed like this all the time.

 

Shuichi was so kind, but he never smiled. He looked almost afraid to smile. 

 _Hey I don’t get it._ _  
_ _What’s this ‘happy’?_ _  
_ _And when was it ever mine?_

 

Kaede listened to the constant rhythmn of the metronome fill up the silence between them.  
She felt too far away from him.   
She took a step to close the distance.   
She saw herself playing piano, and her own shadow joining her for a duet.   
But then her shadow was cut off from her, severed.   
Two butterflies landed. They flexed their identical wings.   
They looked like two halves of a whole, like they were meant to fly together with four wings.   
But that was just wrong.   
One was a mimic.

A mother among butterflies.  
She gently brushed Shuichi’s cobalt hair away, wanting to see more of his face.   
Her fingers, callused and scarred from constant paino practice, touched smooth skin.   
She saw the butterfly and the moth landing on Shuichi’s lips.   
Kaede leaned in, not thinking of anything but the need to be closer.   
Envious of the butterflies that could tickle his lips with their wings.   
Butterflies long to kiss flowers, and so did she. 

If she ate them. If she bit the heads off their stems.   
Would she be filled with flowers again?   
  
Shuichi’s head moved in his sleep, smashing the piano keys.   
Kaede reared her head back startled by the noise.   
A girl stood in the door, watching her.   
  
“I knew you two used this room as a hookup spot. Heheheehehehe.” 

  
“Iruma, why don’t you keep your dirty thoughts in your filthy mouth?”   
  
“That’s not very nice girl of you.” Miu sneered. “You’re gonna ruin that sweet virgin girl image you got going for you.”   


_I’ve never been a nice girl._ Kaede decided to just ignore her, maybe then Miu would get the hint that it would be better for everyone if she just stopped talking. 

 

🧸

 

He knew he was acting stupid.   
The problem was never Komaeda. He did not even have it in him to hold a grudge against the guy. He did not want to. Those feelings would be too heavy for him.   
It was always just him.   
  
As soon as there was a tiny misalignment in the cogs, Kazuichi could not even function, all the others ones got mucked up, and those ones mucked up even more. And in the end, the cogs all came apart. All he could do was stare at the disassembled pieces in his hand, and try to rebuild again.   
  
That was the cycle of misery that belonged to an ill-fitting gear in the machine.   
_Clank. Clank. Clank._   


All he could do was continue to be grinded down, until he did not function at all. Then he would just be junk. Then he would be thrown away. No, he was junk to begin with, damaged, useless goods. If Komaeda was trash, then he was junk. That was why once he mistakenly thought they belonged together.   
  
Kazucihi sighed. All that came out of his mouth was exhaust, noxious fumes. “Somehow, I’m already losing confidence in myself.”   


“...”  
  
“...Well, it’s not like I had any confidence to begin with. Damnit why did this have to happen…? I wanna go home already.”   
  
“Hehehehehehe.”   
  
Kazuichi already know who was standing behind him. He went to the lab to calm down, and only one other person would go looking for him there. Kazuichi turned around to glance at Iruma, while something nasty appeared in his eyes. “Why do you always have to show up and make everything worse?”   
  
“The hell is that supposed to mean. It’s like you’re saying I make everything worse just by existing.”   
  
“Well you do.”   
  
Miu thought about it for a moment, making a face like she was chewing gum. Her bubblegum pink lips curled up. “Huh, I guess I do.” 

 

“What kind of person admits to that?” 

 

“Whatever virgin greasemonkey. How about you stop stinking up the place with your misery?” 

  
“Yeah, let me just hit the sadness off switch I have.”   
  
“I wish people had switches. It’d make dealing with them a lot easier,” Iruma crossed her arms. Kazuichi looked away from her chest. “People are just a pain in the ass you know, and not the good kind.”   
  
“And you’re the worst pain in my ass.”   
  
“Didn’t know you were into pegging.” 

  
“Stop that! You stop that right now! I’m not in the mood for your innuendos.” 

  
“Not in the mood, huh?”   
  
“You quit! Bad girl, bad!”   
  
“Now I’m getting worked up!”   
  
“Ugh….” Kazuichi groaned.   
  
“Really? I thought you were just as much of a horndog as I was.”   
  
“After meeting you I want to go live in the mountains as a monk and devote myself to god.”   
  
“I guess that is the best career choice for someone who’s going to remain a virgin for the rest of his life.” 

 

Kazuichi curled up even further into the corner of the lab he was hiding in, and brought his knees to his chest. He grinded his teeth again, but he knew nobody was scared by his appearance. He was more scared of looking himself in the mirror than other people were. He tried to act like a delinquint but nobody bought it, even for a second. “You should get a personality besides making shitty sex jokes.”  
  
“You should find something better to do than stalking Naegi all day.”   
  
“H-Hey, I don’t stalk him!”   
  
“I didn’t even know stalkers existed for friendship until I met you.” 

 

Kazuichi glared at her trying to make the most dangerous expression he could. He probably looked like nothing more than a kitten staring at her pretending to be a lion. “Hey, I thought your _pretty girl who gives no shits_ attitude was just an act. Well you don’t have to act around me, shouldn’t you be some kind of shy shrinking violet who only shows her cute side to me.” 

 

“Y-you think I’m pretty?”  
  
“That wasn’t the point of what I was saying at all.”   
  
“Well, I wanna act different around you but… I um…”   
  
“You just have no idea how to act around people in general don’t you?” 

  
“No fucking clue,” Miu said casually. 

  
Kazuichi wanted to cry all alone, but now he was getting dragged around by this girl again. The last thing he wanted was to get tangled up in all of the broken wires that made Iruma Miu’s brain function.   
  
Miu suddenly put a can of soda on the ground next to him. Kazuichi noticed it was his favorite kind, but he never told her that. She must have watched him getting it from the vending machine. The two of them despised each other, but they were always together. 

 

“What do you want?”  
  
Miu stuck her chest out, and Kazuichi averted his eyes again. “When you’re in a bad mood, laughing at someone else’s problems really cheers you up doesn’t it?”   
  
“You know how people say repression is bad and you should be true to yourself? Well, I think that doesn’t apply to you, please repress your awful personality a little more when you’re around me.”   
  
“Hey, go to hell.”   
  
“As long as you’re in the same room as me I’m already there.” 

  
Miu scowled, inviting herself to sit next to him. He would have told her to go away, but he already knew she was not going to listen. “Why are you so butthurt about Komaeda anyway? There’s being a wimp, and then there’s being afraid of some harmless little twink.”   
  
“He’s a harmful twink. He’s an attack twink. There’s nothing more dangerous than a twink like-” Kazuichi suddenly sputtered, and spat out. “WHAT THE HELL AM I EVEN SAYING?” 

 

“You’re a gross guy, senpai.”  
  
“I’m not gross. I just have poor hygeine, terrible manners, and no likability as a person,” Kazuichi wanted to pull his hat over his eyes again, but he stopped wearing that hat ever since he came to this school. He glared at Miu, but in an instant her haughty personality disappear, and she started to shiver.   
  
“H-hey, don’t look at me like that. W-with those cold eyes. You were all alone so I just wanted to… talk to you…”   
  
Kazuichi suddenly remembered what Miu had told him, and looked away. His whole neck went crooked as he tried to look anywhere else but at her. “Sorry, I forgot what you told me about how you don’t like men’s eyes.” 

 

“A-are you kidding me? Men are always licking up this body with their eyes. I can’t get enough of it.”  
  
“Sure, sure.” She was so fake, but then again so was he.   
  
“Why do you want to leave this place anyway? I mean a loser like you, no matter what school you ended up with you’d be unpopular right?”

 

“Hey, Iruma, if… if by chance… What if it’s impossible? What if only one person can ever escape from here? Would you kill me?” 

  
“What the hell kind of question is that!” Miu raised her hand to smack him, but when he noticed Kazuichi and his obvious flinch she stopped herself. “Th-thinking about that stuff, Jeez. There’s no boner killer worse than death.” 

 

“If you say _unless you’re into that sort of thing,_ I will kill you just to escape from this place and never have to hear one of your dumb inuendos again.”   
  
Miu suddenly squeaked in fright. “P-please, Please don’t!”   
  
“Can you really believe that nobody here will ever betray us?” 

 

“Umm, I dunno. I don’t do humans exactly. You try to disassemble them you just get a bunch of blood and messy organs everywhere. It’s gross.”   
  
“I don’t know much about humans either but… Humans are creatures that betray each other, y’know… I-if they aren’t then…”   
  
“Huh? Seriously what’s your deal? How could someone like Komaeda make you this upset? You don’t even like the guy. Nobody likes him. Seems stupid to hold a grudge against him. Did you get screwed over by his bad luck or something…”   
  
“No!”

Kazuichi saw Miu flinch again.   
They were both afraid of people. They were afraid of each other. Why did they keep forgetting?   
“I uhh… sorry. I know you don’t like it when men raise their voice around you. It’s just…”   


_I never once thought he was bad luck._

 

🧸

 

Miu was the last person he wanted to open up to, but somehow he ended up telling her. 

 

_I live burning up inside, scratching at the hives and the wounds I got._

 

“I was always a weak, cowardly kid.”  
  
“And now you’re a weak cowardly adult. They grow up so fast.”   
  
“Shut it! Back then all I ever did was study and tinkering with machines. So… I always believed that everyone who talked to me was a nice person.” 

 

When his mother left, his father smashed all pictures of her in their house above the garage. He no longer knew what his mother’s face was like, just that she had blonde hair. When his father refused to work, he blamed her over and over again. 

 

 _Every good man has a good woman behind it. It’s all that woman’s fault for running off, it’s why I turned into useless junk._   
  
Kazuichi knew from a young age that it was the other way around. His father was the junk. Mom left because she could not stand being around junk. Kazuichi however, as a child did not have the choice to leave his father behind. He wondered what would happen to him, growing up around only junk. He would become indistinguishable from the rest of the damaged goods in the junkyard.   
  
He knew his mother was left because his father was worthless. That was why since a young age, he was determined to be someone different than his father. If at least one person wanted him around, than he was different from that man. 

  
He wanted to be someone his mother would have stayed around for.   
  
That was why he thought anybody who spent time with him, who gave him any kind of attention at all was a nice person. He never kept friends for long with that attitude. They always got what they needed from him and left. Kazuichi blamed himself, for not being good enough to keep them around.   
  
It was impossible for him to run away from his father, so he tried running in several other ways. He wanted to be as different from him as possible, to prove that he was useless junk. That was why even though he was a no good idiot, he studied his final year of elementary school hard enough to make his head crack, and his brain fall out like egg yolk, and because of that he got into an elite middle school on scholarship.   
  
From the moment he entered Kazuichi knew he did not belong here.   
Everyone here was rich. They were different people than him, and his father, who were like dogs fighting over scraps.   
  
Back then his hair was not pink, and his teeth were not sharp.   
He had dark hair that he kept cut short and neatly combed, he wore glasses, and he wore a long sleeved uniform to hide his arms.   
  
He looked about as average middle schooler as you could get, except Kazuichi was aware of the fact that he was far below average.   
  
Nowadays he considered himself a confident, happy go lucky guy who got carried away sometimes, (the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves after all).   
Back then he was quiet, distant, and got startled by almost everything. He was the kind of kid who would shiver the whole way through a casual conversation. He could not even look anyone in the eye, even with his eyes hiding behind huge glasses.   
  
It was the winter of the first year of middle school that he made his first friend.   
The person he wanted to feel nothing about anymore.   
The person who he felt so much about, it destroyed and tore him apart inside. 

 

Everyone called him the reaper, and they avoided him.   
Kazuichi never once thought of him that way.   
Before he met him, Kazuichi closed his eyes every night praying that he would either die, or the world would end tomorrow. When he met him, he started thinking about tomorrow because it would mean getting to spend one more day with him.   
  
The moment you think you want to die, life starts to sparkle.   
The moment you think you want to live, death starts smelling sweet. 

From the first moment he saw him, strands of white hair brushing his cheeks as he smiled, life suddenly looked more beautiful just for having him in it.   
His one and only best friend, Komaeda Nagito.   
  
“Who…? Aaah! You’re the scholarship student! You introduced yourself to the class the first day, I recall thinking that you were a delicate looking person.”   


Hearing that from the white haired boy in front of him was a riot.   
That boy was like freshly fallen slow.   
He was a white wilderness.   
He was so quiet, like snow falling silently.   
He was a gossamer.   
His hair in long white strands, sewn up from spider’s silk.   
He was so pale, he was transluscent. 

Like a dream that would shatter around waking. 

A chill so cold skin became fragile and breakable.  
The room filled with white.   
  
That was his presence.   
Komaeda Nagito, looked like the word delicate existed to describe him. 

 

That day, Komaeda noticed him, and thus he would become Komaeda’s first “friend.” 

 

Komaeda reached forward and tugged at Kazuichi’s sleeve. It was not that Kazuichi did not want to talk, he just could not think of what to say. Like nothing at all, Komaeda tugged him a little closer.   
  
At that moment Kazuichi thought if he got trapped there by Komaeda’s eyes, like a spider trapped in a web, then that would be fine with him. “Hm, you’re so quiet. Well, I guess I could understand not wanting to talk to a person like me.”   
  
“Um, no I… I don’t know what to say.” 

 

“Oh, me too. Not that we’re alike in any way. A hardworking scholarship student is too different from a lazy rich boy like me who did nothing to earn his money.” 

 

“Uh-Um… A guy like me isn't worth looking at. So you don’t need to befriend me as a pity case or anything-”   
  
Nobody ever talked to him at this school. He was not bullied, so much as he was ignored. That was somehow worse to him, because at least if people insulted him and threw things at him in the hallways they would be acknowledging his existence.   
  
“No, it’s not like that. I was just… watching you. I just noticed, you always wear long sleeves, even in summer Kazuichi-kun.” He reached out one of the delicate, deathly fingers and pulled down Kazuichi’s sleeves to see the terrible marks and welts that were covering his upper arm. “Ah, as I thought, I’m so sorry.”   
  
Nobody else noticed his pain before that. Nobody even went so far as noticing him.   
As he sensed Komaeda touch his skin through his close, he felt a tension akin to being pierced by needles.   
  
But for the first time, Kazuichi did not want that sensation to go away.   
  
“How come you always stay so late after school Kazuichi-kun?”   
  


“I… I just have to study three times as hard as everybody else here so I spend all my time in the library.”   
  
“You’re a bad liar.”   
  
“I don’t want to go home.”   
  
That shop was all he had and yet he would take any excuse to spend as much time away from it as possible. When komaeda looked at him then, his eyes were like a gentle hand caressing him. 

 

On a whim, Komaeda invited him to come over to his house. _I don’t have any friends to hang out with either._ He always changed his mind easily back then. When he followed Komaeda he was led to a huge white house, covered in dust, like nobody had lived in that place in a long time.   
  
There were white covers hanging off of the furniture, and the curtains on the windows were always drawn letting no light in at all. At the time Kazuichi remembered thinking that such a place was perfect for Komaeda.   
  
With that huge house all to themselves the two of them played together like they never got to when they were children. Kazuichi felt worried when he played hide and seek and almost did not find Komaeda, and Komaeda reassured him it was just because his existence was so hard to notice. When they played tag, Komaeda ran until he collapsed, and he had to assure Kazuichi again that he was fine just not used to running around this much.   
  
Kazuichi found it impossible to believe someone like Komaeda, who was always smiling, had no friends at school. At first he believed it was because he was a sickly kid who was always absent. 

  
When they were alone outside in the snow, watching it fall with nothing to keep them warm from the cold because that was what stupid kids were supposed to do together Komaeda told him why. 

  
“I can’t believe people are always saying bad things about you. If they really got to know you they’d-”   
  
“It’s entirely my fault that people dislike me, Kazuichi-kun.” Komaeda cut him off, his voice dropping as fast as his body temperature. “I’m just a coward. They’re not scared of me, I’m scared of them.”   
  
“Wh-wha? No way, you came right up to me and talked to me like it was nothing.”

  
  
“It wasn’t for a good reason. I was looking down on you really. From the first time I saw you, I thought you were a coward too, and then I thought… we might get along.”   
  
“Man, that’s cold! You’re a nice guy but you have no idea how to talk,” Kazuichi looked at Komaeda’s hands for a moment, and then folded his own. “Well, if it means I got to meet you I don’t mind being a coward.”   
  
“Of course there’s no comparing the two of us. I could never expect someone as hardworking and sensitive as Kazuichi-kun to understand me. We’re simply too different but…” Komaeda looked up at the snow that fell around them like stars. Gray clouds blotted out the night sky, but the two of them did not need a night sky in that moment as long as they were together. 

 

“Then, why did you approach me? Why invite me over?”  
  
“Hahahahaha! It’s just because I don’t have any friends.” Komaeda curled his body up, as if trying to hold onto a little bit of warmth. “Perhaps, I thought you could understand me a little. Just a little bit is enough.” 

 

They talked a lot about nothing at all.   
“ _Why do you like girls so much?”_ _  
_ _“I mean, it’s not like I’m a playboy or anything.”_ _  
_ _“Obviously not because you’re not popular at all.”_ _  
_ _“I just wanted… to one day have a family and a house like this. My dad never gave me one so I’ve gotta find one on my own.”_ _  
_ _“Ah, no wonder you’re so desperate.”_ _  
_ _“I’m not desperate!”_ _  
_ _“Kazuichi-kun is a lady killer who just wants to find love and settle down.”_ _  
_ _“I’m the farthest thing from a ladykiller!”_ _  
_ _“That’s right girls don’t like you, do they?”_

  
Ever since that day, he started spending days late at Komaeda’s empty house.   
His first friend was so fun.   
Komaeda had no parents, for Kazuichi a big house, with no father in it was like a dream. His heart was touched by that boy’s pale grip. He slowly, slowly let himself get spoiled, but it made him even more of a coward.   


From the way they acted in the future, it was obvious they never understood each other, not even a little bit.   
  
After that Kazuichi just wanted to let go of those feelings.   
Let go.   
Stop scratching at a wound that would never heal. 

The entire first year of their time together at Hope’s Peak, Komaeda treated him like a stranger.   
It was cold, but Kazuichi thought that was the right thing to do.   
Just as much as he wanted to let go of him, he wanted Komaeda to let go too.   
He hoped what happened between them did not cause any pain in that boy’s chest.   
Kazuichi tried to leave him every chance he got, and yet it was like he was waiting…   
Waiting…   
Waiting for the day Komaeda would look at him again.   
When Komaeda would notice him, like the first time they met.   
Then, that day came.   
  
Komaeda pulled him in like the distance between them for two years was nothing, and whispered into his ear intimately. “You like blonde girls right, Kazu-kun? There’s a girl I’ve really wanted you to meet.”   
  
And Kazuichi knew, the Komaeda he once knew was never coming back to him.   
His eyes were different.

So gray they were almost black. 

The green eyes that once shone brightly only for him lost their color, and the world seemed to lose color too. He still did not realize then for someone like Komaeda the world had been a washed out gray the entire time, like colors never even existed for him. The colors that he saw back in those days must have been something that Kazuichi saw alone. 

 

Kazuichi stared into those eyes. 

 _I’m seeing. I’m seeing. I’m seeing._ _  
_ _Nothingness._ _  
_ _Komaeda’s too blurry, he’s going to disappear._   
  
“He’s not really a bad guy once you get to know him. I’m the problem… cuz I’m… still a coward.” 

 

He was scared that there was nobody in this world worth believing.   
Komaeda was a friend to him, but only in name.   
The two of them could never be the same.   
That was why Kazuichi had just been an unnecssary thorn in his side.   
  
Kazuichi’s eyes welled with pain. He was so sick and tired of trying to get broken machinery to work. It never ended, even if he fixed it, it would just break again. _I guess you can’t make the hurting end._

  


Miu listened to his sad story, all of it. At the end she did not laugh like she promised to. “Hey, there’s no reason to get all depressed. There’s a girl you love waiting outside this school right? You’re going to make it out of here and then win her heart.” 

“Lady Sonia doesn’t even like me. Nobody does,” All it took was for one cog to fall out of place, then the whole machine was broken. “I must have looked so pathetic chasing after her.” _  
_ **  
** “What’s the big deal? Don’t get embarrassed. If she’s important to you make her yours.”   
  
“Yeah, let me just win her heart with no money, no prospects for the future, no social skills, and a terrible personality.”

 

Miu suddenly pushed him over, Kazuichi did not even have time to scream in surprise like he usually did. For a moment he thought she was just fed up with his moping around. Then she got closer, crawled over him.

 

She dove into his confusion, and messed up emotions. She looked like she wanted to dive headfirst into him. To let their bodies mix like colored paints. She stumbled around him, like she was in the dark.   
  
He looked into her eyes, searching for something, perhaps the right words to describe whatever it was that he felt right now. This sudden tide of emotions. The rushing water he had suddenly been thrown into, threatening to drown him. 

  
Her smile.   
His tears.   
The pain he held in his heart.   
Her want to comfort him.   
  
It was such a lonely thing, protecting a breakable heart.   
If he gave into this moment, if he just melted.

Would that feeling go away?   
  
Her hand spread flat on his chest, and he tensed. He was being touched and he felt no itch at all. He looked forward not comprehending, like a man who spent his whole life staring at shadows in a cave.   
  
Ah, he understood now.   
He didn’t want to love.   
He wanted to be loved.   
That was entirely different.   
  
“If blonde girls are your type then shouldn’t I be fine? Just close your eyes and pretend it’s her. You can use me as practice, to build confidence.”   
  
“I thought you hated me.”   
  
“I just want you to be happy.”   
  
“What’s brought this on?” Kazuichi felt tangled up in wires just being around this girl. Now they were sparking, and a fire was about to start. He ignored the feeling that he would not half mind burning up in her.   
  
“I’m always completely honest with my feelings. I never lie. You don’t trust me?”   
  
“It’s not that, but…”   
  
“It’s for your own good.”   
  
“But… you’re… that’s… wrong…”   
  
“So what? When everything around you is impure… you’ll have to become impure as well. The only way to get what you want is to lose your purity.” 

“To get what I want,” He felt like he was completely helpless to the chemicals roaring in his brain. He saw it, being somebody wanted, being somebody important, she was right, it did not have to be Sonia. Sonia was just the name he gave to this feeling.   
  
He just wanted one place to feel comfortable in this world, a place that belonged to him.   
And he mistook that feeling for a person belonging to him instead. 

Kazuichi suddenly pushed her off of him. It was better to stay a virgin forever than become the kind of scum that takes advantage of her. “W-we can’t.”   
  
He said, hugging himself the way Komaeda used to.   
If only people could embrace themselves, love themselves.   
But that seemed impossible to someone like him.   
  
“We’re not even friends yet. We won't be able to be friends this way.” 

“I thought you hated me,” Miu said, mirroring him.   
  
“I never wanted to hate you.”   
  
“...Huh?”   
  
“And I never want you to hate me.”   



	56. Flowers Without Sunlight

Young children neglected by their parents are forced to grow up like flowers without sunlight.

Kokichi Ouma flourished in the dark.  
He was a flower that bloomed only at night.  
  
He did not look in the mirror before he went to bed, because mirrors always lied. Kokichi loved lies, but he hated being lied to, he was fussy like that. When he slept, his hair like wet crow feathers fell over his glossy skin. The way his skin reflected the moon, was like he was intentionally designed by whatever omnipotent toymaker that crafted him to be a nocturnal creature.  
  
He belonged to the night.  
If he lied and told someone that he was actually a child from the victorian era that had been bitten and turned into a vampire and lived for centuries in this small body they might believe him. Of course, Kokichi really did wish to stop the aging process but the reason for his short body and boyish looks was not supernatural, but rather plain old fashioned malnutrition. 

  
He was raised without sunlight, water and warmth after all. 

 

He lay in the bed in his undershirt and polka dot pajama pants that made him look like a clown, holding a horse head pillow to his chest that he called Mr. Neigh Neigh. Despite that he did not sleep, even if he wanted to paranoia would keep him up all night.  
  
He knew that night time was when most murders would occur.  
The reason he lied was because he did not trust anybody.  
He lied to himself because he trusted himself the least.  


He planted seeds with dishonesty. He buried them deep within his heart. And pain grew up from his heart, like a vine crawling out of the aorta and wrapping itself around one of his major arteries. That was how he lived. That was how he would die one day.  
  
He was not unaware of the possibility. After all, someone who told only lies would have no one ot trust in the end when they needed it the most. When Kokichi thought of that, a life of playing games, easily breakable connections, and empty amusement he smiled. _At least it won’t be a boring life._ If he could go out with a smile that was enough for him.  
  
He wasn’t looking to make friends really. His smile was an empty hole in his face that could accept anything. He could accept people and all of their ugliness, like a windsock without a bottom, like a sieve that everything poured out of but he could not become their friends. He really liked to play around with them but eventually he would have to pick up his toys and go home to be alone. 

  
He knew that if he let them touch him, he would break. His skin was thinner, more fragile, than human skin should be. 

The warmth that other people craved would only burn him.  
  
He belonged slithering on the ground hunting rats, and swallowing them whole down his throat, not in the sunlit garden. 

  
At that moment the door opened a crack. Kokichi flinched, annoyed by the glare of light shining in his eyes.  
  
“Yo! The hell are you doing lazybones? We were going to meet up tonight.”  
  
Kaito’s voice came through the door, thundering as normal. He wondered why Kaito of all people sounded so loud to him, his voice took up the whole sky.  
  
“No, you decided on your own the three of us were going to start meeting up at night. I don’t remember ever agreeing to it.”  
  
“We gotta train man, how are we going to defeat the villains?”  
  
“I am the villain.”  
  
Since he was young, Kokichi had always been good enough at predicting the actions of other people. He refused to trust them, not because he did not know people, but that he knew them too well.  
  
At this moment Kokichi predicted that Kaito was going to ignore Kokichi and just barge in.  
Kaito kicked open the door.

Human beings were so fundamentally disappointing. Kaito was special, because he had a prodigious talent for being a disappointment.  
  
Maki wore a nightgown and Kaito walked around in nothing more than his slippers and his red hot boxer, his slippers, and that coat he never took off. Kokichi did not know which of them looked stupid, Maki for thinking she could dress herself up as a cute girl even though she was a murderer, or Kaito for looking like that in public.  
  
“You’re the Ultimate Leader right, so you gotta lead us.”  
  
“I’d never employ such incompetent minions.”  
  
“Well, I know I’m hopeless but Maki’s not incompenet.” Kokichi looked back to see Maki standing behind him her arms crossed as usual.  
  
“I’d never work with a killer,” Instead of a pleasant lie he told a nasty truth. 

  
“Ehhhh? But you said you were a villain.” 

 

 _Does he just want to play villain as a game? Well, not like I’m any different. But it’s cooler when I do it._ “I’m the Ultimate Villain. Dying is way too easy, living is far more painful than that, especially if torture is involved. I want my enemies to suffer as much as possible.” 

“What kind of torture?” 

  
“Well, I’d make them eat a plate full of vegetables and then while they’re suffering through that I would eat candy right in front of them.” 

  
“Oh, oh, or you could give them a bunch of food and make them go on a rollercoaster. Wait, would your evil lair have roller coasters?”  
  
“What kind of evil lair wouldn’t have a roller coaster! See, this is why I can’t work with you, this is ameteur hour! Never trust a hero with a villain’s job,” Kokichi said, fussing as he sat up in bed and batted Kaito away. It took him a moment to realize that the two of them sounded like two children playing a game of make believe.  
  
He wanted to remain a child forever, but nostalgia was just a bitter nausea that turned his stomach. He did not want to think of the past, and he like any kid was scared of the future. Not because the future was unknown, but rather he already knew what was going to happen to a fragile person like him one day. The future was boring.  
  
He just wanted to exist in this moment.  
This annoying moment.  
  
Kaito shook him in bed. “Come on, you weren’t lying when you said we’d work together were ya?”

  
“There’s no way I’d lie to you.”  
  
“Huh, really?” 

 

“You’re so stupid that you just believe everything I say. It’s a waste of a perfectly good lie. My lies are like fine cuisine and you are someone who’s just shoved mcdonalds in his face his entire life.” 

  
“What’s wrong with believing in someone anyway?”

  
“It’s not like you want to believe in someone. You just want someone to believe in you. Anyone would do, I don’t see why you’re bothering me,” Kokichi was a tad too tired for his usual hyper energetic antics, he blamed that on the insomnia. After a healthy breakfast of a pile of candy he would have his energy back. “If you want someone to believe in you, you should tell more convincing lies.” 

  
  


Kokichi decided to be mean, to make this person, this person who crashed into his life, and suddenly wanted to pull everything into his orbit, this loud, meteoric, impossible to ignore existence to go away.  
  
“Besides, the lies that connected the three of us are gone,” Kokichi decided to target Maki instead because Kaito was too stubborn. “Harukawa-chan, I’m surprised you agreed to be all alone at night with a boy. Well, I guess you’ve been following Momota-chan around like his shadow lately.” 

 

“You’ve got it wrong, that guy just wouldn’t stop following me around until I caved.”  
  
“If he annoys you so much you could just kill him. That’s what murderers do, don’t they?” 

 

“You’re right, how about I start off by cutting out your tongue.” 

  
“That’s no good! If you cut out my tongue, I wouldn’t be able to taste candy anymore. Can you imagine the despair of a life without sugary over-carbonated beverages? What am I supposed to do, kill myself by slowly starving to death!”  
  
“There’s other food besides candy man…” Kaito said, he had been on a strict diet for two years after all.  
  
“Yeah, that’s the idea,” Maki did not bother to hide her hostility at all.  
  
Kaito suddenly got a look in his eyes that filled Kokichi with regret. No idea that popped up in his head was going to be a good one. Kokichi talked about torture, but he could not imagine no worse torture than Kaito’s constant talk about friendship, and trust. 

 

 _My inability to trust anyone is going to get me killed one day._ _  
_ _And his want to trust everyone is going to get him killed too._ _  
_ _You’re the last person I want to commit double suicide with._  
  
“Then, let’s just have a slumber party! Since you don’t want to leave your room,” Kaito said, dragging Maki along as she tried to escape.  
  
“There’s no way I can have a slumber party with Maki, do you know how deadly those are? She could strangle me with the cord of her hairdryer while she’s styling my hair. She could poison me with toxic nailpolish remover after she’s finished giving me manicures. When she’s playing truth or dare she could just tell me _I dare you… to die_ and then I wouldn’t have a choice because I’ve never turned down a dare.” 

 

“You could just pick truth.”  
  
“Do you even know who I am? Do you? Are you talking to a stranger right now?” Kokichi took offense to that.  
  
Kaitos scratched at his gravity defying spiky hair. He was definitely out of this world. His brain had left him a long time ago and was currently somewhere up in orbit. Kokichi did not need to deal with someone whose head was in the stars. “You shouldn’t call Maki a murderer, that’s rude. You’ll hurt her feelings. She’s just a girl you know.”  
  
“I don’t have any feelings.”  
“She doesn’t have any feelings.”  
  
Kokichi and Maki said at the same time.  
  
“I know you’re the kind of guy whose blood to his brain stops whenever he’s in front of a girl-”  
  
“Eh, where else would my blood go?” 

  
“The organ you’re currently thinking with right now.”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about man,” Kaito said, before Maki hit him in the side for his obliviousness.  
  
“Why am I wasting all of my good material on you. You don’t even deserve my clownery.” Kokichi sat up to glare at her. The reaper that followed in Kaito’s shadow, the death he wanted to embrace because he was just too reckless. Oddly, she smelled like flowers. “She can’t go back to being a normal girl, the moment she killed someone she stopped being a girl.”

  
No Longer Human.  
But, Kokichi was sure Kaito never read that book. In fact he was pretty sure Kaito could not read.  
  
“I know you’re just saying that so we’ll leave you alone but you’re going too far.”  
  
“I would never lie to you, Momota-chan. It would just break my heart to lie to such a pure and innocent soul as yourself. Everything I say around you is one hundred percent the truth. So don’t you get it now? Lies are beautiful words like I love you. Truths are honest words like I hate you.”  
  
“Look, if you I pissed you off let’s just fight and get it over with.”

  


 

“No, you’ll just make me cry. You big bully. You brute. I thought you wanted to protect the weak, but here you are picking on someone like me. I’m a peace loving soul whose never harmed anybody in his life. I’m just a victim who everybody walks over over and over again and whose always crying, and you’re going to add to my pain?” 

  
“What the hell’s your problem!” Kaito said, raising his voice. “I get it you hate me, you’ve always hated me from the start. Is there a reason you have to keep holding onto a grudge or are you just being a petty little brat?” 

 

 _I’ve hated you from the start._ _  
_ _I’ve held onto these feelings for so long._ _  
_ _Like a grudge I can’t let go of._ _  
_ _It’s something like that yes…_ _  
_ _These feelings that only hurt me._

 _If only I could close my eyes, lie to myself, and make them go away._  
  
“I’m a little baby! The baby needs his nap, so go away!” Kaito gave up. Watching Kaito’s strong shoulders drop like that, affected him in a way he wished it would not. He rolled over in his bed restlessly and shut his eyes to forget they were ever there.  
  
“I’m so tired…”  
  
Tired of lies, tired of the truth, tired of everything. Yet a nocturnal creature like him could not sleep. He hoped tomorrow morning he would still look cute with bags under his eyes. Everybody else might mistake a scruffy rascal like him for a raccoon. 

  
He respected raccoons, because he knew what it was like to steal from garbage in order to survive the next night. To be chased away by people who would not even give you the garbage they had thrown away, because people were just awful. 

 

🧸

 

In the end Kokichi did not sleep, just like he predicted. Kaito should know better than to spend the whole night with Maki, a girl like that could kill him any time. She would do it too. As far as Kokichi was concerned the moment you killed someone your life was over. If you truly felt sorry about it, you would take your own life. Anybody else who chose to keep living after that, their guilt, their atonement, it was just an excuse. Living itself became an excuse. 

Kokichi stumbled out of bed. They were much more annoying to him dead than they were alive, that was how he made the decision to go looking for them in the middle of the night, Only the delinquints and hoodlums would be up at this hour anyway. Lowlife scum that were up to no good. _My kind of people._

 

Maki was the easiest to find. Kokichi was surprised for a moment to see her alone, he assumed that when Kaito and Maki were out of his view they were always together. Not that he cared about what they did behind closed doors. 

 

Her red eyes glowed in the low light. They looked like a pair of shiny apples.  
Kokichi smiled to himself thinking.  
_Those apples shining red. So sweet and so intense._ _  
_ _They’re even more delicious locked in prison lying dead._  
  
Maki stood face to face with Mukuro, another killer. Kokichi almost liked Maki better because at least she was honest about how much she hated other people. The only good thing Maki ever did was push people away and refuse to let them get close, if murderers had a drop of kindness in their heart than that was Maki’s spider’s thread. 

 

Mukuro still tried to get close to people, even knowing what she was. She was a stray dog, stretching her filthy legs. And strays always bite. They bite to their delight. Kokichi knew that, because his arms underneath his white jacket were full of the marks left by those loving bites.  
  
Suddenly, a fight between the two of them began. They had no access to weapons and only used their bare hands. Kokichi felt like he should intervene otherwise someone might die, but instead he just watched the dog fight.  
  
Mukuro’s quiet nature, her timidity, did not even leave her while she was fighting. She looked like she was holding something back. Which was why, almost as quickly as it began the fight ended with Mukuro threw over shoulder and her back hitting hard against the ground.  
  
For a moment Kokichi wished her skull would crack open and one less murderer could exist. But, wishing she would die was no better. It was not like he wanted to hate people, people were fun and interesting, the world would be boring without them.  
  
He just spent his life picking through garbage to eat rotten fruit. He came into contact with death far younger than anybody else did. He saw corpses starved in the alleyways where he slept. Easily preventable deaths, if just one person cared about their lives they could have lived one more day. But nobody did.  
  


 

Going for days without proper food, filling his empty stomach with weeds because he could not find any flowers to chew on. Waking up to find that he was sleeping next to a corpse. 

Sleeping on the hard ground of the alley, feeling the cold as his only constant companion, being beaten by an adult he could no longer stand. 

 

Kokichi already knew that life was utterly worthless.  
That was why he wanted to lie to himself, to tell himself a beautiful lie that life had value. He would protect that lie with everything he had, he would even be willing to die for it.  
  
He was once a child who never showed any emotion on his face. Even if he was stepped on, even if he was kicked, even if they threw trash at him, just because he asked for food. 

 

That was how he good so good at lying.  
He just did not want anybody to see his pain. He did not want them to know what a weak creature he was, like a dog waiting to die a death in the alley.  
So he pretended to be a devil’s child without a heart.  
Being heartless was better than being heartbroken.  
A fake smile was better than a broken smile.  
  
“What is this a joke?”  
  
“Umm, I’m not good at telling jokes. My sister… no, her jokes are even worse than mine.” 

 

Mukuro looked scared of Maki. For a moment even Kokichi sympathized with her. Nightmares are just other people. Staying away means staying awake. Being alone brought him closer to peace. That was why he never slept.  
  
“All the people that you killed to make it this far, you’re just laughing at them.”  
  
“N-no, no I’m not. I don’t even laugh that much anyway.” 

 

“You weren’t fighting me seriously with the intent to kill. You think you’re so good don’t you? You think you’ve become a kind person now,” Maki  put her foot on Mukuro’s stomach. Kokichi could tell she had no intent to kill, just to make it hurt. “Redemption and atonement is just something people seek for themselves. Like your victims give a damn if you no longer kill people, they’re already dead.”  
  
“I know that I won’t be forgiven but…”  
  
“Then why are you still alive?” Maki screamed as she twisted her foot further. “At least I know I’m inhuman. I’m just a thing that people just point at and tell to kill other people. You keep playing at being a normal girl, playing house with your little fake family.” 

 

“Yeah, you’re right.You’re so kind that its okay if everyone hates you, because you won’t hurt them that way.” Mukuo said, as her stomach twisted inside of her. “I’m terrible, I… I still want people to like me.” 

  
“Why did you even come out here if you weren’t going to fight me seriously? Do you like being kicked around like this you sick freak.”

 

“It’s fine if you hate me, but I was worried that… you might hate yourself Maki. That was why I wanted to try to get along with you.” _Even though you’re scary._ Mukuro did not say that par.

 

“You…” Maki lifted her foot. “You really do think you’re better than me.”  
  
Maki laughed.  
It was a hollow, and painful sounding kind of laugh. Kokichi thought he prefered her scowl to her smile.  
  
He would never get along with Maki because she was a murderer, but if he could get past that they would probably fit together naturally. They both hated murderers. Kokichi thought he would never have anything in common with another human being, but really the only people he ever related to were crooks and fiends.  
  
“Just because you have someone to cling onto! That doesn’t make you better than me!” Maki was no longer fighting, she was just trying to stomp out that thing in front of her. It was a one sided beatdown. Mukuro did not even fight back because she believed she deserved it. “Just because some boy likes you!”  
  
“That’s a funny joke, Harukawa-chan. What a good performance.” Kokichi finally made his presence known with an applause. “I mean isn’t it just hilariuos? You’re saying that Ikusaba-chan just has someone to cling to, but haven’t you been clinging to Momota-chan all this time?” 

 

“That guy’s just pushy.”  
  
“You pretend you’re getting dragged into it, because you don’t want to admit. _How much you enjoy it when he says you’re a normal girl._ ” Kokichi’s tongue flickered back and forth and finally he let it hang out of his mouth, to show his disgust for Maki. “Nishishishishshshsh…” He looked like a rat but that was just a lie. He was the one who devoured rats. “Momota-chan’s a really big liar huh? He’s an even worse liar than me. But, here you are falling for his lies.”  
  
People did not fall in love, they just fell for lies. Maki raised her hostile gaze, and clearly saw blood red when she looked at Kokichi. “Not worth it. Even if I killed you it probably wouldn’t shut you up.”  
  
“That’s right. I’m so scared to die that I hope I can become a spooky ghost, or maybe one of them dancing skeletons with jangly bones. Actually my bones are already pretty jangly, it’s hard being this small and cute. My body wasn’t made to handle this much cuteness.”  
  
He took so much damage, from the elements, from sleeping on hard floors, from starvation that sometimes his body squeaked. He felt like he was getting chewed up by rats from the inside out. That kind of mind numbing, constant, pain. He never took any medicine of course, just sugar. 

 

After Maki left, Mukuro spoke up behind him. “Thank you… Um…”  
  
“Oh, I wasn’t trying to help you. I was just hoping if I provoked Maki enough you two would kill each other. That’s the best ending, right?” Kokichi turned his head around like he was some kind of haunted doll. “Hey, do you still hear them?”  
  
“Them…?”  
  
“The voices of everyone you killed. What do they say? Do they tell you the terrible person who you are? No, I bet they’re still crying and screaming, begging you not to kill them.”  
  
“V-voices, I don’t hear…”  
  
“Then you really don’t give a damn, huh? Wow, I wish I could be that heartless and uncaring of a person. I’m really envious of you, I bet you forget the face of every person you could ever hurt. There’s just no way you could kill otherwise, huh?”  
  
“N-no, I don’t forget.”  
  
“You just forgive yourself and go on living.”  
  
“I don’t want to live like that-”  
  
“So you want to die? If you wanted to die so badly why not kill yourself before you killed all those people. Did you enjoy it? Did you smile?”  
  
“I didn’t enjoy it. I never smiled.”  
  
“Oh, then I’m sure they’re happy to know that their killer didn’t even have fun killing them. Oh? What’s wrong Ikusaba-chan you stopped talking to me? What’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong? Hey, what’s wrong? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey!”

  
“I don’t know what you want. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to talk to you. I’m not good with talking, so um… sorry.”  
  
“Hey, will you stop it with your crappy lies.  
  
“Everything you say is total BS. You don’t give two shits about Maki. You just want to prove to yourself that you’re a good person. _Oh no, poor Maki! Please don’t hate yourself!_ C’mon, really? If you really wanted to die you’d just kill yourself, if you really wanted atonement you’d try for that. You’re just looking for an excuse to punish yourself over and over again.”  
  
Kokichi smiled revealing his venom laced fangs. “It’s just self satisfaction. It’s so stupid. I can’t even laugh at you.” 

 

『Eh? Eh? Eh? Is somebody having a laugh without me? The one they call prince of all fools.』  
  
“Nobody calls you that Misogi-chan,” Mukuro said behind him.  
  
Kumagawa stepped out so suddenly that Kokichi almost jumped back. He thought he belonged to the night, but Kumagawa was made up out of the night itself, he was all darkness with two stars for eyes, and his smile a pale shadow of the moon.  
  
“You were watching the entire time, and now you want to stick up for her and play big brother.” 

 

『Earlier that was just Mukuro-chan rough housing with her friends, but this, this kind of bullying should never be printed in the pages of shonen jump.』  
  
“I thought you said no murderer can be forgiven. Are you going to say that was a lie, because that’s totally my thing, and nobody will like you when you do it. It’s way cooler when I do it.” 

 

『Yepyep, I said that.』

  
“Oh, I get it. You just said that in front of everybody to make them stop condemning her and condemn you instead. You really like to play pretend don’t you? Come on, let’s keep playing! I’ve always wanted somebody to play with ever since I was a kid. You be the hero, and I’ll be the big mean nasty villain.” 

 

『That’s a terrible thing to say, me as a hero. Playing with you doesn’t sound fun.』  
  
“Awe. Why did you say that? You just said that because you hate me right? You hate me? You hate me? How could you ever hate this cute face? You hate liars don’t you?” 

 

『Nope. I love liars and crooks. You’re just too honest for me Kokichi. I don’t think you’ve ever lied to me, not even once.』

 

Kokichi looked at Kumagawa’s face. His smile - broken, like somebody he was missing a few teeth and something else. It was the exact kind of expression that Kokichi was terrified of making.  
  
“Huh? You’re kidding right?” 

 

『Rude! I’m always serious!  I just think you’re a hypocrite and not the fun kind. I mean, Kokichi-chan you say all that stuff about murderers because you know you could become someone so easily right?』  
  
“...”

 

『You said I don’t want to be among mad people. You said I don’t want to be among murderers. But we’re all murderers aren’t we? Everyone can become a killer, that's why I just hate everybody!』Kumagawa pulled out a revolver, that he had stolen from Komaeda and Junko just a few days ago. 『You’re lacking as a villain, Kokichi-chan you just need a little motivation.』

 

Kokichi suddenly rushed forward and then dove underneath Kumagawa’s feet forcing him to jump up. When he landed Kokichi sprung up behind him, catching his wrist and jerking the hand that held the revolver backwards. 

  
“You really are a showoff, Kumagawa-chan. I’m almost jealous. I wished I looked as cool as you did right now,” Kokichi said mockingly from behind. 

 

『Kokichi-chan embraced me, I’m so happy.』Kumagawa suddenly craned his neck around like it was broken, and then dragged his tongue across Kokichi’s cheek. It was nothing more than a childish prank. 『Hey, hey, here’s my little secret. I killed Kaiki-kun. I beat him over the head over and over and over and over again with a crowbar. His brains were so beautiful as they spilled out. A rib punctured his lung, and he had to twist his broken body to cough up blood. He didn’t even care that I was killing him, to the last moment he said, _please help Kokichi-chan, please take care of him, please trust him._ 』  
  
Kokichi did not want to know what face he was making at the moment. If he could he would bury it in Kumagawa’s shirt. Whether he was crying, or laughing at what Kumagawa just said, he did not want anyone in the whole world to see. But Kumagawa saw him, and that's why he hated Kumagawa’s eyes so much he wanted to pluck them out, because he always felt seen in those eyes.  
  
『That’s why to keep my promise to him, I’m going to be a good senpai to you and teach your right. Ahahahaahahaahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!』  
  


Kokichi could not stand hearing his laughter from so close. The vibrations of his laughter sounded underneath his skin, it echoed in his ears, he never knew laughter could sound so horrible. It was like a horrible screaming, a noise that bubbled and boiled out of his mouth. A boy who seemed so empty, who looked like he had no feelings at all, laughed like that.  
  
Kokichi just needed to get away from that noise. He struck Kumagawa in the stomach, and threw him over. “I’m an idiot for thinking I could ever understand you. Even among thieves and criminals, you’re another level of insane.” 

 

 _Are you seriously one to talk?_  


Kokichi’s hands moved on his own, as he punched Kumagawa’s face over and over again. The two of them looked like a pair of boys fighting, and yet his knuckles were already becoming drenched in Kumagawa’s blood.  
  
He just wanted to break the smile off of Kumagawa’s face. “You’re insane.”  
  
Kokichi unleashed his pent up feelings like he was exploding. He opened his mouth like nothing more than the dog he accused Mukuro of being. He wanted to destroy what was in front of him. Kumagawa opened his mouth, and Kokichi put his arm in. He pushed Kumagawa’s head back against the concrete and pushed further and further, hoping to crack his jaw open.  
  
His nerves went haywire from the pain of being bitten by Kumagawa. It felt like the bones of his arms would be crushed. He could not resist. He could not think properly, he was left screaming… well normally that would happen.  
  
But Kokichi did not feel any pain in that moment.  
The lack of pain he was feeling only made him want to hurt the person in front of him more. He swung his right arm up. He swung his right arm down, pounding in Kumagawa’s jaw. His brain was destroyed. However, destroying the brain does not cause a life form to immediately die? Shit, how much longer? How much longer will it take for me to die? How long will my body last? How long will my consiousness last? Shit. Not enough destruction. Still not enough destruction. Gotta destroy. Destroy. Destroy. Destroy destroy. Destroy more and more. This most miersable, too miserable life. Too miserable dream. Reality.  
  
Somebody stop me.  
Somebody kill me.  
I want to die before I kill someone else.  
  
The sound of bone being crunched. The sound of blood vessels being ripped, the sound of skin being torn. Echoed. His brain was gone but his ears were still there, and the sound of Kumagawa’s laughter unpleasantly, yet somehow pleasantly echoed.  
  
Kumagawa’s blood splattered. On his hands. Over his body. The insides of the pitch black boy sspurted out. The black insides. The insides, like darkness flowing forth.  
Crumpled.  
  
“Ah…”

 

Kumagawa kickied Kokichi off, and Kokichi fell over.  
His survival instincts kicked in and he immediately began to slither on the ground, scramble.  
  
『Wow, you are one piss poor liar. You weren’t trying to kill me at all.』Kumagawa said, his beaten up face, his perfectly intact smile. 『Hey, Kokichi-chan you’re controlled by the lies aren’t you? You can’t stand to be yourself because you’re always trying to live up to the lie.』  
  
“And this is coming from the world’s least fun psycho..” 

 

『At least I’m not a shitty actor.』

 

Kokichi scrambled to his feet, and suddenly grabbed Mukuro. ”It’s like you said I’m a bad person, calm down or I’ll hurt her.”  
  
“Misogi-chan, stop it. I don’t want you to be violent for my sake.”  
  
『You lack aesthetic. You don’t understand the values of a villain or what it means to be evil.』Kumagawa said as he suddenly took the gun off the ground and then aimed it directly at his head.  
  
Kumagawa’s smile.  
Finally reached his eyes.  
He heard the click and the turn of the barrel.  
Kokichi saw life.  
He saw death.

All flashing, all at once, all over in an instant.  
  
He jumped forward and pushed Kumagawa out of the way, causing the gun to go off target. The bullet tore through his scalp instead, just missing being lodged in his brain but carving up his whole forehead. 

  
As they hit the ground Kumagawa stared up as if oblivious. 『This gun’s aim must be off.』  
  
He wrapped his arms around Kokichi, embracing death, embracing life, like two skeletons holding onto each other with not even skin between them. 『You’re trembling aren’t you? You can run if you’d like. But first I’d like to teach you something about aesthetics. This is what a real world class villain looks like you son of a bitch 』

Kokichi looked at up Kumagawa’s eyes, blue as water overflowing.  
  
That was it, the difference between them.  
Kokichi was fragile, he lived his life afraid of breaking.  
Kumagawa broke himself, so nobody else could break him.  
Kumagawa swam to the bottom as if seeking to drown himself.  
He cut his spider’s thread because he wanted to fall. 

 

 _If only I could be so defiant. So filled to the brim with cynicism._ _  
_ _How wonderful it would be._ _  
_ _I really am half-baked._ _  
_ _I was sick of myself._ _  
_ _Not just sick, disgusted._

 

Kumagawa stood up suddenly, and threw the gun away in the garbage on a whim. Kokichi saw the entire time, there was only one round left in it and it was spent. It was empty now. Which mean Kumagawa must have had terrible luck to get the one round in the revolver on his first try.  
  
『You’re just like Junko, just a petty child playing games all your life. You two should play sometimes, she needs more friends to play with.』  
  
Kokichi just ran.  
If he stayed any longer, he might kill this boy, or be killed by him.  
Neither of those things were what he wanted.  
  
He tried to run, but he did not realize.  
How heavy his body felt.  
Even though he lost so much blood.  
All of his insides were draining out.  
He was becoming more hollow, more empty, so he should have been lighter.

 

He remembered running away.  
He ran so fast.  
But the snow was heavy on his feet.  
An entire life spent running was better than one more day at that place.  
He ran away.  
Even if he starved as a corpse on the side of the road.  
Even if he was spat on for begging for food.  
Even if he had to steal to survive.  
That was better than staying there.  
He ran away in the stone.  
Then collapsed forward.  
Dying being embraced by the cold like this was better too.

 

He drifted off.  
But suddenly, a warm back carried him.

A dream he thought, or maybe a lie.  
There was no way someone’s back could be this warm. 

 

🧸

 

Kokichi opened his eyes a crack and moonlight filtered in.  
He hated the night sky.  
There was too much light.  
He wished it was an expanse of all black.

Because he would be discovered, they would see he was a rat pretending to be a snake. 

  
He wondered how he had gotten here, until the sight of Kaito standing over him answered his question. Kaito scratched at his hair. “Jeez, how can one little guy be so much trouble.”  
  
“I’m not little I’m just height challenged.” 

  
Kokichi guessed Kaito had carried him on his back, from the bloodstains surrounding his coat. He was only cut on the head, but the head bled a lot. “I ruined your coat,” Kokichi said, before delirious laughter bubbled up his throat, “Nishi-shishi. You love that coat so much, and now my dirty blood is all over it.”  
  
“You didn’t ruin it.”  
  
“What?” 

  
“Now my coat is dyed the color of my friend’s blood. How cool is that?”  


_That’s just…_ _  
_ _A lie._ _  
_ _So obvious._ _  
_ _You’re just trying to sound cool._ _  
_ _So why do I… want to believe it?_

 

“How did you find me?”  
  
“Oh, Harukawa told me.”  
  
“She just wanted to look good in front of you.”  
  
“Always gotta doubt everyone, huh?”  
“Always gotta believe in everyone, huh?”  
  
Kokichi thought lies were far sweeter than reality but he hated being lied to. That was why he hated authors like me. He much preferred to write his own story, what a difficult character.  
  
Kaito took off his coat, the coat that he never took off and put it over Kokichi’s shoulders to lose as a blanket. “I’m not cold. I’m just in shock, and I’m probably going to die soon from all this blood loss so you should just leave me here.” Kokichi said, stubbornly.  
  
Midnight appeared.  
The moon shined its light on his pain.

And he was unable to hide.  
He hated this.  
  
“See! Aren’t you glad you met me? Now you don’t have to bleed to death like this. That’s what friends are for, for cleaning up your blood when it gets all over the place.”  
  
“Dying sounds more appealing by the second. For someone who wants to be liked so badly, you have a prodigious talent for making me despise you.”  
  
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about! I figured out why you wouldn’t let me be your minion. It’s because you want to be partners in crime instead, right? I’m proud to have you as a partner.”  
  
“...?”

  
“For the record, I’m just the hero-who-pretends-to-be-a-villain type. I’ve got quite the record. I could even be called the Ultimate Hero.”  
  
“You can go be a hero alone.”  
  
“That’s not it at all! Heroes need other people around them! With just a nudge, a person can change. They can break outta their shell. ANd it’s a real man that gives them the encouragement they need.” 

 

 _That’s a lie too._ _  
_ _Because you… you never change._  
  
“Why do you… want to be an astronaut anyway?”  
  
“That’s simple! The universe is the final fronteir for me to conquer!” 

 

“That’s a lie.”  
  
“You’re right, I just thought it was cool to be one. Aren’t astronauts the best?” 

 

How like you.  
Midnight often.  
He never saw the sun.  
Stuck in a constant loop of darkness, the moon his only friend.  
The moon, the stars, and this one astronaut in the heavens among them. 

 

“They’re alright, but thieves are way cooler.”  
  
“No way, astronauts are cool all on their own. Thieves have to steal from others in order to show off.”  
  
“I thought you said even heroes need people.”  
  
“Yeah, but heroes aren’t even inconveniencing people.”  
  
“They inconvenience perfectly good victims and get in the way of their evil schemes. Have you ever thought how the villains felt? Have you? Have you?” 

 

 _I should have told him we were not friends._ _  
_ _When he called me that._ _  
_ _I should have._

  
“Those stars are fake you know.”Kokichi said, as he pointed to the dome above them. “They’re just projections. The dome is too thick for us to see the night sky.”  
  
“Do you wanna see the real stars?”  
  
“No. I hate the stars.”  
  
Kokichi told a lie, because he wanted to hurt him.  
Kaito just kept smiling like always.  
That was why Kokichi hated him.  
Even if someone were to plunge a knife in his back, he would turn back and smile at them.  
He accepted everything about people.  
He could forgive murderers too.  
But that was just because he wanted to see them that way.  
He believed them because he was too afraid to acknowledge he was being lied to.  
He was just a coward too.  
  
_A coward just like me._  
  
“Really, I think they’re cool.”  
  
“You’ve told me about ten thousand times,” Kokichi scoffed. “I get that you’re an incurable idiot, but do you have to be a boring idiot too on top of that?”   
  
“But you see, the only reason the stars shine is because the stretches of dark between them. It’s kind of like you and me isn’t it?”

 _Oh and Maki can be the moon._ Kaito added.   
  
_You and me?_ _  
__We’re._ _  
__Nothing._ _  
__Just._ _  
__Two liars.  
_  
Stuck in the gaze of the moon. Kokihchi was ashamed.  
He gave in.  
He gave up on himself, and gave Kaito the chance to hurt him. 

Kaito asked him, something he should never have asked. “Do you hate me, Kokichi? Do you wish I was someone else.”  
  
“Ewe. What a deeply personal question. Why would you show your vulnerabilities around me of all people that’s just asking to get laughed at?”   
  
Kokichi took a deep breath, shuttering with the bloodsoaked coat that rested on his shoulders, around Kaito he breathed in stars.  
  
“Welp. I don’t think you should ever change.  Because phonies like you are what make the game more interesting.”  
  
Honesty.  
He hated it.  
The person he wanted to lie to the most, he could not help but be honest around. The person that made him want to be a person whenever he was around. If only he never met Kaito, then he could just keep on telling lies forever.   
  
_Oh so this is what wanting to kill someone feels like._  How romantic. 


	57. Parasite in Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title and chapter is a reference to a Sugaru Miaki novel that I read recently. All of their novels are translated by VGperson, I totally reccomend checking out their stuff.

When Kumagawa Misogi came back covered in bruises that night Enoshima Junko did not laugh. Instead she reached out and touched his face. It was so simple a gesture for such an overcomplicated girl that for a moment Kumagawa thought something was wrong. As if the two people standing here were not Kumagawa Misogi and Enoshima Junko but actually two completely different people with different names, and different characters.  
  
Kumagawa did not comprehend that that girl, or anybody else really, could actually care when he got hurt.  
  
“You’re always getting in fights without me. You’re like that bad boy archetype who acts like a delinquent then cries over kittens being lost in the rain.” Junko said. “I’m as cute as one hundred kittens, so pay attention to me dammit.” 

『It’s not like that. There’s no way I could be a character that cool.』  
  
“What a waste.”  
  
He had no idea what was a waste.  
Probably, his existence?  
God his train of thought was depressing.  
Pain was wasted on him because he never learned. It was a waste when he suffered alone. 

She probably just wanted to watch and laugh.  
  
『It doesn’t matter as long as I come home not dead. I mean maybe I’m a little more metaphorically dead inside, but metaphors are stupid. I hate reading.』

“It matters to me.” 

『No it doesn’t.』  
  
“Why?”

『Because nothing does.』

“That’s what you always say! Boo! Boo! I’m gonna throw rotten fruit at you, Misogi!” 

『This isn’t banter, this is just being heckled.』  
  
He still remembered her hands traveling all over his face, as if she was a blind woman trying to memorize the shape. They did not have their usual back and forth, argue, or insult each other and yet it felt like with those few lines they had been incredibly cold to each other.   
  
Those two were both chatterboxes, but for both of them silence was much louder than words. 

“You’re way too difficult. Even dogs know to either stay on their leash, or bite the hand of their master. But you, you just keep biting, and licking and biting and licking and biting and licking… it’s like you’ve got a fetish. Weirdgrosscreepy-senpai!” 

It was strange being called difficult by the most difficult girl in the world.『You’re the one who’s enjoying talking about biting and licking way too much. I don’t know why you try to be miserable all the time, that look of happiness on your face is far more despair inducing.』

“Anyway, I gotta think about how to deal with you. I’ll think, and think, and think, and think. Why do I waste so much precious Junko time thinking about an idiot? You make me think so much, about so many things...” _She’s making me sound like a troublesome child again, isn’t it the other way around?_   “More importantly Misogi, can I hug you?” 

 

『...What? What? What? What?』

  
“Why are you looking at me like I said something weird. I was doing my perfect impression of a normal human girl right now.”

 

Kumagawa thought of a retort, but forced himself to be nonchalant instead.『It’s out of character for you to ask for permission like that.』  
  
“You’re making me sound rude!” Junko said, playing along as the straight man because it was her turn. 

 

『Sorry. It’s more like, it’s out of character for you to acknowledge that other people besides you have feelings that might contradict your own. Usually you would say something like _Misogi, you’re my teddy bear so I can hug you whenever I want! Stop being such an awkward mouth breathing nerd about everything or else I’ll rip your stuffing out._ 』

 

“You’re not allowed to write my character ever again. That was just the worst. Like, Ick!” She made a show out of spitting in the air for a moment. “I just wanted to, okay?” 

 

『I see. That love comedy feel.』  
  
“I want what I want.” Stated like a true brat. “So, please?”  
  
That was probably the first time she ever said that in her life. 『Sure, sure. Let’s pretend we’re in a different story for fun.』Junko wrapped his arms around her. If she were a normal girl, she would be comforting him after he came home from a bad fight, but for Junko it was just a hollow imitation of what she was supposed to do. 『Recharging, right? Just like Nagito-chan?』  
  
“Yep, but it’s annoying when other people are clingy like that, it’s waaaay cuter when I do it.” Her big supercomputer brain, probably required a lot of energy.She pressed her body against his, and buried her face in his chest, and showed no signs of loosening her grip. Even so, Enoshima’s slender arms wrapped around the back of his neck.  
Did not trouble him.  
Did not trouble him.  
Time for just Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi, that they had not had in a long time. It was irreplaceable time, that he was willing to throw everything away to protect.  
But that was why, Kumagawa felt like this moment would be destroyed.  
If he did not destroy it, then she would.  
If she did not, then he would.  
He would be scattered like flowers.  
In that embrace, he felt like he might disappear. 

 

He said nothing, and did not move to peel Junko off. Even if he wanted to, he would not be able to. Enoshima’s hands around the back of his neck. Enoshima’s arms wrapped around his torso. Enoshima’s face against his chest. The hair that was already starting to turn red again at the roots.  
  
He should have realized. That, that brain which had memory power of the ultimate RAM. Her brain circuits written in such a way she would never forget anything she remembered, and was packed with information that could never be changed or overwritten, to become an endless criss-crossing of information.  
It was not that she remembered, so much as she never forgot. 

That was why she would never forget.  
She did not forget. She cannot forget.  
No matter how hard she tries she cannot stop thinking.

How she was alone for that month, how he left her alone before, how he left her over and over again in fifty two different death games - she cannot forget and she cannot stop thinking. Just like a computer is just a slave to process information for the one controlling it, Junko’s brain continued to process information whether she wanted it to or not.  
And yet, she embraced him.  
_How sinful I am. How encompassed in penalties a human I am._

She does not forget.  
Yet, she forgives.  
Like an owner bitten by their dog.  
Like a tolerant goddess. 

Like a jilted lover that kept coming back.  
She was the only one who forgave him like this. 

But it was like… she had no choice to forgive him. That felt wrong.  
He would rather see her get angry and call him an idiot like usual.  
He preferred her numerous attempts to kill him to this. 

 

『Laughable.』  
Kumagawa mumbled into her hair.  
His lips touched her head.  
He did not laugh at all. 

  
They sat there like that all night, clinging to each other like they were slowly sinking into the water. Drowning in each other’s silence. Drowning together was still drowning.  
If he laughed-  
It would be forced.  
It would be fake.  
It would hurt his throat.  
It would be empty. 

 

🧸

 

I hate writing love scenes. In fact I just hate it when other people are happy in general. This is the ideal attitude of an author, you should never let your characters be happy. You should despise them.  
  
Anyway, since Komaru-chan won’t be a dear and interrupt them, I’m going to interrupt my own story to ramble. Let’s have some philosophy with your dear author. I’m not going to talk actual philosophy though, that would require actual effort, in fact looking up philosophy on wikipedia and pretending to know about philosophy would take too much effort.  
  
Basically, I’m just going to bullshit. 

You know about parasitology? Diplozoon Paradoxum spend half their lives fused with their partners. Its design is simplified, but it appeared as if it was modeled after a creature with two pairs of wings. At a glance, it looks just like a butterfly.  
  
Despite how beautiful it looks it’s still a parasite. They both have male and female sexual parts so technically they could reproduce asexually and yet they seek out a partner. The fact that they dare to do with someone else what they could just do alone is kind of annoying huh?  
  
BUt there are things to learn from that. They aren’t fussy about their partners. They experience love at first sight, or perhaps first love, or perhaps destiny. They combine with the first of their kind they meet without any qualms, and they don’t abandon their partners to the last. Once they join together they never let go of each other. If you try to tear them apart they die. 

Like birds of a feather.  
Like entwined wings.  
Like two halves of a butterfly’s wings. 

  
Not that that’s a bad thing. Mitochondria are believed to have been a separate independent organism before they combined with eukaryotic cells. Parasitism is the origin of all life. The existence of sex, the existence of love, is it just something that evolved from parasitism? 

  
Then maybe mutual love is just mutual parasitism. 

That’s my pessimistic philosophy, or maybe it’s optimistic.  
Kumagawa always says that parasites deserve love too. 

Kumagawa Misogi woke up in Enoshima Junko’s arms.  
  
He definitely thought something was off about Enoshima Junko’s mood last night. Part of him thought her mood might just change on a whim in the morning.

  
“It’s not like I want to go on a date with you, you know? Stupid Senpai!”

 

『Tsundere!?』  
  
“If you don’t go on a date with me, you’ll have to go on a date with Mr. Knight instead.” 

 

『Yandere!?』  
  
“We have been waiting for you to ask us on a date for too long, but now I order you, commoner, peast, you must escort us on a date.”

 

『Himedere!』  
  
“Well anyway, I’m bored of changing between the deres so can we go on a date or whatever?” 

 

『That came out way too normal sounding!』

 

“A date, so a date yeah…!” 

 

Apparently, they were going on a date today. Enoshima Junko kicked him out of the room to dress up in something that would impress him (though Kumagawa would never in a million years comprehend that she actually would do anything for his sake, or to get his attention). When she came out her hair was wrapped in a tight pony behind her head, one instead of her usual two.  
  
When they got outside, Junko suddenly stopped. “Hm, I didn’t think this far ahead.”  
  
Head tilt.

 

『That’s not like you.』  
  
“I feel spontaneous.”

 

『Gasp! You have feelings? You’re usually only fake-spontaneous. You’re really excited today, huh?』  
  
“No, I’m a ditzy, energetic, girl that’s as bright as fucking sunshine get it right already!” 

 

『Really, because you tried to spend the entire day yesterday without leaving your sleeping bag, crawling around like some NEET caterpillar because you didn’t want to wake up.』Kumagawa, sunk into his usual gloom. He was amazing making a raincloud appear inside the dome like that, and dowsing everything. 『...I don’t know why you’re so excited to be around a guy like me, anyway.』  
  
“Totally ruining the mood. It’s gone now. Dead. You killed it. You’re the blackened. It’s punishment time, execution in 3, 2, 1...” Her executin was just jumping on Kumagawa and hugging him again suddenly, it was a rather pillowy execution. 

 

『No the mood’s still there. You’re as moody as ever.』  
  
“Well then why don’t you plan the date for once?” 

 

『But then you wouldn’t get to control everything.』Kumagawa seriously thought about it, as much as he was capable of being serious or thinking anyway. 『We’ve gone on a lot of dates, but I guess we haven’t gone on a normal date yet.』  
  
“A normal date! How absolutely despair inducing! Let’s pretend to be normal, uninteresting, people with completely meaningless lives. We’ll mock those things called normal people.” 

 

『But you’re just a normal gir-Ah, sure. Somebody’s excited.』

 

🧸  
  
“A normal date to the batting cages!”  
  
Enoshima Junko brought her tied back hair through a baseball cap, and dressed in short shorts and a loose fitting baseball shirt. She probably only recommended this style of date because she wanted to show Kumagawa how good she would look in a baseball uniform. 

 

Not that he noticed how much she obviously wanted him to look. 『Why do you keep striking poses like that, is this Jojo?』  
  
There was no batting cages, so they bullied Miu into building them a pitching machine instead. Junko hit every single pitch, but she really did not care about baseball. When she handed the bat to Kumagawa she revealed her true purpose.  
  
“Misogi, if you don’t hit at least one ball I’m breaking up with you.”

  
She just wanted to see him sweat.

『You break up with me at least once a week.』  
  
“Yes, and you’re devastated every single time, because I’m a total catch, and the best thing that’s ever going to happen to you. When we finally do get a divorce you’re going to spend the rest of your life miserable without me.” 

 

『I’d be just as miserable with you, though… wait, so are we gonna get married first so you can divorce me?』  
  
“Let’s play ball!” Junko said as she slapped him hard on his behind to urge him forward, rapidly changing the subject because she was bored. She sometimes got bored at convenient times.  
  
Kumagawa put his best effort in to look cool in front of Junko. He took wide swings, so he could miss almost every single ball in style. On his last one Kumagawa leaned in to get hit by the ball, finding the loop hole in Junko’s challenge for him, as in a baseball game that would be an automatic walk to first. He was great at getting hit by things. He probably should not brag about that.  
  
“I feel like you’re about to get nailed in the balls, and really we should be above that kind of lowbrow humor Senpai.” 

 

Kumagawa fell for that taunt and seriously tried to hit the ball this time. He did! And then his bat slipped out of his hands and went flying into other direction, hitting Junko in the side of the head. “See, this slapstick is really… really… overrated.” Junko muttered, before falling over.

 

『Junko!』

 

🧸

  
“A normal date making valentines chocolates!” 

 

『Eh, it’s valentines day?』  
  
“No, it’s Friday the Thirteenth of February, isn’t that better! You know in horror movies when the guy and the girl start having sex that’s when the slasher always bursts in, don’t you think that’s romantic?” 

 

『Junko...』

  
“Gosh you’re so gloomy today Senpai, even though you’re ont a date with a super cute girl.”

 

『Maybe because that super cute girl is always trying to kill me, tee hee hee.』  
  
“You liar, you don’t care about that.”

 

『Ah, you’re right. I don’t really.』  
  
Enoshima Junko was dressed in pink apron over her clothes with the words JUNKO LOVE emblazoned on the chest, another outfit to get attention. Kumagawa was staring at a particularly interesting patch of cracked paint on the ceiling instead because he knew if he was caught staring Junko would never let him hear the end of it.  
  
If he didn’t look she would never forgive him.  
If he did look she would never forgive him.  
Basically, he was damned either way. Another day in the life of Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
Kumagawa sat spinning around in his chair, as Junko worked on a stove in the kitchen. When she finished she suddenly in a sing-song voice. “Mi-So-Gi-Sen-Pai! Happy Valentines Day!”  
  
But it was friday the thirteenth.  
Get murdered with a machete day more like. 

Junko immediately attached herself to him and refused to let go, shoving the freshly made bag of chocolates in his hand. “Oh, that magical day of high emotion. Stress, heartbreak, rejection, regret. When girls give chocolate to the boys they’re obsessed with. Oh gosh, I’ve never done something like this for a cool upperclassmen before! It’s really embarrassing if someone sees us in public, s-so open it quick alright?” 

 

『So they’re poison, right?』  
  
“Why would you ever doubt your cute, sweet, innocent girlfriend like this? All I’ve ever done was love you, and care about you, and give you hugs and kisses.” 

 

『So it’s laxatives instead of poison.』Kumagawa opened up the bag and picked up one of the chocolates putting it in his mouth. 

“If you know it’s poison why do you eat it anyway?”

 

『Because it’s so friggin symoblic of our love!』Kumagawa said, mocking Junko’s voice before he quieted down. 『Besides, these were chocolates you made.』  
  
“Ugh, feelings. I know I’m the first girl to ever give you chocolates, or even look at you and suppress my gag reflex long enough to talk with you but you don’t need to start crying all over me.” 

 

Kumagawa with a chocolate half hanging out of his mouth, suddenly leaned forward and kissed her. For Junko it was completely unexpected, because she was the one who initiated every kiss, and ever point of contact. Kumagawa was always too nervous, like he might dirty her, like he might break her, not just her but anything else he touched. To him, his love was a dangerous thing that was why he repressed, the opposite of her.

  
If he would let the floodgates down just a little bit, he would overflow. That was what this was, him overflowing into her. His lips forced hers to part, and his tongue forced his way into her mouth. Her arms loosened at her sides as she got swept away by the water.  
  
The same way people without talent envied geniuses, she envied him. No matter how much she laughed or cried, she would never feel the depths that he did. He was an ocean in one single person. He had the same feelings as everyone else, but unlike ordinary people, his emotions overflowed, they were more real when he felt them. Kumagawa lived, with feelings that scattered him, and cut him apart, like wind in the worst storms, from every angle, at all times, deeper and darker than those of ordinary people all pooling within himself.  
  
She felt both incredible envy, and for the first time she pitied someone. She thought she understood their pain a little bit. Her arms finally wrapped around him, pulling at his clothes. A clawing, desperate, bitter, envious kiss, with her claws she desired to open up and rob this body, rid it of everything, and defile him.  
  
Then a moment later Kumagawa pulled away from her, and Junko was immediately thirsty for more. 

 

『There, now you swallowed a laxative too! Suffering is so much fun when you’re together.』

 

Nevermind. All that romantic prose inside her head was a lie.  
She hated him.

🧸

 

  
“Gaming together like a normal couple- MISOGI notice what I’m wearing already damnit!” 

 

『Huh? You’re not about to go all Junko love again are you?』Kumagawa reacted to her obsessive, controlling love with, mild annoyance. 『Huh, you’ve been wearing my jacket this entire time. Give it back.』  
  
“No, it’s mine now! It’s your fault for dying. Dying isn’t even cool anymore you know? Dying in style is so last season.” 

 

『Gimme.』  
  
“No, no, no! Listen to me damnit, do you know how funny and clever my dialogue is? I’m wasting such pretty words on you of all people!  It’s your punishment for dying. I’ll never forgive you, like ever.”

 

『So, until you get bored again.』

  
Junko looked at the game room around them, in fact they had already had their attempt at a date playing games. When Kumagawa tried to play DDR with her, he tripped and got them both tangled up in the wires, and then pulled the machine on top of them. He was actually winning in mario kart for once, then his controller broke, then the game console spontaneously combusted. The two of them tried to watch a movie in the media room, but Kumagawa  tried to put his arm around Junko only to sneeze and backhand her so hard her nose started bleeding. Then, the projector burst into flames as well.  
  
Kumagawa was banned for life from the Media room by the other students, and his next life too because he might come back from the dead again. Kumagawa himself was trying to learn how to control his newly acquired pyrokinesis.  
  
『...I’m a chaos flame wizard-』

  
“Please shut up, I know I’m dating a total geekazoid nerdloser weirdofreak but I want to remain in denial about still being a cool person a little while longer.” Junko was resting her head in Kumagawa’s lap, because it hurt. “You know I’m supposed to be trying to kill you Misogi, not the other way around.”  
  
That was right, he had ruined every single one of their date attempts so far. Kumagawa was starting to think he was not an abnormal person at all, just a failure at being normal. There was a difference. 『...I’m sorry, Junko just wanted a normal date… but it’s always like this with me.』

  
“Upupupupu!” Junko said, bursting out into laughter. She smiled, completely oblivious to his feelings, enjoying herself in her own little world as usual. “Yeah, I hope it never changes!” 

 

『 _Junko._ 』  
『 _Is the only one who smiles like that around me._ 』  
『 _Just because I’m there._ 』  
『 _This is presumptuous but..._ 』

『 _Is that smile for me?_ 』

 Hey, hey is it possible?

To feel the same way as someone else? 

For feelings to be mutual?

Even for a second?

🧸

 

Time for unwanted philosophy part two.  
  
D.Paradoxum inhabit Koi. They are parasites of love, in other words. Nature has a sense of humor too. The D. Paradoxum who successfully inhabit a koi discard its eyeballs within 24 hours. So the koi, like love, is blind.  
  
Love is blind. Who said that first? Was it Oedipus?  
  
I just want to keep talking about parasites forever instead of gross things like love.  
  
Most parasites don’t kill the host actually. To kill a host would be the same thing as killing yourself. Parasites lack the intelligence to actually kill themselves. Well, I’m not sure on that, I’ve only lived as a metaphorical parasite not a real one. 

 

Actually, living as a parasite sounds like the ideal lifestyle. Living without living, killing without killing. Not even thinking about anything, just clinging to the nearest life form. Humans, unlike parasites are suicidal. 

  
It’s not because they are lonely, or miserable, or anything like that. It’s because they can think. Those are all just symptoms of being able to think. That’s why a thoughtful author like me despises happiness.  
  
But that girl, she really did wish she could stop thinking just for one moment. Stop thinking and be with him, in that moment.  
  
“Upupupu, we did everything together today. It’s just like shopping in every store at the mall, or going on a killing spree and not letting a single person escape alive.” 

 

『Those two things have nothing in common!』Kumagawa stared at the flickering candle light in front of him. 『Um, but Junko, don’t we always do everything together? Everyday?』

 

Hitoyoshi Zenkichi, dressed like a waiter in front of their candle lit dinner poured them some wine. He poured Junko grape soda because she was underaged. Kumagawa wanted to laugh, but Zenkichi’s face was so tired.  
  
He looked like a dog that had been kicked.  
Was it really possible to change so much in one month? 

Kumagawa’s lip trembled, but he said nothing.  
Because he knew he had nothing worthwhile to say.  
  
“Poor Hitoyoshi-kun. Everybody else only likes you because you’re useful. We’re the only ones who know how useless you are, that’s why you’re stuck with us.”  
  
“The three of us aren’t friends.” Zenkichi denied. Then suddenly he grabbed the red tie he was wearing and ripped it off. “Wait, why the hell am I even waiting on you two? I don’t like you.”  
  
“Well, you like being useful to me because it makes you feel like you’re with Medaka-chan again.”  
  
“That’s not it, nobody could replace Medaka-chan you’re…”  
  
“Too pretty? Too gorgeous? Too cute? Too perfect? The perfect human being? With a heart as big as her boobs?”  
  
“So annoying.” Hitoyoshi Zenkichi turned his back to both of them. “I don’t want to be buddy buddy with Kumagawa either. You haven’t changed since middle school, and I still haven’t forgiven you.”  
  
“But you’re not forgiving him for Medaka-chan’s sake. If he had done something to you, you wouldn’t even care. You just want to get angry for someone else’s sake.”  
  
Junko’s fingers curled on the table. She felt something inside of her. The moment Zenkichi said that he knew Kumagawa’s middle school self.

 

When Kumagawa speaks of his middle school days, he seems genuinely happy. When he told her about Zenkichi and Medaka, when he talks about Ajimu, he always seems to truly smile even when faced with such a bitter past.  
  
She was not pleased by that.  
She did not know why, but it bothered her.  
It felt like it was a bit wrong to call it jealousy. Jealousy was a feeling after all, and Junko never felt those to such intensity. The fact that he had a face that he showed someone else, that she had never seen, that he might smile for somebody that was not her.  
Not possessiveness, or even hatred. It was just the feeling of emptiness.  
  
If she was not around him, Enoshima Junko would cease to be a girl, and go back to being a doll. Even though it was empty, at the same time it felt so…  
  
“It is so heavy.” 

 

“You two are the last ones who should be talking about me and Medaka-chan’s relationship, especially since you’re like that.”  
  
“Like what?” Junko hissed back at him.  
Her feelings were her own.  
The things that were hers, were hers forever.  
She hated.  
When other people.  
Touched her things.  
  
“You act all lovey dovey but isn’t it more like, you’re in mutually unrequited love. Like you’re both so deeply in love, but only ever at each other, not with each other.” 

  
Mutual parasitism.  
Mutual love.  
Or maybe just a mutual longing for love. 

It looks like a butterfly, but it isn’t.  
If you tear its wings apart it will never die.  
A butterfly that can never fly.  
  
Enoshima Junko saw a boy fall in the river in front of her.  
He drowned.  
Water, rushing all around him.  
He sunk into a clear blue.  
But his face as he was drowning, it was oddly beautiful.  
She reached out her hands.  
But she couldn’t reach him.  
Deeper, deeper, deeper into the blue she went. 

 

 _I want to talk to you, talk to you, so long._ _  
_ _Tell you the dumb things that I think until dawn._

 

She never even knew she wanted something like that.  
But the moment she realized it was impossible for her to stop wanting.  
The moment she realized the river already carried the boy away.  
His skin was blue, and water sloshed inside of his lungs.

Even slowly losing her mind was fine, if she still had him.  
She did not need reality.  
Even if it was just a dream.  
There was never a garden for them to begin with, no flowers, no sunlight, and no fruits for them to bite into together. 

 

 _I love you Senpai, you don’t know._  
  
This unattainable thing that would shatter the moment she touched it.  
Yet, she wanted to share these feelings.  
It was the first time her feelings demanded to be felt.  
All he needed to do was show her that smile.

 _But I still think…_ _  
_ _Your smiles are for everyone, they aren’t for me._

 

But in the end it was just about her feelings wasn’t it? She could give less of a damn about how Misogi felt, he just needed to keep being Kumagawa Misogi. He needed to stay by her side. He just needed to be someone standing in his shoes, filling in a role. There was probably… someone else who could love him better than she ever could. Whatever that meant. 

 

 _I want that kind of love story with him._ _  
_ _It’d be more painful, more despair inducing, more heart throbbing! So much tension! So much heart break! Oh the drama! Just being around him, I love him like a heart attack._ _  
  
_

But that’s not reality.  
I’m not real.  
I’m not a real girl.

The one thing he needed was the one thing she could never be. She would always be more doll than a woman around him. She too, was just someone playing a role. Hitoyoshi Zenkichi’s words made her realize that, and Junko recognized the emptiness she felt in her chest. 

 

_Ah, this is… despair._

 

Kumagawa grabbed Zenkichi by the neck, like a dog lunging at his throat. The same way he had for Mukuro, over and over again, he was defending her this time? But they were…  
  
The only person Kumagawa truly cherished, who he would never harm, was his family.  
Junko wondered.  
Was she a part of that family still? 

  
  
『Zenkichi-chan, what does an ultra virgin like you know anyway? Mr. I’m only going to get laid once in my life to produce an heir because sex is a sin, should stop running his mouth.』

“You’re right, I don’t know. When normal people don’t know things it scares them. But… you like things that you don’t know, right? You absolutely love situations that aren’t clear, that’re vague and half-assed, don’t you?”  
  
Attracted to the unknown.  
They both refused to define their relationship.

Vague, like a ghost.  
Someone who could never be truly embraced, because they were transparent. 

 

『I am not particularly anything like that...』Kumagawa saw a scene, of trying to embrace a ghost that was not any particular color, or shape, but rather a constantly changing smearing of paint colors blending together and making new colors. The moment he tried to touch, the paint got all over like blood.  
  
Color. Her colors everywhere.  
Color on his hands.  
Color on his face.  
Color in his eyes.  
Drenched in color.

“You’ve always been such a terrible liar, Kumagawa. You’ve never succesfully told a lie once.” 

 

『You know, I have my limits too. It seems like everyone and anyone just wants to blame me for things, like I’m everyone’s shadow. But you know that’s not possible. I don’t think someone like me is significant enough to be hated in the first place so why-』  
  
“What really is that half-hearted desire to interact with people. Hating people, yet wanting to be by people. I don’t get it.”

 

『What?』  
  
“If you don’t like being hated by people then just run away from them. Pessimists should just be pessimistic and go somewhere where they’re not bothering people. You’re strong enough to live on your own without clinging to somebody, you always have been.” 

 

『No, you don’t get it, I’m a weak person. I’m a weak coward who hates people.』

 

“For crying out loud would you stop with that?”

『Words are usually meaningless but uh, what do you mean?』

  
“Making it sound like you’re faulty and no one else is. What’s the merit in acting like you’re incapable? Do you enjoy self depreciation? I’m sick of hearing that shit.”

 

『What are you going to do?』  
  
“Punch you. You fix broken things by hitting them.”

 

There is no idiot that would hear that and walk over. Except for Kumagawa who stood up and walked over to Zenkichi, putting a hand on his shoulder to check how he was doing. That month must have been painful

 

Ah!  
  
Zenkichi punched him right in the face, but Kumagawa did not even stagger backwards. “See, you’re strong enough to live without clinging to other people. You could get along with other people without having them hate you too, you know? You could do better.”

 

『...』Kumagawa wiped the small amount of blood from his lips, like Zenkichi had given him a bright red kiss.  
  
“It just looks to me like you’re failing on purpose. It’s easier for you two to stay miserable together, than to actually try to be happy.”

  
Fighting against Medaka.  
Trying to save Ajimu.  
Trying to stop Junko from killing herself.  
During the fifty two killing games.  
The time he tried to become friends with Komaeda.   
Every time, he failed. But were those failures unavoidable? Or did he choose to do this on purpose?  
  
“In the end, what do you want?”  
  
You think I want to be like this? You think I choose this? What a joke!

He wanted to scream something like that out and laugh, but he just could not.

Enoshima Junko watched Kumagawa get hurt before her eyes.  
The pain he felt did not bother her.  
But he was so willing to let other people hurt him. They always came first.  
Before her.  
One day, he would just break.  
He would disappear and die somewhere she could not see him again.  
It was like she did not even factor into his mind at all.  
He did not even comprehend the fact that she cared about him.  
He was with Zenkichi, and not her. The both of them, holding onto each other’s necks, out of breath, looking like they were about to collapse into each other. Both of their faces smeared red with blood, like someone had dotted kiss marks all over them. 

 

Enoshima Junko with holding her hand with her chin. “I was wrong Hitoyoshi-kun. I’m never going to admit this again so appreciate it. It’s not that you hate people for her sake, but hating Kumagawa-kun is a form of hating Medaka-chan to you.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
Junko smiled, cute, girlish, innocent, there was not even the smallest hint of evil in the expression on her face. A carefree face. A truly happy person.  
A happy person.  
A happy person. 

Is she happy?  
  
“Who’s fault is it that you’re working this hard? Who’s fault is it that you’re all alone? Who crushed you with their impossible standards your whole life? You really hate Kurokami Medaka don’t you?”  
  
If someone answered whether he loved her or not, Zenkichi could answer in a second.  
He did not even need to respond to Junko’s question.  
He could just lie, or tell her it was none of her business.  
Zenkichi said nothing, no, he was physically unable to say anything.

Why?  
Why couldn’t he say that he hated her? 

 

Kumagawa suddenly stood up. He grabbed the wine bottle and broke it right in front of Junko. 『Stop it!』

 

  
  
She heard the sound of broken glass.  
It fell with red wine, like drops of blood, sparkling, sparkling.  
A beautiful blood rain in front of her eyes.  
The wine became one huge bloodstain across her dress, like she was bleeding from the head.  
In that moment, she felt like Kumagawa could have murdered her.

If he had killed her she would be happy.

But she was not happy at all now.  
  
Kumagawa protected Zenkichi.

And not her.

 _I’m an idiot._ Junko thought, a rueful smile on her face. _For believing in your lies for even one minute._

 

🧸

  
All people who are in love should just go die.  
Not that I’m bitter or anything.  
In fact, I’m quite happy, because one day these two are going to kill each other.  
I don’t even need to lift a finger.  
In fact I planned it this way all along. I’m not one of those authors who just makes things up as she goes along, I was in control of everything in this story from the start.  
  
Enoshima Junko, and Kumagawa Misogi sat together in their room once more.  
But alone.  
Junko was so upset that her dress got ruined, she kept stomping until her heel broke.  
Then he had to carry her back home on his back.  
She stayed silent clinging to him the whole time.  
  
Her heart beat.  
His heart beat.  
They were woefully out of sync.  
  
“Why are you so eager to go and get yourself killed, Misogi? Do you really want to be away from me that badly?”

 

『It’s not that.』  
  
“I guess it has nothing to do with me.” 

『Junko, you’re being manipulative.』  
  
“Butterflies fly, Dogs bark, and Enoshima Junko is manipulative. Huge fucking shocker there.” Junko said, before pouting. “I don’t like it, being on the same level as everyone else. Isn’t the way you feel about me different?” 

 

『If I treated you like the only person that mattered to me. You would just get bored of me and kill me, like Yasuke-chan. I know you.』  
  
“No you don’t.”

 

『Yes I do.』  
  
“No you don’t.”

『Yes I do.』  
  
“No you don’t times infinity.”

 

『Damnit, how do I always lose these arguments against you? This battle of wits is too much for an idiot like me.』

  
“Don’t insult yourself.”

 

『Hm?』  
  
“Don’t hate yourself either. You’re not allowed to be hated by yourself, or anybody else. I’m the only one that can hate you.” 

 

『Ehhh, but I’m just so despicable, I’m so melancholy and self loathing, something really is wrong with me.』  
  
“I still hate you. I hate you for dying on me. I’ll never stop hating you, got it?” 

 

『I’m used to being hated so...』  
  
Junko suddenly put her up to his cheek. That gentle touch, was far worse than any violence she could ever subject him to. “You’re not allowed to get used to hating me. Me hating you is the end of your fucking world got it?” 

『Junko...』

Hey.  
We love each other right?  
So why do we talk about hating each other so much?  
It’s…  
Confusing.  
  
"Do you even know how I feel? Watching you hurt yourself over and over again? It's not even despair inducing anymore. It's not even fun to watch. It's just boring because you just... keep doing it... keep going away from me."

He thought she would at least laugh at his pain when he got hurt.   
But know he did not know.  
He knew nothing.   
  
“So listen to me alright. I won’t get bored of you. I need you. Because you’re my…” Enoshima Junko searched for the words. She thought it was lame of her too, that she could say she hated him so easily, but could never find the words to express her love. Totally lame. The lamest. “You’re the hope I found in despair?” 

『Hope?』  
  
Kumagawa’s eyes shone, like crystal clear water.  
He smiled at her.  
And then he laughed.  
Happily. As if he wanted to hear those words that broke his heart. As if he had encountered what he desired. Without any trace of innocence, and without any piece of joy, an indescribable smile.  
  
She watched as if envious of him.  
She watched as if comforted by him.  
She watched as if enraptured by him.  
It was definitely a Kumagawa Misogi that she did not know.  
A boy that she did not know.  
A stranger.  
She did not know this thing.  
  
This thing, this thing, this thing, was not her Misogi.

 

『You’re not talking like yourself.』  
  
The moment he said those words, Kumagawa knew he had said something that he could not take back. He turned his back away knowing.  
  
That Enoshima Junko would reach for the bat she still had in their room.  
That she would raise it in the air. 

 

Maybe it is over.  
He thought.  
It is over.  
He understood.  
  
“In the end-”  
Zenkichi said.  
“-What did you want?”  
It was a question, a terribly knowing, a terrible precise, and probably in the entire world only Hitoyoshi Zenkichi could ask such a simple and clean question. 

 

“Love.”  
He mumbled.  
He did not answer, but he mumbled.  
“I wanted, love.”   
It was a pleasant feeling. He wanted to laugh. Really, really wanted to laugh.  
His blood covered body. His bloodied mind. His clothing felt disgusting. His thoughts were also disgusting. He scratched at his own neck. Maybe it would be easy. To claw. To rip his own neck off.”  
  
As expected, Junko looked like she was about to cry. She was holding onto him and mostly crying. But she was still unable to cry. It was a painful expression that crossed crying with laughter. Right. Just as he could not laugh, she could not cry. She deos not know how to mourn. That was why she ended up with such an ugly expression, and that was terribly disappointing.  
  
So it actually did hurt her to hurt him like this?  
He never would have guessed.  
  
Kumagawa wanted to see Enoshima Junko’s innocent, naturally pure smile in the end.  
Ahh, but.  
That.  
Would be seeking the moon.  
  
That was not allowed. Even that wish was not allowed. He slowly began to lose consciousness. This time, because of relief. He thought he might not be able to wake up anymore. Well, that sounds pretty good. He felt so happy right now.

Ah, he understood.  
They were both just playing. They wanted to go back to their old relationship. But both of them, in that month apart had changed.   
It's not that being together kept them the same forever, being together changed each other, but they did not want to acknowledge it.  
His idiocy was something that could only be cured by a hit to the head.   
  
“...”  
  
What his fading sight finally glimpsed at the end was Enoshima Junko, again. It was fading so he could no longer see anything, but his sight was red.  
Burning, Red, Painful, and comfortable.  
How - red.  
  
“...”  
  
Can I say something selfish?  
  
“I love you.” 

So, like cherry blossoms, fell Kumagawa Misogi. 


	58. Scum's Wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pretty heavy chapter! Sexual assault content warning, but nothing too descriptive the idea of it is just discussed.  
> Chapter is a reference to Kuzu no Honkai an old favorite series of mine.

_In a world where everyone longs to connect._ _  
_ _I just want to be left alone.  
_ _That’s all this scum can wish for._

Wires hung from the ceiling criss crossing in an intricate spiderweb. Several of the wires were frayed or faulty, she knew if she touched them she would instantly feel the shock inside of her, and then nothing, numbness afterwards. For Iruma Miu any connection between herself and others was the same way. 

“D-do you really have to sit on me to do this?” Keebo squirmed underneath her.  
  
“My eyes are bad. Can’t see shit unless I get close. Not like you got any working parts down there anyway, keeboy.” 

 

She was sitting on his chest, or maybe it was just his chassy. The doors of his chest were open and she was working with the internal parts. Whenever she wormed her fingers into his insides for maintennance, Keebo squirmed in a delightful way. Not that she was particularly enjoying it that way, she just found it to be cute. He was innocent.  
  
Innocence.

Not that she would know what it looks like.

But if there was an innocent person in this world, it probably looked like him.  
Pure white skin.  
A body lacking any color at all.  
Clean.  
Unstained. 

That was what it meant to be colorless.  
Silver hair falling over his eyes.  
Light reflected off of it, glittering like snowfall.  
Keebo, the delicate pale skinned doll underneath her.  
Brittle.  
Easily breakable.  
People put flowers in crystal vases.  
They frame paintings containing every color.

Because they believe pretty souls reside within pretty vessels.  
Iruma never once thought that way.  
She pushed a vase over once and watched it shatter, the glass, and water flowing out.  
The flower in a pool of sparkling water as light reflected off of it.  
She thought that was much prettier.  
But perhaps for Keebo that could be the case.  
Any person in this world would have been dyed many colors now.  
Keebo was so lucky just to be a toy. 

It made her want to play with him a little bit. 

As she worked her goggles were pulled over her eyes, and because of that nothing was holding her hair back. It fell all over in front of her face, dangling loose like the wires above. “Iruma, your hair smells like flower, unlike mine.”  
  
She regretted installing those olfactory sensors in his face but the kid would not stop annoying her until she did it. Keebo loved humans. Every time he learned something new about it, he looked at them with the wide eyed optimism like a child.  
  
He thought humans were much more real than him. To be honest though, Keebo already acted far more like a child then she ever had. His happiness seemed like the real thing and hers was just. “It’s called shampoo idiot. It’s not even flowers, it’s just artificially created oils synthesized to smell that way. I don’t even like wearing my hair this long. Yeah it makes me look drop dead gorgeous but it also gets in the way of every friggin thing I try to do.” 

 

“Why do you wear it that way then?”  
  
Damn kid.  
Asking her so many questions.

“I don’t know why, I just do.”  
  
“Wow. Humans are always driven almost completely by emotions even if they do not understand them-”  
  
Miu hit him in the head with a wrench hard, a clanging sound filling the air. “Don’t start getting all philosophical you’re going to fry the circuits in your brain.” 

 

“Wha? Can that really happen?”  
  
“Dunno. I saw it on TV once.”  
  
“Are you even a genius, Iruma? Sometimes I worry about you.”  
  
“Course I am. What part of gorgeous girl genius don’t you get?” That title was such an unconvincing lie that even Miu herself did not believe it. She kicked off of Keebo and lost interest. She picked up a bottle of nail polish instead, and started to redo one which had been chipped while she was working. When Keebo looked at her with the same blank eyes as ever, she sighed. 

  
He had no nails, so she just painted red on the tips of his black fingers instead. As she did this, Keebo fidgeted again and tilted his head back. His usually colorless face, was turning red just from that small amount of contact, and the way her fingers wrapped around his hand. It occurred to her just then, that this little robot was touch starved, like a neglected little kid. 

“Your hair is so pretty…” He reached out as if to touch it before shying away.

 

“When I was a girl I grew out my hair as told by my father, because that’s what the customer wanted,” Miu had no idea why she was saying this. The words came out of her mouth before she even realized. Perhaps seeing a pure white angel fallen in front of her, made her just want to dirty it.  
  
“Customer?”  
  
“Yes, my second father. I was sold to him when I was young.”  
  
A man in a suit led her by the hand, pulling her along forecefully when she hesitated. When she was that young, her hair was blonde and reached just to her shoulders. She spent the entire night crying, because her father forced her to dye it. He dragged her by the hair to the sink any everything, apparently in order to get the price up she made up a lie that she was a half foreigners. 

 

In that room a man awaited her. She remembered nothing about his face, only his eyes. Eyes that dissected her like a butterfly under glass. Empty, glasslike, eyes that burned their way onto her retinas.  
  
Her memory then existed in fragments. She ran, from one shard of glass to the other. A little child desperately looking for a looking glass to fall into. She made it past the black iron gate in front of the manor, that looked like the bars on a bird cage.  
  
Her lungs burned inside of her. Her ribcage felt like it was going to collapse ad stab into her lungs at any time. Her muscles were all chords that had been stretched beyond their breaking point. Yet, she kept running. She knew if she ran a little farther she would be free.  
  
But a child couldn’t outrun an adult.  
Her leg twisted underneath her, and that man got on his knees and crawled after her. The last thing she saw as she fell, was a single butterfly in the sky. 

 

The place she fell was a garden just outside the manor filled with white flowers. It was a particularly nasty rose vine that had caught around her ankle and made her fall over. As she fell into the filthy dirt, she looked up at the sky.  
  
In that moment she imagined the flesh of her back swelling up until it burst. A pair of white wings, tore through her skin, growing larger and larger. She thurst her shoulders backwards, and then forwards as her wings continued to unfold. Wet, naked, shaking like a newborn, she let the wind carry her up to the sky.

 _If I could have flown away, I’d have done so._ _  
_ _I wanted to become a butterfly, or a flower, anything other than a human girl at that moment._

The butterfly she watched flew away from her, as if entirely uncaring about her problems. Several more took flight. Pure white wings.  
A color she would never have.

A freedom she would never have.  
As hands tightly gripped her wrist and held her down against the dirt.  
Butterflies landed all over her, they closed and opened their wings. 

They ignored her.  
Like she was nothing.  
Like she was just a corpse.  
They would not even feast on her, she was too dirty for them. 

“Iruma, that’s horrible… why would he ever…?”

His eyes welled up with actual tears. It was so good, seeing such genuine emotion. He probably only could feel that way still because he had been kept away from other people's dirty hands. She felt as if she reached out and touched one of those tears, she might become clean again. 

He could feel the emotions she was no longer capable of feeling.  
But, she did not want that.  
  
“I lost a lot of things, but thanks to that I gained…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Hmm… something, I dunno.” 

Emptiness, or distance maybe, or nothing at all.  
A pair of eyes looking down on her.  
Even if you freed yourself from the bird cage, iron bars would fall on top of you and crush you.  
Attachments were just ropes that bound and gagged you, and burned your skin.  
They tied you up and made you completely helpless. 

In this world all she desired was to be free. 

Even if that meant severing all of the connections around her.  
If she could scramble the wires in her own brain too, she would have in a moment. 

 _Mmm, well anyway._ _  
_ _I think I am genuinely a victim, but on top of that I just have a terrible personality.  
__Oh well, not much I can do about it. Shit happens sometimes._

🧸  


Computers are by far the most most excellent of devices developed by humans. That can be said not for the hardware, but mostly for the software. They can follow intricate programs using rules that cannot normally be understood, and at a super high speed. They make anything possible, act in a grand language differing from humans, and can arrive at results that took humans a hundred years in five minutes. Yet, on the other hand, despite being such an inexplicable unbelievable device, even na ordinary person can control it. Switch a button, and the computer stops.   
  
There are some who say that’s why computers were able to prosper among people. Controlling a computer satisfies the craving of having dragged something greater than oneself to their own level. No matter how, people want to always be the one in command. That was the dirty desires of mankind. 

Iruma saw herself as much more of a computer than Keebo would ever be. After all, her brilliant mind meant absolutely nothing when she was this weak. If someone hit her switch, she was completely helpless, and turned off. They could control every part of her so easily. 

All of that talent and never once had she been able to use it for herself. The same way Keebo so obviously envied humans, she envied dolls. They did not have any hearts. A heart was, somtething she wanted to run away from too. 

Iruma Miu leaned in front of Kazuichi and blew on his ear. The boy jolted like electricity ran through him, and she saw the gears in his head were clanking and turning. “Hey, a virgin like you sneaking around can’t lead to anything good.”  
  
“I-I-I-IRUMA! WHAT THE HELL? I’M SENSITIVE.”

“What are you going to do, cry?”  
  
“M-maybe!”

 _At the end of the day, I just might not like myself enough._ _  
_ _A person like me._ _  
_ _That’s why all I try to do is run away._  
  
Iruma leaned in and licked the side of his face to tease him. Kazuichi screamed out. “Aaaaaah-” , then immediately clamped his sharpened teeth shut. “What was that for?”  
  
“I wanted to see what you tasted like, but there’s too much oil. I guess that’s to be expected when you’re the human equivalent of fast food.”   
  
“So, what I’m cheap and easy?”  
  
“Actually, you’re difficult as hell. Can you stop fussing so much? Jeez, dudes should know know when to shut up and take their licks.”  
  
“Be quiet, somebody’s going to hear us.”  
  
“Why? Do you think somebody’s going to think we’re fooling around in the bushes if they find us here? Because that would be the best day of your life, and the worst day of mine. I’m the only one who needs to worry about my reputation being ruined by you.”  
  
“What reputation? I think you need people that like you to have a reputation.”  
  
“Th-there are people that like me!” Iruma immediately squeaked, losing all of her fake confidence in an instant. “They’re just not here right now, they’re uhhh somewhere else. I’ll introduce you to the Iruma Miu fanclub sometime.”  
  
“Are you the only member?” 

It was comfortable being around other junk that was all. Both of them when they were around each other, knew exactly what kind of scum the other person was. They could both mutually look down on each other and feel a little bit better about themselves. That was why her and Kazuichi kept talking. They who were afraid of everybody else, could be honest with each other at least.  
  
Except, she had lied to him. 

 _Hmm, why did I do that again?_ _  
_ _Ah, because I don’t like myself._ _  
_ _So I lie, to run away._  
  
When she was younger she told herself a lie. That she had a childhood friend that she played with during the daytime. That because of him she was able to live a normal life in the day at least. That only when night fell was she made into a doll again. 

Then one day that childhood friend suddenly got curious about the bruises that covered her body. He burst into her mansion, and fought with that man’s neck. In the heat of the moment he grabbed a letter opener and stabbed it into that man’s neck. He ripped out those eyes and stoped on them, freeing the girl from those glassy eyes that watched her forever. 

Then, while she was terribly afraid he wrapped his arms around her and told her it was all okay now. The two of them could run away. She needed to be strong for his sake. Maybe, maybe if she had someone like him in her life she could have been strong. 

She never once tried to kill him, because she was not strong. She ran away instead, multiple times. When she was just a little bit older she was smart enough to access the internet on her phone, and hide it, and on social media she found plenty of people who were willing to take in runaway kids.  
  
Of course they all wanted favors. All she had to do was put up with it for awhile and be strong. It was nothing she had ever dealt with before. She could pretend to be there little girlfriend. There were a lot of men who thought they had saved her. Who thought they were being kind. 

They all got tired of her eventually though. It was a basic fact of life, men always get tired of their whores. That’s because what they seek out is the real thing. They always thought, she would fall all over them. That she would be so grateful that they would become her entire world. That she would give them her feelings, and then they could take those feelings and do whatever they wanted with them. 

It was just a matter of ego. This girl I’m giving food and shelter to fell in love with me. I really am a lovable person. But to me it’s nothing more than a transaction. I don’t have power over her body, but her heart as well. 

That was probably the lies they told themselves, but Miu was always painfully honest with herself and others. She knew it was artificial, she knew it was paid for, it was no different than swiping a credit card, or eating candy. You got what you paid for for a little bit, you got to feel a little bit of affection, and then it was gone. 

The morning when he leaves.  
The sound of the door closing.  
He comes home from work.  
The sound of the door opening.  
Ah.  
Late to bed.  
Late to rise.  
This life is, full of constraints.  
  
_What I want the most, is that quitessential something that emerges from the ordinary._

_Freedom._

In the end they all got tired at her. They cursed at her and threw her out, because she could not give them what they wanted. “What’s with those eyes? What the fuck!? I’m the one who saved you, aren’t I? You’d be in the streets if it weren’t for me!?” 

His hand grabbed her hair, and he dragged her outside. 

 _No, my eyes aren’t…_ _  
_ _That man’s eyes are the horrible ones._ _  
_ _My eyes aren’t dirty._  
  
In the end it was when she was starving and cold that she realized how weak she was. Men could overpower her, throw her out, and beat her easily. Then again women could too, any adult could. If only she were a little bit stronger she could live on her own. But instead, she found a pay phone and always called that man to come take her home again. 

She started attending school and having a normal life during the day time. But even then, she could not stand it watching kids play in the daytime, completely oblivious to what she was going through.  
  
It was like she inhabited a completely different world from them. She might as well have been a fucking faerie, or something else, it felt like there was an invisible curtain between her and them. They got to stay a part of the pure world of children, while she was already in the impure world of adults. Even if she tried to play with them, she just felt empty, more aware than they were, more sensitive, like she was detached from her body and merely moving it around from some outside place.  
  
It was due to that fact that her intelligence excelled in school, but several people noted she had no social skills whatsoever, and nothing besides basicbook smarts. It was easy to study, because she wanted to stay away from home as long as possible. And maybe because her head was so empty, other children were overflowing with so many emotions it must have distracted them, making it hard for them to thinl. She could fill her head with all the information in the world.  
  
She was just like somebody saving data on a computer. She had an infinite ability to take in and process information, but that was only because she had an exceptional memory that surpassed most people.  
  
When teachers started threatening to call home about her antisocial behavior, she decided to make boys like her.  
  
Apparently girls her age wanted to be beautiful.  
They wanted to fall in love.

But she never saw the appeal.  
  
She already knew the end result, of what beauty and love led to. It all just turned into sex in the end. Boys thought they were princes, but they were just dicks. Girls were dicks too. Everyone was dicks. 

_Then, why am I doing this?_

She thought as she lay in bed with her senpai. He was two years older than her. Everyone admired him. He was especially nice to her. It was his first time, but he took harge. All she could do was unabashedly act like it was her first time, even though it was not. The more she played it up, the more she enjoyed it.  
  
She was loved, and she relished her self worth just a little bit.She felt flowers brushing against her skin, kissing her gently. She was able to hold them in her arms against her chest. She wanted to gather up these flowers, these pretty things, line them up like treasures and admired them, hold them close like they were something precious. She wanted to handle them. She wanted to trample them. She wanted to do what she pleased with them.

_That’s the kind of stuff I want to do._

She took the virginity of boys who thought they were falling in love.  
She led them on like she was really in love. 

_But why?_

Perhaps because she liked the idea of making someone just as dirty as she was.  
Perhaps because she wanted to become even dirtier using other people. 

No, neither of those sounded right.

She thought as she watched the flowers petals fall from her fingertips. 

 _Um…_ _  
_ _Because that’s all I know._ _  
_ _I am…_

She already knew she was worthless. A trashy personality, a trashy girl, a trashy sense of morals. Even if she pretended to love herself she doubted it would make a difference, because love brought her nothing at all. Even if she found someone else to love her that would not fix her, because intimacy was just possession.  
  
She had a friend back then, or something like a friend. A plain girl with glasses. She had a crush on the senpai that Iruma had slept with a little earlier. For no particular reason, just on a whim, _I wanted to try it out, I’m sorry._  
  
It was not like she could say that when the girl confronted her though. The plain girl hidden behind glasses, looked away from Miu. “I was just surprised since… You two looked so good together.”

 _That’s._  
  
“I’m completely fine but… maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a little while.”  
  
Seeing that girl avert her gaze, refuse to look at her emotion was born inside of Miu.  
It wasn’t guilt.  
It wasn’t some flimsy sense of superiority.  
It was something like excitement. 

_Ah, she hates me._

_She’s not looking at me._ _  
_ _She doesn’t want to see me._

Then she realized, there was one small way to have her freedom.  
Just make other people hate her.

Cut off all attachments.

Miu already had a bad personality, so it was not that hard. She never got along with people to begin with, she could not read them, she had no likable qualities, and the only thing she was good at was memorizing information in books. She had a good body and nothing else, she had known that for a long time. 

 All she had to do was start pretending to be haughty and people would hate her. They would avoid her. They would leave her alone. She never had to see herself in their glassy eyes again. 

 _It’s fine, isn’t it?_ _  
_ _I’m a little jealous of._ _  
_ _Something like being able to like someone other than myself._  
  
Boys who hated her would still sleep with her of course. They hated her but did not hate her body. She swiped her card, and got just a little bit of affection. Because after all of that she was still weak. She still needed other people to keep on living. Then she threw them away, trampled over them like flowers, and pretended that this was being free. 

The illusion of freedom, just like she used to delude herself about a prince coming to save her. She pretended to be more adult than anybody else, to run away from the child who could never escape that garden, but she knew she was just being irresponsible, a careless child. She threw things away, did not think about the consequences of her actions, cut ties like they were ribbons.  
  
It was the opposite of freedom. She was trapped in the same behaviors.  
Some small part of her knew, but...

 _Why do I keep this up?_ _  
_ _It’s all I’m good for._ _  
_ _I’m so…_  
  
If only she were not loved. If only she were not beautiful. How nice it would be, to be ugly and despised. How kind everyone would be if they would just leave her alone. But she knew she was too weak to ever be on her own.  
  
She stared at Kazuichi Souda in front of her. _You hate me, it’s so nice._ She gave up on fantasizing a long time ago. There’s no room for imagination when you have seen everyone and everything. 

 _But, if I want something I’m sure you’ll give it to me._ _  
_ _Because you’re weak just like I am._

That made it sound like she was targeting him, what a terrible girl she was. She raised her eyes and caught a glimpse of a white haired boy, who looked even more like a doll than Keebo did. She wondered how that boy felt about that, being less human than even the robot.  
  
“So you’re stalking someone? Do I need to tell you you’re sending out vibes that will make any girl within a half mile radius immediately run away, or do you already know?”

“Yes, I’m stalking someone so could you please be quiet? If he knows I’m here that defeats the entire purpose of stalking.”  
  
“...Wait, what? You’re actually stalking him? Mwah-hahahahaha! Shine, on! Shine on! Shine on, you crazy fuckin’ diamond.”  
  
“What? N-no, I’m not stalking. I’m just trying to learn about him from a distance.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“I-we used to be friends, but then one day he just…”  
  
“Yup, yup…”

“I just want to know what his deal is. He’s never once told me why he…”  
  
“I’m totes listening…”  Miu said staring off into space.  
  
“Why he hates me so much.” 

“So you’re totally head over heels in love with him, right? You’re going to go sniff break into his apartment and sniff his socks later.” 

“Why would I even do that!? Why would you think of that?”  
  
Kazuichi overreacted to everything. It was fun, pushing other people's buttons instead of having hers pushed for once. To flick someone else’s switch. If only she could control them as well as she did machines. If only she could rewire them.  
  
She might feel a little bit more like a person in comparison to them, for once.  
To be human, to have control over something else.  
That was why machines and dolls appealed so much to humans.  
That was why humans tried to control each other.  
She would do it too, if she wasn’t such a dumb girl that barely understood people at all.  
  
“How am I supposed to comprehend the mind of a pervert stalker like you? You think I should waste even one percent of my genius trying to think about what kind of fetishes you have?” Miu watched the back of Koameda’s head through the bushes. “Still, you’re just stalking a guy? That’s just going to make him hate you even worse. Even I know that. You really don’t know how to behave at all do you, it’s so pitiful it’s almost cute.”  
  
“You’re the last one who should talk about not knowing how to behave. You turn every situation perverted.”  
  
“I just can’t help it, you know? When you’re this gorgeous everyone immediately lusts after you. I’m just going along with what they want, since I’m their goddess after all.”  
  
“Someone sure thinks highly of herself.”

“Thomas Edison once said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration, but you’re one hundred percent perspiration right now aren’t you?”

“I’m sure you think you’re hot as hell, but you just think that way because you’re the devil got it?”   
  
He pushed her away. He was so desperate for affection, and yet he acted scared shitless anytime someone got close. It was so funny. Maybe she was just following him around to laugh at him.   
  
Kazuichi’s face suddenly froze, as if he had encountered a fatal system error. She saw static in his eyes for a moment as he was rebooting. “That’s right… you were stalked like this weren’t you?” Plenty of times but she wasn’t a fucking crybaby about it. She just played that up to get Kazuichi to lower his guard around her. “I shouldn’t be doing this, I must look terrible to you right now.”  
  
“You always look terrible to me. Heh! Hehehehehe!”  
  
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” 

He hated her. He hated her crass personality, her haughty personality, her rude way of speaking, her spineless self, her trying way too hard to be raunchy. As for what she hated about him…  
  
Not that he was creepy, and not that he did not know how to act around others. Those things were both familiar to her. She was barely even bothered by it. She really hated, that underneath those sharp teeth, and that loud mouth he was just some soft little kid.  
  
A kid who wanted to be gentle to her.  
She really, really hated that.  
And she hated herself who only thought about how she would just thorw him away, like another broken machine that she only tinkered with to relieve her boredom for a little while longer.  
  
She brought their bodies closer together, and she noticed how hard he was trying to look away.  
_You’ve already noticed me haven’t you?  
_  
She leaned her head on his shoulder affectionately. It was the only kind of closeness he would allow.

“So, that’s your former bitch right?”  
  
“Can you stop that filthy exhaust from coming out of that mouth of yours? It makes me want to choke. I’m pretty sure you’re polluting the atmosphere.”  
  
“I didn’t know you were into choking. Jeez, you just keep getting more fetishes by the day.”

 _I’ll be quiet but first…  
_ _Can I ask you something selfish.  
_ _I want you to be my lover for a little bit.  
_ _But, I’m a coward see._ _  
_ _I know good and well that I can’t accept anything for you.  
_ _Even for the weight and depth of your feelings, I have nothing to give you in return. I_ _just want to run away into your arms for a little bit._

🧸

 

 _Always running away._ _  
_ _The butterflies that fly away._ _  
_ _The stars in the sky, that wrap around me and burn me as he eclipses my body._ _  
_ _The cold room._ _  
_ _Every little thing speaks to my loneliness._ _  
_ _My profound loneliness._

Her heart was more disconnected from her body than anybody else, like it was torn out of her and connected to her with a bunch of wires. The heart itself was just a muscle anyway. Everything that humans could do was reduced to a bunch of electric impulses, no different than machines. 

But the people around her always seemed much more than that. Perhaps they were just wired differently. Yet she was sure, even if she felt different from everybody else, that did not mean she wanted to be together with them.  
She already knew what it was like for human bodies to be together, after all.

What she wanted was…  
To be strong enough to be on her own.  
  
“Shit, we got caught!”  
  
Kazuichi said stumbling backwards after he locked eyes with a gloomy girl hiding in a different bastard. 

“Mmmm! Mmmm! Is there something you want? Try not to distract me I want to give my undivided attention to master.”  
  
Genocide Jack said, her own tongue hanging out of her mouth.

“Nah, it’s just another stalker,” Miu said casually. 

“No, it’s just a long distance relationship.”  
  
“Really, he doesn’t seem that far away. He’s right over there. Hey, Togami-kun! Hey, Komaeda!”   
  
Miu was tackled by both Kazuichi and Jack. 

“How many stalkers are there anyway? I guess that’s what you get when you lock a bunch of emotionally stunted brats in a school but I can feel my character getting less unique by the minute- Ah! Ah! Ahchoo!”The leaves from the bush Jack was hiding in, made her sneeze so hard she fell backwards against the wall and hit her head. Her eyes rolled around dizzy for a moment and then suddenly, the energy drained right out of her face.  
  
“Enoshima…?” 

She said, blinking at Miu’s blonde hair for a moment.  
  
“Oh, it’s just Iruma.” 

She sounded disappointed.  
_Well, of course she is I’m just Enoshima Junko but dumber._ _  
_ _I’m just her but more annoying.  
__Can’t fault her for having taste in her blonde bitches._

“Why, if it ain’t the mopey masochist mophead! Haven’t seen you around lately. Hey, hey, doesn’t it kind fo suck that everyone likes the literal serial killer more than you?” 

She had no particular reason for picking on Fukawa. Just, she was the girl that everyone picked on, so even a fake, not at all confident, bully like her might even be able to pick on her too. Yeah, that wasn’t a good reason.  
  
“Mopey Masochistic Mophead!”   
  
Toko repeated, as if in disbelief.   
  
“Hey, shouldn’t you be using your body for something more useful than stalking after princes you’re never going to get. Like, mopping the floor or something?”  
  
“Y-you’re the one who polishes the floor with her groveling!”  
  
“Huh? There are far better things a genius like me could do besides cleaning! Like, I could use the time to invent something that’ll vacuum the floor all on it’s own.”  
  
Next to her Kazuichi spoke up. “Umm, that already exists Iruma. That’s a roomba.”  
  
“Damnit, I forgot about Keebo’s older brother. Fuckers stole my idea.” 

Toko glared at them from behind her glasses. She chewed her lip, but Miu doubted it was because of any underlying sexual tension in the air. She probably just found her annoying as well. 

 _Haha._  
  
Toko sighed. “It makes me infinitely happy that I will never have to see your face once we get out of here. Actually, if there does have to be another murder, I’d be happy if it was you.”  
  
“Either kill me yourself serial killer bitch or shut the fuck up.” 

“I only kill people I like.”  
  
“Th-then, what? I’m not good enough for you?” _This is the part of me, I hate the most. This is the weak me._ Miu turned timid and immediately began to back off from her flaccid attempt at bullying. “Normally you’d never have the chance to be this close to a genius. Oh, since you’re so mirror-breakingly hideous… you can’t stand being near a beauty like me.”  
  
They were almost the same.  
Miu just happened to be more attractive that was all. Not that something like that really mattered, it was just a body, not really her. Her true self is probably insigificant. Probably invisible. Probably somewhere else. 

“The only working part of your brain is the part that invents useless shit,” Toko sneered.  
  
If the mirror were a little bit cracked, and warped, they would be pretty much the same. They were both someone that everyone hated. They were both so weak, always living relying on others. _So, I just need to talk about myself then. That’s all I fuckin do anyway._

“Eureka! You only act like a stuck-up bitch cuz you can’t admit how lonely you really are!”  
  
Toko brought her hands up in surprise.  
If she had pearls she would totally fucking clutch them.  
There was something in her eyes, crystal clear like glass that made Miu want to shatter them. “Wh-where did that come from?” For a serial killer she was awful fragile.  
  
“A day without me is like a day without sunlight, so I understand why you’d feel so lonely. I guess I can let you bow before my genius. Every beauty needs a beast, after all.”   
  
“You’re the one who’s lonely! B-because, no one can put up with your fitlhy mouth!”  
  
“Y-yeah right… Nothing relieves me more than distancing myself from plebs like you. I’m a genius, after all… Most people don’t have what it takes to get on my level.” _Jeez, I know I’m terrible but that one was particularly bad. How transparent can I get._  
  
Toko cast her eyes down. “No wonder you don’t have any friends…” 

 _We can’t do this we’re not even friends yet._  
That was not true, there was someone here who wanted to be her friend. Miu felt something inside of her, like she wanted to chew up butterflies and spit them out.  
  
All of the crassness drained out of her voice, and she was quieter than usual as she walked up to Toko. “Hey you, the reason you’re going around as Jack all the time it’s because you’re afraid aren’t you?”  
  
“W-why would I be afraid of a shallow bitch like you?”  
  
“It’s not me your afraid of, it’s him. You actually did it with him didn’t you?” Miu knew the look in a little girl’s eyes, when their first time did not turn out to be as magical as she was expecting. She whispered to Toko like they were two girls gossiping. 

“Poor little Toko, always writing all those love stories. But those were just lies weren’t they?”

“...”  
  
“And you just found out how ugly the truth is. That your prince charming ain’t so charming in bed.”  
  
“..S-shut…”  
  
“You did it with the boy of your dreams, but you’re not happy at all. It just made you realize that yuo’re two separate people, in separate bodies. That love can’t fix you at all.”

“Shut your filthy whore mouth! I’m not a slut like you, I… I…” Toko snapped at that moment, and grabbed her by the collar lifting her in the air. She could not tell if that was Toko, or Jack holding a pair of scissors against her thorat. Oh, no her hand was trembling, so it must have been Toko.  
  
“Grgh!” 

The one who trembled even worse was Miu. This was the weakness she hated. No matter how much her mind did not care, her body did not forget. What other people had done to her. Every time she got in the slightest conforntation, she wanted to run away, she would do anything to escape. She trembled like that little girl again.    
  
She was all bark and no bite. There was no good part of her, she was simply so weak she was harmless. When others started to get violent against her, she froze up, her systems crashed and she could not fight back.

Her memory was far too good. She remembered every single time, someone directed even the smallest hostility her way.    
  
One of the times she ran away, a boy found her who was only a little older. He was timid and shy. His eyes shifted away from her.  _ “Sorry for being so nervous… Wait, you must be nervous right? Meeting with a strange guy like this…”  _   
  
“...”   
  
_ “Um, what do you want to do? Are you hungry? Or do you want to  just head to my place?”  _   
  
“You seem pretty normal.”    
  
_ “I get told that a lot. _ ”   
  
“Ah, no offense or anything.”

_ “Well, I’m kind of a nobody. So… I can sympathize with someone like you. U-um.” _ His fists suddenly tightened.  _ “U-um, other peeople are probably after that, but I just want to help people. If someone as worthless as me could help someone else. So um…” _

“It’s fine.”   
  
_ “I didn’t touch the last girl I swear. It’s just a one room apartment but you can stay as long as you need it... I’m gone most of the day anyway-”  _   
  
Miu was a really stupid girl.    
When they got through the girl, she turned her back to him just for a moment.    
It was not like she believed his good intentions.   
She just thought he was too weak to harm anybody, just like her.   
Suddenly, she felt a rope wrapping around her neck.   
Her feet were lifted off the floor, and she was pulled backwards. 

_ “I get it! You’re tired right? You wanna die right? I can make it easier for you…”  _   
  
Iruma Miu realized how truly weak she was in that moment. Even someone as pathetic as that could easily kill her. It’s not like she did not want to die, but the idea of dying like this was too much for her.    
  
She only escaped because she knew how to fight back a little bit when somebody was on top of her like this. She kneed him in the groin hard and made a break for it. When she made it outside, there were people staring at her. 

_ You wanna die, right? _ _   
_   
They all looked at the marks on her neck.   
There were so many eyes on her.   
Glass eyes.   
Like dolls.    
Watching her all over. 

_ Die. _ _   
_ _ Die. Die.  _ _   
_ _ Die. Die. Die. Die.  _

That was it, whe was just afraid of everybody. That was what this weakness was. She ran through the crowds. If only she was alittle bit uglier than people would not look at her. If only she was alone she did not have to be afraid. If only she was a little less lonely, then she would not have to put herself near the people she feared so much. 

_ I’m gonna die.  _   
  
Ever since that day she started to wear a rubber choker around her neck, over the scars that were left. She liked to remind herself that she was never free. When Toko pulled on it, all of those feelings came flooding back. 

She was…

Crying, and whimpering.  
How pathetic.   
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry so please…”   
  
Even when other people looked at her all she could see were those eyes looking at her. 

That was it, whe was just afraid of everybody. That was what this weakness was.

 _I’m gonna die._  
  
Ever since that day she started to wear a rubber choker around her neck, over the scars that were left. She liked to remind herself that she was never free. When Toko pulled on it, all of those feelings came flooding back. 

She was…

Crying, and whimpering.  
How pathetic.   
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry so please…”  
  
Toko was right, all she did was prostrate herself in front of others. She was able to clean the floor with her groveling.   
Suddenly, Kazuichi stood between them. “T-toko, calm down a little bit. Miu’s got a mouth, but she’s basically just annoying and that’s it.”  
  
“D-don’t sum me up that easily.”

“Ahhhh! Damn, why are all the girls here so scary?”  
  
Toko dropped the scissors. She had a look in her eyes as if she did not know who she was right now. If that violence was hers, or if it belonged to Jack. Kazuichi grabbed Miu by the hand, and dragged her away. 

They ran away together. 

They ran away through a field of flowers.  
She always dreamed about that when she was a child.   
But that’s not what she wants anymore.

Kazuichi looked out of breath.  
Breathless.  
His face red.  
“Jeez, I wanted to look cool but all I did was run away. I’m the lowest of the low. I bet Toko was feeling something bad too, like she wanted to cry, but I just called her scary.”  
  
Kazuichi was a coward, but that was not a bad thing.

She could not think it was a bad thing, because it was all she was.

She looked at the flower petals at her feet.  
She had sprinkled them there herself, after tearing up flowers.  
  
If she wanted to she could truly open up to him in this moment. She could tell him about why she was crying. She could press her face against his chest, and make him fall for her.   
  
She was afraid of him. She just stood there motionless, all alone, but it was better that way. She watched everything spill out of her hands once again, like the tears she could not stop from falling

 _I'll even run away from him in the end.  
_ _I know it's wrong but I'll keep living this way._  
_My cowardly pride makes me who I am._


	59. The Captive Fool

When he was young his parents ran away from him. He wondered if he was such a scary child that two adults needed to run. He was so young that his memories faded over time like spotty photos damaged by the light. 

 

He had the vaguest memory of a conversation. His mother told him he would be staying with his grandparents for awhile. At the time he knew it was a lie, but he did not say anything. When his mother wrapped his arms around his neck, he felt nothing at all.  
  
He felt nothing at being abandoned.  
‘Those people’ were no longer his parents.  
They were no longer humans, cowards running away from their own humanity.  
  
If he had one regret it would be that their blood flowed through him, through his heart, through through his brain, that blood continued to crawl through his veins underneath his skin.It was like an ink stain somebody had spilled on his heart, which slowly seeped through all of him until he was dyed the same color as them. 

 

In his mind the best heroes had no feelings at all. It was not because he thought it was cool, but because people who had no feelings could easily put others feelings over their own. They could do anything for other people, because even if they were hurt, even if they were scared, it did not matter if they were able to look past their own feelings. Their feelings weighed less.  
  
Of course it was easy for heroes printed on paper to act that way. All an author had to do was write _they saved the day_ and it would be done, without struggle, and without hesitation. He had always envied them, two dimensional heroes and their paper-and-ink hearts.

 

He was just so sensitive.

Just like his parents who were so afraid of the prospect of raising a child, that they turned and ran. They put their own fear of failure over the feelings of they child they abandoned.  
  
  In books being sensitive was seen as a good thing. The sensitive hero full of heart. But that was just a lie, sensitive people like him only ever thought of their own feelings first, they could not help it. They did not feel the pain of other people, because they were too wrapped up in their own pain. It was all they ever thought about, it consumed them.

 

His skin was made of paper, it stained and ripped apart so easily. 

He lived accumulating the feelings of other people on paper, trying to contain them all within himself, and because of that ink dripped slowly out from the bottom of his heart.  
  
He laughed louder than everyone else, he cried harder than anybody else, he was convinced he suffered the most in the entire world. Aware of his own selfishness, that boy desperately wanted to live for other people, to be able to put their feelings before his, but in the end he could only continue to live as himself. 

Momota Kaito was just too damn sensitive. That sensitivity only made him weak. Weak people only think about themselves, their own weakness, their own pain, and they run away. When he was this human, this ordinary,he could never become the hero he longed to be. 

  
Everybody views themselves as the heroes of their own story. That was how he knew, he was just as shallow and self obsessed as everyone else around him. He was not out of step with the rest of the world. He was not a failure of a human. It was painfully obvious, how mundane he was after all.  
  
The first time he realized was when his grandmother’s sister, his great aunt, came to stay with them on her dying dies. Even when she got to the point where she could do little more than sleep, she always wanted him by his side. “Such a good boy, such a kind boy”, she would say as she stroked his hair.  
  
Just like any ordinary child,seeing the light perish from her eyes and replaced with a cloudy, milky nothing, seeing the color leave her hair, he became frightened just looking at her. He feared his sickly great aunt as if she had already become a ghost haunting him.  
  
He wanted to be the good boy his great aunt saw him as. He wanted to put the suffering of a sick person over his own petty fears. He sat by her side every day, he wiped her skin down and brought her food. The entire time they were eating together he made up stories on the spot that his great aunt only half heard. He acted like he was trying to prove something.  
  
When he was in the shower he scrubbed himself hard until his skin turned red and felt raw. He was trying to wash away those feelings, trying to forget them, so he could be the good boy that he longed to be. A person was sick right in front of him and all he could think about was his own sickness.  
  
One day his great aunt’s hand as it brushed through his hair, suddenly went limp. Her fingers curled, as if in death she was tightening her grip on him. Kaito felt sympathy for his grandmother losing her only sister, sadness for the person who died right in front of him, but more than anything else he was terrified of the death that was now present in the room. His great aunt’s corpse was now lacking something, there was now an emptiness inside of her. As if some doll lacking in any life or human features suddenly came alive and grabbed onto him.  
  
He screamed and ran away, then hid himself in a cocoon of blankets and cried for the rest of the day. If ghosts exist he knew his great aunt was watching him that day. She saw the good boy she praised so much, run away in fear, and cry only for himself. Ghosts were transparent, they could see through everything. His great aunt watched him even now. He knew it. He knew it. He knew it. 

 

Ever since that day, Kaito became terrified of ghosts who hung in the air, invisible to all, but seeing everything visible, that would eventually look at the face he never wanted to show anyone.  
  
He grew up into a man that despised weakness. He would never forgive the weakness of other people, but he thought he was fair, because he hated his weak self most of all. 

 

🧸

  
Harukawa Maki was weak, but Momota Kaito was weaker which is why during their sparring he was easily thrown over her shoulder.  
  
“Jeez! You’re just a normal girl, Maki! Since when did you get so strong?”  
  
“What part of assassin is not going through that thick skull of yours.” 

 

“I just can’t see you that way, no matter how hard I try.”  
  
“It’s a good thing I never got a job to kill a person like you.” 

 

“Because you don’t have it in your heart to kill a good guy like me, right?” 

 

“No, it’s because you’re far too easy of a mark. You could probably be killed by a five year old holding a rock.”  
  
“No way! I could totally beat up a five year old! I’d knock them down on their ass and lecture them!” Kaito said, getting overheated like he was about to genuinely throw down with a kid. While he made a fuss that entire time and talked big, the reality was that he had been thrown and pinned by Maki in one move. He lay on the ground, arms spread wide looking up at her with the same gaze he usually reserved for all the stars in the sky.

Maki sat down next to him, drawing up her knees to her chest. He turned his head to the side and his eyes trailed along the long red socks she wore that reached just above her thighs  She wanted to look distant and cut off from him, even when she was right next to him. Girls were just so complicated. 

  
“I could kill you so easily you know, and you keep following me around like this. Are you just an idiot with no sense of self preservation?”

 

“Hey, don’t call me an idiot. They don’t shoot idiots into space.” He really hated being called that because if only he was a happy go lucky idiot, if only he was unaware of people.  
  
“Really? Don’t they shoot dogs and monkeys into space all the time?”

  
  
“You’re the one who doesn’t get it no matter how many times I explain it to you. I trust you because I want to trust you, alright? Even if you were to kill me in the end, I’d rather die having trusted you, then live by excluding you to protect myself just like…”  
  
Just like everybody else did.  
Maki was now alone, except for her small trio of misfits. Even Kaede who liked everybody, could not look at her anymore. Kaito knew if he did not shut off his brain, if he did not close his eyes and make a leap of faith off that cliff he would distrust Maki too. The moment he started thinking, he was unable to stop. 

 

Every look of those sharp eyes of hers would be a cut on his skin. Every time she touched him it would be needles in his flesh. Her tears would just be acid to him. Those red eyes, those striking red eyes he enjoyed looking at more than the stars, he would only be able to see the color of blood in them.  
  
Then, it was better to just be a happy go lucky fool. He would rather be the fool that made her smile.  
  
“Besides, kill me this, kill me that. That’s not how normal girls are supposed to talk you know.”  
  
“I have no idea why you keep telling me how a normal girl should behave, when it’s so obvious you have no idea how to talk to girls.”  
  
“Err… Hey! I have plenty of fangirls back home you know. They made a fanclub for the young, handsome astronaut boy who’s chasing his dreams all the way to the stars.I mean imagine seeing this face and not wanting to cheer for me. Doesn’t this goatee give me a glamorous celebrity vibe? That’s what I thought when I cut it this way.”  
  
“Oh, you did that on purpose.” Maki put a hand over her mouth as if she was trying to be polite, while her eyes looked down on him. “That’s unfortanate.”  
  
“The hell do you mean that’s unfortunate?”  
  
“I just thought you were a poor little boy that nobody taught to shave.”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“I thought a rat died on your face.”  
  
“Knock it off! Swoon already damnit! My hair and beard are super cool!”

  
“Swoon already damnit. You’re right. How do I as a lady possibly help myself around a sweet talker like you?” As Maki said that, she idly brushed her hand through the one of the twin tails draped over her shoulder.

Kaito grinded his teeth as he got worked up again. Of course he had no idea how to talk to girls. He never approached one genuinely in his entire life. His only idea of what girls were like came from the books he read.  
  
He was scared of them. That was why, he never wanted to be afraid of Maki. Her sharp eyes, her words she wielded like knives, they were scary as hell and bound to cut him but he knew. He knew she was just like him. He had known from the first time he saw her. There was always something off about her, even when she was just a child caretaker. That was what made him follow around.  
  
A child caretaker who did not like the children she looked after. It was not because she was hateful and miserable, not because she was unable to care about others, but because of how afraid she was too care.

 

She could not bear the pain of other people’s feelings, so she pushed them away. It was not just because she was an assassin, Kaito was sure if she had just been a normal girl she would have turned out that way too. In fact being dangerous, being without emotions, being without remorse, they were all convenient excuses for her to keep people away. Maki had probably longed for this all of her life, a reason to make people hate her from afar. 

 

She wanted to be disliked because that was easier than being liked. If she was liked, she would have to evaluate herself, she would have to determine what was likable about herself, and even worse, she would have to be watched by someone else. Other people's thoughts and feelings would start mattering to her far too much. If she made people dislike her, that was different than people deciding to dislike her on their own. 

 

She just could not accept the feelings of other people, their hatred of her love. It had nothing to do with being unfeeling, it was just her own petty sense of inferiority.  
  
Casting judgement on herself, deciding all on her own that she was a monster that could not be redeemed was one thing, but if someone else were ever to say that to her a girl more fragile than anybody else would break.

All of the corpses piled up her feet changed nothing. She was just a scared girl, crying all alone. Kaito refused to see her in any other way. _If I could help… someone like you…_

 

He reached out and grabbed one of her twin tails yanking on it. “Aaaaaah! Seriously? I’ve never met someone with a bigger death wish then you!”  
  
“You were thinking of the past again, weren’t you?”  
  
“...” Maki puffed out her cheeks. Seriously, what a brat. 

 

There were times he wanted to scold her. When she showed up in front of him half beaten up from her fight with Mukuro, he wanted to knock her upside the head and give her a good talking to. Of course she was jealous of someone like Mukuro, someone who could live without hiding their weakness. 

 

“Dragging someone else down won’t make you feel any better about yourself! Even children know that! You’re worse than the children you take care of.”  
  
Kaito said to her face, but in the back of his ear he heard  a whisper. _“But lifting other people up won’t make you feel any better about yourself either.”_  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
_“It’s all so stupid. How can you live without constantly wanting to laugh at yourself,  Momota-chan?”_

 

Maki just stared confused at him at the time for his random outburst, and then quietly apologized to him. She probably thought it was her fault he suddenly started acting that way.  
  
In the present moment, Kaito’s hand traveled up her hair, and tried to grab onto the hand lost in her hair from behind. “Hey, don’t try to shoulder everything on your own. That’s why even though you can beat up a guy way taller and more manly than you, you’re still so damn weak. You gotta trust other people.”  
  
“...”  
  
“Once you’re able to share your burdens with you’re friends, then you’ll be stronger. Just, tell me a little bit so I can carry it with you.” 

 

His fingers wrapped around hers, like she was some delicate, precious thing, that he wanted to hold in his hands and protect. As if her hand were a flower he wanted to lightly pluck. In that moment, Maki reacted on reflex and cut his fingers with a razor blade she kept hidden on her person. Kaito only stared in shock at the mess of red his hand had become.  
  
The pain was worse than anything Kaito had ever fault. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream at her and call her a monster. He wanted to fight back. His sensitive heart, pounded loudly in his chest, and filled his red cheeks with blood.  
  
He hated himself, thinking only of his own feelings of hurt in this moment, when Maki was obviously hurting worse. He could never be the man he wanted to be around her.  
“Don’t touch me. The next one goes in between your legs.”  
  
“Hey Harumaki,” Kaito through his own haggard breaths, forced a smile like he did not feel any pain at all. Stupid people were not supposed to feel pain anyway. “Girls look way less cute, when they have knives in their hands… that’s what I think anyway.” 

 

“Harumaki…?” 

  
Maki repeated. He had spent all night thinking up that nickname for her, so they would really feel like friends. He ended up using it at the worst possible time.  
  
Kokichi who had been watching their sparring the entire time, claiming he was supervising their training but really just playing a game on his nintendo 3ds looked up at both of them. “Hmm, there’s no way Harukawa-chan would stab you there, those are Momota-chan’s precious jewels after all.” 

 

Kokichi closed his 3DS, a satisfied grin on his face. “But you’re really bad at talking to girls. You’re so bad that they want to stab you, nishishiiiiiii!” 

 

“He really is the worst,” Maki said as she stood up. It was practically the only thing the two of them agreed on.  
  
“Momota-chan’s like the kind of person who doesn’t know how to make friends, so he just shows up and starts acting all important.” 

 

Kaito reached up and grabbed Maki by the ankle. “Hey, Harumaki it’s fine. Let’s just talk… I won’t talk over you like normal, I won’t be loud, I just wanna listen.” 

  
Maki said nothing, but he saw the fear in her eyes. Fear of him, fear of herself. _I knew I was going to hurt him._ Those eyes said. He had to show her that she was was wrong. That he did not feel any pain at all. That he was not so weak that one little knife meant nothing to him. 

 

Maki ran away after that. Kokichi barely looked up from the game he was playing so intently.  
He needed to chase after her.  
She was running away again and he was the only one who could stop her.  
He had to move.  
He had to run after her.  
If he did not that was just running away in the opposite direction.  
If they both ran away from each other they would never be together.  
And he would…  
He would never surpass the worthless parents that gave up on him. 

  
“Harumaki, wait!”  
He pulled the dagger out of his hand. 

The sight of his own blood filled him with fear.

Just like his sick great aunt, he was reminded of his own sickness.  
_I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die._  
_She’ll kill me if I go after her._  
Just a tiny amount of pain like this was enough to stop him.  
He only made it one step, and then fell to his knees and vomited in the bushes.  
Maki was probably crying alone somewhere, and he was a damn weakling who wanted to cry about one little scratch.  
It was not the sight of blood that made him nauseous.  
He was just so sick of himself.  
  
He wanted so desperately to become someone else. _“But that’s just running away too, Momota-chan. If you really were serious you’d try to love your weak and pathetic self the way I love you.”_

 

“Shut up…” 

 

🧸

 

Ikusaba Mukuro unbuttoned her shirt, and pulled it over her head again. She did not want to be able to hide. She did not want to hide under her clothes, under her shy personality, under her quiet eyes. Her entire life had been spent hiding in Enoshima Junko’s shadow after all.  
  
But now, that sounded like it was just a convenient an excuse. An excuse not to try to be her own person, to not feel remorse for her own actions, because she was just a puppet to be controlled by her sister one way or the other.  
  
It was uncomfortable, telling Makoto how awful she was.  
There was something that scared her more than the idea of him hating her.  
Makoto sat on the bed as politely as possible, his hands on his knees.  
He looked like a kid waiting to be called on in class.  
A kid trying to be quiet so they do not bother their parents. 

That quiet, soft existence.  
He blinked at her with those big, pure pupils.  
Exactly the same as when they first met.  
He smiled at her, a kind smile.  
The smile that saved her.  
In the end, she still decided to kill him and the rest of his class, even after falling for that smile.  
And now it was two years later.  
Sooner or later, the time would come.  
When she’d buckle under the weight. 

And she would try to kill him once more to ride herself of the weight of being a person.  
Even then, he was sure to try to save her.  
Even if she murdered or destroyed his friends, he would give her another chance.  
Just as he had done two years ago, with that innocent, beaming smile, as if nothing even happened.  
There was a difference between being saved and being forgiven. She knew after hearing this Makoto would love her all the same, but that love was just a little too heavy.  
  
Perhaps the worst thing her younger sister had told her was that she loved her, truly, genuinely. 

Mukuro shivered and put a hand over the slip covering her upper half. “Takumi Hijirihara. I killed his entire middle school class. The entire time, even when blood splashed on me, not a single emotion crossed my face. There were children younger than me, screaming and crying and running away from me and all I said was…”

Mukuro dragged her fingers down the delicate skin of her cheeks, it only made her face look paler, more hollow. “I just told them running away was useless, because I was going to kill them anyway. That’s all I thought, it’s a little bit annoying when they run away. It’s a hassle. I wish they would die more quietly.” 

Mukuro clawed at her own face. Her eyes shook inside of her skull. She was drowning, but she was dry. She tried to cry but no tears would come out, only empty gasps. It was hard to tell if she was alive or if she had already died. All of her turned to white.  
  
“My nose wrinkled a little bit because the entire room was filled with their corpses. There were boys who had thrown themselves over their girlsfreinds, only for me to stab through most of them. Desks were carelessly tossed aside over the corpses. All of them were frozen in some horrible fear. They spit up blood, and had tears and snot still on their faces. They were so ugly in death it was difficult to believe they had ever been alive. I took a step forward, and I heard a crunch underneath my foot. Then, the sound of splashing water as I stepped in a puddle of blood. All I thought was _oh, my shoes are going to get dirty._ I trampled over them like I didn’t even see them at all. I… some of them had their bones broken and hanging out of their bodies, some of them were torn at the sinews of the flesh, some of them had their eyes gouged out. It was all so…”  
  
Naegi Makoto as she described the scene of death, suddenly gagged and put his hands over his mouth. He stumbled off of the bed and ran to the bathroom. She heard the ugly noise of him emptying his stomach. 

 

  
  
She stood in the doorway like a shadow watching him. Makoto fell at her feet, and looked at up her with guilt in his eyes, on the brink of tears, as if he had done something wrong. “I promised I would listen to all of it. I wanted to be strong just for you but… I’m still so weak.” 

 

Naegi Makoto loathed that he was nothing special on his own. His greatest strength was that he could always depend on others, but that was also what made him weak. Mukuro sat down next to him on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor. It was much less romantic than a bed.  
  
“Don’t hate that part of you. The fact that you’re so normal is what makes you so wonderful.”  
  
“Hey don’t say that. You’re making it sound like you would have fallen for any normal guy.”  
  
“No way, none of them are as cute as you are.” 

 

“I… I was disgusted with you, and I vomited. Don’t… Don’t act like that’s normal.”  
  
“That is normal.” Mukuro said, tracing a faint smile with her lips. “The fact that I can recount that story without wanting to retch, that’s proof that I’ll never be a normal girl. Not the kind of girl that you deserve, anyway…”  
  
“Why do you always say that? It kind of makes it sound like you constantly want to break up with me… it’s um… you know… hurts my feelings a little bit.”  
  
“Everything hurts your feelings.”  
  
“That’s because I have so many of them!” 

  
Nervously, like any other shy girl might she tucked one of her front bangs of hair behind her ear. “Makoto I… I’ve always loved you.” An overpowering love, a love that outweighed the love of her sister of nineteen years, a love so heavy it could break her. “I used to dream of you loving me back, but more than that I wish you would hate me.” 

 

“It would be easier if I hated you right?”

“Huh…?”  
  
“Then you don’t have to try to change anymore. You can just spend the rest of your life hating yourself.”  
  
“A pathetic person like me is only capable of that…”

“What about you is so pathetic? Are you saying my feelings are wrong? That you lied to me! That you swindled me! If being loved by me is that hard for you then that’s your punishment.” Makoto who always hesitated when he spoke, and nervously second guessed himself suddenly shouted right in her face. “Or do my feelings really mean nothing to you?”  
  
“N-no, Makoto…”  
  
“When you hate yourself it hurts me too. When you hide things about yourself, I feel lonely.” Makoto wiped his mouth. The look of determination in his eyes was like that of a fictional hero. Except none of what he said was fake, he was full of so many genuine feelings that Mukuro was able to feel warm just sitting next to him. She had no idea how he could continue living with so many feelings, when she could barely live like this with her muted emotions and her half-killed heart.  
  
“So, you have to keep telling me.”  
  
“You’ll get nightmares.”  
  
“I get to see you in my dreams how nice.”  
  
“I-If you hear all of it and forgive me. You’ll feel guilty too.”  
  
Makoto reached out to her hand once more. He wrapped his fingers gingerly around her wrists. It was such a light touch, but Mukuro could feel its heaviness. To anyone else when they walked side by side they might have looked like a normal couple, but between their hands there were an invisible set of chains holding them together.  
  
Because Makoto had decided to share his life with her, and share his guilt with her. Naegi, and his many colors, like bubbles of paint floating in the air, exploding, and dying the whole world many different colors. 

 

🧸

 

Laugh. Laugh. Laugh. No, cry. Cry. No, laugh, you have to laugh. He felt so much he wanted to do both at once. That was why he could never cry. Nobody needed to find out his head was full of such things. _I’ll pretend to be a person so stupid they redefine idiocy._ It was better to have an empty head than to be always worried about what others thought of him.  
  
When he was younger he always smiling at everybody else around him. He thought about how horrible it would be, if he made them worry about a selfish person like him. It was a relief to be considered nothing more than a simple minded idiot. 

 

  
When he looked at the mirror in the morning, he practiced his smile. He needed to learn to smile even when he was in pain, that was what strong people were capable of. If others insulted him he laughed along with them, when they tried to beat him up, he lied to the adults and acted like they were just rough housing like boys were supposed to. 

 

Everyone always told him how nice it must be to live without a single worry inside of his head. In the daytime, he was a hopeless optimist always shouting at the others around him to do their best. At night he cowered  under the covers in a cold sweat kept awake by his terrible stomach pain.  
  
His sensitivity was so great the feelings of other people, loudly drowned out his own. It was like they were screaming in his ears. He picked up on all of their feelings but tried to ignore it. That girl looked sad when he forgot to compliment twin tails, when he noticed he wanted to say something but what if she knew it was a lie, that he was just saying something to appear kind. He was so transparent he was sure they all saw through him. 

 

He was overcome by an impulse to cry out, and tear his stomach open. Maybe if he let it all spill out, she would stop smiling at him, stop laughing at him, and stop her face from turning red whenever he looked at her closely.  
  
An uncorrupted, pure-hearted, gentle little lost lamb. She placed her trust in someone like him. He could only envy her and feel repelled by her. Even though talking with her, was like being bathed in a soft light, even though he was taken by her simple effervescence.  
  
When he was younger he was always playing with the other kids, but there was only one person he could call a friend. That boy. That boy with the terrifying face. That boy who saw through him.   
  
The first time they met, Kaito had borrowed his grandparents telescope to look at the stars.  
  
That boy, like a white ghost in the night appeared from nowhere looking at him with an innocent eyed curiosity. “You’re always looking at the stars, aren’t you, Momota-chan?”  
  
“Yeah, because one day I’m gonna conquer them.”  
  
“Do you really like the stars?"

It began with that cruelly innocent question. 

Kaito had the vaguest memory of hating him, and yet they watched the stars every night.

  
The person who understood him better than any in the world, his nemesis, his best friend, his other half, his eternal opponent. 

 That boy was a kind person, maybe. He saw through Kaito but still wanted to spend time with him.

He was only kind because he was afraid of other people. He was like a beggar trying so hard for the smallest amounts of praise they threw his way. To him the worst thing in the whole world was the idea that someone might hate him, might despise him, so he did favors for others, and always smiled for them desperate to be liked.  
  
Spending day after day with him,  havethat must boy eventually started to pity him. His pain, his fear, there was nobody who could understand but one person...

But. He hated that boy.

His brightness was too much.  
Bright enough to burn.  
Like a star fallen to earth, if he tried to touch him he would be nothing but ash.  
  
Like venom falling - _drip, drip_ \- from the fangs of a snake, slowly that boy wrapped himself around him, and they became closer, and closer. Paralyzed in fear, suffocating, stuck unable to move, a slow death by poison. 

 

🧸  
  
“W..wait, we have to go after Harumaki.”  
  
“How come she gets a nickname and I don’t?” Kokichi whined as he dragged Kaito away, supporting the much taller boy with his shoulders. He was small and cute, people were supposed to pick him up and carry him around. This really was a hassle.  
  
“You have a nickname already, it’s brat!”

 

“Everyone calls me that, though. It’s not special at all. Am I not special to you, Momota-chan?"

Kaito wondered why he was suddenly filled with a vague feeling of dread both pleasant and unpleasant. A familiar sense of plain and pleasure. He became afraid to look Kokichi in the eyes.  
“Yeah, you’re a very special thorn in my heart.” 

 

“Man, it’s so boring talking to Momota-chan. I could so easily come up with a thousand different insults and walk circles around you, but it’s almost a waste of my cleverness.”  
  
“That’s what people say when they don’t have a good come back.”  
  
“Uh, no! I’m really smart and funny, everyone thinks so! I just didn’t want to insult somebody who’s too dubm to realize when they’re being insulted.”  
  
“Sure. I believe in you with all of my heart. This is me believing in you.” 

Kaito would not be surprised if Kokichi dropped him right there, but instead he kept dragging him along. When Kaito tried to run after her after recovering from his bout of nausea, Kokichi insisted they go to the nurses office.  
  
When Kaito ignored him, Kokichi immediately grabbed onto his leg like a toddler trying to prevent their parents from going to work, and burst out into tears. Kaito would have done anything in that moment, to silence the particularly annoying goblin hanging off of him. 

“I’m not a goblin, I’m an imp. I’ve always wanted to be a demon, but I can’t stand the idea of being ugly. Imps are like little fun sized demons with chubby cheeks so they suit me perfectly.” Kokichi said, like he read Kaito’s mind. 

When they got to the nurse’s office, Kokichi grabbed him by the wrist and dragged his hand out to see his bleeding wound. Kaito fought against him every step of the way. “H-hey, quit it. I can do it myself.”

“No, you really can’t. You’re not even smart enough to stop yourself from getting stabbed.” 

Kaito groaned. “How did I get stuck here with you of all people then, anyway?”  
  
Kokichi replied like clockwork. “You’re lucky then. I’m Super High School Level Luck. If you rub my head you’ll definitely get good luck for the rest of the year.”  
  
“You just want to be patted on the head.”  
  
“What’s wrong with that? Do it? I know you want to. I emit pheromones that make people want to be nice to me and shower me with praise. It really is a curse being born this cute.” 

  
Kokichi was off rambling in his own little world in his far away galaxy. Kaito knew even with the best rocket he had he would never reach him. That distance from other people, a sensitive person like himself could not even comprehend it. To Kaito, as much as other people hurt him, the idea of being removed from them was far worse. It was like never tasting food again, or having an IV ripped out of his arms that gave addictive medicine directly to his heart. 

  
He would be living without living. He would just be hollow. 

 _“If you go out to the stars no one will be out there Momota-chan. It's just a void. Well maybe that's why you like them so much."_  
  
Kokichi in front of him, his all white uniform, the chains that hung off of him, he looked like an escaped prisoner. He fooled the guards and ran. He was oddly free as a person. Unattached.  
  
Kaito was the exact opposite. He was everyone’s fool. Nothing more than a captive fool made to dance. Not that he could blame anyone for it, in the end it was his own fault for caring far too much about what others thought of him.  
  
“Harukawa-chan and I are never going to get along. If you have to pick one of us, you’ll definitely settle for her.”  
  
“Hey, what’s this all about! You can both get along. You have tons in common. You both like me, after all.”  
  
“More like we both hate you,” Kokichi said with a giggle.  
  
“I don’t get you. You call yourself the worst villain in the whole world and yet you won’t give someone like her a chance.”  
  
“I would never employ someone like her in my organization. A female assassin in a schoolgirl’s uniform, it’s too much of a cliche.”

“No, that’s what makes it good. Everyone knows that assassins from anime and TV dress like that, so nobody would think it was real.”  
  
“I don’t need her anyway. I have a fleet of killer robots that can answer me at my command.”  
  
“Yeah, well I bet Harumaki would be able to kill all of them. I mean if you lock one person with a katana in a room full of random mooks, then obviously the mooks are all going to die to make that one person look stronger.”  
  
“Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Kokichi cried out, and grabbed his head. The two of them had a bad habit, despite hating each other sometimes they got along by accident like they were playing a game of makebelieve together.  
  
They were reading from the same script, just with different assigned roles. Kaito was the hero and Kokichi was the villain. “Why do you hate Maki so much? What did she ever do to you?"

  
“Hey now, you don’t really ask the supreme leader of evil such normie questions. Also, if you wanna know my origin story you’re gonna have to bet two lives on it.”  
  
“Idiot, everyone’s only got one life and there’s no way I’d waste mine on your story!”

Kokichi batted his eyes. The honest emotion in them was almost too much for Kaito, he almost wished Kokichi would go back to telling lies. If Kokichi cut him apart with knives, or peeled his skin off, that would be better than looking at the disappointment in those eyes. “You’re always trying to change her, but you treat me like a lost cause. Why is that? Is it because you hate me? You hate me don’t you? You hate liars. Well, you’re just jealous because you suck at lying and being lied to.” 

“You’ve never lied to me once.” 

“...Huh?” Kokichi stopped in the middle of his childish rant.  
  
“You're not as deceptive as you think you are. You don't have us all fooled."

  
“That’s not true. You’re such a meanie. I was trying to help you right now. I even sewed your wound up. Do you want me to lick it too? Lick it and make it all better?”

“You're just jealous of Maki aren't you…That she has a reason for being the way she is but your just... Like that.”

“That’s not it! I really am worried about you, Momota-chan! Harukawa-chan might kill you, and you just keep trusting her.” 

The truth looked like it was painful for Kokichi to say.  
Momota reached forward and patted Kokichi on the head, just like the boy asked him to.  
He pulled the much shorter boy up to his chest.  
  
“You’re way more trouble than you’re worth. But, a good guy like me can’t give up on you just because you’re a little bit of trouble.” 

 _That’s a lie._ _  
_ _When I’m around him, I always lie, and he tells the truth._  
  
“Really, I’d prefer it if you gave up on me, and I’m a lot of trouble thank you.”  
  
“Ahahahahaha! You really was scared I would die, huh? There’s no way I’d die before I got to drink for the first time, or made it up to the stars! Momota Kaito is a man who will never die!” 

“Some people are just too stupid to die….” 

He hoped. He prayed that when Kokichi was this close he would not be able to hear it. The whisper of his sickly heartbeat, like a shinigami breathing down his ear. 

 

🧸  
  
Naegi Makoto sat in the cafeteria next to Komaeda, watching him closely. Komaeda always wanted to apologize when others looked at him. He could not imagine what it must have felt like to look at something so disgusting.  
  
Yet, Makoto looked at him in such a soft way. He could see no hostility at all in those eyes. They were eyes that could not possibly belong to a human. They were innocent like a little dog. Innocent and cheerful, always laughing brightly. He was very childlike.  
  
How wonderful it would have been to be like that, too. Part of him hated that peaceful boy, so welcome, so surrounded by his friends, like a sheep in the middle of its flock. 

 

  
  
Komaeda was a black sheep who had covered himself in powder to make his fleece white. He dusted himself to pretend he was a white sheep, too. He was sure he was a black sheep. Blackness oozed inside of him, like pitch black tar seeping out of his heart. If they ever saw that he was a black sheep, they would gang up and stab him with their horns, and trample him with their hooves.  
  
A herd of harmonious sheep, grazing peacefully, was threatened by the mere existence of a black sheep like himself. Komaeda thought he was special because he was an individual, he once thought he was much better than normal people living unimportant lives, but it turned out he was just a failure of a normal person. He was not broken, he was not damaged goods, he was simply inferior.  
  
Each time the rain fell, each time the wind blew, Komaeda shuddered. He was convinced that they all already saw through him, and yet he was also half convinced he was still deceiving them.  
  
He hated Makoto, a sheep among his flock, comfortable and warm but then Makoto accepted him too. Komaeda could become a part of his flock. He suddenly found himself enraptured by Makoto’s existence, if he could just become a small part of this person’s world then he could become like him.  
  
The cobalt blue world that Makoto saw.  
The pure world, without any sorrow, must have been so beautiful.  
Komaeda longed to see it too.  
  
“Hey, Komaeda-kun you have to eat. I’m not going to leave until you eat.”  
  
“But, you’d much rather be spending time with your cute girlfriend than someone ugly like me. You should be more careful with who you associate with, Naegi-kun. I can already feel your likability dropping just by being around someone like me. I’m like a walking charisma vaccuum.”  
  
Makoto just kept smiling, even though Komaeda fought him like this every time the other boy tried to take care of him. “Here, I’ll feed it to you. Say aaaah…”  
  
“You’re willing to feed a dog like me in public by hand, Makoto is much too kind.”  
  
“I keep telling you not to say that I’m kind. You’re making yourself sound like you’re unworthy of my kindness when you say that, like I’m some saint taking pity on you. I’m only doing this because you’re my friend.” 

 

“Forgive me, you’re my first friend. I don’t really know how to act around others.” 

 

“Well that’s normal. I’m sure everybody else feels that way sometimes too.”  
  
Makoto picked up a spoon of rice, and slowly moved it towards his mouth. Komaeda wrapped his lips around the offered spoon and ate the entire thing in one gulp. “Don’t hide your sickness anymore, okay? You might think you’re sparing me any pain but it hurts me even worse when I know you’re suffering all on your own.”  
  
Naegi Makoto was his friend now.  
He smiled at him as naively as a puppy.  
He placed an innocent trust in Komaeda.  
An uncorrupted-pure hearted, gentle, happy white sheep beloved by God. He was repelled by him due to how different they were, but at the same time he couldn’t help but adore someone with such a strong hope.  
  
A hope so strong that he could even tolerate someone as wretched as Komaeda.  
They say that love changes people.  
If he were to see the horizon in Makoto’s world, maybe his heart would be changed as well.  
Makoto wanted to save him after all.  
He might become a normal human being when he was around his normal friend.  
  
Even if it was only an act, he knew he would eventually become Makoto’s real friend. Then, Makoto’s innocent light could deliver him. It would be okay, because Makoto’s hope was so strong he could accept even a person like him. 

 

_To someone who’s forgotten how to even move forward, the smile you gave me was as if everything was melting. You permeated the silence and gently gave my back a push._

 

He thought about Kirigiri’s dead body, tender flesh pulverized, red blood coughed up everywhere. That pale body like a flower, collapsing, wilting, he could have stopped it but he did not. A body so beautiful and beloved in life was so ugly in death, all alone, without even a friend to hold her hand. 

 

_You have everything that I lack, You are everything that I long to become._

_If only I could become a kind person like you Naegi._  
  
“Naegi you don’t understand, that kindness of yours is your strength.”  
  
“You keep making me out to sound special, I’m not-”  
  
“You are,” Komaeda corrected him putting a finger on his lips. “You’re just unaware of how wonderful you are, but don’t worry. You’re the kind of person who brings out the best in other people, you even brought out the best in someone like me. That’s why I’m sure you’ll save all of them too.”  
  
“Save them…?”  
  
“If this were a story, you would be the passionate hero. Just think of me as a sidekick who exists to make you shine all the brighter.” Komaeda said, his eyes dazed as he stared at dreams in front of him.  
  
“I don’t really need a sidekick, I just need a friend Komaeda-kun.” 

 

🧸

  
When Kokichi left him alone, Kaito punched the wall as hard as he could. He wanted to break something, but he had broken his hand far worse than he broke the wall. Then suddenly his legs were jelly underneath him, and he clung to the wall like it was his only support.  
  
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, idiot.” 

 

When Kaito was young he was terrified of his great aunt’s sickness. He washed himself because he never wanted to be sick in the same way. That was why, his great aunt must be laughing at him right now.  
  
The once energetic child who spent all his time playing outside, trying to be a bigger person than he really was, disappeared one day. Replaced by it was a kid who could never even leave his room. A boy who dreamed of the stars, looked at a featureless white ceiling all day unable to leave his bed.  
  
It seemed fitting for someone who always pretended to be strong. Now his body was just as weak and fragile on the outside. Everyone knew how sick he was now. His body broke out into a cold sweat, his breaths were so ragged and desperate like his lungs were full of holes, he was so overwhelmed with pain that his fingers were constantly trembling.  
  
The doctor said it would be a miracle if he lived another year, but Kaito lasted longer than that.  
He already knew the reason why someone like him was not going to die from sickness.  
  
One day his childhood friend disappeared without saying goodbye.  
Kaito knew he would live until he could see him one last time. 

He could not die yet because his old friend was waiting, to play with him one more time.  
That  boy would kill him one day.  
Ever since he met the other boy he was struck by that feeling. 

All alone in the nurse’s office, Kaito coughed and hacked. Blood came out of his mouth, there was so much of it that he could not even hold it in both hands, it dribbled out and stained his shirt. He tried to hold the blood in his fingers but it all kept spilling out. He stumbled over to the sink to try to wash his hands. Cold water ran over them and he shivered.  
  
It won't wash out.  
It won't wash out. 

 _That boy is dangerous._ _  
__That boy sees through everything._ _  
__That boy will  probably destroy me._ _  
_ _Eventually, that boy will probably kill me._ _  
_

_I can't remember him. I don't even know if he's real._

_But one day hell come for me my shinigami._

_What ectasy that will be._

Kaito smiled at himself in the mirror, his mouth filled with blood that spilled out from the corners. 


	60. My Sister, My Sister, My Sister

“I wanted you to save me.”  
  
Korekiyo’s voice echoed in Rantaro’s ears. He sat in nothing more than his green and black boxer briefs, eleven earrings punched through one of his ears, and a silver pendant on a string hanging from his neck, settled in the divet where his collar dipped low into his chest.  
  
He had no idea how much time he had spent sleeping or awake. He had neither happiness nor unhappiness. He locked himself in his room, now he was no longer a criminal he was a lunatic. He was locked away in the room for the safety of everyone around him, and for himself. 

 

But, he was definitely not mad. He had never been mad for an instant. Most lunatics claim the same thing, but Rantaro was sure if he could have escaped by going mad it would have happened long ago.  
  
When Kaede held him over her shoulder and carried him to this room, she showed him a gentle smile, the likes of wish he had never seen before on her face. Kaede’s smiles were always forceful, like a blast of wind in your face, like the sun glaring in your eyes. He felt so grateful, so happy for that gentle smile that he waned to weep. He was completely shattered and smothered by that one gentle smile. 

 

Then he sat here, thoughts and voices passing through his empty head that were not his own. “You said you were ready to die for the sake of your sisters, but in the end you killed me instead.” 

  
“Hm…”  
  
“Was it really for your sisters? Are they the ones you’re fighting for? Or is it your own sense of uselessness?” 

 

“Hm.”  
  
“Or, did you just hate me because I’m the same as you? Someone who can’t live on his own so they cling to the memories of a family they never had.”  
  
“I don’t remember you being this sassy in love, Kiyo,” Rantaro said, rolling his head back and batting his eyes at the ghost who was not really there in front of him. He made it sound like he did not care at all for the man who died, he was carefree, but he meant it in all honesty. His insides were already thoroughly saturated with bad memories. He may have caused another corpse to fall at his feet, but they’d be buried soon enough underneath the garden. One more cross to carry on his back. One more hole to pierce in his body, but he was already a boy full of holes. That was all there was to it.  
  
“You didn’t really care either way, did you?” Korekiyo asked him.  
  
...In regards to what? There were so many possibilities, did he not really care in the end about rescuing his sisters, did he not care whether he lived or died, whether his plan succeeded or failed, did he not care abour what Kaede and Shuichi thought about him. But still. Whatever the intended question there was only one possible answer.  
  
“Nah.”  
  
That was what it meant to be carefree, that was what it meant to be a careless existence. Thus he was unattached to anything. Thus freely floated there. A jack o’lantern with no head and no face, wandering between heaven and hell. Thus he was Amami Rantaro.  
  
“I had to survive.” 

 

That was all he knew how to do. He would survive. Though, really it was more like a death-postponement. That was his life, surviving but not living. When each of his sisters were born, and then torn away from him, it happened again and again. His parents chose a worthless older brother like him to survive over his wonderful little sisters.  
  
He was the only survivor of that household. He could not smile properly, all he had was shallow good looks, and yet someone like him kept surviving. Every time he lost someone, it was like one of his organs was pulled out, but even then he did not die. He kept living on, just a little hollower than before. 

 

Then, there was that woman. He threw himself into the sea with her at nighttime. She took off her glasses and he saw her eyes for the first time. He removed the piercings from his ear, and let her look at his old self.  
  
_We entered the water together._ _  
_ _She died. I was saved._  
  
His whole life was those five words repeating over and over. _She died. I was saved. She died. I was saved. She died. I was saved. She died. I was saved. She died. I was saved._

“I survived…”  
  
“But, I died.,” Korekiyo’s bandages slid from his hands, it felt like he was getting undressed. The scars left by his older sister on his fingers became apparent. Korekiyo, needed a loving sibling. That hand probably did not even know the softness of someone holding onto it like it was something precious. Rantaro could have been the person to take that hand, but instead he killed the boy in front of him. 

  
  
“Why should I care about a corpse? You should be happy, you’re the spooky ghost that you always wanted to be. You don’t have to worry about being human anymore, you’re off the hook.”  
  
“You wanna look away?”

He must have laughed at god’s son once.  
That’s why god cursed him to wander forever, unable to die, unable to live.  
  
Korekiyo reached forward placing one of his hands on Amami’s shoulders. His other he slowly pulled the mask off of his face, revealing there was no flesh on the lower part of his face. It was all scraped off, and there was nothing but  raw red underneath. His skin peeled and cracked away from his face, like an old painting. Vanitas. A portrait of emptiness. He had no lips, and yet he smiled revealing rows of white teeth. Both of his eyes had been plucked out, and yet Rantaro could feel the empty holes staring at him. His face broke more and more, as his smile stretched across it.  
  
“Look me in the eye.” 

 

His hand moved to his neck. It was then he caught a glimpse of his vacant eyes in the mirror, and the black bags underneath them, he was not scared at all he just looked tired. A hand wrapped around his neck, and yet he barely fought back.  
  
“Amami-kun! Umm, Amami-kun, please! I’m sorry to bother you but-”

  
There was only one person who would apologize at a time like this. He tilted his head to the side and saw Shuichi at the edge of his vision. “Ah, Saihara-kun…” If it were Kaede she would have slapped him across the face and told him to get ahold of himself. Nothing about that girl was gentle at all.  
  
“Why are you strangling yourself? Did something happen?”  
  
“It’s my fetish.”  
  
“Am-mama-mama-Amami-kun!” 

 

“Just kidding. Korekiyo and I were having a friendly chat.”  
  
“Please, sit down on the bed,” Shuichi said politely, as he guided Rantaro back down. 

 

“You’re so forward today.”  
  
“Quit it. I know you don’t mean any of that when you say it. You’re the farthest thing from a playboy.” 

“Hm, why’s that?”  
  
“Well, playboys at least love women right? Maybe they hate them. When you were at that trial, I didn’t see any malice in your eyes.” He was sensitive to that kind of thing. If Rantaro was entirely insensitive, even to the feelings of the person he killed then Shuichi was his opposite. “You just don’t love or hate anybody. You’re not anybody’s enemy, or their ally.”

 

Rantaro just smiled. His charming, prince-like smile. “Oh boo, guess the detective’s figured me out.”  
  
Himself included. He was not allowed to love himself, or anybody else, he had already decided a long time ago he would love his sisters. Not in a crazy or obsessive way. It was just tied to himself, he was only Amami Rantaro when he was with his sisters, and when he was away from them he was something else. Something that could not return the feelings of other people, whether it was love or hate, all he could respond with was his usual carefree attitude.  
  
If one more cross was added to his shoulders he would just shrug. “You should get some rest.”  
  
“Aer you just pretending to worry about me, to impress Akamatsu-san?”  
  
“No, my goal is the same as Kaede’s. Get out of here, with everyone. You’re a part of everyone. And that means… I need to do something.”  
  
“You remind me of someone…”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“My missing half.” Shuichi had no idea what he meant.  
  
“Th-that sounds kind of romantic.”  
  
“No, it’s not romantic at all.”  
  
Shucihi tried to softly urge Rantaro to sleep once more. “Nah, if I sleep now I’ll worry Akamatsu-san, won’t I? She’s scary when she gets worried, and aggressive too…”  
  
As Shuichi tried to push him back into the bed, Rantaro reached forward grabbing at Shuichi’s collar until he pulled it open letting one button pop off. His eyes were looking in two different directions, and he wore a half-cocky grin. “Stay with me…”  
  
“S-sure.”  
  
“I don’t want to lie down. Akamatsu-san will scold me for being lazy.”  
  
“F-fine.” Shuichi’s whole body stiffened as if he was frozen solid in that moment.  
  
“You’re way too bony. A girl will never want to rest her head on your shoulders if you’re like this. You probably can’t even carry Akamatsu-san, she’s the one who has to carry you around.”

 

  
“D-did you ask me to stay here just to bully me!? Hmmph, go asleep already if you’re just going to run your mouth like Ouma-kun.”  
  
Rantaro laugh, soft and gentle, vibrated and echoed into Shuichi’s skin as he buried his head in the boy’s shoulder. 

 

“You too, huh?”  Shuichi said, as the darkness shifted around him like a thick fog. The fog leaked malevolance, like it was aware, like it was alive. A heavy smog that would fill up his lungs and slowly paint his insides black with tar. “You have to look away from the hallucinations. No matter what don’t let them look at you.” Shuichi said, as in the bubbling fog, several eyelids peeled open. They spun, spun, spun around as if searching for someone, and he felt himself caught in their gaze. Those eyes, on the walls, on the floor, in the light, in the dark, all of them, all of them watching him. He saw on the back of his hand, an eye open up on his own skin and stared at him. 

 

They all watched him. All of them, all of them, all of them.  
A boy touched his shoulder from behind, and leaned against him.  
A boy in a hat, but underneath the brim of that hat there were no eyes.  
He heard a voiceless whisper in his ears, but just then averted his eyes and pushed the sleeping Rantaro on the bed, hiding his face in Rantaro’s bare chest to stop seeing what was in front of him. He was just like a little child afraid of the dark.  
  
“Please, Amami-kun. Don’t end up like me.” 

 

🧸

 

Amami Rantaro treated all of his little sisters like princesses.  
What then, about a girl who could never become a princess. 

  
Monaca dreamed the same dream over and over again. Her mother carried her on her back through a field of white flowers. That mother collapsed suddenly, sending flower petals in the air. Monaca crawled next to her mother’s side, and saw her weak mother reach out and put a hand on her face.  
  
_“Live.”_

 

Monaca looked at the wildflowers. They slowly spun around and turned inside out, becoming red and blooming in full view right between her eyes. When she looked up again, her mother was nothing more than a skeleton. The bones broke, and started to fall apart. Red flowers had grown in the holes in her eyes, and between the cracks in her bones.  
  
That entire dream was a lie, of course. Her mother had never so much as held her. That woman would never tell her to live.

 _“Die.”_  
  
For getting in the way of the affair between that woman and her father. 

 

 _“Die.”_  
  
For breaking apart her and her lover.  
  
_“Die.”_  
  
For ending her fairy tale romance with a rich man who loved her in secret and spoiled her away from his life, a love without attachment, a love without substance, a love without consequence suddenly had a consequence in the form of an unexpected pregnancy and birth. 

  
Most mothers treated their daughters like a princess, at least that was what Monaca had heard. To be truth the only idea she had of family was what she watched in disney movies, for study material on how to act like a normal girl.  
  
Monaca was the child of a witch.  
Not a princess.  
That was why her mother tried to drown herself.  
  
“Jeez mom, he was gonna dump you sooner or later anyway. You were just a side chick.” Monaca sighed looking at the red flowers that Monokuma had left in Rantaro’s room as a present. “Don’t go blaming me. You were the one who was too stupid to wear a condem.” 

 

That cut girl, had a childish cynicism about her. As if she had figured out the entire world at thirteen. Most thirteen year olds probably thought that way, but she was a special case. Monaca was in a particularly bad mood, and because of that she uselessly thought of the past. She was too tired right now to act cute, even though being cute was a full time job.  
  
_“Hey, why are you always playing with me?”_  
  
_“You’re the only kid here. I’ve always wanted a friend my own age.”_

 

 _“I’m not a kid. I’m an ordinary high school student who just happens to be a robot!”_ Keebo snapped at her. _“I’m very mature for my age. Say I’m mature or I’ll cry. Well, I won’t cry but I can simulate various crying noises and that’s very annoying.”_

  
Monaca looked up at him her eyes as blank as usual. _“Why do you want to be normal so bad anyway?”_  
  
_“Well, if I was more of a human I could understand why you’re eyes always look like that. I could help you. Maybe… I could be more like a big brother-”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Don’t say that.”_ Monaca cut him off, her corpse-like eyes came to life only for a moment. _“If you ever say that again, Monaca-chan will hate you! If you become like everybody else, Monaca-chan will hate you!”_

She had been trying so hard to use Keebo as her camouflage, but in the end she threw another tantrum. “Monaca-chan really is still just a cute kid, huh?”  
  
That was all she was.

A girl who was simply cute.  
Childish, cute, and disgusting. 

She was a fake. She was forced to be pretty and innocent, because otherwise she was an eyesore for that household. 

 

 _When Monaca talks, everyone freezes. When Monaca smiles, everyone stops smiling. For Monaca, the outsider, the eyesore, to survive that house, she did what she had to._  
  
Even if that meant turning herself into a doll for them all to fawn over, and play with however they like. The best thing about being a toy was how easily they could break, especially their legs.  
  
Amami opened his eyes to see Shuichi had left him alone, and there was a little girl staring at him. The room was pitch black without a single light, and yet somehow her eyes were darker. He noticed green hair falling in front of those eyes.  
  
“Na… nanami,” the moment Rantaro realized it was not her, a sigh escaped from his lips that he immediately regretted. “...Sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay, Big Bro Rantaro. Monaca-chan is used to hearing people sigh when she enters the room. Her existence is very disappointing, even to Monaca-chan herself.”  
  
  
“Are you going to curse me so I die in three days now?” Rantaro yawned and gave a half assed joke as a response.  
  
“Go die on your own. You’re so lazy. Don’t get Monaca-chan’s blood on your hands, you’ll ruin her innocence.”

“Ah… sorry.” 

 

“Why do you keep apologizing all the time? You know they say people who apologize over and over feel guilt just for being born. Monaca thinks that’s stupid. You look really uncool, right now big bro.”  
  
“I’m aware.”  
  
“And yet you keep on living? The audacity! The nerve! This angers Monaca-chan!” 

 

Rantaro was aware of how uncool he looked. He sat up blankets still around his shoulders. His green hair had become a worse case of bedhead than usual. “Ah, haha… hey wait, calm down kid. What did you start calling me big bro for?”  
  
“You’re the only one who treats Monaca-chan like a child. Everyone else just ignores her because they think it’s too pitiful for a middle school kid to get caught up in a game like this. Doesn’t that make you big bro?”  
  
“I haven’t really done anything. I just acted like a half-assed nice guy like usual.” 

 

“Yep, Big Bro is utterly uncool and worthless but, you’ll do anything for someone who calls you Big Bro won’t you? That’s Big Bro’s character type. You’ll treat anyone like a little sister, you’re like the playboy of little sister. Everyone in the world is a little sister to you. That’s why Monaca-chan has no chance to rely on you.”  
  
“Hey there, I think you’ve got me all wrong.” 

 

Monaca suddenly folded her hands over her chest, and cried out with her eyes watering. “Please help Monaca-chan big bro!” 

 

“Hey, hey don’t make that face. Smile okay. Jeez, so pushy, guess I have no choice.” Rantaro stretched his neck, but he was only pretending it was a hassle. His gripes were just lies.  
  
“Big bro’s three core values aren’t friendship, effort and victory. It’s my sister, my sister, and my sister.”  
  
“If you keep talking like that people are going to think I’m weird.”  
  
“Really? I didn’t think people thought anything of you at all? Nobody has any expectations, or thoughts on you, or anything like that. You just decided all on your own that things were like that.”

 

“Yep.”  
  
“You’re supposed to cry when Monaca-chan says that.”  
  
“I’m crying on the inside. Super sad, really. I’m a sensitive guy.”  
  
“Big bro, will you let Monaca-chan bully you a little bit? She’s really in a bad mood.” Monaca said, the corner of her eyes turning up as if she was smiling with them. It was as eerie as a smile appearing on a corpse.  
  
“I’d do anything to make my little sister happy, but I don’t think that’d make you happy.”  
  
“What is this happy? What does it look like? Monaca-chan is such a ditzy clutz she must have dropped it somewhere, oh no!” Monaca said, as she jumped up and sat on the corner of the bed next to Rantaro. “Well, it’s not like Monaca-chan hates big brother. If only she could hate him, or get angry, or sad, that would be so much easier.”  
  
She could remember the scene clearly. An ordinary day, where she tried her best to be an ordinary girl, and smile with her older brother.   
  
She stood in the middle of a laboratory, watching machines get assembled and disassembled in front of her eyes. However, those machines were just like puzzles. The moment you figured out how to put them together and pull them apart they stopped being interesting.  
  
She always hated the sight of puzzles, ever since she was young. A girl of twelve years old was taking a tour with her older half brother. He kept going on and on about how she had to behave this time, how she would be much cuter if she kept quiet the entire time.  
  
She saw top of the line machinery. Haiji, her brother, had probably been studying his entire life forgoing an ordinary life in order to work tirelessly on continuing his father’s work. His family name was everything to him. He was constantly acting like a grown-up, trying to prove he was an adult. 

Monaca thought if she paid him a compliment he might be nicer to her sometimes. In her ordinary voice, without any malice, without a meaning any ill, without meaning to hurt nor humiliate others, without imagining her brother more than twice her age would have taken twenty years to reach this level.  
  
“This is actually amazing research,” She said, innocent, childish, smiling up at her big brother like he was proud of him. “If I didn’t take this seriously, it’d take me three hours.”  
  
She unconcernedly crushed her older brother underneath her shoes.  
  
Her mother saw her as an eyesore.  
Her father saw her as the child of a witch.  
Her brother saw her as an intruder in his house.  
Nobody saw her as a child, so of course she had no idea how to act like one.  
  
When they got home, it was obvious to Monaca that her brother was mad. Unlike her, other people never bothered hiding their emotions at all. She wished they would hide their emotions a little bit better, if they tried hiding their hatred for her behind smiles, even if those smiles were lie it might make living in this house a little easier.  
  
She did not need to be a genius at reading people to determine Haiji was mad though, because he threw her into a closet, dragging her there by her hair. When the door shut in front of her, Monaca realized her brother probably just wanted to see her beg a little bit. She pretended to plead with him. “Big brother. Let’s drop it, that sort of thing. Talent, genius. I don’t care about that. If you debate ideologies too much they become boring, in fact I don’t really understand the type of person that can argue about ideologies all day. To be honest, I feel sorry for big brother for not having aaaaaaaaany talent in your head, but stop blaming that on me. Monaca-chan holds no responsibility for your incompetence.” 

She thought it was stupid to apologizing for being born. Suddenly, her brother pushed the other side of the closet door open. He grabbed herhair again and pulled on it hard. She was thrown to the floor, but the entire time Monaca kept smiling.  
  
She was doing her best to smile in a bad situation.  
Everybody called her smiles eerie.  
She told jokes to lighten the mood.  
No one laughed.  
She tried to be an optimistic person. 

But when bad things happen, everybody acted like it was her fault. 

She really just wanted to be a cheerful, normal girl.

That was all she wanted.  
So, why didn’t other people see her that way? 

“I told you not to run your mouth, brat.”   
  
“Are you going to hit me now? Well, don’t hit too hard. Because, you still need to use Monaca-chan’s power right? You should avoid hitting her in the head because she might become damaged goods, and dad can’t use her brane anymore. You should hit my arms and my legs instead, oh, and keep it under the clothes because it’d be annoying if one of the maids pretended to be a concern for me.”  
  
“You… you sound like you want to be beaten!”  
  
“I’d rather not, but to be honest even if you hit her Monaca-chan won’t hate you. Monaca-chan doesn’t care if you hit her. From the bottom of my heart, all the way out, in any and every case, I don’t care about you at all. What Big Bro is proud of, what Big Bro cries over,  Monaca-chan has absolutely nothing to do with this.” 

 

“Y-you, you’re a freak.” 

 

 _Why is Monaca always the freak?_ _  
_ _That man cheated on his wife._ _  
_ _That boy lusts over his own sister and beats her._ _  
_ _That woman abandoned her own child._ _  
_ _Why is it… always my fault?_

Those words to her big brother were a lie. She did in fact hate him. But it was not like she hated him in particular. She just hated everything. Monaca knew this characterization of hers was not especially unique, in fact a lot of people thought they hated everything. She was also aware, she was a part of the world that she hated.  
  
But she decided to keep hating. Her petty, childish, hatred was the only thing she had to hold onto. 

 

“Monaca-chan thinks all big brothers are useless,” She said in the present moment, smiling by curling her lips back at Rantaro.  
  
“You’re probably right.”  
  
“Monaca-chan’s going to punish you.”  
  
“Sure, go ahead.”  
  
Monaca suddenly stuck her hand out. The red nail polish he applied earlier was almost entirely chipped off by now. “You’re Monaca-chan’s slave so, you have to paint my nails again. You have to paint my nails as many times as you ask her to.”  
  
“Whatever you say, princess…”  
  
He knew that Rantaro was just joking around again. That everything he said was half assed, but even so Monaca hesitated for a moment. That was the first time anyone had ever called her a princess. 

 

🧸

 

 _I’m not okay but I’m living anyway._ _  
_ _Somehow smiling through all the pain._ _  
_ _Isn’t Monaca-chan strong? Isn’t she just full of hope?_

 

Or was she slowly rotting away like those red fruits. There was no real her. There was no scared, weak girl hiding behind the mask. What you see was what you get, when it came to her. She was nothing more than a cute child.  
  
Her big brother always called her a liar, but Monaca thought she was honest. If she was better at telling lies maybe she would have been able to get along with people, maybe she would have been liked by them.  
  
Monaca thought it was fine she was born this way though, such a shallow, cute girl. Even if she was genuinely innocent, even if she was kind deep down inside her heart, that house would have treated her the exact same way. 

  
Children that were praised as being darlings were just a bunch of obnoxious idiots. 

 

Monaca was sure pure people did not exist, or if they did they would be terrifying, like Kumagawa Misogi. That boy Naegi Makoto was not pure, or kind, he was just a normal pushover that let other people walk all over him. 

 

That was probably just her own sour grapes. Nobody was kind to me, so kindness must not exist in this world. She knew those were just, her own childish thoughts, not at all mature or rational. 

 

 _I’m sorry for being born._ She never once thought that way. 

Monaca did not regret being born.  
It was because she was born into this world that she got to meet Enoshima Junko.

Enoshima Junko, smiled at her, an obnoxious and unwanted child.  
  
At the moment she was following Enoshima Junko’s twin sister. The two of them were actually quite similar, all they could do was disappoint their siblings. That was why it made no sense. No matter how much she followed the other girl around she could not see what Enoshima Junko saw in her.  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro seemed like a C-rank character to her, the kind that would die in the first round. A fat chested girl with a flat personality, a two dimensional character, with no fans at all.  
  
Mukuro suddenly turned around, concern in her eyes. Monaca wanted to laugh. She should stop pretending to be a decent person like that. Junko already told her once, that Mukuro killed an entire middle school class of children her age. 

 

“Monaca-chan? Why do you keep following me? Do you want to play a game?” 

 

“Hey, disappointing older sister, how come you’re the real one.”  
  
“The real one…?” Mukuro tilted her head to the side. Despite the fact that they were twins who were not identical, Monaca could easily see a more deadpan Junko in the way Mukuro moved her body around. It had nothing to do with the fact that they were twins, they were just sisters who grew up in the same house and spent so much time together.  
  
“Why are you her real sister, and I’m the fake one?”  
  
If they were both the same, then they could have easily been switched. She could have been born the older sister of Enoshima Junko, and Ikusaba Mukuro could have been born as the ‘extra’ in that household. Then it was just arbitrary. Then, it was just meaningless. 

 

Mukuro’s eyes widened. “Did… Junko-chan do something to you?” 

 

She really was an idiot. No wonder Junko never told her, she was probably too stupid to trust with the information on her back up plans. “Mm, no it’s not like that. The moment Monaca saw her… Monaca understood. Big Sis Junko is light itself that will shine down on Monaca’s boring little world. It’s a miracle! Thank you, God! At least, at the time I thought it was a miracle. But later I learned it was inevitable. She came into my life just to take advantage of me. She just uses people so…why not use me?” 

 

Monaca hated looking in the eyes of others, and yet she forced herself to meet Mukuro's eyes. 

Looking in someone's eyes that's like acknowledging them as a person, right? 

What a pain. 

The eyes of a dead child, yet she was alive.  
The eyes of a child who should have suffocated in the womb, and yet she was breathing. “Why doesn’t she use me?” 

 

“You’re your own person-”  
  
“Oh my god, please don’t start with those cliche motivational poster phrases. You’re just rehashing what your boyfriend says anyway. I mean as a twin you’re naturally just a ripoff of Enoshima Junko, but now you’re a Naegi Makoto ripoff too.” 

  
  
“Umm… sorry Monaca-chan. This may sound harsh but, Junko-chan treats the people she loves way worse than the ones she’s indifferent too.” 

 

“So what’s wrong with that? I’ve already been beaten by people who hated me. If that’s all that’s waiting for me ahead, then why not have people hurt me out of love rather than hate?”  
  
“Monaca-chan… it doesn’t matter. You won’t feel loved, you’ll just be hurt.”  
  
“You’re not interesting to talk to at all. Are you sure you’re not adopted? Gosh, if I had been born her sister at least I’m half as smart as she is. You don’t even want to be her sister, Monaca heard what you said to Korekiyo. You shouted that you hated his big sister, but you weren’t talking about her at all were you?”

Mukuro’s face darkened. Unlike most people though, she did not look afraid at all of the child in front of her. That bothered Monaca. Monaca was annoyed now. She wanted to make that girl afraid.  
  
Mukuro averting her eyes, holding onto the sleeve of her jacket, spoke up. “That’s probably why she doesn’t have much interest in you. You’re too much like her, and Junko-chan is bored of herself the most.” 

 

“Huh…?”  
  
“Well, maybe it’s not like that. You’re also too normal. You get jealous like normal. You want people to like you, like normal. You throw tantrums just like a normal kid.”  
  
Everyone always called her eerie.  
She was not like kids her age, and she was not like the adults  either.  
So suddenly, why was this girl in front of calling her normal?  
  
“She’s not a big deal, Monaca-chan. She’s not light or anything like that. She’s just a pain in the ass younger sister.”

 

_If you’re not going to use your life, then give it to me._

_The idea that you ever belonged to anybody else but me is just unpleasant to me so forget about your stupid family._ _  
_ _Hey, Monaca-chan you don’t need to worry about being thrown out. I place what belongs to me by my side. Even the things I’ve thrown away are without a doubt mine._ _  
_ _It’s unpleasant to have something you’ve thrown away picked up._ _  
_ _You know Enoshima Junko-chan is extremely greedy._

 

She knew exactly what Junko would say if she saw what a damn kid she was acting like right now. _Boring, so it’s just envy, huh?_  
Monaca smiled, looking up at Mukuro. “Junko is the worst to the people she loves, huh? Then, she must love Kumagawa-kun a whole lot!”  
  
“...What?”  
  
“What? What? God can you contribute to the conversation a little bit, Monaca’s carrying this scene all on her own. I’m just saying, I saw her dragging him earlier… or was it his body she was dragging?”  
  
Mukuro looked like the ground opened up beneath her feet.  
Her legs gave up underneath her.  
The girl in front of her was so scared, Monaca wanted to laugh.  
She had never seen someone run that fast. 

Familial love. The love of an older sister. _It must be nice. It must be nice._ Something she had never felt once. _  
_ This boring envy was all she had, that and her eternal nausea.  
  
She reached up and touched her own face with the red nails, delicately holding her cheek the same way her mother had in the dream. Then, she pinched her cheek as hard as she could. She wanted to imagine, just for a moment, that this hand belonged to Enoshima Junko holding her face that way. She pulled at her own hair, and imagined the same thing too.   
  
Monaca knew she was being childish, but she could not help it.  
She was still just a child after all.


	61. Not Yet Real Love

_You will never get the words you want to hear the most from the person you want to hear from the most. That’s what I think._  
  
『 _That doesn't sound fun._ 』

 _But, that's how you and I met. We're together because we don't need those words._ _  
_

『 _And yet… You hear them all the time from people you don’t care about._ 』  
_  
_ She heard a rustling sound as she fell back on the bed. The white sheets folded around her, wrapping around her like a cocoon that had been pulled open and spilled out its insides. Immediately after pushing her over, Matsuda-kun was standing on top of her. He looked down at her, but did not say anything. He reached down and still not saying anything, gently wiped her face.  
  
She stared at him. His face was uneahlthily pale and he had long, narrow eyes. His black hair curved towards his eyes, like a pair of curtains opening to display his face. His eyes spotlights shining down on her from above, it was the first time the light of the spotlight agitated her eyes. He had girlish eyelashes, a pointed chin, small thin lips that never showed her a smile. This is Matsuda-kun’s face.  
  
But, this man’s face - somehow it looked lonely.  
  
White, long fingers reached forward and wiped her face. Junko could not help but feel that he was trying to gently remove her mask. She felt rain falling down on her face from above. When his fingers gave up, she knew it was already over.  
  
“Junko, I…”  
  
She always thought falling things were beautiful. 

Water falls, as the sky revealed the grief it feels.  
Silent, and soft and slow, snow descends, and her heart freezes over.  
People like clear glass cases, sparkling, sparkling, sparkling all kinds of colors.  
All of the colors she did not have.  
When they hit the concrete they spilled out all of their colors, mixing together, in one big splash.  
She wanted to be hit by a wave of that color and drown. 

  
This was the first time she saw no beauty in that, no ugliness, just nothing. _I don’t want to play house with him anymore. Even though I’m his childhood friend. Is that what he’s angry about?_ Her eyes, blue eyes, empty to all, widened ever so slightly. _But… why? Why do you look so hurt?_  
  
A pained noise escaped Matsuda’s throat, like a dying whisper. “I want to live for you.” 

Mastuda’s strings were cut one by one, and his body fell over hers like a discarded puppet. Even with his body overlapped with hers she felt no warmth from him at all. Dolls were emptiness. Their bodies and hearts are total emptiness. A void. That emptiness is like death. 

 

Her sister’s bloodied hand reached for her. Her skin pale white, like a child who had been locked in the basement and never seen the sun, her hair jet black as a raven’s feathers. When they were younger, on a night as cold as the snow ice in Mukuro’s eyes, that girl reached out and took her hand. 

 

_Seriously, hurry up… and let go of my hand!_

 

Junko remembered thinking at the time. But she was wrong. All this time, even if she would only hurt her, even if her love took the form of abuse, the one who did not want to let go of Mukuro’s hand was her. 

 

“That’s right… you were just being you, Junko? You just wanted despair, right?” 

  
Her sister held her corpse like hand, made up of carpals, metacarpals, phalanges, tendons stretched over bones, and veins running in between them, with a hypodermis, dermis, and epidermis stretched over the framework. A hand that despite having all the parts assembled lacked any warmth at all. Mukruo continued to hold on to her hand, and dragged her from the seat in the audience back tono the stage. 

 

“It’s because you love me. You wanted to kill me, and fall into despair. That must have been it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I couldn’t grant you that despair, little sis.” 

 

 _I don’t get why…_ _  
_ _I’m the one who’s wrong._ _  
_ _But you keep apologizing to me._  
  
Spears suddenly burst forth through her skin. The hand that was gripping her so tightly, slowly let go, and Mukuro’s fingers fell away from hers. As the spears were ripped out of her body, Mukuro became nothing more than a discarded doll, who fell on top of both Matsuda and Junko. 

  
Even covered in her sister’s blood the expression on her face would not, could not, change. 

 

_Why… do you love me so much?_

 

『 _See? You just want them to love you without giving anything in return, that’s just a superiority complex._ 』

 

Junko’s hair in the bed, spilled out like glowing rays in the sun, and twisted, twisted, twisted up into knots.

 

 _It’s like I made him say it._ _  
_ _It’s like I made her say it._

 

Naked, Enoshima Junko’s hands slowly traveled up to her face. Even in total darkness, she wanted to hide her face away. Even without a stitch of clothing on her, her breasts like two apples on her chest, the skin of her hips as smooth as ever daring to be gripped by rough hands, she wanted to keep her face covered. Only if someone saw her face would she be truly exposed.  
  
She had no idea if she was crying or smiling. That was because, hidden behind her mask for so long, she had forgotten what her face looked like a long time ago. Even then she could not move her hands and let her mask slide off. She was afraid, underneath there would be nothing at all. She was so, very, very, very afraid.  
  
A rough hand, covered in lacerations, and that scratched her as his hands overlapped with hers. He slid his fingers in between hers, and slowly pulled her fingers away from her face. His eyes, water, and dark blue over everything, and her holding her breath. She wanted to burst out into tears, but all that came out were pink flower petals.  
  
It was so beautiful.  
She hated beauty.  
Just like her be some ugly thing, even once in her life.  
  
A storm of flowers, a sudden wind, she halted and opened her eyes as she held onto him.  
She tried to reach for them but they scattered and fell away from her fingertips.  
_And yet…_ _  
_ _There was somebody who loved me regardless. Someone who didn’t care at all about my faults._ _  
_ _Someone who fell on this me._

 

She suddenly brought her lips up to his for a kiss, but he did not kiss her back. A one sided kiss. An unrequited love that enveloped him. Her lips felt cold as she kissed his smile. She kissed the cold, cold, smile frozen on his face, and then burned. She knew why, because they were not kissing each other. They were both kissing the insides of their masks, as they forced their masks to kiss. 

 

A kiss that just made her feel lonely. Just like those that happened in old black and white movies, with rain that fell like oil in the background, for two who could not form words with their lips, so they smashed them together and tried to tell the entire story of their romance in one minute, _Hello, I love you, I can’t love you, Soon I’ll stop loving you, Soon I’ll forget about you, Goodbye,_ all those words they struggled to say as their tongues twisted together. 

  
She pulled back. “You’re so cruel, Senpai.”  
  
Kumagawa’s smile widened, his lips messy and red with her lipsticks, as if she had turned over a glass of wine and spilled it all over her face.『 _You are the last person who should be calling anyone cruel._ 』

 

 _Mm, why not?_ _  
_ _Underneath it all, I’m just a girl you know._ _  
_ _You shouldn’t be cruel to a girl, senpai._ _  
_ _Especially if underneath it all you’re just a boy._  
  
She was cruel. She always had been. Yet, Kumagawa managed to find something to love in her. At first she thought it was because he was as cruel and mean as she was, but it was different. He was different. He was cruler.  
  
_Entertain me!_ She thought manically. _Ruin yourself! Ruin me! Please, show me how this, how love, witl ruin us_ . She would let Kumagawa stab a scalpel into the space between her rib cage, directly below her heart letting her blood drip out from underenath her heart like it sprung a leak.She would let him stab her through with spears, until she fell forward and drowned in a pool of her own blood. _Tell me we’re dead and I’ll love you even more.._ If that was what it took to see just how deep his darkness goes.  
  
She could not imagine anything in this world making her happy but that.

Finally able to see Kumagawa’s real face.  
Sitting next to him, with neither of them needing to wear a mask. Being together without being alone. He turns towards her and his lips part, but he does not lie. He lies to everybody else but not to her, never to her. His truth belongs to her.  
  
The words she wanted to hear the most..  
From the person she wanted to hear them from the most…  
That unobtainable thing… 

 

『God, just shut up already!』

 

Kumagawaw’s voice shattered her fantasies like a rock thrown through a stain glass window. That boy was always so crude. Junko removed her hand from in front of her eyes and peaked through at the reality in front of her.

  
  
  
  
  
  


🧸

 

 _Heya, Kumagawa-kun. It’s been a while._ _  
_ _You haven’t been keeping in touch recently, have you?_ _  
_ _Why haven’t you been dying for me? Even though I wanted so very badly to see you._ _  
_ _Even though I’m the one wishing for your death the most._

 _Why don’t you die for me already?_ _  
_ _If you so blatantly try to avoid me, then even my feelings, the feelings of this Anshin’in-san will get hurt. You shouldn’t hurt a girl’s feelings, Kumagawa-kun._ _  
_ _Even you should learn a little more kindness- but honestly, I don’t know any human that’s kinder than you are._ _  
_ _Of course, that's just a joke._ _  
_ _Did you think I was serious?_ _  
_ _Do you want to know what I seriously think about you?_ _  
_ _The feelings I’m hiding in my heart?_ _  
_ _Seriously, seriously, someone like you should just go die._

 _That girl loved death more than she loved him.  
_ _  
_ 『 _Ajimu-san...please don’t die. Please don't leave me alone._ 』 _  
_

To die (Shinu). Die! (Shine). Dead person (Shinin). One who is dead (shisha). Martyrdom (Junshi). Death (Shi). Cause of death (Shiin). A corpse; a cadaver, a carcass (Shigai) usually used for animals. Death (Shibou). To die like a dog (Iujini).  
  
Ajimu had no pupils at the center of her eyes, and those words flashed by instead. 

Suicide (Jisatsu).  
To kill one’s self.

A smile curled on the doll’s lips. 

 _Don’t worry, you’re my favorite toy Kumagawa-kun._ _  
_ _I’ll love you even when you’re broken._

『 _Ajimu-san...I don’t want to be your doll. I’ll live for myself._ 』

These memories.These terrible memories.  
He wanted to remember her in the best light possible, because she was already dead. She was already gone. It did not matter whether he loved her or hated her, those feelings would never reach her anymore.

A boy with the head of a stuffed rabbit stood over him. 

 _Are you lonely?_ _  
_ _Are you alone?_

The boy’s hand reached out for Kumagawa but before he could touch him, the seams in his fingers were torn up, and the stuffing in his hand was ripped out.

『 _No, I won’t belong to anyone! I can live without them never showing my true face._ 』 _  
_

The rabbit’s head ripped off, but as it fell away from its body and stuffing fell out of its neck, the rabbit’s lips still moved.  
  
_“But you’re lying.”_

Kumagawa’s eyes suddenly opened as he awoke with a start. He had a headache, and he immediately assumed Junko was the cause. He was not wrong. When Kumagawa woke up the first thing he saw was Junko pacing back and forth in the room muttering to herself. Kumagawa smiled, truly,, Junko finally dropped the pretense and stopped bothering with anyone else and talked to her best friend and favorite person, herself. 

Zenkichi told him that their love was mutually unrequited. That they were both in love at each other. They were both in love with an image they saw. Junko’s blue eyes were always so still, so fake, like tranquil water so unmoving the surface could easily be mistaken for glass. Did he just fall in love with the reflection of himself he saw in them?  
  
How narcissistic.  
Kumagawa did not even think he was a person capable of narcissism, usually that involved liking yourself at least a little bit. At least people with an excessive amount of love had someone to love, people with an excessive amount of self hate just had nothing.  
  
Junko suddenly stopped, her hands covering her face as she slowly sunk down to her knees. Her one eye stared, frantically, through the spaces between her fingers, as if she was searching for some kind of escape between the gaps of the bird cage she was trapped within.  
  
“Please…”  
  
She started muttering something though Kumagawa did not make out the rest. What he felt like, a pain, like a screw being driven directly into his temple. She was so annoying. She was so annoying to love. And yet he still…

 

『God, just shut up already!』He snapped at her. 『Stop talking to brain ghost Kumagawa when I’m right here, that’s creepy even by your standards,』he said as he struggled against chains.  
  
Wait...Chains?

『I apologize for this jarring and unexpected development, but it appears I have been kidnapped.』  
  
A  date with the girl he loved, that ended in a trip to a love hotel together.  
For any high school boy it would have been a dream come true.  
Kumagawa Misogi, was not even allowed to dream of course.  
All of his dreams quickly, too quickly, turned into nightmares. 

Junko had hit him on the back of the head and dragged him all the way to the KumaSutra love hotel, and locked him away in a room. Kumagawa did not really figure that out so much as he thought that it seemed like a thing Junko would do.  
  
His hands were hanging above him, suspended in the air by a pair of handcuffs. He sat on an old chair with the wood rotting away. Chains looped around his arms and tied him to the back of the chair. Oddly, it felt like he was sitting on a throne. He was a king, but only because Junko had put a crown of thorns on his head, and let the thorns rake across his skin as he bled. 

“Creepy?” Junko repeated back to him, as she turned her head towards him. “I’m creepy? She turned her head again. “Creepy, what a terrible thing to say to the only person who loves you, you really don’t know how to talk to girls, Senpai.” 

『Yes, and junko doesn’t know how to talk about her feelings and that’s why she ties me up like this and forces me to listen to her monologue.』  
  
“Hey, my monologues are great okay! My self reflections are like, soooo deeeep. Everyone wants to hear them.”

『Are you so sure about that? It seems like nobody willingly spends time with you unless you lock them up inside of a killing game. Hey, hey, do you know what a captive audience is?』  
  
“I’m the most popular character and everyone likes me! Shut up Misogi, just shut up!” Junko suddenly stopped, her eyes emptying out as she tilted her head like the whole world was on an axis for her. “That’s weird. You’re weird. It’s your fault you’re not popular, for being such a weirdo.” 

 

『You’re the one who chained me up, how am I the weird one?』Kumagawa spat out, because it was his turn to play tsukkomi. 

“But I always want to tie up what I love, and collect it in a toy box.” 

 

『You should really be careful. Toys can sometimes bite the hand of their masters.』

 

“Don’t say something dumb like that with so much confidence! It’s dogs, dogs bite the hand of their masters!”

 

『Hey… I have no intention of becoming your dog or your toy. I’m me.』  
  
“Hm? You sure about that? You suuuuuure you don’t want to try to be someone else? I mean you’re the biggest, the most awful, the worst, most despair-inducing tragedy of a person I know.” 

 

『Awe, Junko’s being so nice today...』  
  
Suddenly, Junko’s expression dropped. If Kumagawa had to describe the feeling of her eyes dropping, it was like a shot put ball colliding with the back of his head, and cracking his skull. It was too heavy. There was too much weight. He was going to be crushed. “But, that’s exactly what I mean Senpai… even now, you’re not acting like yourself.” 

 

『That’s right because I’m not Kumagawa Misogi at all. I’m actually his twin brother, Kumagawa Yuuki!』  
  
“That twist is lame. I’ve already decided we’re not doing the evil twin twist. Don’t you think it’s kind of overdone?” 

 

『You hypocrite! That’s exactly what you were going to pull with Mukuro and yourself.』  
  
“But if a bunch of other sets of twins show up in the story then I’ll feel less special.”

『So that’s your real reason! You just hate it when other people steal your spotlight?』  
  
Enoshima Junko suddenly lost interest in that, and started to climb over him. He felt her knees dig into his lap. Her skirt was pushed up as her legs underneath it moved. She kicked her black heels off the ground as she lifted herself up onto him. Her arms crossed behind his neck. He saw her body closer, closer to his, as if pulling him into an embrace.  
  
Only when they were this close did he remember how misshapen the both of them were. They were never meant to fit together with anybody, especially not each other. Yet, they kept trying desperately to jam their bodies together. Her red neck tie fell in front of his eyes. She leaned her weight against him, he felt something soft bush against the side of his cheek.  


 

“Because Senpai, you’re really angry right now aren’t you? You hate that I hit you on the head again. You hate that in the end, I always just use you the same way everybody else does. So, how come you’re just bantering with me like normal?” 

 

『Junko, get your boobs out of my face.』  
  
“That’s the first time you’ve said that (LOL). Come on, I know you want to touch them, boobs are the only thing that give life meaning.”  
  
『Sometimes boobs are beautiful because you can never touch them, only look at them from afar.』  
  
“See, Senpai! You avoided my question. You won’t let yourself be angry.” 

 

『You’re just being annoying again.』  
  
“Even if I were to torture you to death, even if I were to cut your arms and legs off, I bet you’d still forgive me. You’re messed up, Senpai. More messed up then I am…”

 

『I’m just used to it...』

  
Her elbow dug into the side of his ribs. Her knee was already poking at his thigh. He finger trailed down his back, as if he was tracing the curve of his spine. Even though they were so close together, even though they were both warm, he shivered. He shivered, and she shivered too. The frames of their body grinded against each other, but the closer they got it just reminded both of them that they were too separate people.  
  
“Hey, hey, Junko-chan is talking here! Don’t you know how clever my dialogue is? My writer must have been really proud of themselves when they created me, a character with so many fans that anyone could love.” Kumagawa could tell Junko was feeling more and more unstable, if being hit on the back of the head did not tip him off then her erratic speech patterns did. She was not just wrapping her arms around him, she was not just strangling him, she was desperately holding on afraid to let go. “You’re not allowed to get used to me. Getting used to someone, isn’t that like getting bored of them?”

 

『You know what else is boring, getting tied up and locked in a room!』  
  
“Nobody asked what you think is cool, senpai. You’re not one of the cool kids.” Junko said, putting a finger on his lips. “You’re afraid of yourself aren’t you? You’re afraid of what you are deep down, that’s why… everything… everything is a lie for you?”

 

『Junko, I tell you nothing but lies.』  
  
“I know I’ve been watching all this time.” 

  
Junko, wanted to gather up all the glittering toys that were hers, and lock them away in a chest. She would even destroy them because they were hers. That was why, she knew all this time Kumagawa was just indulging her stupidity. He was just playing along with her because he was kind. 

 

 _He…_ _  
_ _Will absolutely never be mine._

 _That’s why I love him._ _  
_ _Delusion, Admiration, PIty, and everything else._ _  
_ _I loved the one person who could never be mine._  
_That being the case, I decided…_ _  
_ _To never leave you alone._  
  
“It’s fine if it’s a lie, but you know Misogi even if you’re broken, and even if your true face is revealed and the world turns against you, I’ll still accept you.”

 

『Too bad, I’d rather not be accepted by a person like you.』  
  
“I’m the only one who can understand the real you. That’s why, I have to protect you.”

『Now you sound like pre-character development Mukuro-chan.

  
Junko suddenly stopped. Her empty glass eyes, rolled up to the ceiling, looking more like a doll’s than a human in that moment. “Yeah, is this how she felt? How stupid.”

『That’s great. You finally did the empathy thing. I’m so proud of you. Now untie me.』  
  
“No. This is the first time I’ve felt like this. I really do want to protect you Senpai, just like in those shonen manga you love."

『Great, now you've ruined shonen manga for me forever.』  
  
“I might lose you... This feeling it's scary."  
  
The idea of losing him was so intolerable she would destroy her current relationship with him to keep clinging to him. She was so afraid of a future without him, not for a single moment could she think of the present, and instead tried to keep things exactly as they were in the past.

『Please lose me. Actually, get lost.』  
  
“I know that you’re a pathological liar, who doesn’t trust anyone in this world. I know you’re incapable of loving anybody and yet you’re always unsatisfied if you’re unloved. My feelings don’t matter to you. It could have been anybody, it could have been Medaka-chan, or Ajimu-san, as long as you were accepted. I know you haven’t changed since the day I met you, you just learned how to better hide away the nasty parts of your personality hoping that nobody you liked would have to see them. I’ll never believe that you love me. I know that. I know better. Your ‘I love you’ has no meaning to me. It’s as shallow and thin as paper. But… I want to be your first.” 

 _Knowing all of that._ _  
_ _I’m still here._ _  
_

“I… want to change you.” 

 _I…_ _  
_ _I. I. I. I._ _  
_ _Me. Me. Me. Me. Me._ _  
_ _(Ore.) (Watashi). (Atashi). (Watakushi)._ _  
_

“I want the real you.” 

Enoshima Junko was the only one who would ever pick the real Kumagawa Misogi, the ugly truth, over the pleasant lie. She wanted to see his tears rather than his smile. She wanted him to be selfish, and use her, rather than be her selfless knight that lets himself get used by her.  
  
Because she was unwilling to let go of their relationship, even though he refused to show his real self, she had chained him up like this.  

『The real me never smiles. He’s so weak it’s not even pitiable any more. You’d just get bored, because that’s what you do to people you lo-』

“This time it’s different!” Junko screamed, loud enough to break glass. “You’re going to stop me. That’s why we’re playing this game?” 

『This game?』  
  
“It’s simple. We’ll stay in here together, until you manipulate me into letting you go. Going to a love hotel with the boy I like for the first time, Gaaaaaaaaah! It’s so embarrassing! I hope nobody finds out about it! My reputation will be ruined.” 

 _Because you’re more manipulative than I am._ _  
_ _And I want to see that side of you._ _  
_ _I won’t reject any part of you, Kumagawa-kun._ _  
_ _I want to be thrown over, possessed by you._ _  
_ _Do you want me? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground, like you mean it, reach outside, and wrestle it out with your bare hands?_

She hated herself too much. She loved herself too much. She loved her toys too much and they broke. She tried to love someone else. She could not love someone other than herself. She could not love herself.  
  
She had no idea how to love or be loved.  
What a stupid girl.  
That was why she broke that boy’s heart.  
That was why she broke that girl’s heart.  
That was why she broke her own heart.  
That was why she ran. 

 _I hate that about you. I love that you say stuff like that._ Contact with the human failure. Flirting with him. Pointless conversations with him. Pointless conversations about self-love. Hating each other a little less than they hated themselves. Mad for the sensation of being in love itself, for the beauty in the very act. The pleasure of seeing someone else as empty and filling them up in your own feelings. The joy of getting hurt because you let someone in close. The ecstasy of feeling your insides tear themselves apart over them. The feeling of fulness nearly destroying you. The euophria taking over the brain.  
  
An ephemeral, painful gaze.  
This wasn’t a lie.  
His expression.  
His smile.  
The moment she understood it.  
She always wanted it to be a part of her life.  
It almost felt like she had gone and understood somebody’s feelings.  
If someone separated them they would die on their own.  
A vague, nondescript feeling.

Because if they tried to put the feeling into words.  
It might disappear.  
If they looked at it, it would break.  
An inability to remain apathetic.  
A feeling like their tiny little world would break.  
She desired him. She faced him.  
She had forgotten who he was.  
She remembered. 

He didn’t need to be himself.  
He just needed to be hers.  
A symptom of addiction.

An addiction to a human relationship.  
Drunk on each other.  
Feeling withdrawal from each other.  
Wasting away together because it was better than wasting away alone.  
Few things were as meaningless as proloning a failed relationship.  
Yet, they did meaningless things all the time. 

Those eyes stared at her, they were strangely lonely.  
Even though she was right here.   
She grabbed both of the sides of her head, hoping they would not split apart.  
Her brain, her brain, her brain, it was trying to leave her skull.   
She had put tape over the cracks in the glass, hoping she would not fall apart.  
She still wanted to look in the cracked mirror.   
  
Junko smiled, like she was feeling nothing, even though she felt everything, enough to break her fragile self.  The game, focus, she had to explain the rules of the game. In a game she could control everything, even herself, even her own mind. “You have to get me to untie you, Senpai.” She teased him.

『Laaaaaaazy! Untie me yourself.』  
  
“Don’t wanna.” 

『 _Let go of me. Stop loving me._ 』 Her delusion of Kumagawa asked her that but she was too afraid to ask if the real one felt that way.

 _Never._ _  
_ _Senpai I…_ _  
_ _I don’t understand why you love me.  
  
_

🧸

 

Junko’s eyes looked like glass that could easily break.  
She did not need to put a glass eye in the hole in her face, her one remaining eye always looked like that. Fogged up glass it was impossible to see anything past. 

  
Kumagawa watched just then as Junko turned away from him. She had flowers in her hands and threw them up in the air carelessly. She looked like she was having fun, but she only looked that way. She could only recreate the appearance of having fun. She could only exist in artifice.  
  
The sudden wind, the storm of flowers, he opened his eyes to watch them. She was surrounded by flowers and yet all he could do was watch her. Her laugh like a fistful of flowers. Flowers fell instead of rain. A beautiful sight he was sure.  
  


But Kumagawa was just withered tree, decaying and yearning, left all alone.  
He could not reach for her anymore, because both of his arms had been broken.  
Even though Junko was right in front of him, her mind danced, somewhere far away from him.  
  
He had no idea how to fix her.  
He had no idea how to fix him.  
He had no idea how to fix this. 

 

『 _This is my fault isn’t it?_ 』He promised her that he would always recognize her, no matter how much she changed. That he would know the real Junko. Then he went and said those horrible words, _Junko, you’re not acting like yourself._ He kept making promises to people he knew he would never keep. He kept making promises because like these chains Junko tied around him, he wanted to chain people to him. He wanted people to see him as worth something even though he was worthless. He wanted people to have expectations for him, even though he knew he would disappoint them. He wanted people to believe him even when he lied.『 _When did it become my fault? When I first met you? When I fell in love with you? When I tried to save you and we fell into the river together? When I forced you to live? When... When did I..._ 』  
  
He wanted to be obsessed over.  
He wanted to be desired.  
He did not want to give them anything of his real self.  
He wanted to keep his heart locked away in a box.  
He won’t let them take anything from him.  
It can’t be equal.  
He doesn’t care who.  
Please someone.  
Please.  
『 _Please think I’m worth something._ 』

He decided to accept the punishment.  
  
Junko must have been lonely that whole month he was dead.  
She must have thought when he came back he would fix her.  
  
When Junko had sex with him for the first time she told him if he was beaten or insulted he would never get hurt. That the only way to truly hurt someone like him would be to get close to him, and embrace him kindly, and softly, accepting all of him. Kumagawa had said something similiar to her before, that he wanted to love someone even if it meant hurting them. He desperately hoped, that there was a good kind of hurt. 

“You’ve got to break the chains, senpai.” 

『The metaphorical ones, or the real ones?』  
  
“Both of them, duh.”

『That’s too much effort. I’ll just get used to these chains. They make a cool edgy fashion accessory don’t you think?』  
  
Junko was sitting on the ground next to him, draped over him. Her head was in his lap. It was like he was not even sitting in the chair at all, and she put her head against it to find some trace of his warmth.  
  
“Hmm, Kumagawa-kun you’re terrible at talking to girls so I’ll give you advice on how to woo me. You should make me lose everything, and trick everyone I know into abandoning me, then I’ll come and cling to you.” 

 

『Today’s advice column brought to you by people who should never have been inflicted on society in the first place.』

 

“Upupupu!” Junko suddenly changed her mood, “Well, that’s enough of the opening act. It’s time for the show to begin. Towa-san saw me drag you here, so that means she probably told someone I have you here. Which means Mukuro-chan will enter from stage right.”  
  
Just as Junko pointed to the door, Mukuro kicked it open. Junko rolled her eyes at how dramatic her sister was being, she had not even locked the door. She wondered where Mukuro got her sense of drama from. Oh, wait it was her.  
  
“Junko, it’s not good to tie up the people you like!” Mukuro began, as if she were trying to lecture a small child.  
  
“Ehhh? But it makes me happy when I tie up the boys I like!” 

 

『If that’s what makes you happy you should just stay miserable forever.』

  
“Junko-chan, why are you doing this?”  
  
“To protect him. I don’t want Misogi to get involved with other people. He’ll just keep starting fights until he gets himself killed.”  
  
That was right, Mukuro saw right in front of her eyes.  
The older brother who was always gentle to her, become someone she did not understand, someone who enjoyed hurting others. He got violent for her sake again and again, even though she never asked him to.  
  
Kumagawa was enough. He just needed to remain himself, the person who saved her, and yet he seemed so desperate to change himself. To destroy himself. To rebuild himself again. To die. To Revive. To kill himself. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. In front of her eyes.  
  
  
Mukuro could only watch, confused as the two of them Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi, danced on strings. They danced, between life and death, on the edge of a rooftop, not caring if they stepped on each other’s feet, broke each other’s toes, to a song that only they could hear. They looked like they were infected by some kind of french madness, and would keep dancing until they died.  
  
Lots of love.  
Too much love.  
  
This was her only family. The family she was born with, and the family she found. Years ago she never thought anybody would be her family besides Junko, even if someone was kind to her she did not let those feelings reach her.

The person she wanted that love from the most was Junko.  
The one person that would never give it to her.  
That was why, if anybody else gave it to her that was acceptable.  
  
The world she thought was just her and her family, the portait she painted between of the three of them, suddenly it got smaller, suddenly she was cut out. _I don’t… I don’t understand you anymore Junko. I don’t understand my feelings for you._ For Junko hurting the people she loved was as natural as breathing, but for some reason Mukuro had no idea why she had tied Kumagawa up like this.  
  
_What am I supposed to do?_ _  
_  
Mukuro looked like a stray dog caught in the headlights. She would be grinded underneath the tires, until her skin made a tearing noise and her body broke in two. Her intestines would drag out like rotten yellow cord and be stretched out like rope as the car continued for a few more meters before finally stopping. 

 

She just wanted Kumagawa to go back to the way he was. She had no idea why he was acting like this. She had no idea why he hurt himself. She was useless. She was stupid. But, Junko was smarter than her. Junko always knew everyone better than they knew themselves. That was what she used to say over and over again, _Junko knows best, Junko knows best._  
  
In battlefields, where she made her home, her main mission was to kill and survive. And in that setting, Ikusaba was invincible. She could put her own emotions like a leash, in order to become nothing more than a girl tarined to kill.

 

  
However, when she was facing her own sister in the battlefield of a normal high school life (twisted as it may have been), she could not control her emotions no matter how much she tried. She wanted her home to stop being the battlefield, because her home was between these people, Kumagawa, Enoshima, her family.  
  
But now, she had to choose between them? It felt as though her world was being torn from the inside out.  
  
She wished that boy had never caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye and turned his head to look at her.  She wished she had never caught a glimpse of the world that existed beyond her own. A world beyond her sister. A world that contained Naegi Makoto, the first person that smiled at her.  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro’s heart was an arid battlefield in the middle east, a place of death where nothing grew out of the ground, only weapons left behind from the people she had killed. Even in the cracked, and dry earth, even there a flower could grow.  
  
A flower grew in her heart. It shot up her throat and she choked on it. She could have a flower of her own.But by the time she realized this, the flower had already rotted from the inside out.  
  
That was why she wished she had never seen it. “I wish… I wish I had never seen that light.” She had no idea what to do anymore. To let Junko do what she wanted and keep Kumagawa in this room to protect him, to free him and try to protect him herself even though she never once protected him before.  
  
She was always useless.  
She had watched him die a month ago. Kumagawa died.  
His story could end just like that, just with two words, it would be that easy to lose him again.  
  
Junko leaned against Kumagawa’s shoulder, placing an arm around him as she cozied up to him to whisper in his ear. He wondered if this is what people felt like when they had snakes constricting them.  
  
“If you want to get out of this room, all you need to do is ask my cute little sister. I bet she would even kill me if you asked her too. You stole my sister away from me after all… or did you just do that because you wanted to play house?” 

  
So that was Junko’s game. She wanted him to manipulate Mukuro, the one person he would never hurt.  


Kumagawa’s wrists were already becoming raw from how much he rubbed against those chains. None of Junko’s attempts to mess with him so far had even registered to him, as anything more than radio static, but when he heard Mukuro wish she had never seen the light it pierced through him loud and clear.

『Mukuro-chan… don’t say that.』  
  
It was true.  
For every light you saw, that meant you were going to see a new darkness soon.  
Even so…  
  
『Mukuro-chan, thank you for the food you made for me that time. It was so delicious! You’re going to be such a good housewife, Makoto-chan is so lucky. I’m sorry your older brother is so useless, and he’s always worrying you, but I’m fine really.』

  
Kumagawa knew he was putting on a fake smile, but he so desperately wanted it to be real.  
He wished for it just this once, so he could show her a smile that could save her like Makoto did.

 

『There were a few rounds on Jabberwock island that Nagito-chan got chained up for the whole round, so this is only fair don’t you think? Besides, you can come and visit me as much as you want.』  
  
“Misogi-chan…”

 

『You don’t need to save me, because you already saved me by being my sister.』

 

 _That’s all you need to do._  
  
You will never get the words you want to hear the most from the person you want to hear from the most. And yet you hear them all the time from people you don’t care about. 

 

Junko’s smile widened. “See, we’ll fall in love by being locked in the same place together, just like beauty and the beast. So stop third wheeling us already sis!”  
  
“Junko-chan, I…”  
  
There was a bullet lodged in Mukuro’s chest. The one who had put it there was Junko. She was the reason that loving to her was so painful, that just to keep her heart beating, she felt it breaking over and over again, and the muscle fibers slowly being torn apart by the object obsctructing her heart and wedged in there.  
  
Yet, she could never pull that bullet out. Because she thought it was all she had.  
There was a gun in her hand.  
It felt hot. It felt oily. 

“I wish you had never loved me.”  
  
She fired.  
If she couldn’t be a girl.  
A normal girl, with a normal family, then she would be a gun.  
  
“I wish I hadn’t realized… how much I hate you.”  
  
“...Eh?” For the first time in her life, Junko was genuinely shocked at something her sister said. She made no facial expression, she could not make one, like her mask had slipped off her face and all that was left was that empty-wide-eyed look. “Muku-chan, wait…” She mumbled the words, she had no idea what she was saying, she had no idea why. She reached out her hand trying to grab her sister only for the door to slam in her face.

『It’s just us. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?』  
  
Kumagawa asked behind her.  
Junko held herself the same way Komaeda did, to stop herself from falling to pieces right there.  
Desperately holding onto herself, because there was nothing else to hold onto.  
And no one who would want to hold her.  
  
Kaede and Shuichi eventually showed up. The two of them argued over whether or not it was right to keep Kumagawa locked away from all the others, but Junko pointed out they were the two most dangerous players in the game and it was safer to keep them away from the others.  
  
Everyone had started to dislike Kumagawa after seeing him beat up Toko. Not one of them spoke up for him. Komaru even suggested that they not tell her big brother, because Makoto was too much of a goodie two shoes and would demand they free Kumagawa.  
  
Neither of them knew that when they were both locked away, the third motive had already been announced outside the walls, but neither particularly cared anyway because they ignored the game everyone else was playing, to play a game with each other.  
  
Everyone left them alone.  
They were alone together. 

Is it mutual love, or just mutual loneliness? 

  


  



	62. Bow wow! Two Dog Night!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title and chapter is a reference to Narita's Series "Estusa Bridge" Which I just finished reading.

 

Two young girls.  
  
The murderer, meek and quiet Ikusaba Mukuro, seeking a sense of family with the boy who smiled at her once and called her a normal girl.  
  
The assassin, cold and cutting Harukawa Maki, who stopped herself from wanting a normal life, because she knew she was the one who destroyed other people’s normal lives.

A girl who killed for her sister.  
  
An orphan with no family.  
  
The two of them took entirely separate paths, and yet they look much like a dog barking at it’s own reflection. Both of them were nowhere near this so-called ‘normal life’. Just what the hell is a normal life anyway? Tell me what it looks like so I can run away from it!

🧸

Momota Kaito came barreling towards her, but despite his taller body and wide shoulders Maki barely reacted let alone let anything show on her face. _I’ve killed boy’s Kaito’s age before,_ she thought. It was a bitter thought because Maki herself was bitter. Kaito grabbed for her with one arm, at which point she instantly redirected his arm and threw him over her shoulder. 

When Kaito hit the ground he rolled over like a dog. To Maki he was like he was one of those big, shaggy dogs that was way too friendly and slobbered all over you. How annoying. He got up to a crouch and then lunged for her knees. She jumped up in the air dodging him easily, and then landed on his back with both feet.  
  
The view of him underneath her feet was a little bit interesting at least. Maki was not a sadist, because enjoying pain involved enjoying something, and Maki was pretty sure if she sincerely tried to enjoy a single moment of her life she would just fall over and die. Or something. 

Kaito looked like he was some kind of delinquint always getting in fights after school, but secretly he was hiding a heart of gold. The kind of person that finds a mewling kitten in the rain and takes them home without anybody seeing. That was what he acted like anyway, and he so desperately wanted everyone to but that act.

 

He was like a big brother to everyone, but that meant he was never close to anyone specifically. Maki wondered then why he kept bothering her. Otherwise, despite acting tough he fought like he had never been in a serious fight in his life. He was always chasing around Kokichi, and that time he socked Shuichi in the gut in front of everyone, but Maki got the sense that if either of them had seriously fought back they would have lost.  
  
Maki wondered why that guy spent so much time pretending. He was more obsessed with his own appearance than most girls were. Then there was Maki, she did not care what she looked like, or rather she already knew no matter how much she changed herself in the mirror all she would see was a dog looking back.  
  
Kaito threw a punch again after getting back on his feet, and Maki felt like being cheeky so she grabbed him by his Goattee and slammed his back against the wall. As she held him in place there her hand moved from his chin to his neck.  
  
There was one thing that was odd about Kaito’s body. It was unbelievably warm, like he was constantly overheating. Is this what it felt like, touching another person? Is this how it burned? Kaito’s heart was red. He was red all over painted in oil colors. He was a red different than the color of blood, a red she did not know. 

 

Maki was cold. Her blood, her smile, the edge of a knife, everything about her was cold. It would be wrong to call her a corpse, her body was a whole graveyard.  
  
Even with her hand wrapped around his neck Kaito’s expression did not change at all. “Haha, it’s kind of embarrassing having a girl with her hands all over me like this.”  
  
“So embarrassing you might just die,” Maki retorted drily.  
  
“Don’t you think all this training is making me way stronger? I’m way cooler than I was the first time we fought.” Kaito said, like he did not even notice he was being pinned. 

 

As she held him up against the wall, Maki smiled because she thought it might cut him. “Yeah, so cool, now you’re getting knocked on your ass in style.” 

 

“Whoa! So you really think I’m cool Harumaki? I was just joking around…” Kaito bashfully began to scratch at the back of his head.  
  
Maki had never met someone so infuriating before. She only killed because she was ordered to, but for the first time she started to understand wanting to kill someone with her own two hands. I believe that’s called a crime of passion.  
  
“There’s no way anybody can genuinely be this stupid. You’re just pretending right. You’re going to say _Maki, all the real heroes don’t think with their heads they think with their hearts._ ”  
  
“All the real heroes don’t think with their heads- Hey! You stole my line!” 

  
“If you thought that line was actually cool I’m worried about you. Like, genuinely, as a person. You worry me, Momota.” 

  
“No need to worry about me! I’m larger than life! I’m so big the atmosphere just can’t contain me, that’s why I gotta make it into space.”  
  
“Really? Because you act like you’re smaller than every single person you meet.” 

 

“Harumaki… please think I’m cool.”  
  
“DON’T JUST ASK THAT!” She raised her voice. Maki did not realize until after the words left her mouth. She wanted to keep coldly brushing him off. No matter how hard she tried, this person kept dragging her along. When he took a step, she took a step, and with clumsy steps they were dragged into a dance together.  
  
It was a simple tale to tell.  
Boy meets girl.  
A basic component of any story, no?  
The encouterer of a murderer girl, and boy who happens to be a self-proclaimed hero.  
  
No matter how many times she stepped on his toes on purpose, Kaito get dancing along with her. _A dance to kill me_ . No, that sounds lame. She decided against it.  
  
Some were made to dance.  
ANd some mad eothers dance.  
Kaito was definitely the latter.  
  
That was why he danced.  
That was why she danced.  
Knowing she was being helplessly pulled on strings by an unreachable puppeteer.

 

She sighed and finally let him go. She had meant to do it earlier, but lost track of time talking to him like usual. “Just go back to pretending to be cool, I like you more that way.”  
  
“Oh, oh, so you like me Harumaki?”  
  
“...”  
  
“You’re supposed to deny it, and then get all flustered! That’s how this scene goes!” 

 

“I just thought that question wasn’t even worth responding too.”

 

Kaito slumped against the wall, and sat on the floor of the Ultimate Assassin’s Talent Lab. Every room he walked into he acted like he owned the place. He really was an impudent one. Though, if he wasn’t so impudent they would not be talking like this right now. “Hey, Thanks for keeping your promise to train me, HaruMaki!” 

 

“You made that promise, not me. I just decided it wasn’t worth the effort to chase you away.” She closed her eyes, fighting with Kaito was easy but talking with him was just exhausting. “And stop calling me Harumaki.” 

 

“Huh? Don’t you like it?”

 

He really did just constantly butt into things, other people’s conversations, other people's stories, their lives, and act like he was the main character. No wonder he wanted to see space so badly he must have thought he was the center of the universe.  
  
The moon revolved the earth.

The earth revolved around the sun.

Both of them kept spinning, entirely indifferent to one boy’s tiny dreams, Maki wanted to tell him that but for some reason she could not bring herself too. He always smiled so much, when he was talking about his dreams.  
  
Maki never once looked forward to the future. She knew all that was waiting for her was a death she would deserve, and then another child from that orphanage would be trained as an orphan to replace her.  
  
“I don’t like it,” Maki said, her voice quiet, almost shy. “You just keep treating me as normal.”  
  
“You’re a normal girl, Harumaki.”  
  
“A normal girl who kills people.”  
  
“Well yeah but… that’s just because they made it normal for you. I mean if you do the same thing every day, isn’t that just your normal life?” Kaito said, getting in her face smiling so wide, like he thought he said something smart. “Then all you gotta do is broaden your horizons, then that’ll become your new normal life!” 

  
“...”  
  
Maki just did not respond, cutting others off when she did not want to deal with them. Kaito bit his lip and when she stood up to walk away he grabbed her by the sleeve. “And maybe… a life with me in it… if we spend every day together like this it would be our normal life.” 

The dog turned around and flared her teeth to bite the hand that was holding her.  
She had no reason.  
That was what dogs did.  
  
“You think you’re helping me? You think you’re fixing me? Everytime you’re around me, you just hurt me…”  
  
What else swas she supposed to say?  
_I have feelings for you and they’re killing me._

 

🧸

 

Harukawa Maki was an assassin.  
  
An important man in a suit walked along the road surrounded by four bodygards. He saw a little girl in a red jacket, standing alone in the rain. The man takes his umbrella and holds it over her head. He asks in a voice containing a kindness she had never heard before and did not recognize what was wrong.  
  
In return for his kindness, she slit his thorat.

A ribbon of red fell from him, and he bled out as the rain washed away the colors of his blood. 

 

 _That’s right._ _  
_ _I can’t remember how many people I’ve killed._

 _Adults lower their guards around children. That’s why children are selected to be assassins._ _  
_ _Or so I’ve been told._  
  
She did not remember the faces of people she killed, nor did she feel any kind of guilt for forgetting. _Nobody remembers the details of an ordinary day in their life. Same with this. This was my ordinary, everyday life._ Even when she was a child some part of her was aware of this. She was a person who destroyed other people’s normal lives.  
  
The girl picked up the umbrella as she ran away from the man’s bodyguards, and disappeared in a crowd of grey people holding up the same umbrellas. Maki wondered once, what it would be like to hold and umbrella like this, skate on the surface of the water, and dance in the rain. 

That was impossible for a girl like her. She could not move on her own unless somebody else pulled her strings. 

It wasn’t like she had been born a killer though. She was once a normal girl, that was why she had an image of what a normal life looked like. The Holy Salvation Society, for a time Maki really believed they were a charity that took in orphans like her out of the goodness of her heart.  
  
A group of seemingly kind men one day appeared, and watched the children play. In reality they were searching for potential candidates to train as assassins. A cult that killed believing it was an act of god, though Maki doubted they believed in anything at all. 

When she first met them she really was normal. She had a bad personality and no talent at all. No one ever looked her way and she preferred it that way. Yet, always by her side, there was a bubbly girl, who always smiled in a way she never could.  
  
Every morning that girl woke up the rest of the kids present. She was a morning person, that was why she terrified Maki so much. She and Maki were both the oldest. Maki was annoyed with this because that meant she had to do everything for the younger brats, but that girl loved taking care of everyone.  
  
When she woke up early, Maki just rolled over in bed to get more sleep.  
  
“Haru, I can’t put my shoes on!”  
“Haru, I can’t tie my stupid shoe laces!”  
  
“Relax, I’ve got it covered. Don’t cry,” Haru said. She was always so bouncy, moving around from kid to kid. She was the type of girl who thought she had to be everyone’s mother. Last but not least she always moved to Maki’s bed and tried to drag her out of it. 

“Wake up, Maki! We gotta go play with everybody else.”  
  
“Orphans don’t play, and we’re not supposed to have fun. We’re supposed to live in a grey orphanage where it rains every day, and the cruel mistress forces us to do chores until our bones break.”  
  
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” 

Maki threw the pillow at Haru’s face. Despite the fact that she was always the center of attention in the orphanage she acted like she could never do anything alone. Just like Kaito, she was the kind of person who always dragged other people into her dancing with her. “Could you be any more annoying?"  
  
“IIf my love is annoying then prepare to be annoyed!” Haru immediately started to pout. 

“Quit whining already it’s way too early in the morning for this.”  
  
“When do you want to wake up then?”  
  
“Eight thirty.”  
  
“That’s thirty minutes before bed time.”  
  
“Yes, then I only have to stay awake for thirty minutes. It’s the life I dream about.”  
  
“No way, if you were asleep all the time I would miss you Maki!”  
  
“Fine, fine. The only way to deal with people like you is to nod along.” Maki let herself be dragged out of bed after that, otherwise Haru would throw a fuss. She had no idea why, but the girl who was always smiling, was always crying as well. There were some nights that even if Maki pretended to be nice, she would keep holding onto her and crying. Maki never understood the reason why.  
  
Haru helped her brush through her hair every morning. Maki really wanted to cut it all off, but when Haru praised her for her long hair, Maki could not bring herself to cut it. That girl always tied her hair up to two long ties but back then it only reached to her shoulders.   
  
When Maki followed Haru outside holding her hand, suddenly she was ambushed by one of the younger children who jumped up from behind. “There she is! That’s the assassin, get her!”

Two more children emerged from nowhere and grabbed her by each of her legs. One grabbed her pig tail and pulled on it, causing her to fall back. As she did a child in goggles landed on her chest. “How’s that, Maki? You give up?”  
  
“I wish I was an assassin so I could kill all of you.”  
  
The boy sitting on Maki’s chest whined. “Tch.. Would it kill you to play with us once in a while?”  
  
“Yes, it would kill me.” 

Maki did not know if there was any cause for her bad attitude. She had no memory of even having parents. As far as she was concerned she was born this way. She went to pick up a book from the shelf, and read a book as Haru played with everyone else.  
  
“Does Maki hate us?” One of the kids asked.  
  
“Yep,” Maki said without looking up from her book.  
  
“No, she doesn’t hate you! Maki has to be the stern one, because otherwise I’d spoil you all too much. It’s like, she’s the dad and I’m the mom,” Haru explained bringing her hands together. Every time Maki made a mess it was Haru who apologized for her. Every time she made someone else cry, it was Haru who comforted them and made sure they made up with her.  
  
"That's right I'm the deadbeat dad that's going to abandon all of you," Maki said still not looking up from her book. 

She made Haru cry too. A lot. That was the only thing she felt a little bit bad about, but Maki herself never cried. That was the only good thing about her. She was quiet. The only thing she needed for her world was herself.

That day because she was sitting alone while the two kindly men watched them, she happened to overhear something she should have never heard.  
  
_“Those two girls are the only suitable candidates this year.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Look at the girl playing tag with the others. She’s a quick thinker, observant of everybody around her, and her reflexes are honed.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“The other girl has the right attitude for the job. The first one’s too soft.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“That’s fine. It doesn’t even matter what kind of personality she has, personalities are things that can be broken. She just needs to be trained properly.”_

 

Maki stared at the chainlink fence in front of them. She had always wondered why, an orphanage run by a church had barb wired at the top of that fence. All it took was hearing those words, and her normal days came to an end.

_This is a dog pound for catching strays._

_I am… just a dog._ _  
_ _Mangy. Rabid. Starved. Unwanted._

 

She felt something. It burned her heart, and made her hair stand on end, and pounded so strongly through her she started to claw at her own throat. A sob escaped her lips.  
She wanted to cry.  
It was the very first emotion she had felt since her birth. She was never once happy with her life, she thought someone like her must have been born without a heart and yet the thought of dying made her want to cry. She had not even been alive yet. So why did she care… Why did she?

No, wait.  
They said the other girl was the better candidate. Haru was going to be scouted and she could continue to live at this orphanage until one day she was adopted or was old enough to live on her own. 

  
Maki smiled. She smiled at the thought of her only friend being taken away from her. She never had a family to begin with so why should she care. She did not want this place to become her home, or her family, the other kids at the orphanage were just brats. If that is what her living meant then they could all just die.

 

In that moment she thought of herself. The self that she hated so much. 

 

 _If it was Haru, she would not even cry. She would not be afraid not for a second. Because, if she was the one who got picked that meant all the other kids in the orphanage would be safe._ _  
_  
Maki looked up at the girl playing tag, unaware that they were just dogs being raised for a fighting pit. If there was someone who could escape from this place and live a happy life, it was her and not Maki.  
  
_Haru I’ve…_

 

Trhe girl who dressed them in matching outfits and stood in the mirror with her. The girl who baked sweets for her while Maki lazed around in the kitchen. The girl who always kept her awake at night talking so late. The girl who told her about her dreams  when Maki did not have a single one of her own.  
  
_I’ve always wanted to be like you._

 

She was not afraid to die.  
She never had a family or friends so no one would miss her.  
She was not afraid of the pain of dying, either.  
Her life was so utterly devoid of happiness she never feared losing it.  
And she felt nothing about being a killer.  
Because a girl like her did not have a drop of kindness in her heart. 

 

She was not a dog.  Even if they chained her up and put a collar on her she would never be a dog. _I have something to protect. I can’t be a dog._

 

🧸

 

Hey, Tsumugi time! It’s not as good as Junko time, but it’s the next best thing.

 

I hate mirrors. Every time I see one, I want to take a hammer and mercilessly smash it to pieces. Three-sided mirrors, mirrors on compact cases, full length mirrors, houses of mirrors - my heart strains with my desires to break them.  
  
This is because obviously I really don’t want to acknowledge that I’m a person. Every time I see a plain girl looking back at me in the mirror, it breaks all of my fantasies and delusions about myself.

  
  
But the reason I don’t act on these desires is because if you smash a mirror, all you do is multiply it into so many little mirrors. Just like hatred. A while ago, I actually set about testing how much I could hate a mirror, I used to pieces of a mirror I really did smash to make a kaleidoscope. The broken mirrors reflecting each other in a timeless, infinite, hellscape.  
  
As long as you’re human, you will recognize the image of yourself in the mirror. That’s what it means to have intelligence, or maybe that’s unintelligence. Dogs are lucky don’t you think? If they see  a mirror they think they’re looking at another dog.  
  
When a dog barks at the dog she sees in the mirror, I wonder what goes through her mind. 

 

She caught sight of Ikusaba Mukuro out of the corner of her eyes. Her senses immediately flared up and she turned around. If only looks could kill, my job would be a lot easier. Maki had thought that herself several times but at this point she would settle for looks getting someone to take the hint.  
  
Maki always made it clear that she did not like her, but Mukuro always kept coming back to her. She was like a dog that did not know her master was beating her. Mukuro looked different from normal though, her quiet expression was gone and instead she scowled.  
  
The girl who never had an emotion cross her face, looked really pissed off.  
Maki wondered for a moment if they had switched roles.  
  
Then that scowl disappeared as she forced a smile. “You smile when you’re around him without even realizing it. It’s cute.” 

 

 _You’re such a cute girl Maki. I want to see you smile one day._  
  
That girl said.  
_  
_ _Oy Harumaki! Girls like you are supposed to be hiding a really beautiful smile. Come on, show me one! Ehhhhh! That’s horrifying. You look like you’re contemplating killing me. Wait, you are?_ _  
  
_

That boy said.  
  
“L-let’s spar again, Maki. If we keep spending time together I’m sure we can be friends.” 

 

“...”  
  
“You’re right, it’s wrong for someone like me to wish for even a normal amount of happiness but, if someone like me can try to be normal, then you can try too. I won’t give up on you-”

 

“Why are you whining like a mutt? Did your fake little family break apart just like I said it would.”  
  
Mukuro finally after letting Maki trample all over her, and only lowering her head to whine and beg at her feet suddenly raised her eyes. “Um… I’m sorry, but take that back.”

When she was not whimpering and hiding those eyes, Maki understood. “You’re right. I’m just like you. I wondered how we could be similiar, but now I see. We have the same eyes.” The eyes of a dead dog, its corpse rotting away forgotten in some alleyway. “Am I wrong?” 

 

“Yeah… you’re right, b-but.” 

 

“But, the world’s not big enough for two tragic girls. My world only needs one tragedy and it’s mine. Heh… talk about useless. I’m a girl that only knows how to kill after all.” As though mocking himself, Maki began to snicker at her own words as if mocking herself. She sounded a little like she was crying too. She slowly reached for a gun hanging off the wall and reloaded it. “That’s why I’m going to kill you. Me alone is enough. The world is just big enough for me alone.” 

 

“Um… what?” Mukuro had just escaped a confrontation with her sister and her older brother, and found herself in the jaws of another dog. She was not scared of Maki because she was a killer, but because she was a person. All of those hidden emotions, the part of her she did not understand, they scared Mukuro. 

 

The threat of being killed in that moment did not anger her. She just thought. _I made Maki mad. I better apologize. I really am terrible._ Timid and self conscious thoughts like that. 

 

“I’m fine on my own. Me alone is enough. The world is just big enough for me alone,” Maki’s world was even smaller and shallower than the world that was just Mukuro and her family. If she were to paint a portrait of her life, it would be a self portrait. One that grew more and more rotten as she herself never changed. 

 

Maki fired her gun, and in the next moment Mukuro dodged the bullet by guessing it’s trajectory and then dove forward towards her on all fours. She kicked up at the last moment and kicked the gun out of Maki’s hand. She caught in her own hand, but the room was full of them. 

 

Maki threw a grenade to destroy the entire room. The Ultimate Assassin Lab crumbled, and they were both thrown outside into the ruins of the second floor of the academy.  
  
That was when it began. 

The dogs danced madly, together.  
  
Both shoters scrambled between support colums for the building, and rooms whose doors were blown off, as they fired.  
  
Bullets rained, but it was not as random as rainfall.  
Both of them knew when the other was going to fire by instinct alone, and fired first.  
They pulled their triggers almost simultaneously.  
At most they only got close enough to graze each other’s faces with their claws.

An ugly gash opened up in Mukuro’s cheek, in the freckles udnerneath her eye.  
  
Barking like a dog in the dim lights of night, the two dogs looked in the mirror, laughable, and absurd, and terribly meaningless and shad. 

 

 _I have to kill her._ Maki thought. _I have to kill her. I have to kill her. But if she killed me that would be fine too._  
  
The two of them met in opposite sides of the hallway. Mukuro’s voice was cold. “I’m really not in the mood for this. Why are you…?” She raised her gun and shot, Maki only tilted her head to the side. The next shot she tilted her head again and a few hairs fell away from her. 

 

“We’re just like a couple of dogs.” Maki kicked away Mukuro’s hand, yet she continued to laugh mockingly at herself. “Yeah, a dog looking at itself in the mirror. Some poor mad dog that doesn’t know it’s barking its lungs off at itself.” 

  
Maki drew out a second gun, and Mukuro only kept out the one. “Ah, I get it, you’re just a kid.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You’re younger than me. That’s why you’re like this.” 

 _That’s why you’re throwing a tantrum._ _  
_  
Maki always thought she was a heartless person, but Mukuro’s voice somehow chilled her. She felt like a fake, some kid who brought a knife to school because they thought in would make them look cool, standing in front of a real killer.  
  
Bow wow!  
  
The dogs both barked. Maki rushed forward bringing her  one of her gun’s up in the air. Mukuro just knocked it away by side arming her with the piece. Maki manuevered in the limited space they had, throwing both of her arms in front of her again. When she fired from point black rage, she knocked the gun from Mukuro’s hand.  
  
Mukruo caught it in the air as it was flying away with her opposite hand, and the both of them landed pointing guns at each other in a stalemate again. Blood ran down one of Maki’s arm. Mukuro did not have a single scratch on her. 

 

  
“This is just kid’s stuff. Immature. Well, as the older one, I’ll discipline you.” Mukuro’s eyes looked like they were about to roll out of their sockets, that was how rotted away they looked to Maki in that moment. “If you don’t scold your younger siblings, they’ll turn out spoiled.”  
  
Mukuro mumbled to herself. She looked to be a little more than broken at this point. The girl that was snickering at her, it reminded her too much of her sister. There was no expression on her face, as in the blink of an eye Mukuro lunged forward. It was fast, faster than the pull of the trigger. She grabbed at Maki’s wrist.  
  
With her powerful grip, she had utilized a technique that went beyond normal, surpassing even the Super High School Level and reaching superhuman heights. She no longer held a shred of human hesitation within herself. The only light in her eyes was that of a predator stalking its prey in the darkness.  
  
Maki’s wrist bent backwards and she heard a terrible crack. In the next moment the whole world inverted, as if Mukuro was in control of gravity at that moment. This was different than assassionats, this was different from killing, it was sheer violence. The living embodiment of violence. 

 

Maki’s face collided with the floor. Mukuro held a gun over her pointing it at the back of her head as she stood. She looked ready to put a dog out of its misery. “You’re right, I’m just a killer playing at being a normal girl,  but that makes you the opposite. You’re a normal girl playing at being a killer.”  
  
Mukuro hit the back of her head with the butt of her bun. She scolded her, like the naughty little sister who she never got to scold.  
  
What happened next was just bad luck.  
  
Mukuro had not shown up at the place she agreed to meet Makoto, and then he heard a loud explosion and went _hmmm, I wonder who that could be._ Makoto did not need to be lucky to win the bet that it was probably one of the two despair sisters. 

 

He saw Mukuro standing over a bloodied girl, holding a gun.  
Even then, Makoto did not suspect her at all. Even then he immediately wanted to hear that side of the story. “Hey, Bunny. Hand that gun over here. You don’t need one of those, do you?”  
  
“Makoto I… I didn’t have good intentions. I was useless, so I wanted to beat up a person more useless than I was.”  
  
“Th-then fine. Even so I’ll stop you.” 

 

The boy who was so shy that he almost never met other people’s eyes when they talked to them. Whose only outstanding stat was how averagae he was. If it was for Mukuro, he suddenly stood tall like a hero. Well as tall as a short person could stand.  
  
“Do you really mean that?”

 

“I promised didn’t I? If you’re a murderer then I’m a murderer too.”  
  
As he got closer and closed the gap between them, Mukuro cocked her gun out of fear alone. _Please. Just hate me. I can’t do a thing, for Junko, for Misogi, the only thing I can do is hurt other people._ Makoto reached forward and wrapped his hands around the gun she held. “That’s why if you want to hold a gun from now on, we have to hold it together.”

 

“I’m sorry…”  
  
Mukuro could already feel herself breaking. She was so weak. She was so weak for him.  
  
“Stop reflecting me…”  
  
Maki growled while still on the ground.  
  
“You two had a fight, so you should just cry and make up like normal.”  
  
Normal.  
Maki hated that world.  
“STOP REFLECTING ME!”  
  
She picked up her fallen handgun from the ground and shot Makoto through his hip. His fingertips dragged themselves across Mukuro’s hands, then slipped away from her as he fell backwards.

🧸

  
If you want to destroy a mirror, smashing it is not an option. The best thing to do is paint it over. Paint it red, or black, or whatever color you want. A thick coat of paint will absorb all color in the mirror and not reflect any back. The other side is the important side, the other side is what I despise.  
  
I hate mirrors. I hate other sides. So did she. Harukawa Maki ate the pomegranite in the underworld so that girl could live in the spring time.   
  
She went to the dark so that girl could live in the light.  She lived under the moon, so the other girl could be in the sun. She suffered through brutal training, thinking the entire time it would be fine as long as that girl could smile and live her nornal life.  
  
Maki left the orphanage to train for three years.  
When she got back, she was told Haru died.  
Just a week after Maki left Haru without telling her where she was going, so Haru could continue to live her life without her. A car hit her. She jumped in front of it to save a kid.  
She threw away the life that Maki worked so hard to protect. 

That normal life that Maki wanted so badly for her, was trampled on, without any meaning at all. The flashback could go on longer but for Maki there was no story to tell after that. 

 

🧸  
  
“We’re both so useless,’ Maki said as she got back up to her feet again. She coughed up blood in between her own snickers, it fell from the spot in her head where she was hit. “You can’t protect anyone. Isn’t that right?”  
  
Ikusaba Mukuro said nothing, and not emotion crossed her face. It was difficult to tell if she even saw the scene in front of her. She tightened her grip on the gun in her hands that Makoto had almost pulled away from her.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“You’ve already sent a whole horde of people to their deaths like this! What are you apologizing for?” 

  
Mukuro was not looking at Maki because she saw it. She saw overturned desks in a middle school classrooms, with kids underneath them all of their limbs bent the wrong way. She saw a man in the desert with his bowls hanging out of his torso, begging her for water, and then smiling at her when she put a bullet through his head. She saw the student council tearing apart each other and killing each other in the first killing game as she idly watched. A chainsaw tore through a girl’s face. A boy drove a sharpened metal rod like it was a spear straight through the girl he loved. A couple that wanted to commit lover’s suicide was stabbed from behind, again, again, slowly, the most painful way to go, a death without any love at all.  
  
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”

"I’m sorry.”  
  
“I won’t mess up this time. So please. Please don’t leave me.”

Mukuro threw her head back, and howled. She had no heart, no human parts, or human feelings, and no colors inside of her, and yet she howled every emotion of every color into the night sky.  
  
Maki only smiled. “Awesome. You really are a killer. This is what you are when you’re not pretending to be-”

Maki did not finish, because a fist twisted itself into her gut. She had not even seen Mukuro move.  
  
There was a sharpness in the air around Ikusaba, lending her a more dangerous look then a moment ago. She could not be called a girl, or even a dog anymore. She suddenly tackled Maki over and raised her fist in the air. She did not even seem to be trying to fight.  
  
She was just violent.  
A girl who only knew violence.  
She hit the girl in front of her with her fists.

Again. Again. Again. Again. Again.  
Muttering apologies the entire time.  
  
“So this is despair.” She whispered to herself. “I’m sorry Junko, until now I never understood what it really was.”  Plainly and monotonous like a robot. She just hit the thing in front of her because it was in her way.  
  
That thing. That thing. That thing. That thing.  
She tried to break it like breaking through concrete with just her fists.  
If she could not destroy it, she would not be able to move forward.  
  
Maki stopped fighting back, and all she heard was the sound of her fists hitting her over and over.  
  
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.  
What was she sorry for again?  
What had she done?  
Why was she guilty?  
Why did they all hate her?  
Who was she?  
All she could do was apologize over and over.  
  
Sorry Misogi. She could have taken him from that room and alone from Junko but she didn’t. Sorry Junko. If only she was a better sister Junko would not have grown up so spoiled.  
Sorry Makoto. If you never met me, you would be happy right now.  
  
“N-no way.” He grabbed her by her shoe. “Maybe I’d fall in love with someone else, Maybe I’d have a family of my own, but I wouldn't be loving you."   
  
Naegi Makoto hugged her from behind, holding her fist back. Mukuro could not raise her hand and hit the girl underneath her again.  
  
“You don’t need to apologize.”  
  
“S-sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay, you don’t have to do this anymore.”  
  
Mukuro fell forward, and Makoto caught her. He repositioned her head so it would rest against his chest. Despite confronted, with the ugliest side of her, her violence, all he could do was smile in relief. “Thank goodness.” 

Maki on the ground peered her eyes open, and tried to look through the cracked mirror. _I get it. She has a hero. That’s the only difference. So why… why didn’t anyone save me?_ In that moment the face of a boy always smiling flashed through her eyes. Even when she closed her eyes she could not stop seeing him.   
  
“Why?”

Maki muttered as she stood up again and forced herself to walk away.  
  
“Why don’t you leave me alone?”  
  
Maki repeated again, but her head began to drift forward and her legs gave out underneath her.  
She was falling.  
She was falling.  
She was falling.  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
Kaito said, as he caught her.  
  
She fell. 


	63. Komaeda Nagito Wants to be Forgiven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Komaeda Nagito wants to be forgiven" is a reference to Given which I've been reading recently.

Komaeda Nagito did not interfere.

When his class one by one turned to despair.  
Because he thinks his actions will never amount to much meaning.  
Even when his friends started falling apart, he knew everything, but said nothing.  
He never once feared losing his friends.  
He thought he did not have any friends to lose.  
But he lost them anyway.  
  
_“Hey, I understand how you’re feeling too, but…”  
__  
_ _“You’re not even sad! You... you did it so easily, like you felt nothing. You don't know anything at all about I felt!"_

 _“You’re right. I don’t know. How presumptuous of me.”_ _  
_

But even so right now.  
Komaeda Nagito wants to be forgiven.  
It doesn’t matter by whom, he just wants to be forgiven. 

 

🧸

  
Kumagawa woke up to realize his hands were in suspension, hanging above his head. He looked around to see that iron cuffs wrapped around both of his wrists, that connected to chains hanging from both sides of the four poster bed.  
  
He tugged on his chains for a moment and gave up, because he realized even if he broke the physical chains in front of him the metaphorical chains wrapped around him would continue to drag him down. Or something like that. He was tired.  
  
Enoshima Junko was curled up next to him. Her blonde hair turning red at the roots was down, and wrapped around her, she shimmered gold in the low light. But her hair was just dyed so even that was a fraudulent gold. _Fool’s gold, how appropriate._. Her elbows were held in front of her and her knees brought up almost to her chest. She looked like a girl sleeping comfortably in her chrysallis. 

 

For a moment he thought about what it would be like to crush a cocoon between his fingers before it ever became a butterfly, what kind of juices would come out. He wondered what a butterfly would look like, pulled from the womb, before it even got the chance to cry. 

  
Junko woke up before he got the chance to continue his macabre fantasies for too long. She wrapped her arms around him, as if carefully threading a red string through the loop of a needle. Enoshima Junko who usually acted like she had a perfect marble statuesque figure worthy of a goddess, someone human hands were not meant to touch for they would only dirty her, suddenly became all clingy. It was almost like she wanted to dirty herself with him. It would almost be cute, if she had not chained him up. 

Which was something Kumagawa needed to remind himself. He was chained up. He got used to things far too quickly. It became normal for him. Was that abnormal? But, didn’t reacting to things like they were normal make him normal. 

 

Junko’s embrace was like another set of chains. It was heavy. Her thin arms wrapped around him, the small noises of joy her mouth made nuzzling up against him. Moments like these she seemed like a normal girl. Junko tried so hard to play the part of a normal girl, but she really only became one in small moments like this where she did not even realize. 

  
But Kumagawa was always watching her. He could not help but look at her, not because she was beautiful, not because she was ugly. It was just a reminder that she was there. The sights she saw with those red eyes, he wanted to see them too, to look up at the same sky. 

 

『This is just a joke, but don’t laugh. Flowers, thorns, they just exist to be compared to you. 』  
  
There was no deeper meaning than that. Kumagawa Misogi did not need a deeper meaning. _I have my boy and you have yours._ No meaning. Junko was a normal girl. But then what was he?

 

『Do you think I’m abnormal?』He asked, sudden and vulernable, because Kumagawa Misogi was vulnerable, he was crying, despairing, giving up, and smiling, all at once, like many colors of paint mixed together until they became an ugly black.  
  
Junko wiped at her eye with a curled hand, sleepy. “Why do you ask such dumb questions, Misogi?”  
  
Kumagawa despaired at her reply. He must have loved her so much to feel that way. Even if he was out of sync with the world he did not want to be out of sync with her.  
  
The answer bored into his skull like a screw. He was such an idiot. This is why he tried to stop himself. He did not need anyone else to look at him, because he knew they only ever saw the mask. The real him would always stay buried. The one they were interacting with was just a body he was moving around, the real him was a ghost floating somewhere outside of him. The real one him was untouchable, unaffected by all of this, the real him was still pure. 

『 _Only I will ever truly know the truth in my heart until the day I die. That’s enough for me._ 』  
『 _People are too hung up on beauty, don’t you know that Junko? It’s okay, people will still look at you no matter how defiled or hurt you’ve become. They’ll accept you. Do you know how?_ 』  
『 _You pretend. You’re interested in them.That’s how you control people's hearts miss despair._ 』

『 _You just have to keep your heart shut, or else they’ll break it._ 』

 

He heard the sound of a door closing. He was lost in the fantasy that maybe _she would understand._ He knew already. He kept telling himself that he was normal, he kept lying to himself because he knew. He was the only one dumb enough to believe in his own lies.

 

But he started to dream. That maybe she would be different. That maybe someone who was completely immersed in despair- someone like her, so calm in the face of death - might understand.  
  
ANd his dream was shattered to bits. So… maybe they were from different worlds after all. Was he different from the world itself?  
  
If they were from different worlds.  
If they could never truly be together.  
『 _If she can’t be mine..._ 』  
『 _Then I’d rather._ 』

 

He reached forward straining against the chains that held his arm up. In his head he repeated again. It was her fault. It was her fault. It was her fault. The feeling of pain in his chest belonged to her, it would be so easy to make her go away. 

 

Then suddenly she turned back to him. There was a smile on him. It really is.. A pure smile. Junko was pure in every sense of the word, the same way a kid was. He really believed that. He always watched her face, because more than anyone else, he wanted her to learn to smile.

 

“But.”  
『 _What?_ 』  
“I”

『 _Please stop talking._ 』  
“Don’t.”  
『 _You’re so annoying._ 』

 

Kumagawa focused to try to string her words together, as that smile emerged into his world and spoke to him.  
  
“No doy, you’re abnormal. But, I don’t dislike it.” 

  
What does not disliking it mean? Is that the same as liking it, or is it different?

 

『Just now, I wanted  to kill you.』That was no good. He was too honest. He needed to go back to lying. It was not like he was afraid fo his true self being rejected, he was afraid of being understood. 

 

“Oh, Misogi you finally confessed your feelings to me! You really know how to charm a girl don’t you?” 

 

『Just this once I really hope my feelings are unrequited.』Killing the person you loved was abnormal. No wait, people went mad over jealousy and love all the time. Anyone can. But they suppress it and wear the mask of logic. He was no different from anybody else, he just wore a different mask. He was normal.

 

“If you kill me you’ll realize you can’t live without me, and then it will be just like Romeo and Juliet.” 

 

『Wait, the play ends that way?』  
  
“Then everybody will fall into despair over our deaths.”

 

『I think that requires somebody actually liking us.』Kumagawa was genuinely curious so he kicked at Junko with his toe. Because Junko did things for reasons, unlike him. 『Hey, Junko, why are you doing all this?』  
  
“I don’t feel like giving another villainous monologue this early in the morning.” 

 

『But if you don’t all of your fans will be disappointed!』

  
“Which fans?”

 

『Me, I’m president of the Junko fan club.』  
  
“That’s Mitarai.”

 

『I’ll kill him and reclaim my throne, just like in hamlet.』

  
“The play doesn’t end that way.”  
  
Kumagawa thought he should really learn how to read. Junko reached forward and dug her red nails into his cheek, even her affectionate touche had a little bit of pain. “This isn’t like the pranks I’ve played before. I want to know, how long will you be able to stay as Kumagawa Misogi? You know about the paradox of the heap, right? From a heap of sand, if you go through the single act of removing one grain of sand at a time, at what point does a heap cease to be a heap. It’s the same as that, to make this paradox you’re bitch, you need to define what a heap is, and in that way I’d like to define you.” 

 

『A pile of junk. There’s your answer now let’s-』  
  
“What defines Kumagawa Misogi as Kumagawa Misogi - what it is that you hold that makes you, you? Although you’d probably insist that you don’t have anything like a definition.” 

 

『Junko, if you’re going to just predict everything I say you might as well go back to talking to yourself.』

  
“But I had a question to ask you Senpai. Is your name really Kumagawa Misogi?”  
  
Kumagawa had no idea why they never said what they meant. They just used a bunch of big words to confuse him. He thought things were going fine before this. 『 _Why can’t we just have a normal conversation…?_ 』  
  
Kumagawa was once again saying something incomprehensible, as his eyes watered. Althought it wasn’t like he ever said anything anybody else could comprehend. But that was normal too, nobody truly understood another person. 

 

“I don’t want to talk to myself, you’re my favorite person to talk to… really…” She grabbed at his arm again, pulling at his sleeve. The childish way Junko got possessive of him, got jealous, like a person not wanting to share her toy. It was so...

  
“What a sickening sight. The despair inducing couple really does make me nauseous.”  
  
Kumagawa already knew who it was without looking up. 『That voice, the moment I heard it, I thought it’s unpleasant. And so is your face.』  
  
A white canvas.  
Not a single stroke of paint on it.  
Sleeping in whiteness, drifts of snow.  
White noise in the back of his head.  
Frosted eyelashes.  
A blank dream.  
Sleeping without dreaming.  
Holding himself, wanting to be held.  
Nagito Komaeda. 

All of the things that were white in this world, were meant to be compared to him.  
Kumagawa felt that in that moment.  
  
Komaeda Nagito, a blurred image in the distant, a faint whisper of a person, tame and polite.   
Kumagawa Misogi, visceral, screaming in your face, wild and unmannered.  
  
『Are you here to laugh at what a monster I am?』

Kumagawa danced. With his hands above his head. With his feet bound.  
He still danced.  
  
“You look too pitiful to be called a monster. Besides, if I look in the mirror and see a monster doesn’t that make me a monster too? You’re always so mean to me.”

 

『 _Why can’t we just have a normal conversation…?_ 』The two of them together. Kumagawa wondered. Love, maybe, love, maybe, love, maybe? Or maybe just negative space.  He put on a cocky smile.『Hey, don’t be so quick to call yourself a monster Nagito-chan, or I’ll have to show you what a real monster looks like.』

  
Nice.  
What a lovely face Komaeda made.  
A look in his eyes part killer, part crazy, and a skewed mouth that’s just desperate towards the world. He was just joking though. Did Komaeda not understand that? He looked defensive, like a white fox in snow. Kumagawa wondered sometimes if Komaeda tried to camouflage with his whiteness.  
  
“You really have no idea why I’m here, do you Kumagawa-kun? Jeez… this is the worst. How could you be so careless about something so important. I swear, you’re just the worst… As I thought there’s no way I can leave you alone here.” Komaeda touched his head as he spoke, pale fingers on the thing skin stretched across his forehead. 

 

『Nagito-chan are you in a good mood or something today, you’re usually not that forward with your insults.』

  
“Ikusaba-san was injured, and Naegi-san was shot, all because of you.” 

  
『...』  
  
“If you had just let Ikusaba-san take you out of this room, if you just let go of Junko and didn’t always enable her, the two of them would not have been pulled into despair.”

『...』  
  
“But you thought you were saving her right? You can’t save broken things, but you can make it more broken, you can still crush it into pieces. If you’re a villain, then why do you keep thinking you can help people?” 

 

『 _...Why?_ 』

  
Why did he keep doing this? It always turned out the same. Fifty two rounds and his actions did not change a single thing. It occurred to him that his eyes were blue.  
  
That was why he hurt people. 

  
That was reason enough. Actually, you did not really need a reason. He just did not want to answer to Komaeda that there was no reason at all. The reason was always different in the moment, and he got sick of repeating them to himself all the time. So he just started to think stuff like, because his eyes were blue.  
  
Because it was raining.

Because it’s night time.  
People would hurt him over and over again and he never understood the reasons behind it, he only understood that they were smiling. They enjoyed it. As if the act of hurting other people was pleasurable in itself, but when he tried it he just felt empty inside. There was no reason. He could only speculate.  
  
Because he was born with blue eyes he was hated. If he was born with different eyes maybe he would have been loved. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt. That’s right. WHat he really wanted to tell himself wasn’t the reason that it all hurt so much.  
  
He just wanted to remind himself that he was in pain. So he would never look away. So he would face his own wrongdoings. He faced the nauseating truth, endlessly, again, and again, and again. And eventually, that nausea turned to pleasure. To remind him of himself. For simple peace of mind. For entertainment.  
  
If he was aware of all of that, he must still be normal. If he felt regret for what he did, he was normal. What a relief. It looks like he had not gone crazy yet. If he went crazy that was fine too. He thought it was normal for anyone to go crazy in his circumstances.  
  
The blue sky over the both of them was unfinished. It embraced the whole world, and yet neither of them could feel it warmth. He wanted to cut off his head and throw it into the sky. In his last few fleeting moments, maybe he would know what it was really like to be detached, to be free. He wanted to paint the blue sky red with his blood. His eyes were the same color but he never saw anything in that sky. It was just a place he could not reach.  
  
He wanted to distance himself from his pain. It was a point of pride for him. He could never be anybody extraordinary but at least he could remain normal. Maybe if he tried. If he killed his emotions and coldly, deliberately, chased away all of the pain. If he severed his brain stem from the rest of his brain and removed his brain from his skull. If he let a mask settle over his face, and suffer in his place, then could he retain his pure, unharmed, normal self?  
  
He loved humans. Because humans can smile and laugh at the most inconsequential of things! Because humans can find happiness even in misery. He was human and he loved his fellow humans. So… why did he have to keep this mask on his face to be accepted? 

He was afraid. He was afraid of casting aside the mask of a minus, and going back to the real Kumagawa. He had been wearing this mask all his life after all, the real him was undeveloped, a child. Then, for now he just had to live on his mask dictates.  
  
That was normal too. Everyone without exception was lonely. They were lonely behind their masks. He knew that.  
  
“You’re not even sad are you? She’s your only sister, but you feel nothing at all. You’ll just shrug it off and mutter, I lost again like always. She’s in so much pain but you can’t feel any of it.” Komaeda’s face became irritated, as he bit his thin lips, Kumagawa watched in anticipation he wished Komaeda would bite enough that he would see a pinprick of red on that blood-white skin. “Say something would you?” 

 

『Something. Would. You.』

  
“Are you a kid?” 

 

『Yeah, I’m just a little kid and you’re being mean to me. You told me to say something, would you! Ahahahaahahahahaha! Gosh no matter what I do for you you’re never happy!』  
  
“What have you ever done for me? No, let me rephrase that? Is there a single person on this earth who has ever benefited from you being alive?” 

 

『You’re so annoying. Just tell me what you want already?』Kumagawa cut him off. He noticed the tiny flinch in Komaeda’s eyes, he really hated being called annoying. He was so cute. So sensitive. Really, the only reason he called himself annoying first was because he thought if he could get to it first he would never have to be called that by anyone else.  
  
Komaeda’s face. His eyes. The shape of his eyebrows. His thin nose. The slope of his cheeks. That nastiness. That barely contained hostility. The kind that Komaeda always suppressed around other people because he was too busy pretending to like them, supplicating his gods, he loved it!

 

『Damn, both hope and despair are really giving me a lot of grief today. But this is just what I need to do for my rehabilitation.』

“That’s not nice to use the word rehab Kumagawa-kun that implies you have some chance of recovery. A false hope isn’t even worth despair, it’s just disappointing.” 

 

『It’s rehab you know, because I’m going to use you to make myself feel a little better. You did the same to me, didn't you? Like you give a flying fuck if the poster boy for hope got tear, you were just thinking that no matter how much I insult Kumagawa he’ll just sit back and take it like he’s my little bitch.』Kumagawa started to ramble out of control. He dragged himself to the ends of his chains, looking like a feral dog barking, being kept back only by the collar around its neck. Struggling, struggling, trying to break those chains no matter how futile it was. Even if his own body broke first. 『So, if you end up getting bitten biting off more than you can chew, that’s just too bad isn’t it?』

“Kumagawa-kun…careful you’ll hurt your arms.”

  
That was right, he was pulling so hard that his elbows were starting to bend back. His tendons were stretched to their limits but he did not notice.  
  
Komaeda took a step back even though he was on the opposite side of the room. It was strange, he had never once been afraid of Kumagawa. A pebble on the side of the road. At most he was a broken gear that somehow caused the entire machine to break down. He was nothing compared to Enoshima Junko, and yet Komaeda was so scared in that moment like a panicked white doe he forgot that Junko was watching silently in the same room.  
  
『Hey, what are you looking at me like that for? You’re starting to bring me down. At least look like you’re having fun. I guess you can’t, huh?』  
  
Kumagawa had no idea why he was saying these things.  
He was not hurt at all, from Junko kidnapping him, from Mukuro being hurt, from Komaeda.  
The only person who was hurt was his mask.  
He simply did what he had to do.  
For himself.  
For the lie he believed in.  
It must be because his eyes were blue. In the end, that answer was good enough. He was the only one who could understand his thoughts, so the only one he needed to lie to was himself. The biggest problem, then, was that he never really believed in himself.  
  
Kumagawa’s eyes, the eyes of a rotten fish floating to the surface, a fish bloated with death. 

『Did people really call you a shinigami, Nagito-chan? That’s wrong, because there’s no way someone weak like you could ever kill someone. You’re so weak, just like the protagonist of a shonen manga I’ll finish this in one move.』  
  
“Don’t act like you have me figured out, Kumagawa-kun. It’s really embarrassing, you don’t even understand basic math so-” 

 

『I never once thought you were unlucky, Nagito-chan...』  
  
The words that he had been waiting to hear his entire life.

 

  
『It’s not bad luck, it’s just you, you were the one who dragged your friends into despair, just like with Souda-chan. You’re just doing to me what you did to him.』

 

The words he was so afraid of hearing.

A bug being smashed by another bug. Just like those jars were bugs were sealed in and forced to compete and devour one another until there was only one left. There was no reason. Kumagawa simply made up his mind to snap every bone in Komaeda’s body, to make him unable to stand.  
  
Komaeda said nothing. 

 

『Ahahahaahahaahaahaahaahah!!! What’s wrong did your mind snap from despair?』

 

Komaeda said nothing. 

 

『Did I go and break his brain? You were talking such hot shit a second ago, second string antagonist.』

 

Komaeda said nothing, like a zombie he simply turned towards the door and walked away.

『Tch.That was no fun. No, no fun. That wasn’t very much rehab at all was it? Junko why the hell do you find this crap so fun anyway?』  
  
Junko watched him the entire time. Her contacts made her eyes blue as well, but an emptier shade then him. A hord of monsters inside Kumagawa calle ‘regrets’ were chewing him up from the inside, he felt their teeth in his bones, in his organs, in his veins. They crawled out from his heart and used ribcage as a set of monkey bars to play on. He felt it wash over him, like someone had dragged him by the hair and dunked his head in a river over and over again. That was one way of getting clean but he preferred to stay dirty.  
  
Junko just watched him, an incredulous look on his face the entire time. “I’m like totes jealous, you so obviously wanted to kill him more than you wanted to kill me.”

 

『I don’t know what to say to that.Banter over. Banter’s finished. Banter is ruined forever.』

 

“Nooooo! I can’t believe we killed off the most beloved character in this manga. No, banter-chan! No jokes! Please don’t leave us. W-what is this feeling? Is this what despair really feels like?” 

 

『 _Since when did that become a way of measuring affection? Is that normal? No, it’s normal when girls who like attention way too much get jealous for not getting enough attention._ 』Kumagawa wondered if he had ever been this obsessed with being normal, perhaps because in the tepid existence of having his entire world reduced to one room, all he could ever think about was Komaru Naegi’s rejection of him, calling him not normal.  
  
Junko smiled feintly in his direction. To his heart it felt like someone slowly removed a veil from her face and let him see what was underneath, he really did, so much it was painful, eviscerating. “Well, even you have a human side huh? Even you do things you regret. You’re not so bad, senpai.” 

『Sorry, Junko. That was uncool of me. Next time, I’ll do something much cooler.』  
  
“You were just trying to make him feel despair weren’t you? Didn’t I tell you how much I hate plagiarism? This is so not groovy." 

『I think you used slang from the wrong era on accident, your head needs to be tuned. It's different, because, Nagito-chan needs to be a villain. He'd be happier if he was a little more selfish.』Kumagawa's smile waxed like the moon.『My despair makes people happy.』

  
“Happiness? Since when was that trendy? It’s not a good look for you, senpai.”  
  
Junko said that, like she hated happiness, but being here with her made him happy.  
  
He plucked out the words you’re not bad, and I don’t dislike you, and played them over and over again in his head. Junko sounded so normal right now when it was just the two of them..  
  
Was he really normal if he could make Junko of all people act this way? It was almost like she was obsessed with him. As if she had become twisted around him. No, of course he was normal. He just wanted to be acknowledged. Not by himself. 

 

『 _Someone. I want someone to acknowledge me._ 』

  
That’s right he had Junko! Why did people keep saying their relationship was messed up? Not wanting to be alone, that was completely normal. 

 

🧸

  
Kumagawa Misogi.  
Blue-eyed fire.  
Screaming as he sang.  
Dancing mad.  
All of his strings cut, so freely.  
Bleeding all over.  
Out for blood. 

 

Komaeda could compose what he just saw, but instead of an orchestra his mind only produced the sound of a car crash. His head was monologuing, but none of it made sense, and he might as well have been speaking in tongues. He drowned in his own heart.  
  
Kumagawa’s howling laughter echoed in his ears.  
Kumagawa a wolf, and he the moon.  
If  Komaeda was just another lost boy, with hollow eyes, reaching for the sun.  
Then, Kumagawa’s wax wings melted and he met the see under moonlight.  
But that was the same wasn’t it?  
Just another goddamn tragedy.  
  
Kumagawa was in pain, and Komaeda was in pain, and it was like both of them could not exist without hurting the other. Komaeda tried to hold his head, but he could already feel the white wax of his skin melting. He wiped at his forehead, but all he managed to do was smudge the colors.  
  
Komaeda hated the sound of his own voice. He could always hear himself babbling, but nothing short of cutting out his own tongue would stop him. Yet, what was scarier were his silences. A long stretch of white silence.  
  
That was like death.  
  
“I regret it…”  
  
He said, talking to no one. Komaeda never spoke his feelings to anyone, because he was sure nobody wanted to hear them. He knew nobody would ever be comforted by his smile that was like peeling the lips back on a corpse, but he tried to smile anyway. For who? Maybe it was just for himself.  
  
After his dog was hit by a car, the kids in the neighborhood stopped playing with him. Komaeda thought that was fine, he was sure his dog was much more likable than him anyway.  
  
Until his first year of middle school, when he met another latchkey kid who walked alone to school every day, and always tried to avoid going home just like he did. When he first saw Kazuichi he thought, _what a boring, typical, person._ Absolutely nothing caught his eye about him, he had black hair combed neatly, a pair of glasses, his uniform was neat and tidy it was like he was trying not to stand out. Yet, to Komaeda, that in itself was eyecatching.  
  
Komaeda did not seem to know what others were thinking, so he always ended up saying what he wanted. Back then he still wanted to fit in, so his hair was well groomed, and he wore nice clothes. Kazuichi always was overly conscious about everyone around him, he never said what he was really feeling. He was afraid of troubling other people, so he tried to look like a carefree boy. No matter how hard he tried, he could not wash the smell of oil from his father’s junk shop from him, like his father clinging to him. 

 

For three years of MIddle school, everything happened in a small world of theirs. From the start, him and Kazuichi were incomplete halves. Together, they filled each other’s missing pieces. 

  
Komaeda never told Kazuichi, but he his heart was broken into some jagged shape as well. He never told him why, the reason all his smiles were fake. Yet, he felt just a little bit sad when Kazuichi did not notice.  
  
Still, Komaeda was essential to Kazuichi.  
Kazuichi was essential to Komaeda.  
That’s the kind of atmosphere that they created in their world.  
When they were together, their world was complete.  
  
At least that was what Komaeda tried to convince himself of, that a person like him was capable of enjoying a normal friendship, of watching normal days pass by, that he could be satisfied with that. But when he looked down, the tranquil sky crumbled, and gave way to an infinitely drab life.

  
Drab school building.  
Drab classmates.  
Drab streets.  
Drab air.  
Drab mansion.  
Drab sheets.  
Drab air.  
Drab noises.  
Drab vibrations.  
  
He noticed it one night, when Kazuichi stayed overnight for the first time. He shared the same bed, slept under the same sheets as him, Komaeda could not sleep that night so he simply observed the rising and falling of Kazuichi’s chest until morning came. The warmth of Kazuichi, from the small accidental brushes he made unknowing in his sleep, clung to Komaeda even the next morning.  
  
In the winter of his third year of middle school, a smudge appeared in the glass before his eyes, when he tried to wipe it away, a crack appeared in this thin sheet of happiness.  
  
Komaeda lived in fear. That all that time, his friend would figure out he was simply pretending to be normal. He would realize that when they were together, Komaeda was not a part of the same scene. Kazuichi saw colors, and Komaeda saw different colors, and he felt them like a tingling in his fingers, and he tasted them underneath his tongue, and he was sensitive to their noises. 

He was always afraid of being found out, but when Kazuichi did not realize he was also a bit disappointed.  
  
Kazuichi, started a part time job on top of his job at home and did not tell Komaeda why. For a whole weak Komaeda walked home alone. He noticed the feeling of loneliness did not go away, even when Kazuichi was by his side.  
  
Kazuichi confined himself to his garage. Then one day, he appeared in front of Komaeda holding something behind his back with a bow strapped on it. 

 

Around the last year of middle school Kazuichi and Komaeda talked again and again about Kazuichi running away from his home and coming to live with him. Komaeda even helped him study so they could test into the same highschool. He often made fun of him for how much harder Kazuichi had to study, but sometimes when watching his diligence a faint smile appeared on Komaeda’s lip.  
  
The idea of paying for Kazuichi’s living, did not even seem like a bother at all. Komaeda had even suggested Kazuichi live alone in an apartment so Komaeda did not have to take up any more of his own time with his awful presence.  
  
But the idea of getting a present from Kazuichi.  
It was the first gift he had ever received in his life. He sometimes had dreams his parents would return home on his birthday, and give him a present, and those faceless people would watch him as he pulled out birthday candles.  
  
“I noticed you were walking with a limp lately, so I built this all on my own man! It’s got like three different motors to constantly adjust as you walk. It’s even retractable. I have no idea why it’s retractable but things are cooler when they’re retractable that way right, like whoosh!” 

 

Somehow.  
Komaeda hated that very much.  
He refused.  
  
“I don’t want it.”  
  
That was the first time, the boy he had pegged as normal, a boy so weak he ended up relying on a person like Komaeda, showed a sign of his talent. The kindness that Kazuichi showed him, the weeks of work, the money he spent when he had almost none at all, Komaeda threw it all into the street and let a car run it over.  
  
_Back then I should’ve just said - “I’m happy.”_

When he was around Kazuichi, he was possessed by those thoughts over and over again. _I want to be with him. I want to be with him. I want to be with him. But, I’m in LOVE with talent._

 

After that the two of them fought for the first time.

A small fight.

A childish fight.  
Komaeda remembered raising his voice, he almost never did.  
No matter how you look at it, it was an ordinary fight.  
But he was incapable of being ordinary.  
If only he was a normal person, who could fight with his friend, and then say sorry afterwards. 

Komaeda knew he was in the wrong.

He knew, and yet he disappeared from Kazuichi’s sight.  
  
At the present moment, Komaeda childishly covered his eyes with his hands as if that would make the images flashing before them go away. 

『 _He served his purpose, so you wanted nothing to do with him anymore._ 』

  
“No, that’s not it…”

『 _The only reason you approached him was your own self satisfaction._ 』

  
“Please, Kumagawa-kun listen to me. I’ll explain it this time, so please don’t talk over me-”

『 _He made you feel better about yourself. Just like I did. That's why you tried to put him in his place. That's why you tried to put me in my place. What are other people to you anyway?_ 』  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about other people.”  
  
Komaeda wished for rain inside this dome, because then he could at least feel a wetness inside his face. That way he could cry. He wanted something to fall down on him and wash him away, a meteorite, a falling plain, anything would be fine.  
  
Komaeda Nagito wants to be forgiven, doesn’t matter by whom he just wants to be forgiven. 

 

🧸  
  
Kazuichi Souda watched Komaeda from a distance. He stood in front of the dorms, arguing with Ikusaba Mukuro.  
  
“Let me in, I know how to do field medicine.”

 

“It’s your fault he was hurt in the first place,” Komaeda said. He really was the opposite of Kumagawa, who always said it was not his fault. “There’s no way the Ultimate Soldier could be so weak that a bystander was shot in a complete accident. The world bends to you Ultimates, it’s your world after all, you must have wanted it.”  
  
“N-no, I…”  
  
“Wow, you really are pathetic if you’re being talked down to by a person like me. Of course, I never once considered you a real Ultimate. An Ultimate would never fall to despair, you’re just a fake who infiltrated our school.”  
  
“Th-that’s true but…I think it’s better if I’m there by Makoto’s side. He’s afraid of being alone.”  
  
“Making your loved one suffer…”  Komaeda said, staring at his hand to center himself, because the world was spiraling, spiraling, spiraling. “You and Enoshima-san really are sisters? To be honest when I saw the two of you, I didn’t believe it at first…”  
  
“Komaeda, why are you suddenly so protective of him?”  
  
Mukuro asked, a question so sharp it could cut right through him, and he was thinner than paper. “He’s my friend. He’s my first friend. I know I’m a hopeless weirdo, but isn’t it normal to not want to lose him?”

 _My friend._ _  
_ _My first friend._ _  
_ _  
_ His only -  
Kazuichi always thought those things were special.  
A first kiss, a first love.  
That was why he thought he needed to find the right girl. Someone who would not toss him aside as easily as his mother did. It became an obsession for him.  
  
“Hey, how did you even stalk people before this? You’re such a mouth breather.” 

 

Miu’s taunted him, but he could not hear anything but Komaeda’s words. Over and over. He wrote them again and again, until it just became scribbles all over his brain.  
  
“How come you’re not rising to my taunts like usual? What’s the problem? Can’t get it up?” 

 

Loud. Obnoxious. Overbearing. She was the farthest from ideal possible. She was not a quiet and respectable girl like Sonia, and she was not the tranquil Komaeda and yet. She was the only one here next to him. 

 

He grabbed her by the hand, pulled her out of the bushes and ran again.  
It felt like all they ever did when they were together was run away.  
They ran away together.  
They tried to disappear in each other.  
Hiding in a yellow field of flowers together.  
Pretending together.  
They jumped off the cliff but they never reached the sea, they just kept falling.  
They fell through the floor.  
Like they found the glitch in the programming of life. 

 

That was what they both thought, but even then Miu’s heavy hand in his, both of them smelling of grease, smelling of the same thing, both of them are made of the same internal programming, the machinery, Kazuichi still wanted to look back. The girl with him was not enough to make him forget, a deep-wounded mind, gears, _clang, clang, clang, clang_ clanging at the back of his head. A head full of junk. Two heads full of junk.  
  
He wanted to look back and see if Komaeda even glanced his way when Kazuichi ran away suddenly. He wanted to know if he appeared even as a small regret in his eyes. If he was just a dot on the horizon that was fine, as long as he looked his way. 

 

They ran.  
Because they wanted to be chased.  
A body, any body, look here, look away.  
The machine of the world would continue to run smoothly without them. 

 

Kazuichi collapsed in the field of flowers with Miu next to him. Their hands were still connected, but that was it. Kazuichi still looked behind him, trying to see if Komaeda gave chase. Then he looked further, and further back, until the colors he saw started to bleed out all around him, and the lines drawn neatly in the shapes of flowers all blurred.  
  
When Komaeda and him were in his last year of middle school the two of them started to think seriously about the future. Kazuichi studied every night to keep up his scholarship, but he was still no more than just a passing student. He never even got in the top tens.  
  
The school Komaeda was aiming for was in the top five, basically just short of Hope’s Peak. Komaeda planned to buy his way in, though Kazuichi told him several times his grades were already high enough. Kazuichi wanted to go to the same place, so he started to study with Komaeda. He got used to studying all night with Komaeda, and spending the night with him in the same bed because both of them were too tired to move. They slept in their clothes and wore them the next morning and walked to school together.

Kazuichi was serious.  
For the first time in his life he was able to see the sky beyond his father’s junk shop.  
But for Komaeda it was all just a joke.  
Komaeda made the sky fall on top of him.  
  
They had a fight just a week before midterms. Kazuichi tried to apologize a few times, but it was hard to work up the nerve. But, that was just normal, often when friends fought they both were waiting for the other to apologize.  
  
He decided if Komaeda did not approach him, he would apologize after midterms for sure.  
He must have done something Komaeda was sensitive about without realizing.  
He was sorry for being so stupid.  
  
The morning of their first midterm, Komaeda pulled him aside. Kazuichi thought Komaeda was going to apologize to him, and tried to start first. “I’m really sorry-”  
  
“What? Oh, I already forgot about that Kazu-kun. I just didn’t feel talkative this last week. I don’t have anything interesting to say anyways.”  
  
“That’s not true, I-”  
  
“Kazu-kun, can you let me copy off your test answers?”  
  
“The hell? You’re loads smarter than me man. All I ever do is stare into space, but you like seriously get it and try your hardest to understand what other people are saying around you.”  
  
“Kazu-kun don’t you think things like, _everybody’s smart in their own way,_ or _everybody’s special_ is just a little mean? It seriously feels like you’re looking down on someone as mundane in his talents as me.”  
  
“N-no way. If you want my help you’ve got it man. That’s all I ever wanted to-”

 

 _I wanted to pay you back for being my friend._ _  
_ _I know I’m nothing but trouble._ _  
_ _I just wanted… to be worth something to you._ _  
_ _The way you are to me._  
  
Kazuichi told Komaeda to change a few of the answers so they would not get caught. After the midterms were done, Kazuichi thought they would go back to walking to each other’s houses. It was just one fight after all. 

 

The teacher caught them because Komaeda copied every answer exactly. The teacher asked them in front of the whole class, and Komaeda sold Kazuichi out. 

 

 _That’s okay, Komaeda was just scared of everyone hating him right?_  
  
Because Komaeda confessed, Kazuichi took all the blame alone.  
Every time he tried to talk to him afterwards, Komaeda just shrugged him off.  
Due to the stress of high school exams, Kazuichi who had always been ignored became a target for bullying in the class. A day did not go by when his desk was not drawn on, and his shoes were not thrown away from his locker.  
  
He was given a zero on his exam which made getting into the same school as Komaeda impossible.  
  
_Did Komaeda really do this?_  
  
Kazuichi asked.  
Because he knew that Komaeda knew his father beat him every time he got in trouble at school. Komaeda was always the one who touched his bruises, and help him spread ointment on his skin. Komaeda always invited him to stay over because going home meant he would get hurt.  
  
Komaeda knew what his father would do if Kazuichi got in trouble at school and he.  
He still…

 _That’s not Komaeda._ _  
_ _That’s not, that’s not, that’s not._

Komaeda used to always walk him home. Kazuichi tended to run first without thinking. Komaeda, overly cautious, grabbed his arm before he crossed the street.  
  
Kazuichi, crossed the street with no one to stop him.

A car hit him.

Hepassed out on the sidewalk and a stranger found him and rushed him to the hospital. In his vision blurred ,inh feverish dreams, when he falled he saw Komaeda there to catch him.  
  
Even the kids who bullied him visited him in the hospital because they wanted to convince themselves this was not their fault, that they were decent people. Every time the door opened Kazuichi waited for Komaeda to come.  
  
He never did.

He threw away his glasses and broke them underneath his feet. When he came back to school from a long stay in the hospital, he had pink hair, pink eyes, and his teeth were sharpened into fine points. 

He turned his head over to look at Miu.  
  
“Hey… to be honest, I’m wearing contacts.”  
  
“What’s this now?”  
  
“It’s not like my hair is this color because I wanted to look like this. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, so I just tried a few things and it ended up like this.”  
  
“Oh, so you're not a firecrotch after all,” Miu said disinterested.   
  
“I kind of hate you, and I told myself I was just putting up with you to be nice, but the truth is nobody else here likes me. I’m just stuck with you because I need somebody.”

“There's nothing wrong with a good round of hatesex.”  
  
“I’m a fake. Everything about me is fake. When I’m around Keebo, I just think he’s way more human than I am.”

Miu suddenly sat up, looking down at him, her fkae blonde hair falling in tresses over her shoulders. “What’s wrong with being a fake? I mean, girls fake orgasms for guys all the time.”  
  
“What the hell does that have to do with anything!”   
  
"It's really hard to stay interested, I'm not getting off on this conversation you know?" Miu said, raising her eyebrows.  
  
"You keep those eyebrows down right now!" Kazuichi snapped. "Can you stop thinking about sex for five seconds."  
  
"No, you first."

They stared at each other for the world's longest five seconds, before Miu gave up. “You’re still way too easy to fluster.”  
  
“That’s because I’m a giant virgin mouthbreather whose never going to convince another girl to like him, because my breath smells, or something like that!”

“No, I think it’s the obsessive stalker tendencies but continue…”  
  
“I’m glad that you hate me. Yeah, I want to be hated by you. I…”  
  
“God, can you stop beating your meat to how much you hate yourself???”  
  
“I don’t know what I did wrong...”  
  
Kazuichi pulled his hat over his eyes. She could hear it, the ugly sounds of his crying. Kazuichi came off as a crybaby to her, one that was always minutes away from bursting into tears. Usually she would have insulted him, or felt better about herself that she was not the one falling to pieces right now.

Instead, she watched with fascination. She slowly pulled off his cap, and stared at his eyes as his tears caught the light. Over him, on top of him, she kept staring in complete silence. Her head was pulled down to him, by magnestism, even though like forces were supposed to repel each other and not attack.  
  
Her lips.  
Pulled slowly apart.

And then.  
  
Monokuma appeared between them. “IT’S MOTIVE TIME! THAT’S WHAT YOU LITTLE SHITS GET FOR DESTROYING MY SCHOOL! THIS IS A SPECIAL MOTIVE FOR ALL THE GEARHEADS.” 

He said, and then slowly lead them to the newly opened third floor. There was a room that consisted of just one alien looking piece of technology in the center.  
  
The moment Miu saw it, she smiled. “Fucking finally! No more pretending I like people! I can just spend all day making this machine my bitch.”  
  
“When did you pretend to like people? When?"


	64. Melancholy of Mecha Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title comes from the Poetry Book Melancholy of Mecha Girl

_I feel like that._  
_A junkyard._  
_They forgot to put a boy in me._  
  
🧸

“What is it Sour tits? You better have a damn good reason for buggin’ THIS beautiful genius!”  
  
Miu threw a wrench to vent her annoyance without even looking who it was. Shuichi moved in front of Kaede in order to protect her, but instead of looking heroic it just bounced off his head. Miu was already causing headaches and the morning had just barely started.  
  
“S-sour… tits…” _Yeah, I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that._ Kaede and Shuichi were walking around together like always, but due to the fact that Kaede had started to wear Shuichi’s hat around people started making certain assumptions about them. She averted her eyes trying to ignore the smug look on Miu’s face.

“N-nothing much… We just wanted to talk to you guys.”

Kaede put her arm around Shuichi again. Touching him was beginning to become second nature to her. “Saihara-kun’s being too nice again, neither of you have left this room in three days we were worried a murder happened!” 

“Huh? Talk? Why the fuck do I gotta talk to you, dumpty tits?” 

“Dumpty tits…?” _Just grin and bear it… You can do it… I’m the one who decided to talk to her._ Shuichi was right there, and she wanted to be the kind girl who always smiled he saw her as. 

“Hey, I’ve got high standards for who I spend my precious time with you know. Unlike you whose so desperate to be liked you’re the village bicycle of friendship.” 

Kazuichi was fully asleep on the floor, a large snot bubble growing from his nose. The conversation suddenly woke him up with a start and he sat up, “Wires. Why wires? Wires bad."

Kaede grew concerned. “Is he alright? He kinda sorta looks like he’s in outer space.” 

“Of course! I make my boys see stars you know!”  
  
“Oh, you went stargazing with him?”

Even the Ultimate Detective Shuichi could not figure out how exactly Kaede was this oblivious when it came to romance, all he knew was he wanted to protect her innocence. “Iruma, please!” 

“Oh, I love it when you beg for more like that.”

Kazuichi looked at them with pity. “You guys gotta learn to tune her out, all that comes out of her mouth is junk.” 

“Your entire life is junk!” Miu snapped back at him.  
  
“Well yeah, that’s true, but at least I don’t think I’m funny, ya busted radio!” 

Miu turned away from him out of spite. “Well, I am bored. How bout you start talkin’ about something that’ll interest me? You got no boobs and nothin’ interestin’ to say! You’re fuckin’ hopeless!”  
  
“...”

“Hah-haha! Poor widdle Akamatsu and her sad, sour dumpy tits! Why else do you think the only boy who could fall for you is the most beta of all betas?”  
  
Kazuichi immediately thought of getting between the two of them, but the thought of any confrontation at all terrified him. So, he ran away, in a very manly way. “Hey, are you gonna let Miu talk down your girl’s boobs like that? If you don’t defend her chest who will?” 

Shuichi was being shaken back and forth by Kazuichi, he could hear his brain rattling inside his head. “I literally have no idea what to say anymore… please someone tell me what to say to make this stop.”  
  
“Will everybody stop talking about my tits!” Kaede raised her voice so loud that everyone, even Keebo who was too nervous to speak at the moment looked back at her. Kaede immediately got into Miu’s face, grabbing her by the neck. “Who you callin’ sad, sour, dumpty tits, huh!?”  
  
“Heeeeee!” Miu wheezed immediately taking a step back. She continued to stumble back before grabbing onto Kazuichi’s shoulder and hiding behind him. “Wh-what the-!? Don’t shout all of a sudden… You know how fuckin’ rude that is?”  
  
“Sorry you guys! The part of her brain that she uses to talk to other people is broken and unfixable, so she just keeps making junk up about how hot she is.”  
  
“It’s not junk,” Miu said, in a voice much quieter than her usual one. “I’m a fucking snack, and everyone knows it.” 

“You’re the rude one here! I was holding it in, but this is the last straw! It’s not even worth trying to be nice to you!” Kaede raised her voice again, and Kazuichi felt another shiver run through Miu. When Kaede walked up to get in Miu’s face Kazuichi thought about defending her for a moment but Kaede was too scary.   
  
“Huh? Oh, I get it. Don’t tell me… You’re jealous of my fine sexy body! T-totally.” 

“Hey! My boobs are pretty big, y’know!”  
  
“Hey, Shitty-hara! Which one of us do you think has bigger boobs?”  
  
“Why would you ask Saihara-kun that?”  
  
“I’m too afraid to answer that question,” Saihara tried to look anywhere besides Kaede’s boobs. He had… to protect… her…”U-um, maybe we should go back to talking about the killing game. Aren’t you guys a little worried that by building Monokuma’s motive you’re playing right into his hand.”

“Some guys get all the luck,” Kazuichi said ignoring the plot important details for more boob talk.   
  
Miu immediately looked back at Kazuichi. “Oh, right I gotta keep reminding you. It’s not that you’re unlucky with women, it’s that you always creep on them so no girl would ever like you.”  
  
Kaede was really getting on her last nerve, her circuits were already fried. Miu just wanted her to leave her alone. Not just Kaede, everybody else should leave her alone too, but Kaede was the loudest right now. 

Even if she wanted to, Kaede would never like her. If she took off this obnoxious mask, Kaede would see the girl underneath. The girl who did a lot of awful things. Kaede would consider her disgusting.   
  
She was not going to be liked, so she wanted to be hated. Miu saw no difference between the two, being liked, being hated, were both violent things, but if she was hated she had a better chance of being left alone. How to touch Kaede in a way that would make the other girl push her away.  
  
Her hand reached out.  
Her hands metallic, chromium steel.  
She wished.  
She would give anything to be unable to feel people’s touch.  
This wasn’t her, it was her exo-self.  
Her exo-skeleton. A junkbody metal girl. 

Kaede slapped her hand away as harshly as she could. Miu flinched. Her hand was so sensitive it was fiber-optic, inside her, inside it, she felt that small touch with her whole body and hated it with all of herself. She hated herself for reacting this much to the smallest thing. Coward.  
  
“You freak Iruma! Geez, what goes on in your head? How can any part of you possibly think the way you act is okay?” 

Miu’s brain was junk code. She tried to process it, but the letters and numbers refused to spell out any answer. 

“You just shouldn’t talk. Some things are best left unsaid.”

“Oh. You don’t like what I’m saying? Why, are you not as confident in your little good girl act anymore? Are you afraid ace dick boy over there is going to see through you soon.”  
  
“You know what Iruma, it’s not how you act, it’s not what you say, and it’s not like anybody is jealous of your looks. It’s just you, nobody likes you because you yourself are disgusting.”   
  
“Just admit that you’re leading him on. Hahahahaha! C’mon, c’mon! Don’t leave me hangin! I wanna hear you talk more shit! Tell me how much you hate me!” 

“Jeez, what’s with the good girl bad girl fight all of a sudden?” Kazuichi whispered to Shuichi.  
  
Shuichi whispered back. “You really shouldn’t talk about girls that way, and I doubt it’s that.They’re just two people. Too different.”  
  
“Akamatsu-san, stop, stop!!” Shuichi said finally getting in between the two of them. He wrapped his arms around Kaede from behind and pulled her back. Kaede was so surprised by his sudden embrace that her mind went blank. “Hey, Keebo’s been quiet the whole time? Shouldn’t we be worried about him.”

Keebo looked up from where he was crouched in the corner. “I am experiencing my first simulation of the human desire to angst.”  
  
“He’s pouting cuz we’re paying more attention to the new machine then him,” Kazuichi said.  
  
“Th-that’s not true. I would never do something as childish as pout, I am simply continuing my study of human emotions for a higher minded purpose.”  
  
“He’s being a total baby about it,” Miu said clicking her teeth.  
  
“I am not a baby! My intellectual capabilities are on the same level of cognition as yours.”  
  
“He gets anxious when we stop paying attention to him,” Kazuichi said.  
  
“Why would anybody program a robot with anxiety? It’s a completely useless function.”  
  
“Hey, Keebo go find me the thingy!” Miu called out to him.

“R-right away!” Keebo went looking through the room and pulled out a socket wrench.  
  
“It makes him feel better to be useful so we’re using him to grab tools while we work,” Kazuichi explained.  
  
“But he’s a machine, shouldn’t he be just as good at you guys are at working on machines?” Kaede asked.  
  
Shuichi behind her muttered, “Akamatsu-san that’s kind of rude.”

Keebo's shoulders immediately began to slump. His body whirred to support him as he looked like he might crumple and fall to pieces. “It’s alright, I don’t feel pain, I only feel an approximate simulation of pain.”  
  
Kaede pulled the lid of Shuichi’s striped hat over her eyes. Shuichi always hid himself from the eyes of others, afraid of the hatred in their glares, but Kaede felt like she was hiding her own eyes from other people. She did not want people to see that while her smile was a lie, her eyes told the truth. 

 

🧸

 

 _I don’t know if my feelings are real._ _  
_ _Or if I’m faking them._ _  
_ _No matter what I can never be the real thing._  
  
Keebo laid down in the flower field just outside the school. This was not recommended for him because he would get dirt in all the joints in his body, and Miu would fuss over him when she was giving him cleaning for maintenance later.  
  
He was more worried that he couldn’t feel.  
The petals tickled him, or they would tickle him if he had skin.  
Their scent filled him, but he did not know what flowers smelled like.  
His transparent, highly conductive, colorless eyes did not know if he saw the same colors humans did. He did not even have eyes, he had optical circuits.  
  
His body was full of holes.  
Silver, wrapped around bones. 

If people were what was inside of them, then he could never be what he wanted to be.  
  
The only flowers he could see were iron.  
The only brambles were wires.  
Wire and rose, Silver barbs and thorns.

A garden of metal and flower was pointless.  
It would just rust.  
  
Living things got to die, but they also got to live first. Their slow decay, there was something beautiful about it. The more they rotted, the more they struggled to live. As a machine Keebo was simply off or on. He was simply functional or not. Everything was switches, and binary, and black and white, and he existed maybe but he did not live.  
  
A girl with small legs stood above him, she dangled a flower in his face.

“Monaca-chan. There’s something I want to be sad about right now, but I can’t even do that. Must I be a failure at everything, there’s something wrong…”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong. Keebo’s supposed to be a doll without a heart isn’t he? Maybe they just  forgot to build you with a brain too!” 

“I neither want, nor need your pity.” 

“Monaca-chan wasn’t pitying you. I mean, Monaca-chan’s always suffering the worst, and my pain is the only pain that matters, so why would I waste time feeling sorry for anybody else?”

“Ah, I suppose when you put it that way…” Keebo found that ignoring most of what Monaca said was an easy way to get along with her. He just knew she did not mean what she said, almost nothing she meant. “Hey, why aren’t you helping Kazuichi-kun, and Iruma-san?” 

“Why would Monaca-chan want to do anything helpful, ever?” 

“You have a point there, but still it’s nice to feel useful.”  
  
“Why is it nice? You know Monaca-chan knows from personal experience, people think if they’re useful they’ll get paid in love, but it’s really just a ripoff. Being useful just means you get used.” She kicked the flowers, stomping over their heads without a care in the world. If there were insects in the flower patch, Monaca would crush them one by one. She did not hate flowers or insects, or rather she hated everything in the world equally. “You’re really lucky, there’s nobody happier in this world than an idiot. Monaca-chan really is so unlucky, if she was born useless to her family maybe they would have just thrown her out on the streets.”  
  
“Do you really dislike them that much?” 

“Keebo-niichan is so good at being useless he even asks useless questions.”   
  
Keebo knew, that despite her eyes Monaca was not empty. She had too much inside of her, more than anybody else, to the point where Keebo was not sure how she was still alive. She did not look like a dead child, she looked like…  
  
She wanted to…  
No, no, no, no, no, no.  
  
Miu had told him something that worried him deeply as well, but even then there was nothing he could do. He could not understand the pain that other people felt, no matter how hard he tried. That must have meant he was unkind. He was so cold, so mechanical.  
  
He could not do anything for them. People were in pain in front of him and he did nothing.  
He could not even offer them a small amount of understanding.

Was he even sad? Could he even feel a little sad for Monaca’s sake? 

“I do not understand… why would the people who raised you hurt you?”  
  
“You really are just a kid. That’s what all kids are like, even after their parents hit them they go _I still have to love them._ That’s why those other kids were so boring. Monaca-chan is glad, she was never a kid, not even for a single moment.”  
  
Monaca seemed to know so much more then him, and yet so much less. 

There had to be someone who was, beautiful enough, beautiful enough.  
If only he were more of a person, he would know what to say, but his existence was flickering, flickering.  
  
“You don’t get it, I also did something awful and hurt someone. That’s why I want to understand the feelings of people who are hurt.” 

Keebo remembered. At least he thought he remembered. If what was in his head could be called memories. Part of him wished that it was the same, that wires and electric signals were the same as neuron pulses.  
  
He was normal. At least he thought he was. He had never seen another human being besides the one who built him, so he did not realize he was abnormal. Perhaps his family was not normal like the ones he read about in the books the professor offered him, but there was nothing he could do about that. 

He thought he was just a normal child, so he went through the motions of crying, and laughing, but never to extremes. In fact he never actually noticed he did not shed tears when he cried but he just felt like never had anything to cry that much over.  
  
Keebo did not realize that he was just a parrot, mocking the sounds that humans made without cromprehending them.  
  
He did not know what he wanted to be when he growed up, and he was not passionate about anything. He knew there was a world outside him and his father, but he realized he did not really care to see it. Staring at the shadows in his cave were enough for him.  
  
He had no idea the way he saw things was different than the professor.  
He never talked about it.

He thought he was normal.  
He thought the professor was this way too, and that was why he never smiled.  
  
It was only when he started getting strange tests, when the professor put funny machines on his head, and took measurements that he realized something with him was wrong. No, it was fine. He did not really mind that he was treated like a guinea pig.   
  
What he could not accept was that this made him different from the professor.  
He became afraid.  
He realized just then he knew very little about himself.  
  
Someone other than him, knew the Keebo that he didn’t know. That was the trigger. That was the virus, that slowly replicated inside of him without his control, and made him distorted. He honestly did not know when distortion began.  
  
He started dreaming about running away. To find someone in the world that was a little bit like him. When he woke up he realized he had nowhere to go. Yes, maybe it was the dream. Robots were not supposed to dream of anything electric sheep. Because he could dream, he was distorted.  
  
He started to pick fights with the professor, and one day the argument escalated into something physical. He knew it was rude for children to hit their fathers but Keebo thought occasionally children should be allowed to misbehave so they could learn better.  
  
His father told him he was going to shut him down. To be honest, he was scared. He was afraid. He had no idea what to do. Death… That’s right. Until that moment, he never once thought about death. Perhaps if he had been an elementary schooler he would have stayed up all night in fear crying about what happened after death, but Keebo had not ever been that young.

He did not remember what happened next.  
In fact none of these were his memories they were just what the professor told him had hapened.  
  
That was a lie. He just lied to himself. He remembered what happened after that. He ended up grabbing his professors arm, and breaking it to make him drop the switch to turn him up, then grabbing him by the face and hitting his head against the wall. When Keebo was splashed with blood he knew that other people had things inside of them that he did not.   
  
He was jealous, of humans and their veins, and their scarlet coloring, all he had was colorless lubricant, pumped through tubes underneath his skin.  
  
From then on he became afraid of his nature as a robot. Why did he ever think he was normal? A normal person could never hurt others so easily. The normal Keebo, the first Keebo, died that day, and all that was a child deeply ashamed of what he had been born as. The second Keebo knew that it was impossible for someone like him to be normal.  
  
But, what was so bad about hurting the professor?  
He just didn’t want to die.  
  
It disgusted him. When he realized that the whole world rejected him, he felt something that was completely indescribable to him, not anger, not sadness, because he did not have those feelings in the first place just simulations of those feelings.  
  
That’s right, he had no feelings, so there was nothing worth him getting upset about. If that was the case then why, right now, were his fingers shaking, and his joints squealing like some part of him wanted to cry out. 

“When I hurt the professor, I was overcome by the emotional response known as ‘sadness’. The first law of robotics states, ‘A robot must not harm a human being’. So I died.” 

“Don’t you know laws are meant to be broken keebo-niichan?”   
  
“It’s because you say things like that, I suspect you’re a terrible child.”  
  
“Thank you! You’re always so nice to Monaca-chan.” Monaca lowered her eyes. “You know the first Law of Robotics is broken in the same book that it was written. It’s kind of silly to think you would commit suicide over that, are you lying to me?”  
  
“Huh? N-no, I wasn’t programmed to tell lies.”  
  
“Or maybe the professor was the one lying to you? Did he tell you this convenient backstory. It doesn’t seem like you would attack him for no reason, computers don’t suddenly glitch and gain emotions like that.” Monaca was like a child who could not help but question everything in their innocence. “What did the professor do to you?”  
  
Keebo said nothing.  
He meant to say something but his speech system started failing him.

  
“How much do you know about yourself? Hmm, for example is the reason the professor programmed you with so many useless features was that so you’ll never be a threat to him.” 

“I r-really don’t know?” Keebo took in a breath and started to wheeze. His shaking got worse and he had to run a systems check, terrified that his systems were suddenly shutting down or going haywire for some reason.  
  
“How are you hyperventilating, you don’t even need to breathe.”  
  
“You said a bunch of really worrything things, I’m just worrying...”  
  
“You really are the anxietybot 9000.”

“Why do people call me the anxiety robot!?”  
  
“I guess there is no telling whether your memories are real or not. Even right now, I could scramble your brain with a magnet and rewrite your entire history to make you obsessed with Monaca-chan.”  
  
“Well, that’s fine.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Even if it was a lie. If I got to be your friend for real, it would be worth it.”  
  
Monaca frowned at that.  
How tall he was.  
How gentle his voice.  
The way his hands reached out towards her without hitting her.  
She hated those things too.  
  
“You have real emotions, but all of your smiles are fake. I don’t get you, Monaca-chan.”

“You really don’t understand. Because you’re a stupid dumb dumb baby. If Monaca-chan stopped fake smiling she would never be able to smile, if she stopped faking her laughter, she would never laugh.”  
  
“B-but I… I want to understand.”  
  
“No, you really don’t.” He found himself reflecting in Monaca’s eyes. Keebo always thought they looked like dead eyes, but in that moment he recognized the look in those eyes, the look was the same one the professor made when he decided to kill the person in front of him. “You can play big brother to me, and you can play like the pink one, and the pointy toothed one are your mommy and daddy but that’s all it will ever be. Playing. Because they see you as a thing. Everybody else sees you as a thing. Even Monaca-chan sees you as a thing but she’s honest about it because she feels like being nice to you.” 

“I… I do understand some things,” Keebo said as he pulled his collar up over his mouth. He did not want to see the face that he was making right now, and he did not want Monaca to see either. He was afraid that he was making no face whatsoever, that he felt nothing, none of her pain, and none of his own. “When I was younger, Keebo talked that way about himself too. Because he had no concept of self. Just like Monaca-chan.”  
  
“Monaca-chan has a self. Monaca-chan is the cutest, that’s how Monaca-chan knows she’s still Monaca-chan.” 

Monaca claimed to have no emotions at all, but just then he caught it in her eye, she looked a little bit sad, and a little bit of disappointment, or maybe that look was just boredom. 

 

🧸

 

 _I thought I was normal?_ _  
_ _No… these memories in my head are different than what I was told._  
_There’s no way someone like me could ever think about being normal._ _  
_ _I’m professor Idabashi’s son._ _  
_ _He’s proud of me._  
  
Keebo cut out his heart and gave it to others, and because of that they kept him around, but he never felt loved.  
  
Of course not, love was wasted on machines.  
matter how much he desired to be mistaken for a human.  
To forget his essential soulless nature for even one moment.

It would never be.

Dreams were also wasted on machines.  
  
He was a good robot, but that was all he could be. 

The heart was just a muscle to pump blood through the body anyway, it was no different from the pump he had in his chest. Then it did not matter whether or not he had a heart in the first place.  
  
But that was just his wish.  
To have at least one other person be the same as him.  
Even if he was not normal.  
  
“Hey Pinocchio, aren’t you getting tired of having the same character arc of literally every robot character in fiction ever?” Jack laughed as her tongue wagged in the air.  
  
“Th-that’s unhygeniec. Keep your tongue away from me, I do not want to get sick.”  
  
“Kyeaaa-hahahaha! Keeboy, you’re a riot! You know you can’t get sick right?”  
  
“I well… I could get a computer bug, maybe. And thank you, I have been working hard on my jokes because there is a certain girl I want to see smile.”  
  
“Anyway, spare me the melancholy of a mecha boy. I ain’t even a writer and I think that shit’s boring.” Jack suddenly shivered, “Man, I just agreed with Gloomy on something, that’s just not right. I think we’re breaking the split personality rules.”   
  
“Well, I am sorry he problems that have defined my entire life are boring to you.”  
  
“Apology not accepted! I won’t forgive you even if you die!” 

“Jack, jeez! Quit it already. I’m sorry for her, I have to follow her around to make sure she stays out of trouble.” Komaru said, trying to to nudge Jack out of the way.  
  
“More like you’re so afraid of everyone that I’m the only one you’ll hang out with.”  
  
“Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you should say it! You and Toko should really try to be nice sometimes, than more people would like you.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll be the first nice serial killer. I’m gonna redefine the genre of weirdo crazy ass serial killers.” 

Komaru sighed, soemtimes she honestly did not know which one was harder to deal with Jack or Toko they were both so stubborn, but Jack was the only one that came out during the day now. “You wanted to ask me about something?”  
  
“Um… I just wanted to know what a normal person would think.”  
  
“I-I’m not that normal you know. Is that all people see me as? That one’s the normal one. Actually, that’s my brother so really I’m just a spare. I’m more than just normal y’know, e-everybody’s special in their own way.”  
  
“That’s what everybody says,” Jack mocked her.  
  
“Don’t treat me like a normal person!”  
  
“You’re the japanese national symbol of normal people.” Jack turned her attention back to Keebo. “Hey, keeboy I get it let’s ask some questions. What do you do on a hot day?”   
  
“I use a desk mat instead of a fan.”  
“I have my own internal cooling system, but I like to talk into the fan. It makes my voice sound like a robot don’t you think? I mean, moreso than it already does.”  
  
“If the teacher calls on you in class do you know the answer?”  
“I only get called on when I don’t know the answer.”  
“Nobody calls on me because they don’t pay attention to me.”   
  
“How fast do you run a 100 meter dash.”  
“I wanna say… 18 seconds.”  
“At the speed of the average elderly grandfather.”  
  
“And what’s your favorite music?”  
“Top 40.”  
“I admire japanese pop idols, but apparently my singing sounds like the AOL dial up tone.”   
  
“What’s your favorite kinda manga?”  
“Whatever is popular right now.”  
“I don’t really like reading manga, it seems a little bit immature. I’m already two years old now.” 

“Kyeeehahahaha! Wow the world’s most normal girl and the world’s most mediocre robot, how have you two not fallen in love already?” 

Keebo immediately got flustered. “L-love? I am unfamiliar with that emotion-”  
  
“Oh boy another cliche. I’m a walking stereotype myself but even I think this is embarrassing?”  
  
Monaca grabbed him by the collar and started to shake him. “Are you kidding me? Why are you talented anyway? You don’t do anything?” 

“I… do I have to do something?” Keebo’s voice panicked as he lost himself in Monaca’s emotions. He still did not understand the inferiority he saw in her eyes, even though it reflected in his own. “Am I not alive… unless I’m useful… Humans are so lucky, they’re born for no reason at all.” 

 _Even this girl who is the same as me, is not._ _  
_ _Nobody’s the same as me._

He once thought he was normal. It was a mistake.  
At that moment someone came into view.  
  
White roses, a dark coat.  
White roses, snow, and snow, and snow, and repetitions of snow.  
The image fizzling out into white noise.  
And snow falling down.  
A ghost floating up.  
A sudden whiteout.  
Keebo though his optics had broken.  
He saw white.  
That boy appeared in front of him, and everything was white.  
  
Komaeda Nagito-

To be honest Keebo always looked away from him because he used to take a small comfort in thinking his appearance was so inhuman that he would never even look like a human. He could stop worrying about it.  
  
If Keebo looked into the mirror, and a human boy looked back, Komaeda Nagito would be looking back at him, looking into him, colorless, foggy eyes and white hair.  
  
Komaeda was dead anyway, he was a ghost, he was transparent. If Keebo scrutinized him he would see nothing because the boy was invisible.  
  
Keebo could not take his eyes off of him. 

“You two are both too normal. Let’s ask with an expert on being weird.”  
  
Komaeda tilted his head back at Jack. “What are you talking about? I am the most unremarkable person here, I stand out so little among such exceedingly bright people that not a single person would notice if I were to go missing.”  
  
Komaru asked, “Does Keebo’s talent count as a talent? He’s just a robot. He’s not even that good at being a robot he doesn’t do anything.” 

“W-what is talent anyway?” Keebo asked nervously.  
  
Komaeda sighed, it was like they were asking for him to ramble. If he lost control of himself, it was not his fault, he thought in fleeting self awareness. “A talent is who you are-”  
  
_But I’m nobody._  
  
“A talent is what you give to others.”  
  
_But, I can’t give anything to anyone._  
  
“I-I’ll think of that,” Keebo said as he turned away from Komaeda. He was just afraid. He was running because he was afraid, but that was okay. Humans could be brave, but machines were only capable of doing what they were programmed to do and nothing more.  
  
Suddenly, Komaeda caught him from behind and wrapped his arm around Keebo’s shoulder. “Do you really think you can compare us? Do you know the feeling of being abject filthiness. Disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. Someone like me. Someone like me… Are you aware every second, every wretched breath, how disgusting you are? You don’t understand at all do you? You think so highly of yourself, just because someone called you talented.” Komaeda smiled at him as he pulled away, that smile that reminded him of Monaca’s, so pitifully fake. “Not that that’s a problem, I think highly of you too of course. Higher than anyone else.”

That just made Keebo feel more lonely.

Komaeda whispered in his ears.   
So then basically he wanted nothing to do with him, was what Keebo understood from those words.   
Those vague words that haunted the air like the words of a ghost. 

 _I know I’m not enough._ _  
_ _Not even for Monaca-chan. Not even when I want to be enough._

 

🧸

 

Komaru felt a little bit bad for fighting with Keebo, especially the way he was reacting. So she invited him along to where she was going next.  
  
No, that was not it. She just wanted someone to walk with. 

 _I hate being alone._ _  
_ _Being alone, feels so empty._  
But everybody felt that way. It was normal to dislike being alone. Even her problems were dull.  
  
Komaru Naegi thought she was normal her whole life, she did her best to live up to the expectations of the others around her. She thought she was doing a good job of living, so how. _How did I become so weak?_

Just then she walked by Enoshima Junko. Komaru felt chilled to her core, more afraid of her than anyobdy else in the world, as if she was facing the worst villain in the whole world as a level one villager character.  
  
But Junko did not even seem to notice her.  
  
In a way they were complete opposites. The girl with an obsession of her normal, everyday life, and the girl who wanted to destroy everything that was normal and everyday.  
  
“This is embarrassing but…”  
  
Junko’s voice trailed out behind her.  
Komaru just caught it.  
  
“Me and Senpai have already done it.” 

Komaru suddenly turned around but she could not even make out Enoshima Junko’s face. She had no idea why that girl said that to her. Why that girl thought she would care. 

_This girl… what’s impossible for me is effortless for her._

_She steals everything even though she doesn’t really want any of it._ _  
_ _Hey._ _  
_ _How does it feel like to toy with other people’s feelings?_

The closeness Komaru wanted from others, came so easily to that blonde girl. And she didn’t even care. 

Komaru, just like any other girl dreamed of being a princess. When she wantted to escape from her normal everyday life, she opened a magazine and pretended she could live a lifelike the people on those pages. One girl always caught her eyes.  
  
Enoshima Junko. Komaru always knew that a normal girl like her, especially one that did not try to stand out in any way could be like those people. Yet, Junko in her interviews spoke like she was a classmate at Komaru's school.   
  
She was not some untouchable beauty.   
Approachable.  
Inviting, even.  
Maybe there was no such thing as extraordinary people.  
Enoshima Junko was a real girl just like her.   
  
Those fantasies were a comfort. Thinking of that, she felt less alone. When Makoto went to the same school as her, he even pestered him to get her an autograph. When Makoto told her stories about how Junko acted like a slightly rude, opinionated, but energetic and carefree girl Komaru started to think of her as her own classmate.   
  
If that was the person Kumagawa fell in love with, she could understand. Enoshima Junko's beauty was just painted on, she was not someone who could be loved, just admired, like art.   
  
When she thought of it that way she started to feel comfort again.  
She just wanted to be comfortable in her own mediocirty.  
Wanting to feel comfortable in your own skin, that was normal.   
Everyone felt that way.   
  
But Kumagawa loved her.  
He loved that fake girl like she was any other girl.  
When she was loved, it was almost like... she was real.   
  
He loved her so much.  
He accepted those chains.  
He accepted that hurt, if it meant being with her.   
  
That feeling that.   
No matter how defiled or hurt she became.  
He would accept her.   
  
Komaru was always afraid.  
If she was not normal. If she was not a good girl.  
She would be thrown out. 

 _But as far as she's concerned  you're just another fish in the sea, Kumagawa. But it's like you don't care at all, you still want to be involved with her.  
  
_ _I wonder if others thing of me the same way.  
_ _I'd be another fish in the sea too.  
_ _This won't do.  
_ _I'm still.  
_ _Completely.  
_ _Utterly._

A crow with a broken wing.  
  
That was the only way she could describe Kumagawa, as she brought food to him. They all agreed to have her bring food, because Junko might poison him.   
  
The boy is a bird.  
A bad bird.   
He fell out of the tree. 

Decrepit. Mites in his feathers. Biting, biting, biting him.  
Plumage plucked, feathers fell away from him. 

A bent wing.  
His skin showing. His face crooked. Eyes a black that swallowed all light.   
The worst part was his eyes. His eyes. His eyes. His eyes.   
  
There was nothing interesting about those eyes. The water is flat, flat and calm, it seems a sheet of glass. You look at it, the more you look at it the more you feel like you are looking into your own head, which is a strangers' head, empty.   
  
When you look there is nothing.   
There was something terribly wrong with his face, empty, restless, young and old. What is this thing? He was dirty. Sediemnt. A slow river cogged with silt.   
  
How was she supposed to look at him.  
He kept shifting. In the light.  
His foot was chained with silver, and his shadow was sewn to his toes so it could not escape and yet he looked freer than anybody else.   
  
That was what bothered her.   
She was more bothered by his confinement then he was. She always thought birds in cages were pitiful, but the crow smiled at her.   
  
He was not looking at her. He looked at the wall.  
He did not look like he wanted to look at anybody except Enoshima Junko. Nobody else in the world existed for him now.   
Their faces fell off, and there was nothing underneath.   
  
Unattached.  
Unrelated.   
  
He looked happy.   
In a way that made the made the word 'happiness' leave a sour taste in her mouth. 

His presence was so weak, so faint, she felt any moment the chain on his ankle might just slip through him, and he would float away. His eyes which looked like they only saw flickering shadows, looked at her.  
  
Then suddenly, she felt scrutinized, observed, trapped by those eyes.   
  
『That's not fair Komaru-chan, thinking about me like I'm some kind of Hannibal Lecter that's in control of everything even in chains. I'm the victim here.』 

Komaru felt like she could kick him over and over again.  
And he would keep smiling at her.  
And the next time they met, he would act like it never happened.   
He could not hold onto anything.  
Hatred, Pain, they slipped through his fingertips and that smile was what was left.   
  
『Komaru-chan, doing this for trash like me… I’m so happy. You even have a normal amount of kindness.』  
  
“Just because I hate you doesn’t mean I want you to die. I'm a good person so, I’d never wish for somebody else to die.”

『You’re right, you’re a much better person than I am. A person like me can’t even be called abnormal because that implies there’s something extraordinary about me, I’m simply inferior.』  
  
“Whatever. You say that stuff all the time. I’m leaving-”

『Though, I wonder. If you hate me why do you keep coming to visit me in this room? You know I think it’s fine to run away if it hurts, or if it fills you with despair. I think it’s fine. Yeah, it’s fine. Maybe that’s the opinion of a pathetic coward, but it’s totally fine.』  
  
Kumagawa’s smile widened. His eyes shined like wedding rings. She tried, she tried, she tried so hard to see him differently, but he just looked like a boy in love.  
  
That tender, sweet, and affectionate love she daydreamed about.  
Was only a plausible delusion.  
Being loved  felt just like some sort of violence tearing him into pieces. 

『I think you’d be much happier if you ran. Hope can only be called hope after facing despair, so if you always ran you’d have neither hope nor despair. But you know, there’s a difference between running away and just looking away.』  
  
“You’re like Komaeda but backwards.” 

『Gosh, normal people are slow. It took you this long to realize. Hmm? I shouldn't be so rude to an underclassmen. Yeah you're right, that's not how a normal senpai would act.』  
  
She expected to see a boy born in melancholy. Someone crying from the moment he was born and who never stopped, the perfect protagonist of a tragedy and yet, he was smiling still.   
  
There was something different about him.  
Is change always a good thing?   
When does it become self mutilation?  
When does it become cutting away pieces of yourself you don't like?   
How much can you get away with before it becomes some kind of murder.   
  
A ghost who did not realize he was dead.   
He looked happier than he did before. He looked happier than the miserable boy she once knew.   
  
“It’s not like either of you are my friends.”

『Awe, I wanted to be manga reading friends.』  
  
"Why haven't you asked me to free you," Komaru said after a long silence. "Why... why don't you want my help? It's like you're not even sad at all."

『What are you talking about? I'm just doing what normal people do. Everybody else tries to smile even when they're hurting.』  
  
"Don't act like you're so noble for suffering and not asking for anybody's help. You just. You just think I'm useless is that it?" 

『What do you want me to say? What does she want me to say?』Kumagawa muttered under his breath. He looked so casual about it, that Komaru could have sworn she heard the same voices speaking back that he did.『Ah, it's normal for guys my age to be clueless about how to talk to girls.』

He kept saying that.   
『I'm just doing my best to be strong, like a normal person would.』  
『If I can still appreciate the light of life I must be normal.』  
  
He was calm.  
What a relief.   
What a relief it was to know he could stay calm even when he was trapped like this. He kept insisting, telling her, that he was trying his best to stay normal, to stay himself, even in a situation like this.   
  
Komaru had expected him to go crazy.  
Yes, that was what she wanted to see. Him barking like a dog on the end of his chain. But, his gentle smile, his cool demeanor.   
  
Maybe.  
Sometimes.  
It wasn't normal to stay sane.  
  
He cut his own legs off for her.   
He floated, but he did not float.  
He felt neither pleasant nor unpleasant.  
  
He looked like someone who never experienced real life.   
Who never felt his real feelings, not even once.   
  
What was happening?   
What was happening to the boy she wanted to be friends with?  
  
『But, Komaru-chan you should probably stay away from here. That kid is about to wake up...』

 _Why was he so concerned about her?  
_Couldn't he tell he was in pain?   
_  
_ “That kid… what?”  
  
Keebo wondered if Kumagawa had noticed him watching from the doorway.  
  
“Are you talking about me behind my back, senpai? You’re totally talking about me behind my back. You were the type of boy who bullied the girls he liked in gradeschool, weren’t you? But that’s not a show of affection, that’s just the precursor to domestic abuse. What are they teaching boys these days anyway?” 

Komaru suddenly jumped at first she thought it was just the pink Monokub that had been missing for over a month, but then she noticed Enoshima Junko’s voice was coming out of it. Its eyes had turned from a beady black, to a growing red, almost as if it was sick, almost infected.  
  
『Awe, she’s trying so hard. Big sister, big sister, please notice me. I want to be just like you when I grow up.』  
  
“Eh, whaaaat? I can’t hear you. You gotta speak up since you’re soooooo puny.” 

『Even her responses are childish. She can’t help it, because she’s only seven years old.』  
  
“That’s just a joke! But good job you ruined it! You ruined it just like you ruined everything else. Why were you even born?”

『I was born to be your big brother obviously!』  
  
“I have seventeen  years of memories copy pasted into my brain. I can perfectly reproduce the indecisive, self absorbed, and egocentric mind of a teenage girl. I’m not a kid. I’m also like way hacking smarter than you, so stop treating me like a kid.”

『She said hacking instead of hecking that’s adorable.』  
  
“I killed you fifty two times. I made your life hell. Stop liking me! I don’t want to be liked by you! Eeeewe, gross, icky, icky, icky, gross boy cooties.” 

『Junko gave me a gift for the first time. Junko's been spoiling me with happiness lately.This is Junkai-chan. She's someone to talk to. She tried to kill me a whole bunch, then she got turned into a cellphone, and now she’s a bear.』

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!! SENPAI KEEPS BULLYING ME! If I had real feelings instead of the half-assed robot approximation of feelings, that’s what I would sound like right now.”   
  
“I… what?” Komaru tilted her head.  
  
That girl who was Enoshima Junko but was not Enoshima Junko.  
Komaru remembered staring into a magazine with Junko’s face on it and thinking she would never be like that girl. But even this Junko right in front of her could not be Junko.  
  
Did even Junko think of herself as the real Junko?   
  
This was too abnormal.  
How was she supposed to process all of this? “It’s not normal, it’s not normal…” She muttered under her breath to reassure herself.  
  
“Oh, great you brought me the knockoff Naegi.”  
  
“Kn-knock off?” 

 _Who else should I be?_ _  
_ _There’s no one else I can be. So just. Shut up already._  
  
Keebo who had been watching the entire time felt like his world had dropped out from under him. He always told himself. Nobody was the same as him. Nobody looked at the same sky, the same way. He shared the sky with nobody.  
  
Keebo felt something leaking from his eye.  
It must have been some kind of malfunction.  
_There’s no one._ _  
_ _No one. No one. No one._ _  
_ _There’s no one for me in this world._ _  
_ _Nobody is…_  
“The same as me…” 


	65. Selfish Indulgent Love's Joke

_It’s completely black._ _  
_ _This flower is red, you thought._ _  
_ _You thought the world was full of color._

🧸

 _  
_ A yellow rubber ducky floated by. 

The two of them in the water together. Junko behind him, sitting up on her knees and pressing her back against his. Her arms crossed around his neck, and slowly she brought them up to his face.  With an uncharacteristic gentleness like she was taking care of a glass doll in her hands, she brushed through his wet hair in front of the mirror pulling it back from his forehead. 

He had never seen Junko so quiet before, and her hands move with such careful attention. He saw a glint of light off the silver razor blade, and wondered for a moment if the sharp edge was smiling at him.  Junko was the type to slit somebody’s throat because she wanted to see pink, add one splash of color to the world. 

With one hand and one doll’s hand, and inhuman precision, the blade cleaned up the sides of his head. There were two knicks on his ear that never healed, one left by Ajimu when he first met her, and the other left by Junko during an emotional pique.  
  
Emotions? Yes, she had those sometimes. It was hard to believe with the way her glassy eyes, _empty to all,_ looked stared forward. A rectangular mirror. Just large enough that both of their heads could fit into it if they were crammed together like this. A mirror. The mirror that showed the picture - showed her. The sight of herself in the mirror, slipping away. A familiar-looking presence in the mirror.  
  
She was with Kumagawa in the mirror, on the other side of the glass the two of them were together  and yet - _The mirror does not show the slightest reflection of me._  
  
She looked transfixed by something, but it was actually a lack of presence, an emptiness that her eyes could not escape from. 

It was then she noticed that one of her eyes was glass, and the other was not, and yet they looked exactly the same, as if two glass beads had been put into the holes in her head. She could swap out her entire body with silicon, glass, and plastic fibers and she would be exactly the same.  
  
A fake, is a fake, is a fake, is a fake, is a fake, is a fake.  
  
Junko lenaed forward, wrapping more of herself around Kumagawa. She had no idea why. To prove that her body moved when she wanted it to, maybe? _I have my body._ It was still hers. _What’s mine is still mine._ And that applied to the boy, too. 

But when she was with him she could be herself. That was what she thought, anyway. As if she defined herself as the reflection of him. She could not see herself in the mirror, but she could see herself in Kumagawa’s eyes.

His mirror-like eyes.  
Her mirrored expression.  
An expression of herself. 

 Kumagawa’’s pupils–

Blue like hers, blue to blue, cleaner, purer.  
  
This smell. Blood, and dead bodies, and flowers.  
Towards the sky.  
Lotus flowers.  
Born from mud towards the sky. They make the world smell good.  
The world became colorful because he was in it. The world was painted all the wrong colors.  
But they were so, so right for her. He was like that flower. 

  
As she brought her body closer to his, the water swelled and started to overflow. Color bled colors from his wounds instead of blood. He painted drunkenly dots all over the surface of the water, and those colors took root and become flowers. And he was sleeping. And he was sleeping leaning back against her. And it’s nothing like she thought it would be, and not what she meant for it to be.

 _None of it is real, darling._ She wants to caress his face and reassure him that he is not alone, because she is not alone.  Maybe they will wake up. Maybe they will wake up together. Maybe if it gets too painful, they will both wake up and the dream will end and they can find their way back to the ‘reality’ that they were always searching for, and it would feel real -  this time

thistimethistimethistimethistimethistimethistimethistimethistimethistimethistimethistimethistime.  
  
She was disappointed. Then, she was bored. And that’s where everything changed. The distance between them, she meant. Growing apart slowly, even as their vines twisted around each other, and roots became entangled in the mud. 

She was here with him, bathing in a pool, water dotted with flowers. Bathing in flowers. With him. Born from dirty mud, growing up without light, watered with only dirty water. The light despised them and yet they were oddly pure, they just kept reaching for it. She wished for just a moment that she could be the light he kept reaching towards, but she knew she wasn’t. She knew that flowers meaning was _far from the one he loves._  
  
Rise from the murky, muddy waters, to bloom into a pure beautiful flower. People needed to strive to be more like an open flower, but her petals were always closed, becausefor the longest time, for all this time, she was hesitating and fretting like a small child, and hiding herself away. She watched him coquettishly from behind the flower as the petals masked her expression. 

Fully enveloped by unrequited love, she made herself comfortable. But, she was beginning to get uncomfortable with taking comfort in him. 

  
Oh, she was on another tangent again. Right, right, the flowers, and the colors, and him. He strived to be pure, and he strived for the light but she wanted to tell him he did not need it. All he needed was her.  
  
He blinked at her with those big, pure pupils.  
Those azure eyes.  
Exactly the same as when she first met him. And he ramined silent, watched. And she knew she was hurting him by locking him up in me, she knew she was trampling over flowers. She was the girl who tore apart flowers like him in her hands for fun and then threw them in the air.  
And yet, those eyes kept watching her.  
There was no pain in them.  
There was no pain, because he did not feel it.  
He did not hate her for what she was doing, because he did not see her. But for Junko, and her shriveled up heart, Kumagawa was moisture to her. Apathetic. Indifferent to everyone else. She met him. _It’s like I was breathing for the first time._ Breathing while drowning. Breathing while being dragged underneath the surface of pitch black water further and further from light. _This is such an awesome feeling._  
  
She could remember it even now. It wasn’t even love, it was just the feeling of being around him. Those were the first seeds planted deep into her pitch black chest where no light had ever reached. That was the desire that grew forth, a desire to connect.  
  
But she hated it. She hated his purity. The soft warmth of his presence. The smile he showed her even when she hurt him. Because he didn’t need to be pure. He could stay dirty if it meant staying himself. He didn’t need to become anything for her.Don’t change into a flower, just stay you.  
  
And she didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know, didn’t know how to say it. And she still didn’t know how to say it. But if he didn’t he would be gone soon. But even if she could not articulate, that feeling was still there.  
  
Because, love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love.  
  
Even when it’s dirtied.  
Even when it causes pain.  
It’s still love.  
  
At least on the surface of the mirror it looked like the two of them were together.  
  
“I hate it when we have sex.” 

『Jeez, I didn’t know I was that bad.』  
  
“Mmm,” She pulled her lips tight chiding, “No, I don’t hate that part, I was talking about y’know metaphorically-”

『Meta-for-what-now? Oh, I know, it’s that thing where everything is a metaphor for a dick.』  
  
“I mean you literally are the worst. Like. Ever. But I’m talking in metaphor. Metaphorically you’re the worst too, but that’s like, besides, the whole point, ya know?” 

『Are we being literal or metaphorical? Now you’re just confusing me.』  
  
“Stop interrupting my monologue, I was just getting to the good stuff, the really deep shit.” 

『Your entire life is a monologue. And can a shallow girl like you really say anything deep?』

 _He’s… trouble._ Her eyebrows twitched in annoyance. She felt so much she started to show something with her eyes, those fake glassy eyes of hers. “I’m afraid. When we’re together like that, I’m afraid when we fall apart. That, it’ll be the last time.” _You’re afraid aren’t you._ Many colors mixed together in Junko’s reflection, but not a single one thank into her. _I stumbled onto the realization. Even though I slept with him. That I can never be happy._

She got a good look at the distance between the two of them every time she was that close. She realized he was a separate individual from her. The joy of contact was fleeting. That wasn’t her goal. That was never her goal. She never even had such thoughts before. She didn’t even know, until she met him.   
 _  
_ _You know now, you are no longer able to go on without Misogi._ _  
_ _But Misogi is able to go on without-_  
  
She splashed the water suddenly into the mirror, causing her image to disappear for a second, and the water of the bath tub to overflow once more. The splashing caused the yellow rubber ducky in the water with them to become troubled and start to sink. She picked it up.  
  
“Theseus paradox.”

『Huh? Sorry, I don’t know what words mean.』  
  
“You take the ship apart one plank at a time, and replace it with another. At which point does it break. At which point is it no longer the argo. When does the original get destroyed and replaced by something else?”  
  
Just like that boy, a flower floating water, she removed the petals one at a time. And still he never stopped blooming for her. 

『Hey, Junko instead of talking philosopphy why don’t you just tell me what you’re feeling? You remember feelings, right?』  
  
“You know I have you chained up. Do you even care at all? You’re like so whatever about it.” 

『Mm, I’d rather not I guess.』  
  
“You guess?” 

He really was more childish than she expected. _He’s trouble. There’s a divide between us. He always acts like the mature one, and I thought that was true at first that he was a more ‘grown up’ me, so I thought that was made him more exciting, that he had an allure I could not comprehend, but the truth is he’s just a kid. Even so. I love him as he is. Just ashe is. Just like that._ She sighed, processing all those thoughts in less than a second. “If I chained up Muku-chan, you would do anything to stop me. But, no matter what I do to you, you just keep taking it. And it… and it’s so… and you hate me because I hurt other people but you’ve never once hated me for hurting you.” The words all came spilling out of her mouth in less than one second.

『Hey, Junko, could it be you’re a normal girl who feel things just like everybody else?』  
  
“Nah…Being an apathetic bitch is cool these days,” _I know what I’m doing is wrong. I know, it’s pointless and yet._ “If I don’t chain you down, you’ll just disappear and die somewhere I can’t see you, senpai.” 

  
But she was the one who did this. She was the one who took the things she loved and tore them apart so she could pin them down with her body and pretend they were hers. 

 

『You didn’t have to use real chains. You could have tried metaphorical ones.』  
  
_You don’t get it. You don’t get it. You don’t get it. I wanted to be. What you chained yourself to. I wanted to be the reason you stuck around._ “I don’t want that…. Don’a wanna, don’t wanna, don’t wanna…I just do not.” 

 _  
_ She looked into the mirror. She saw Ikusaba Mukuro, she saw Matsuda Yasuke, she saw Kumagawa Misogi, and here was the repeated image of love destroyed. 

 

『Sorry, Junko.』  
  
_No, you idiot don’t do that. No matter what I do to you you’re the only one to apologize. It isn’t you. You’re falling because I pushed you. You drowned in the river because I dragged you with me. You’re swimming. This is not harmless you are not breathing._ And all she could do was get angry with him, like he was the one making her do these things. Like he was provoking her.  
  
And she thought they would not need to do this, because they were the same. Because they were both in despair. She could recall the fun conversations they used to have. When with him, she was truly able to smile, and carry with her the burden of some stupid sentimentality everyone else had. It was a childish happines that probably appeared comical to others, but she just wanted those days back. When he was just as evil as her. Two lonely souls trying to make each other laugh, in the midst of a poorly written story together. 

 

“You should hate it.” 

  
The lotus flower.  
Overcame the pain of real life, and remained pure. But he was not a flower, and his heart was not one either, and it would stop beating if she sunk her hand deep into his chest to feel its warmth. 

 

“You should hate me..” 

 

『Mm, but what if I don’t?』  
  
“I don’t like it! I don’t like when nothing bothers you! You just don’t feel anything anymore!”” 

 

『But it really doesn’t bother me to be stuck in this room with you.』 _Liar._ 『If it doesn’t bother me, you won’t like me anymore?』  
  
“Yeah…”  
  
『I see. But I’ll still like you. I’ll keep liking you.』  
  
Junko grabbed him by the neck, and pushed him forward into the pure, clean water. Her fingers snagged on the white curtain near their bathtub, and she pulled it down and watched it fall like a fleeting curtain. Her Doll like hand went over his mouth, and she brought the razor blade to just below the adam’s apple of his neck. The water was overflowing again.  
  
“You coward.” Her fingers were shaking, with an emotion she never felt before. Her fingers trembled. Her fingers trembled with an emotion that she never felt before. “How much do I have to hurt you, until you realize…that you feel pain too.”  
  
Why?  
Why wasn’t he trying to save himself?  
Why wasn’t he trying to leave this room?  
Why did he tell everyone to leave him alone?  
Why did he want to be alone with her?  
  
Her.  
She was…  
She was so…

🧸

 

It would never wash away so she did not even try.  
She used to scrub her skin until it was raw trying to get some kind of clean feeling, but she gave up and decided to be dirty and it was a relief really.  
  
He was like that too. He was never going to be anything more than junk, so he never tried to be anything else. Well, he did try, but his act was so pitiful and see-through that nobody bought it even for a second. He just wanted to be accepted exactly as he was, he wanted to be loved for all of his annoying little traits, he wanted people to say _but that’s what I love about you_ …! 

  
If it was her she would rather be hated. She did not understand his preoccupation with being loved. Why he clung to past loves, to the idea of love for other people, even when it hurt him, even when it was hopeless.  
  
Being hated or being loved made no difference to her in the end, and being hated was just easier. There was nobody she ever loved, but there were plenty of people she hated. Just like that.  
  
She hated it.  
Miu thought as she gazed between the flowered tree branches.  
To see what others saw and she didn’t.  
She hated love.  
She always wondered why people could not see it the way she did?  
Maybe, if they did it would be a little bit easier.  
If at least one person understood her a little bit.  
  
But, that would mean tying herself up to someone else. And in the end, even if that touch was comforting, they would still be touching her. They would still have their hands on her. And the moment she was in an embrace she would be trapped.  
  
Connection was the opposite of freedom. It was wanting to be with someone, always, always, always, always. And that always turned into possessiveness. A sense of belonging rendered you into one of their belongings. They say mine, like it’s a cute affectionate thing, but they really see you that way.  
  
That was the love Souda so desperately wanted. That was the reality she saw when she was so young, the reality that everybody else got to live in denial of. If Souda had seen it, he would think the same way too.  
  
He still had his dreams, and she didn’t. That was the difference between them.  
  
She was crying, and he was not. Another difference.  
  
Because Monaca got annoyed with her. Because that girl spotted her weakness, and wanted to shut her up, so suddenly out of nowhere she grabbed the choker around her neck and dragged her down.  
  
“Why don’t you just choke and die, bitch? That’s all girls like you who are just pretty and nothing else can aspire to do anyway.”  
  
And even though Miu always reminded herself, that every part of her body had already been touched before. That there were hands around her neck, holding her even now. Even though she already knew, she felt it all over again in that moment. 

  
She saw white hair. And felt a rope around her neck. And heard the kindness in his voice. And knew this was the best she was going to get out of life. All she could hope for was a pleasant death. The only time someone gently touched her like that, was to strangle the life out of her.  
  
But, what scared her.  
What really scared her.  
Was that she wasn’t afraid.  
In fact she felt nothing at all.  
The reaper’s thin white hands, closed around her neck.

And she realized how little her life mattered, to her, or anybody else, this kind reaper might be the only one who truly ever cared.  
  
She was sure most people in her situation would see death as some kind of mercy, but the idea was so pathetic to her right there she suddenly decided she wanted to live. Out of spite if nothing else. 

 

So she ran. Yeah. It was fine spending her whole life running away, if that meant living. Anyway she was not secretly desiring anything. She was not one of those types who just wanted to be loved all along. She didn’t want any of that shit, seriously.  
  
She picked a fight with a middle schooler. And she lost. And she ran away like always. She ran and that boy chased her. Pink greasy hair, black jacket, goggles pulled over his forehead. He stood in her doorway, grinding his sharp teeth.

  
Kazucihi was a loser of course. A lifetime member of the loser’s club. He was lower than anybody else. But it’s not like he was the type of person to leave a girl crying right in front of him. Yeah, she cried. And she wanted to be comforted by a boy she had no interest in. She was so weak.  
  
Grind, grind.  
Scrape, scrape.  
Like grinding gears.  
  
“I-is it okay if I come into your room? If I’m being creepy just tell me.” That was one of the rules they had set, because Kazuichi genuinely could not notice it on its own. He stumbled over his own words. “I mean I know I should be self aware enough to notice it myself by now but like… you barely want to look at me, can you imagine how much I don’t want to look at me?”  
  
He noticed something was wrong when Miu did not take the obvious bait to make fun of him. She was crying, and she hated herself for crying, or showing any emotions in general. In her mind she was an unstoppable bitch, who was so unfeeling that nothing got to her anymore. And yet, that was not the reality. Everything she endured did not make her a strong person capable of handling anything, it just chipped away at her until she was unable to handle anything at all. 

And she was relying on the monkey boy in front of her for support. Miu was crying. No, it was more like her face had sprung a leak and it was all coming out, and she could not stop it.

Kazuichi hovered next to her, not saying a word. She swore. It wasn’t just her imagination. The two of them were close at one point. They always spent all of their time together. But maybe that was just because nobody else wanted to put up with them. They were just putting up with each other.   
  
She did not know if they were each other’s only friends, or if they were complete strangers. They always spent time together, but they never talked about deep or personal issues, and she never told him anything about herself that was true. Neither of them confronted each other about it either.  
  
_Why is that?_

 _Maybe, I’m just bored of him. That’s right, if it was all just to alleviate my loneliness, I can just talk to Keebo._ _  
_ _  
_ _I don’t need him anymore._

“I don’t really get why you’re sad, but I basically want to cry all the time always so you go ahead and let it out.” Kazuichi looked like he wanted to pat her back, but he stopped himself. He was afraid to touch her.  
  
“That’s because you’re a little bitch, I’m different, I’m the bitch.” 

Miu got the feeling that even if his precious Sonia was naked in front of him, Kazuichi would not make a single move. It was not about being loved at all, he just wanted to cling onto the idea that he could love others. He was after the happiness he might find with love, with just being with someone else, because his father had tricked him into thinking love would solve all of his life’s problems.  
  
She thought she would be at least a little bit smug, when he finally realized this. How useless love was. How the thing he desired all of his life changed absolutely nothing, and whether he was loved or not he would remain the same loser forever.  
  
Yet, Kazuichi smiled at her.  
His pointy-toothed smile.  
That loud, obnoxious, rude boy was trying to speak to her in a gentle voice.

 _Why?_ _  
_ _Why?_ _  
_ _What do I do?_

 _Just don’t do anything._ _  
_ _I don’t need him anymore._ _  
_ _I can let him go._

Miu only knew how to fake it, being confronted with the genuine thing was too much for her. It was easier to believe the genuine thing did not exist. Miu suddenly, closed the distance in between them crashing into him, like a wave, and pushing him down. Her mind disinterested and disconnected from her body, thought, _so much for subtly seducing him. Well whatever, I don’t do subtle._   _Bombast. Is more my style. You know like bomb ass? Yeahhhhhh, iIm not funny. I'm the least funny person on earth._

Her mouth was over his, and she licked the inside of his pointy teeth cutting her tongue on them. It was most likely Kazuichi’s first kiss, and he had been waiting for a girl to kiss him like this all his life, and yet all he did was stare forward in confusion.   
  
“Y-you can’t be serious,” he muttered into her lips.  
  
She wasn’t serious. She wasn’t serious at all. This was just amusement. This was just to take her mind off of things. He should be grateful, because this was his only chance to taste the real thing. 

 _I don’t need him anymore._  
  
She thought as she kissed him. As her tongue dragged over him. As she closed her eyes and shut out the tears that were falling from them. As she watched and delighted in his confused expression. As she overlapped her face with his.

 _I don’t need him anymore._  
  
She thought as she saw his face turn as pink as her hair. As she needed a breath, and panted into his chest as she had forgotten to breathe this whole time. Then immediately slammed their lips together again, forgetting again that she needed to breathe.  
  
_I don’t need him anymore._  
  
She thought, as Souda finally kissed her back. As she felt tickled, by his trembling lips. As his whole body shook from lack of confidence. As he rolled over on top of her, and tried his best to make up for inexperience and having no idea what he was doing. 

 _This feels so good._  
She thought as she was a mess underneath him. 

 _In ways that don’t really matter._  
  
And she rolls on top once more, and Kazuichi stopped. And she has no idea why he stopped, because this is the validation he wanted his whole life. He just wanted one person to think he was worth while, to think he was useful, so he should be happy getting used.  
  
And her shirt was already off but she did not realize it. He was not even looking. Her goods were on display and he could not have any less interest. His eyes were on her face, and he did not look away, even when tears welled up in his eyes. He reached up to caress her chin with his calloused hands, like he was some kind of fucking romantic and she wanted to laugh at him.  
  
“Don’t make a face like that…”  
  
“You mean a super dead sexy gorgeous face?”  
  
Huh?  
What face was she making?  
She was in the mood. She was giving him what he wanted.  
So, why did he suddenly stop?  
Was she still crying? Well, that was fine because in a moment she would feel so good she would forget she was ever sad.  
  
“What is it? Why are you making a face like that? Tell me. I’ll do anything for you.” 

He said, fingers still cradling the side of her face. He wanted to touch her but he was afraid to touch her. He was afraid, that just like his father, he was going to beat whatever he loved with a wrench until they left him.  
  
And she wanted to be touched but she was afraid of being touched.  
She was miserable.  
She felt pathetic.  
She hated being around him, the person who reminded her the most how pathetic she was.

Yet, unknowingly, she began to enjoy his presence.  
The thing she once found unbearably annoying, she laughed off.   
The truth was.

At the moment he said that.  
Miu wanted to break down crying, and beg Kazuichi to save her.  
  
“Why couldn’t it be you?” 

Miu asked, her face still full of tears and Kazuichi had no idea how to respond.  
  
“Why couldn’t you be my prince?” 

She collapsed next to him. When he tried to leave, she grabbed him by the wrist and would not let go. So, he laid in bed next to her. He used to fantasize about being in bed with Sonia, about being so close she could hold her, and squeeze her, and nestle himself in her warmth. Yet, here he was in bed with another girl, and he did nothing. He did not so much as move.

He just waited there hands crossed over his stomach, until she finally fell asleep. When he heard the sound of her peaceful breaths, he smiled. He did not know anything about her at all, or how she felt, or what she had suddenly initiated but he still smiled nonetheless.

  
You were supposed to get flowers for a girl, right?  
  
If he wanted to make flowers, he would have to assemble them from nuts and bolts. The only flowers that would survive in his hands were artificial ones. If he wanted to color them, he would have to use neon lights, or maybe spray paint.  
  
He would never be able to give her real flowers, but maybe fakes were fine.  
If they both knew it was fake.  
  
As he thought of that he drifted off to sleep next to her.

🧸

Kaede wanted to see the garden again.  
Even if it was just an illusion, or a dream, she was fine. All she needed was to glimpse it again for even a moment. If she could keep it in her heart, then she could keep playing piano even if she was all alone.  
  
Shuichi Saihara sat next to her and tried to keep p with her playing. He was diligent and serious as always, and yet a small smile showed on his face, like a budding flower reluctant to bloom. But every note they played together, was another seed, that made the garden bloom around them.  
  
His eyes. His eyes. His eyes. Shuichi’s colorless eyes were crystal clear water for the flowers. The way they glistened looking at her. She should scold him for ignoring the sheet music, but she didn’t.   
He was just following her lead. Like the day they first met, when he stayed by her the whole time, following her around as they met with everybody. Like the first week where they spent almost every second they could together.   
  
The music they were playing had a certain color to its timbre, it was different from the music Kaede played solely to make other people smile. It was the music of a rose colored romance.  
  
Shuichi saw her. He stared at her. As Kaede’s blonde hair, shining like the sun seemed to elongate at the moment. As it slowly wrapped around his feet and traveled up his body. As flowers grew from her hair, slowly opening with the sunlight. Kaede was so talented she did not even need to look at her fingers as they played the keys, so she drifted, closer, closer, closer to Shuichi. She drifted towards his face as if the wind carried her, she was a single flower petal in the breeze completely helpless. 

 _I think. I never should have met you._  
  
She thought, with the music as her backdrop, expressing her feelings better than the words ever could. If only she did not need words. If only the person she wanted to understand the most, could have understood her through her playing alone. 

 _Not good._ _  
_ _This is not good._ _  
_ _I play for everybody._ _  
_ _I want everybody to smile. But, you’re not a part of the crowd Shuichi._

 _The distance between me and others, is being totally shattered._ _  
_ _I can’t stop seeing you._ _  
_ _Even if you were in a crowd of thousands, you were the only one I would see._ _  
_

That as it. She likes everybody, but Shuichi Saihara was no longer a part of everybody. He was an existence that belonged by her side. She wondered when it happened. One week, suddenly became one month, and then it felt like they had always been at each other’s sides.  
  
Sure, they were quick friends who got along well but what exactly was next. That was suddenly when it struck her, like a spark that ignited her garden, ruining the peace she had inside of her just staring at the flowrs.  
  
She stopped playing and slammed her ten fingers down on a dissonant chord.  
_That’s right._ _  
_ _Shuichi confessed to me._ _  
_ _And I haven’t responded._  
  
She could say that there was more important things to do because they were in a killing game right now. But, that would be like refusing to think of the future. She was forced to now, because she had killed Kirigiri, and Kumagawa and Korekiyo died instead of her. If she wasted the life of hers that had been spared then there was no way she could face all of her friends in the afterlife.  
  
It ward getting harder and harder for her to picture a future without Shuichi by her side. She had to admit that. It was so strange she lived her whole life alone up until this point, and even after the person she played piano with in the garden left her she still managed to keep living. Yet, now after meeting him, she suddenly realized how lonely her life had been until this point.  
  
Part of her wished she had never met him. That way she could go on smiling, and performing for everybody, and thinking she was happy living like that. The moment she met him, something in her changed, and her feelings changed, and she did not want to admit that.  
  
If she belonged to one person, she would not belong to everybody anymore.  
  
She wanted to just keep playing music with him, and disappear into the music itself but she could not bring herself to. Shuichi stared confused, unable to read her face. 

 _I’m sure if I told you, you would forgive me._ And she would no longer need to hide under the blue hat she borrowed from him. _But. I can’t forgive myself._

That was not the girl she was supposed to be. She was supposed to be optimstic for Shuichi. Someone who got along with everyone. Someone who saw everyone as a friend they could get along with. Someone who did not worry about the past, only looking forward. She, wanted so badly, to be the hero that Shuichi saw her as. 

So.  
_Why?_ _  
_ _Why?_ _  
_ _Why?_

Why did she become a murderer. If the whole time she was plotting to kill the mastermind, why was she able to sit next to Shuichi with a smile on her face? Did she feel nothing at all about lying to him.  
  
Kokichi’s voice whispered in her ear. 

 _You said you like people._ _  
_ _In other words, you're not attached to anyone in particular. You can trample over their entire worlds like it’s nothing. You were ready to murder one of us._  
  
And she, was struck with so much grief that her heart shattered to pieces. It was like Kokichi already knew, that she had trampled someone in the past. That because she was born, another person’s dreams were destroyed.  
  
Shucihi was worried about her sudden silence, but too shy to bring it up. Before either of them could speak up in that awkward air, at that moment a reaper stepped into their garden and flowers died at his feet.

“I know a person like me is out of place in such a beautiful scene, but it really warms my heart to see you practicing your talent even when we’re trapped here,” Komaeda said, his hand on his chest, though Kaede wondered for a moment if he felt anything at all or if his chest was just hollow.  
  
It was a mean thing to think, she felt a little bit bad about that. She liked everyone, so she tried to like Komaeda too, or at least she tried to keep her distance so she could remain friendly.  
  
“You really like my playing?” Kaede said, completely forgetting about everything else for a moment. She jumepd off the bench and got in Komaeda’s face. For once, Komaeda thought somebody else besides him was clearly bad at picking up on social cues. “You like talent, so does that mean you know a lot about music? I’ve been dying for someone to talk about music with.”  
  
Dying. Komaeda wanted to laugh. He was a shinigami, true, but most people were not dying to do anything with him. Kaede must have been an exceptionally kind person, to suddenly take an interest in him. “Actually, I only came by to investigate. I heard your wonderful playing Akamatsu-san, but somebody else was clumsily playing along with you and mucking up your sound.” 

His eyes settled on Shuichi Saihara. Komaeda smiled at him pleasantly. He looked almost innocent, like an angel, someone who had no bad intentions whatsoever towards the world. Yet, his mouth contradicted that the moment he opened it. “Oh, I thought it was you Saihra-kun. Are you clinging off of Akatamsu-san’s hope like some kind of parasite as usual? It’s too bad, you have such a fantastic talent but you can’t do a single thing on your own.”  
  
“Hey, you be quiet about Saihara-kun-”  
  
Komaeda walked over to the piano, and with his long fingers stretched over the keyboard and played the part Shuichi had just played, by ear, and a much better version at that. It was still nothing compared to Kaede’s playing, but Komaeda was clearly someone who had played before.  
  
Kaede forgot about everything else, and listened to his playing. That music was better than words for communicating someone’s feelings after all, but, in Koameda’s playing, that sounded more like a requiem than anything else she thought the notes sounded oddly lonely. As if his playing was a duet with one of the seats empty.  
  
“Ah, usually I would never sully an ultimate’s talent lab like this but seeing as Saihara-kun's been playing this piano too, I thought I would demonstrate to him where his talents would best be served.” Komaeda waved his skeletal hands, flippantly in Siarah’s face. “If you want to clean these piano keys after I leave that’s understandable, but even if Saihara-kun is an ultimate and naturally better than me playing piano with you is a waste of his time Akamatsu-san. Especially if someone like me can play better than him.”  
  
Shuichi expected Kaede to get fiery like normal. She never took anything from anybody, and had a tendency to steam roll people. She was the exact opposite of Komaeda, of someone so faded it was like they could disappear every second. Yet, Kaede was being oddly quiet. “This is a death game, it’s the perfect place for a detective to hone their talents, and you’re the only one left Saihara-kun. Why are you stealing away Saihara-kun from everybody else just so you can keep him for yourself, don’t you think that’s selfish Akamatsu-san? We could all die because of your selfishness.”  
  
Kaede said nothing.  
  
“That’s right you see, Kirigiri-san asked me to watch over you Saihara-kun. Well if there was some kind of piano based puzzle, or if a piano was used as a murder weapon I can see this being useful, but don’t you think the time you spend with her is going to waste?”  
  
Kaede said nothing.  
  
“Why do you want him all to yourself, Akamatsu-san?”  
  
Kaede.  
Said.  
Nothing.  
  
“Akamatsu-san, you’re the one who thinks of everybody else before her self, right? In the first round, I really admired that selflessness of yours. Are you even thinking of the future anymore, of escaping out of here, or did you give up?”  
  
Shuichi Saihara stood up suddenly. He looked for a moment like he was going to throw a fist at Komaeda to defend her. Instead he swiftly bowed his head down. “I’m sorry it looked like we were just fooling around, Komaeda-kun. I know how useless I look, but I’m serious about this. I want to be the one to make Akamatsu-san’s dream come true.”  
  
The dream of them all escaping together, of them being friends afterwards. The dream she had given up on, Shuichi was still fighting for. He believed in her far more than she believed in herself. Komaeda grabbed the side of his face. “I’ve made an ultimate bow to me, I really don’t know when to shut up. I should be the one groveling.”  
  
“Um, it’s okay. You were just speaking your mind. You’re trying to help us, aren’t you Komaeda-kun?”  
  
Ah, so that boy was Makoto.  
He saw the worst in himself and the best in others.  
  
When Komaeda left the room. When they were alone again, Kaede wanted to tell him. She was supposed to be the brave one between the two of them, but it was Shuichi who spoke his true feelings, it was Shuichi who was always standing up for her, while she could only be true to herself when he looked away from her.  
  
She wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him about how her mother loved piano. She wanted to tell him about the girl who used to play by her side in the garden. Maybe, if she told him Shuichi would feel like his feelings were returned, maybe he would understand that he was the only one she trusted in this game anymore. Maybe, she would be able to say those feelings instead of just hoping he understood them through her music.  
  
That she was a prisoner now handcuffed to him, and he was the detective responsible for her for the rest of her life.  
  
“He was right,” Kaede said. She wanted the music between them to be beautiful, and yet she played such an ugly, and sour note. “I… I’m using you. I didn’t say anything to respond to your feelings at all, and yet, the idea that you like me makes me so happy.” 

There was someone who resented her. Someone who was always by her side and stared at her with eyes of hatred. That was why it was so comfortable to see Shuichi’s soft gaze upon her.

 _I loved playing in that room like an enclosed cocoon._ _  
_ _It was sun-deprived and completely soundproofed._ _  
_ _There wasn’t anything in there, nothing but the two of us together, but with two birds in the cage I forgot there was any bars. And there was music. There was music for the birds to sing along to._

 _But in spite of all of that there was unbearable pain._  
  
She remembered a hand intertwining with her own. When that hand let go of hers, she so desperately wanted to hold it again. _As long as I… continue with music… will  we still be connected somehow?_  
  
But the person she wanted so badly to play by her side never came back. Instead, a boy appeared and took her hand. Shuichi looked at her, watching her carefully, with at discerning gaze of his. “It’s fine… because I’d do anything to make you happy.”  
  
His sincere feelings, sharper and clearer than any music she could play. _I gotta apologize. I gotta tell him. I gotta stop hiding secrets for him._ She thought, but her mouth did not move, because she did not want to ruin the moment between them. So, she buried her face in Shuichi’s chest again, and listened to the rhythm of his beating heart more dependable than any metronome.

 _If only I had met you sooner._  
The piaist played a chord of lament in her head, because the revelation of these feelings had come far too late.  
_If I only I had met you in any place besides a killing game._

🧸

 

『 _Hey, hey, teacher can an insane person save someone?_ 』  
『 _I’ve learned the answer to that question over and over again._ 』  
『 _Teacher, I have another question_ .』  
『 _Can an insane person save another insane person?_ 』

Kumagawa asked the question in an upside down classroom, but as usual the teacher ignored him. 

A mirage. An illusory scene. Light gets bent by temperature differences in the air, and the original scene appears in a different place, stretched out or compressed, or turned upside down… a twisted, false image. 

His smile was just an frown flipped up. Something like that. If he thought about it that way he could continue to smile. He just needed to deny the reality, and he could survive anything. If your suffering wasn’t your own, if it was in a storybook, or it was being in a dream, or you were watching it happen to someone else it became bearable. He was trapped here in this room with Junko, but the real Kumagawa Misogi was not here, he was somewher else.  
  
Junko’s right, in fact. She usually is. She turned the screw real good this time.  
She may be right, intellectually, about everything, but those feelings are still there and she just doesn’t feel them the way that he does. He was afraid. He was afraid of all the time he wore this mask.   
  
He covered his eyes with both hands, and then he went blind.  
Underneath the mask, a darkness as absolute as the word implies. He himself was in suspension, he was just hanging there. He could not see anything, nothing of his real face, but he feels it. All kinds of, somehow bizzare feelings.  
  
_Where is this? What is this blackness?_ A feeling bizzareley heavy, utterly unlike the emptiness that he is supposed to feel. An  oppressive feeling. The weight of the mask on his face, that was supposed to free him, becoming glued to his skin underneath. Unable to remove it without ripping the skin off.  
  
And all of these feelings and he could not describe a single one to them.  
It was pain, but he was always in pain and she already knew that, but something made this pain much worse. He could call it existential pain but that would just be pretentious.  
  
When he spoke he heard his own voice, a truly awful sound.  
When he felt his skin, when he realized he was wearing his own skin, a truly awful feeling.  
Truly awful, to the point where he noticed it, it was impossible to bear. A terrible confusion, aware and yet not aware, blind and yet seeing too much. He was at the edge of his endurance, and Junko kept pushing him farther.  
  
He felt the edge of the razor blade against his neck, but could not speak because Junko’s doll fingers were shoved into his mouth.  
  
The real Kumagawa, Junko was looking so desrepately to find was not at all interesting how she built him up in his head. He was just someone who could not deal with reality.  
  
Even with an edge pressing against his throat, he just pretended like it never happened. He never actually endured anything. Not one thing. He just ignored it. And that was why he was so stupid.  
  
But that was fine. Because there was no way this was reality. He smiled with his lips still concealed by Enoshima’s hand.  
  
It’s a dream, a dream, a dream, a dream, not reality, a dream, everything, everything, imaginary, a lie, a dream, a lie, a dream, a lie, an illusion, imaginary, a lie, a dream, an illusion, a dreamlike illusion is a lie and imaginary.  
  
He was not chained up here.  
He wanted to be with her.  
He felt no pain.  
He had no mother.  
He and no father.  
There was no Kaiki.  
There was no Ajimu.  
He did not miss Kurokami medaka.  
He did not miss matsuda.

There was no one.  
There was no one else in the whole world except for him and Enoshima Junko.  
  
None none none none none none none none. There was nothing. There was no meaning. See, there was nothing. There was nothing inside him or outside of him.  
  
He didn’t know why this was happening. He didn’t know what was going through Junko’s head. He didn’t know why she was doing this to him. He didn’t know why this was happening to him. He didn’t know. He didn’t understand,. He was ignorant. He was innocent. He was just caught up in all of this. He didn’t want this to happen. He didn’t mean for things to turn out this way. Why in the world was he having this nightmare?  
  
That was why.  
That was why.  
That was why this wasn’t his fault.  
  
He was still innocent, phew. For a moment he worried he was in the wrong there. He was still sane. Of course he was sane. So, it had to be a dream. If he just woke up, he would go back to his normal life, and joke around at school with Junko the next day the same way they did the day before that.  
  
No matter what happened…  
He could keep lying to himself.  
He could keep smiling. 

But that was a lie.  
  
The razor blade was already covered in blood, but it was not from his neck but rather his fingers. He had gripped it impulsively and pulled it out of her hand. He was not sure how he got from point a to point b because his mind whited out there for a second, but now they were both out of the tub dripping wet on the tile floor and he was holding her face down into the tile the razor still in his hand. 

He wondered if she expected him to scream. She expected him to go wild if she provoked him enough. But he always did the opopsite of what she wanted. He could not give voice to his scream. His throat had clogged long ago with the tears and snot he spent his whole life swallowing. 

He spoke.  
Cooly. Gently as always. Like water. His words washed over her.  
『It’s okay Junko, you just don’t know how to love me right? It’s not your fault, nobody taught you. Nobody ever scolded you before.』  
  
This was no dream.  
It wasn’t a dream.

It was real.  
  
He brought the razor blade to his throat, and dragged it across, and the pain was undoubtedly real. Why was he hurting again? Why did things turn out this way? Whose fault was this? 

He touched his fingers to the gash in her throat. The one scar on her body. Her flawless body, his scarred body, marked for all of his flaws. They were naked but oddly in that moment neither of them felt anything sexual at all.  
  
It was just like.  
There was nowhere for either of them to hide.  
That was the feeling.  
  
『But, it’s fine because I don’t really know either. We match.』He carved up his throat to look just like hers, but he made sure the wounds were only skin deep. 

His eyes.

Blue.  
Pure.  
His smile.  
Pure.

And rather than fight against her for suddenly pulling a knife on his throat. He embraced her. He wrapped his arms around her, with nothing in between their bodies, and no flush of embarrassment, and no heat to burn themselves on, just a comforting warmth. He muttered into her hair. 『Junko, you’re mourning the relationship we used to have, but I’m still right here you know. Can’t you feel me?』  
  
“God, do idiots ever learn? I trapped you here, you know!” 

『Hmm, did you? I can’t remember. But anyway you’re ignoring my choices. What if I choose to let myself get trapped, what if I choose to stay in here. It’s not your fault, it’s my fault. Yesyes.』  
  
“Why would you ever want that-?”

『You’re scared, aren’t you? The one trapped in this room isn’t me. You want to hide yourself in this room, don’t you?』Kumagawa, his voice, his smile, accepted everything about her, understood her exactly in the way she wanted to be understood. 『If I weren’t here, you’d be lonely..』

He just wanted to suffer for the sake of someone else. He said he wanted it to be her, but it did not have to be her, it could be anybody. She was just the one in his arms right now, and part of her wanted to stay there forever.  
  
“It’s too bad you’ve tried this trick way too many times before, senpai. You harm yourself, you let someone hurt you, and then you forgive them right in front of their eyes, and you comfort them when you’re the one that’s in pain.” Junko rolled her eyes as she remained still in his embrace.”It’s a strategy, a move you tried to use against me, ergo despite all you’re pretending you’re still playing this game with me.” 

『No, I don’t do strategies that involves thinking.』  
  
“Ugh, my brain can’t even malfunction properly. Being this crazy is supposed to make me worse at thinking not better, you know all the stuff about you that confused me before I see it a lot clearer now.”  
  
『...』

Even if she were to kill him. He would spout confess love to her, while she stabbed him through the chest. He would pull her closer and hug her, so, so tightly. And he would yell that he loved her. Over, and over. Even as she reached towards his heart. “See, senpai it’s just like I said. You’re manipulating people. So they like you. So they don’t leave you. And in the end you’d manipulate me too.”  
  
『...』  
  
“From the beginning you-!” 

『No, it wasn’t like that.』

“...Eh? Kind of ruining my momentum here. I was about to take my victory lap with a cool speech.” 

『No, she wasn’t like that. She wasn’t always like that. We were really having fun. She felt the same way that I did, I was so sure. Hey, hey, Junko, what happened to the kind and considerate Anshin’in-san that everybody loved…?』  
  
“Okay, even I think that’s an off topic tangent-”  
  
Kumagawa grabbed her shoulders and shook her gently, as if pleading, as if urging. 『She looked so happy. Why… why did her smile go away? Was it my fault? Did I… did I do something…? I still don’t know why… she stopped smiling.』

Kumagwa said something incomprehensible. Although, it wasn’t like Kumagawa had ever said omething she could comprehend. He stood up suddenly, still dripping. It seemed like whatever had possessed him for a moment, had alraedy gone away, the temporary flicker in his eyes drowned out like a match underwater. 

『Ah, what a mess...』He scratched at his wet hair, as if this were just simply awkward for him. 『We should cool down a little bit. I’ll talk to Junkai-chan for awhile.』  
  
_Can an insane person save another insane person?_  
The answer seemed so obvious that only an insane person would bother to ask the question to begin with.   
  
Enoshima Junko turned her head around. She saw a girl holding a stuffed bear, dragging it along by its arm, her hair tied up in two red pig tails. Mukuro was not with her time, because she had made her sister cry for no reason at all. 

“Oh well. You’ll never go back to the way things were. It’s all your fault.”  
  
“I don’t want things to stay the same forever anyone, that would be boring.”  
  
She was just one girl, standing alone in the rain, thoroughly soaked. And the rain washed all of her colors away. Though, she never had any colors to begin with. She looked as discolored as the old stuffed bear, missing half of its stuffing, that she held at her side.  
  
“There you go again… You know, you kept saying that you were just Ajimu-san’s replacement, but it’s not that at all. He thought you were different from her. That’s why he fell in love with you. But in the end, you’re no different from that woman! You’re scum! Congratulations! Now you get to feel unmitigated despair at the awfulness of your own existence.”  
  
Rain kept falling.  
And she laughed.  
  
“Upupupu!”  
  
She laughed.  
No, she wasn’t laughing.  
She was being laughed at.  
  
She thought she was different from other people. She thought she saw through them. She thought she wanted something different from them. But in the end she was see-through. The flowers she thought she was trampling on, tearing up and destroying, she just wanted one of her own.  
  
She was so.  
She was so...  
Laughable.   
Selfish indulgent love’s joke.   
And the feeling that hit her right now, far after it was too late was the punchline. 


	66. Everybody is Lonely

**Book 3: Thin-Ice Suicide Lovers  
** **Chapter 12: Everybody is Lonely**

 _You don’t need to be strong to survive._ _  
_ _You just have to keep your heart shut or else they’ll break it._ _  
_ _I’m going to lock my feelings away in the deepest, darkest place I can._ _  
_ _I don’t care if anyone ever finds out._  
  
🧸

Hey!  
It’s Tsumugi here! I know nobody was missing me but here I am anyway.  
  
What’s the difference between a crow and a raven? Crows travel in larger groups. Ravens only ever travel in pairs. They probably can’t stand other ravens that much.  
  
A solitary crow would be odd, but nobody is surprised by a solitary raven.  
  
Crows laugh. Several crows gather, perching on trees, one after another. The number of other birds and bird calls drop dramatically because they’re afraid. Then they all laugh at once, raucous, murderous laughter.  
  
They scavenge in trash bags in the city. They fly after kids in parks, and peck at their heads, bullying them. If enough of them gathered around a human their beaks are strong enough, they could rip their flesh off with their beaks, and claw out their eyes.  
  
A lone crow on his own was not that much of a threat.  
Especially if he was a water-soaked drowned crow.  
Not compared to a raven the size of a small hawk.  
Multiple crows might harass a single raven, but a single crow would probably just get eaten.  
Was it cannibalism if the two similar-looking birds devoured one another?  
Feathers and all, one black was swallowed by a greater black. 

Ravens cannot laugh the same way crows do. They make a noise low, and cracked, like something dead is crawling out of their throat. That must have been why the boy (the raven) in front of him, laughed like he was dying. 

『Ahaaaaaah! Ahahahahaha! I’m finally popular. Even though  I’m ugly, have a bad personality, and have a foul sense of morals, I’ve always secretly wanted to be popular you know?』  
  
“You’re not popular at all, Kumagawa-chan. You’re just a sideshow attraction, everybody wants to see the freak.”

『Are you jealous Kokichi-chan? You look like the type of boy who dreamed of running away to the circus when you were younger.』

“You figured me out. You’re really smart. You totally trolled me you're the smartest guy here aren't you? You're just pretending to be a moron who was brain dead even before his skull got crushed.  You may look like a flibbertigibbet who wastes air just by breathing and constantly assaults others eardrums with the ugly noise that comes out of your mouth, but secretly you’re controlling us all from the shadows aren’t you?”

『All of the lies I told were worth it… I’ve finally tricked someone into thinking I was cool.』  
  
“I was obviously joking. God, why are we even talking?  Ugly. Smelly. Nincompoop.” 

『Nincompoop? That’s just bullying.』 _You sure are using a lot of big words to call me an idiot._ Kumagawa sighed.  
  
“Oh no, oh no! Please don’t call me a problematic meanie! Please, please, please, I still want to have friends. Wait, nope, I don’t because I hate all of you! This is a killing game. This is what we’re supposed to do in a killing game.”

『Ah! What? We’re in a killing game? That’s scaaaaaaaaary! Why didn’t anybody tell me!』

The raven had a cahin around his taloned foot.  
And could not take flight.

But, Kokichi knew if they ever flew together in the same sky.

It would be called a murder most foul.  
  
Kumagawa opened his wide eyes, they were an incomprehensible blue, a perfect blue, Kokichi found them difficult to look at. They were like water, but the kind of water you found a dead corpse floating in, and nothing grossed him out more than death (that was the truth).  
  
Kokichi thought Kumagawa was gross. That was the first feeling that gripped him.  
Grossly stinky!  
Grossly yucky!  
Grossly gross!  
  
Kumagawa saw.  
First was black, then white. They were flickering and mixing together - black white, blackwhite, whiteblackwhite, without becoming gray - in CR TVS on screen, a nonsense image, that looked like the feeling of going mad, that was a phenomenon called ‘the sandstorm’. It was black and white on a screen, alternating, dancing, entangling themselves.  
Kumagawa thought of that, black and white, as he stared at Kokichi’s scarf.  
  
Kumagawa’s hair was white, but one day he saw a man like dead tree, with crows laughing in its twisted branches, and bark so rotted it started to turn black. Ever since he met that man, he decided to paint himself black. 

His black hair.  
His black clothes.  
He painted over his white self with black.  
He painted over his face. Black. And that became a mask over his feelings. 

He liked it.  
『 _Darker and darker._ 』  
『 _I’m getting painted over._ 』

It was fun. 

Kokichi. The laughing skeleton. The lying skeleton.  
Painted in white, he looked so much easier for Kumagawa to stain. 

Kumagwa could heard it, his bones were shaking, _clack, clack, clack, clack._

He was sure when Kokichi looked at him, he saw nothing. Because black absorbs all light. It absorbed all colors, without ever changing its color. 『Oh, maaaaaaaan! You’re sweating. What is this crap? Don’t get worked up playing all these pathetic games, third string antagonist!』  
  
“Some of us are actually playing seriously.” 

『That doesn’t sound fun. If you’re not having any fun why are you playing?』  
  
“Hey, how about you really throw me a curve ball and say something useful for a change."    
  
For a crude child. For a bully. He talked oddly childish and cute, ke an antique doll on a shelf. His jet black hair that shone glossy in the lone light, those dark eyes the size of buttons, his painted on smile. Trembling and scared, but staring directly at him. The kind of precious thing you wanted to hide away in a toy box forever.  
  
Even Kumagawa thought so. 

『 _He’s so pretty._ 』His smile widened. 『 _I want to mess him up, defile him._ 』

『Oh, I get it. You’re not having any fun because you’re playing alone, right?』  
  
“Wow, you’re hearing things nobody said. I thought it would be fun to see you go a little bit crazy, but look at you, you’ve gone the full flap-jack whacko.” 

『Don’t worry! I’ll do something that will be useful to you. You need to act more like a villain and I can help!』

Kumagawa’s mask was just a big black x, painted crudely over his face. Not only that, because he had no face. Because his face did not matter. Because none of his expressions were the real thing. So he smeared paint over his face and forgot about it. 

Wait, why was it just him?  
Why did he have to keep wearing this mask on his face?  
Oh, that was right everybody else’s faces were crossed out too. They were all wearing masks. 

Oh, phew then he wasn’t alone.  
He was lonely, of course, but everybody is lonely underneath their masks. It was normal to be lonely. What a relief, he almost got worried for a second there. 

Kokichi said with no face, “No wonder nobody likes you. You’re not a fun and lovable scamp like me. You think somebody whose whole life was a joke would be a little bit funnier, but nooooooo…! Oh, and just so you know, everybody’s laughing at you, not with you.” 

『Kokichi-chan is always so kind. That’s what makes you such a piss poor villain. Oh, and I’m not talking some cliche line like kindness is a weakness, I mean what I say.』  
  
“Ewe. Who wants to mean what they say? I don’t mean anything I say, ever.” 

『Choosing to be kind, means choosing to be vulnerable. So I hope you’re reaaaaaally careful., because if you keep going like this you won’t be able to remain cute.』  
  
“That’s a lie! I’m going to be cute forever!” Kokichi genuinely seemed offended by that insult. “Oh, I get it, you’re going to say ‘I used to be kind and I ended up this way, this is what happens to kind people’ or something like that.” 

『Nope! I don’t think that at all! I’m this way because bad things happen to bad people.』  
  
“If you’re a villain, then what were you thinking when you saved Amami-kun?” 

『Hmm, what are you talking about Kokichi-chan? Villains can’t save anyone. I didn’t-』

  
“He’s alive because of you, so keep your smelly breath, in your dirty mouth! All that noise you make is so obnoxious I want to drive a screwdriver into the side of my head, and twist it, until I can pull out my eardrums.” 

 _Kokichi is very descriptive. He should try creative writing sometime._ 『It’s not my fault..I just tripped and pushed him over. I’m so clumsy.』Kumagawa rapped himself in the head and stuck his tongue out.

“What were you thinking?” 

『I don’t think!』Kumagawa tilted his head, uncanny. 『It’s like you said, I'm a useless idiot Kokichi-chan, an artless fool, yep, yep, nobody would make any art of me.』

 _That’s not what that means._ Kokichi thought.

Kumagawa saw Kokichi’s shaking hands. Those hands were so fragile, he could see one of the fingers easily breaking off. A sickening thought rose in his mind. That, breaking Kokichi was all he could do. That it was all he was good for after all. That ultimately, that was the only choice. 『 _I can’t help it, I’m just like this normally._ 』No, that was not right.  
  
He was Kumagawa Misogi.  
He wore the mask of a devil. So why was he hesitating? The mask was separate from the real him underneath. The mask must protect the real him. He should not hesitate. Even if this mask broke, even if it fell off of him, he would just put on another mask; That was right, so he should not worry at all. He was Kumagawa Misogi, the boy who sat alone atop a pile of masks.  
  
『You’re way too trusting, Kokichi-chan!』  
  
“Well, actually I’m the exact opposite, but watching an idiot run his mouth like he knows anything at all really never stops being funny.” 

『But you’re always around him aren’t you?』

“So what?” 

『A villain doesn’t need the power of friendship.』  
  
“You got me. I’m actually just like Akamatsu-san, I want us all to work together and be buddy buddy, but don’t tell anyone, it would be really embarrassing.” 

『A villain won’t be saved by anybody. They’ll all fall eventually when struck down by a hero and nobody will catch them.』

“God, are you so stupid you can’t even process words anymore? Let me try speaking stupid at you, oogly boogly boo! Gabbedy gook!” 

『But you want him to catch you, don’t you? Nobody in their right mind would trust you, but you want to be trusted anyway.』

“...”  
  
Kokichi remembered, the dark scene in a hallway.  
Maki fell and Kaito caught her.  
And Kokichi watched, alone.  
  
『You want to keep lying, and you want him to believe in you, even when you lie.』

“God, why are you so annoying? Who told you? Who told you about me and Momota-chan?”  
  
Kokichi screamed.  
Kumagawa smiled.  
Unlike Kokichi, he was pleasant and easy to get along with. 『You just did right now! Thanks for that!』

 _A childish trick like that?_ Kokichi thought.  _  
_ _  
_ Kumagawa already decided. He needed more masks. Another mask for his pile. That was why he would reach forward, and still Kokichi’s right off of his face. That was what he did. He met a girl with a beautiful face, and ripped her mask off, and wore it for awhile until he got bored of it. Then he discarded it and found another one, and he kept living that way.『Well, maybe you don’t actually want to be a villain. Maybe what you really wanted all along was to be friends with Kaito-chan! If you did I’d be really happy for you. To tell you the truth, I never wanted to be a villain, all I’ve ever wanted was just one friend to treat me normally.』

“You’re not taking this seriously at all, are you?”

Kumagawa felt insulted. He loved shonen jump, so of course he knew the power of friendship was the most formidable force in the universe. It was no good for a friendless unpopular loser like him.  
  
Wait, no was Kokichi talking about something else?  
What wasn’t he taking seriously?  
Life, or death, or black, or white, or maybe both?  Well either way he would laugh.  
No matter what he would laugh. As long as he could laugh the mask was still on.  
Maybe he wasn’t trying to preserve his real self. His normal self.  
Maybe he was just trying to preserve the mask.

Then, his real self could rot for all he cared.  
And he found it harder and harder to care, as time kept passing.  
  
『You have to go crazy sometimes, right? Nobody can be serious all the time.』

“Senpai, you so silly! If I follow you’re advice I’ll get locked up just like you!” 

『Nobody will lock you up, Kokichi-chan...』  
Kokichi heard the noise of a heavy door swinging shut.  
『Because you already do that to yourself!』

 

🧸

 

 _I have it barred with lock after lock._ _  
_ _I have it sequestered to the deepest recesses_ _  
_ _Somewhere not even light can reach._ _  
_ _Somewhere cold, quiet and dark._

 

🧸

 

Komaeda looked at Makoto’s blood spilled on his paper white skin after he finished changing his bandages. Dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty. Not the blood, but him. Why was he trying to tend to someone else’s wounds.  
  
The dirt would seep into Makoto’s cuts, and he would get infected. It’s like he wanted to make other people just as sick as he was. If the infection spread, Makoto’s insides would rot, and his hair would turn the same color as him.  
  
Komaeda  thought someone like him should really be quarantined for the good of all of humanity. Yet, with his crescent shaped glasses over his eyes, squinting through his strained vision, he delicately worked with his hands to make sure he did not reopen the bullet wound.  
  
Makoto really was lucky, the bullet went straight through him without hitting anything major. The only thing he suffered from was blood loss, and there were packs of blood stocked up in the infirmary cooler. The only thing he really needed was to keep his wounds closed to avoid losing anymore blood.  
  
Komaeda thought he should wash his hands, but that was the problem with his pale skin.  
Pale, colorless white, too white, nothing washed out.  
The filth always clung to him.   
  
Makoto was so clean in comparison. Immaculate. Nothing touched him.  
Not even a bullet. Not even this blood could dirty him. Komaeda was so obsessed with being clean it became like a disease to him (or at least one of them). Even his feelings of admiration for Makoto, were a sickness.  
  
Makoto’s eyes fluttered open. His eyelashes were long and delicate, Komaeda observed them closely as his face hung over the other boy’s.  
  
“Mukuro… did Mukuro come by yet?” 

“No, she hasn’t. You must be disappointed to see me. It’s no worry Naegi-kun, compared to anybody else in the whole world it’s only natural that I would be disappointing. In fact you’re probably already getting bored of looking at my face, I could ask someone else-” 

  
“It’s okay, Komaeda-kun,” Makoto’s eyes flickered over to him, Komaeda shuddered when he saw green with flecks of blue, leaves floating on the water. “Thank you for watching over me.”  
  
“Naegi-kun is much too kind-”  
  
“You’re the one who’s being kind right now. You’re taking care of me when you don’t have to, and you probably did not get a lot of sleep last night.”  
  
“No, it’s alright I slept fine. I just look like this all the time, really,” Komaeda tried intentionally to lie and he did a much poorer job of it. “I really am the worst for making Naegi-kun worry over me when he needs to focus on his healing. I just can’t help myself. I probably act so pathetic on purpose just so I can be pitied by-”  
  
“It’s alright…” Makoto sat up, and winced as he gripped his side. He pulled away the blankets that Komaeda had neatly piled on top of him, and tried to step off the bed. “It’s my fault, I have to apologize for getting hurt in front of Mukuro. She was probably… so scared…”  
  
Before Makoto could make it off the bed, Komaeda suddenly stopped him, pushing him back on the bed and leaning using his body weight to keep him pinned down. “N-naegi-kun, you really care far more about everybody else’s pain more than your own.” No, it was normal to be worried about other people, Komaeda was just abnormally self obsessed. But when Komaeda was around him, he wanted to be more like a normal human, not a set of bones with human skin stretched over it, not some monster that possessed neither love nor kindness.  
  
He wished that he could be more normal like Makoto.  
He wished it so ardently that his heart seemed on fire. He wanted to burn up in Makoto’s warmth, until there was no trace of the original him left.  
  
Makoto blinked, innocently as he was pinned down on the bed. “Wh-wha?”  
  
“Naegi-kun, you’ll reopen your wounds again. Besides, you were the one not her, can you please think about yourself for once?”  
  
“I didn’t mean to-”  
  
“You’re the most important person here. What would I- what would everyone do without you? Hope would be lost.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s that dramatic, but okay.”  
  
Komaeda slowly backed away from him, and reluctantly let go of the parts of Makoto’s body he had been holding onto to pin him down. Makoto was rather spineless, so it was easy to convince him of things, not that Komaeda was smart enough to trick another person. “Besides, I’m sure Ikusaba-san was nauseous and overcome with grief the first time she saw someone die in front of her eyes, but now blood must look like nothing at all to her.”  
  
A clear, colorless fluid, leaking out of people.  
  
“I’m sure she doesn’t feel anything about watching another person get hurt. Even you. She’s too numb.”  
  
Komaeda stood.  
In a graveyard with countless graves. 

It felt like with each step he took, every corner he turned, he only found more rows and rows of gravestones. Crosses sprung up behind him.  
  
“No, I’m sure it’s not like that. She’s really worried I know it. I’m… useless… because I kept saying that I’d follow her no matter where she went, but I got hurt so easily.”  
  
“If she’s worried why hasn’t she come to visit you once?” When he saw pain flash across Makoto’s eyes, Komaeda wondered what he said. He must have said something hurtful again without realizing it. He was always hurting others so thoughtlessly, he should cut his tongue out and die choking on the swollen up stump left behind by his cut out tongue.  
  
“She’s too worried… She’s really sensitive you know. Even more sensitive than I am, and softer too, more than anybody else…”

“But she killed people.”  
There was no way she could be soft, or kind.  
“Just by living she killed people.”  
That kind of life did not allow for any kindness.  
  
“I’m sorry, I must have worried you too Komaeda-kun. But, I didn’t even think about your feelings.”

Komaeda should have been begging for forgiveness. He should have clung to Makoto’s feet, until his head was stepped on and cracked. He was so unowrthy, of even this meager amount of kindness. He did not even deserve a normal kindness, or normal treatment. Especially when he knew, it was not like he was anyone special, Makoto just treated everyone that way. 

“I wasn’t worried at all. In fact, when I heard you got shot I was happy.” 

“Um, thanks buddy.”  
  
“Oh, I’m so terrible. I should have done a better job of explaining. Naegi-kun’s always such a good listener even when I annoy him just by talking. I was happy you lived.”  
  
“I didn’t think you meant any harm. It’s like talking to Kumagawa, I just gotta tune out half of what you say because you guys phrase stuff weirdly.”  
  
The fact that Makoto was only listening to about half of what he said, made Komaeda a little bit sad. Even if he should be grateful, because that meant Naegi knew to ignore all the stupid dribble that came out of his mouth, and it less likely a drooling idiot like him would say something he didn’t mean to say, and hurt Naegi who was always so kind to him. 

“Or rather, I knew you wouldn’t die, because you’re the hero, Naegi-kun!” 

“Huh?”  
  
“Like when you’re reading a book you think, _there’s no way the main character would die right in the middle._ You’re the most important one here, that makes you the main character of this killing game. That situation would have turned into a murder for anyone else, but you surived because you’re too important to die at the early stages.”  
  
“I’m uh… pretty lame for a main character. I think I’d do better as a supporting character in other people’s stories.”  
  
Actually, there was only one other person’s story he wanted to be a part of.

He had been thinking that recently.  
He did not need to help everybody, if he could just help that one person.  
That girl that needed him.  
  
“No, Naegi-kun you just don’t realize. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry I did a poor job of explaining again. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t sad at all. Just being around you fills me with hope, so I’m not sad…” Komaeda reached forward to try to take Naegi’s hands, but his own skeletal hands were shaking too much. _Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack._ He was just bones, with nothing to hold onto. 

“I made you sad too, huh? I’m so useless on my own. All I’ve done is worry you.”  
  
“I’m… explaining it really badly, and I’m confusing you and I’m really sorry but I don’t know how to put it into words, and I’m trying really hard, and I keep talking even though it’s useless now because I can’t make you understand. I should just stop talking because it’s making it worse, but I can’t stop... Kirigiri-san trusted me with you and I can’t even.. Not one thing…”  
  
Komaeda started to crumble, just like that.  
Like the statue of one of his gods grew a single crack in its ankle, and then toppled over and crushed him. It was his fault for getting his dirty blood on the altar, a black sheep like him, had black organs as well coated in a layer of tar they would never serve as a proper sacrifice. 

Nothing would come from burning his body up. He would just smell noxious.   
  
Makoto suddenly reached up, and cupped Komaeda’s cheek in his hand. He showed no hesitation to touch him at all. “You’re always calling me kind, but you’re kinder than anyone else aren’t you?” 

Komaeda opened his mouth to argue with him, but no sounds could come out, and he could not form words with his lips, especially after Makoto’s fingers brushed the corner of his lips by accident.  
  
“Thank you for forcing yourself to smile for my sake, but it’s okay if you want to be sad. Your friend got hurt, that’s sad right?” 

No.  
He shouldn’t cry.  
His tears would be like acid on Makoto’s skin.  
  
He could not cry because Kirigiri was dead and could not cry or smile anymore. Komaeda was the one who took away both for her. He could not cry because he was no one special enough to shed tears. That day when he saw a car crashing into that boy, when flesh was pulverized like raw meat and colorful blood spread against black asphalt, when that boy caught a glimpse of him and reached out to him muttering his name asking to be saved, Komaeda watched with an empty heart and walked away.  
  
He did not feel a thing for other people. His eyes were empty of tears to begin with.  
That was the only explanation.  
Really, he was not abnormal at all that was just a rationalization he clung to. He just did not want to deal with the fact that he could not be called normal because he was below average, simply inferior. He was someone far below normal people, yet he made himself out to be a special existence who was simply incapable of being normal.  
In fact, he was not even tragic.  
  
He was more blessed than most people. He had good luck. He was rich. He had lived a life of freedom most children dreamed of. And all he turned into was an ordinary, dumb kid. He had every oppurtunity in the world, his parents set him up with a world class piano teacher when he was young and he just did not want to learn. Really, really, ordinary, and so, so, awful he could not understand the pain of other people. No matter how hard he tried. He just couldn’t sympathize with them at all. In the end he must not have cared, he simply wanted to appear like he cared.  
  
He wanted to perform empathy.  
He wanted to look like Makoto, that was all.

There was nothing else they had in common, because Komaeda was just an ordinary, ugly, child and Makoto was so much more. Komaeda looked like Makoto, because Makoto was what he pretended to be.  
  
He was wrong for making Makoto like him, and with each day he spent pretending to be his friend Komaeda only got sicker with himself. Even when he continued his performance and esem the same as always, his spirit was that of a terminally ill patient, growing ever more feeble and exhausted. That was what ordinary people did, live a life of ordinary blooming, and ordinary withering.  
  
That was why he would not cry his fake tears.  
He could not cry…  
In the end he truly could not cry for anybody else.  
If the heartless child did not cry when his own parents died, he would not cry now.  
He…  
He looked up and it was raining.  
Rain came to wash all of the sakura blossoms away. 

 

🧸

 

 _I’ve never told anyone._ _  
_ _Nobody knows._ _  
_ _And I don’t want them to know either._

 

🧸

 

Mukuro silently stood over his bedside. When she realized she might wake him, she moved to leave. He caught her by the sleeve before she could, reaching out to pull her back.  
  
Makoto’s hand was small, but it was so heavy. She really wanted him to let go. She was much stronger than him, so why in that moment could she not make him let go? She felt a force like gravity keeping her in this one spot.   
  
“It’s not your fault, okay…?” 

  
Makoto’s voice said. He knew her well enough to know she was already taking the blame, she had let him get to know her too well. She never should have.  
  
“I know you’re going to say it’s your fault, and we’re going to argue about that, but it’s not. You make me out to be your savior, but the truth is you’re the one who always helps me. I haven’t done a single thing for you yet, and this time when I tried I just hurt you again.”  
  
Because she saw Makoto’s blood.  
Splattered everywhere.  
His insides…  
Dripping out.  
  
“I’m the weak one who’s always clinging to you, got it?”  
  
“Makoto, I…” Mukuro’s voice shook with an emotion she could not bear to feel. Both of them were always putting themselves down to raise the other one higher. It was like they were asking to fall. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”  
  
Mukuro chanted again. It was just a learned reflex. Mukuro always had to apologize. Even when Junko hit her, she had to be the one to apologize. When people died, she apologized even though she knew she would not be forgiven.  
  
She always made the wrong choice. Then she apologized, but she didn’t really mean it. It was like Junko said, if she actually was sorry she would learn. She just did not want to learn, so she kept apologizing instead.  
  
She was sorry she broke down crying and ruined Junko’s fun.  
She was sorry for following Junko’s orders exactly because it made the plan boring.  
She was sorry for pushing Junko out of the way to protect her and getting her skirt dirty.  
  
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. It repeated over and over again in her head. She was sorry, really sorry for going mad. She was sorry for doing this right in front of Makoto, she must have been making him concerned. She was making him pity her again.  
  
Nobody could love her, but they could pity the girl who was the poor victim of her sister.  
And she could take advantage of that kindness, because she wanted at least one person to like her. Because she would be alone otherwise. Because she was always alone, even if she was with Junko, and she wanted to close her eyes and pretend that she was not.   
  
“H-hey, you don’t need to apologize. I was the one who wanted to say sorry. Jeez, why are we always tripping all over each other like this-”

Makoto suddenly, forced his body forward and wrapped his arms around her. It was a warm embrace. Too warm. Trying to move too quickly, his stitches ruptured again and his wounds reopened.  
  
Mukuro’s eyes traveled down slowly, and she saw the patch of pink spreading across his white undershirt.  
  
The blood that dripped down the side of his body, was sickly sweet, and metallic, and oh so familiar. She stretched her arms across that blood, crying out with all of her skin and bone. _Please, not him…I just want to stop myself from hurting this one person._  
  
She was so used to the sight of blood. She thought she felt nothing. She was just a dog chained up and only let out in the fighting pits after all. When she opened her mouth to smile, the blood from the throats of other dogs she had chewed up dripped from her lips. That was why she never smiled. She never showed others the fangs she used to rip into flesh.  
  
He was sick with the stench of blood. Mukuro had no right to feel anything when she had killed so many people dispassionately. Yet, her nose was clogged, and her throat closed up with the guilt she swallowed, and she suddenly could not breathe at all. 

 _“I’ve been telling you running away is useless.”_  
  
Her monotone voice rang in her ears. In her hand she held a bloody combat knife, with a serrated blade. She flicked her thumb across her face, smearing some of the blood as she wiped it away because she found it a little bit annoying.  
  
That was all she felt. Just a little bit annoyed, killing all these people amounted to a minor inconvenience. She rushed forward and her knife plunged into the neck of a boy who was screaming, with tears running down his cheeks. He did not even realize he was dead for a few seconds afterwards, and his face was frozen in that horribly shocked possition.  
  
She avoided the blood spray because Junko would lecture her if she got blood on her uniform, and then with one strike separated a blonde girl’s head from her shoulders. She had only stopped running away because she started to cry over the boy Mukuro just killed one second ago.   
  
Gross. Gross. Gross. Grosss. Gross. Gross.  
  
A boy’s upper half was severed from his lower half, and he tried to drag himself forward to get away from her, leaving his organs like red chords behind him. Mukuro stepped on his skull to finish him off without thinking too much about it. A boy pulled himself against the wall while he bled out and left a streak there. 

 _I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die._  
  
She heard a girl muttering, a girl she saw out of the corner of her eye. Mukuro tilted her head a little confused.  
  
_“Well, of course not. Nobody wants to die.”_ _  
_ _  
_ She knew that. She had a completely normal grasp of morality. She knew she was doing that wrong thing. If only she was someone who killed for fun, because she was a monster with no heart. Makoto was right, a normal girl was doing all of these horrible things.  
  
Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. The scene in front of her, children’s bodies falling apart in pieces, dying in pools of their own blood. That scene flashed in front of her eyes. This is horrible. But, I’m the one doing these horrible things.  
  
She fell back from Makoto’s arms, and hit the ground. Her senses heightened so she could tell exactly how nauseous she felt.   
  
She looked to Makoto, and saw the pink blood running down his body. She really thought someone like her was capable of anything else. She needed to apologize to Maki. Maki was kind, she did not pretend to be someone else just to be liked. She did not put other people into danger. She did not take advantage of people’s kindness to make them comfort a murderer. 

Makoto reached for her again and she stumbled back even farther. She was scared. She remembered how scared she was of that kindness. She was scared because she knew a person like that would never survive a person like her.  
  
Mukuro tried to say something, but her mouth refused to say anything other than a monotone. “...Sorry.” As if she was stuck in a loop.  
  
She just needed to get used to being alone. If she was a little stronger, she could be alone without needing to cling to others. Then, she could atone, and bear everybody else’s hatred for her alone without dragging her into it.  
  
That way if she died, she would be the only one. She would cut the spider’s string herself, with her serrated knife.  
  
Mukuro crawled away on all fours. Like a dog.  
Because she had let herself become far too human around that boy.  
  
“I… so… I’m so…”

And as Mukuro blamed herself.  
Makoto blamed himself. 

 _Even though I’d decided._ _  
_ _Even though I’d decided to never let you be alone._

It was always like this. This was as far as he could get alone. He could do nothing on his own. 

He needed other people. He needed her.  
Alone he was worthless. 

 

🧸

 

 _Thoughts that reach no one._ _  
_ _Words that speak to no one._ _  
_ _I lock them deep inside of me._

 

🧸

 

Kokichi listened to the digital noises his game console made.  
This was a boring game.  
He played it alone, while Kaito fussed over Maki.  
  
“C’mon Maki roll your wrist is broken give it here.”  
  
“I’ve treated my own injuries before this. If a broken wrist was capable of incapacitating me then I would have have just died and been replaced.”  
  
“God, would it kill you to value your own life a little bit?”  
  
“It just might.”  
  
“Hey, gimme your hand!” 

She held her hand up, but just when he was about to grab for it she snatched it away. Kaito kept chasing after her a few times, as she amused herself watching Kaito’s desperation. 

  
“Gimme.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Gimme!”  
  
“Nu-uh.”  
  
When he finally snatched it, he finished setting a splint and tied a ribbon around it. “See, it looks cute now!”  
  
“Well, I’m glad I’m covered in injuries like this. Then I can be ugly and maybe you’ll finally leave me alone.”  
  
“What? No, scars are like super cute. Lemme see em.”  
  
“I… I…” Most of them were hidden underneath her clothes, so she tore her hand away once more, and with her free hand started to run her hand through her hair. “Leave me alone.”  
  
Kokichi was terribly bored watching this scene. “Momota-chan, you’ve heard her like a thousand times by now. We really should leave her alone. In fact if you had let her die last night, then Ikusaba-san could have been executed and we would have done everybody a collective favor.”  
  
“God. Just say what you feel. You don’t have to be a passive aggressive little bitch about every single damn thing.”  

“I’m a passive aggressive fun-sized bitch. Thank you. And, that girl is a killer. She tried to kill somebody. Somebody almost died, and it’s your fault.” Kokichi grinded his teeth. That was bad, he needed shiny perfect teeth, so he could keep smiling cutely. “If it was me you would have abandoned me already, you would have gotten everybody to gang up on me and hate me, but because she’s a cute girl you suddenly want to pretend to be a good person in front of her.” 

“Wow, you feel a lot.”  
  
“Haha! I tricked you! I don’t feel anything,” Kokichi said as he jumped off from where he was sitting. “That girl only thinks about herself, and her own emotions. She’s like a dog, if she’s cornered or in pain she’s just going to lash out at whatever is nearby. Emotions are so naaaasty, that’s why I got rid of all of mine.”  
  
Kokichi thought that was enough. He would make Kaito angry at him, or Kaito would feel the need to defend Maki. If he made Kaito choose one, he would choose Maki every time. Then Kumagawa would be wrong.  
  
No, that’s not it. That was not why he was doing this. He had no listened to a single thing Kumagawa said. He was just annoyed. He was playing a prank to relieve his annoyance. This was all because Kaito was so easy to get riled up.

But, Kaito did not get angry at him. He reached forward and put a hand on Kokichi’s shoulder. Kokichi suddenly heard his pulse in his ears, that big hand, that warm hand, touching him holding on. “Hey, man… You have to explain shit to us or we’re not going to get anything. We’re not mind readers. If you’re pissed, just punch me, or get in a fight, or scream at me.” 

 _Men don’t run away from their own emotions._  
  
But Kokichi did not have a body. He had a skeleton. _  
_ _If anybody touched me I might just crumble._ _  
_ _That’s how weakened I’ve become._ _  
_ _But my heart has been alive all this time._

His heart beat  was so heavy. Just from that little touch. Just from the way Kaito looked at him like he wanted to understand. No, that was not supposed to happen. He was supposed to get angry, and snap at him, and chase him around, and go back to hating him like always. “Don’t touch me.”  
  
Kokichi suddenly flipped Kaito over his shoulder, like he needed to defend himself. All those times Kaito threatened to hit him he barely took it seriously, but right now he acted like Kaito had his hands around his throat. His throat, his heart, Kaito’s hands…so big…  
  
“Ewe. Icky icky Momota-chan germs.” He said, as a shiver ran through his body. “I need to wash myself off now. Smell you later losers. Except Harukawa-chan please go die in a hole all alone where you won’t inconvenience anyone anymore.”

When Kokichi walked away, Kaito followed him a few steps behind.

Which was really annoying.  
  
“Come on man. When we learned Harumaki’s secret we agreed we’d protect her together.”  
  
“You decided that all on your own. To be honest I was only hanging around to laugh at you when you failed.”  
  
“You don’t think I can save anyone? What kind of villain can’t save people?”

 _Truly there’s no difference between playing hero and villain, they’re both roles, though I’m not going to bother to explain that to someone as stupid as Momota-chan. But he’s so incompetent he really can’t play either of them._ “Umm… every villain? No duh?” 

“Don’t you no duh me!”  
  
“I am so going to no duh you!” 

“You’re not even serious about this training at all are you? We invite you every night but all you ever do is look at that dumb game.”  
  
“It’s not my fault. Have you tried being more interesting?”   
  
“You’re always like that. You’re the first to give up on everyone. You don’t even explain yourself, then you have the gall to get disappointed in people when they don’t magically understand you.”  
  
“Oh my god, I only say it one thousand times a day but how do I get it through your thick skull. I… AM… A...LIAR!”   
  
Kokichi really was going to the baths. Kaito followed him into the dressing room, but Kokichi just ignored him, and worked on unfastening his white outfit. It really was a pain having all of these extra belts because it meant it took like ten minutes to get undressed, but it was worth it just to look so cool.  
  
Kokichi pulled off his colorful and tight boxers and mooned Kaito, before laughing and walking into the baths. That should have been enough to convince him to leave.  
  
He let himself sink into the water. The crow needed to clean out his ratty and crooked feathers. They never grew back straight, after he almost drowned once. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the water. Maybe if he was not such a bad child when he was younger, he would have grown a little bit taller. Maybe if he did not steal from the trash in order to eat, he would be more than just bone. 

Kaito Momota. When his hair was not gelled up into ridiculous spikes, it fell in front of his face, covering one eye and parted to the side. He had a mess of thick brown hair. He was more well muscled than he looked, because his clothes were always so baggy. 

His neck was well defined and dipped into his collar bone. There was enough space between the collar bone and the crook of his neck to rest someone’s head there, and he had shoulders strong enough he looked like he could support any weight. They squared up, perfectly symmetrical. He always stood with his shoulders so high, cocky, and attractive as hell because he looked like he held his shoulders up to defy someone else. He looked taller than anyone, he just had that look to him.  
  
His chest was so large, someone’s whole head could rest against it comfortably. Following the line of his cleavage down, you could make out every muscle in his stomach. Kokichi could see them pulled tight underneath his skin. When he saw that chest rise and fall, something inside Kokichi shuddered deeply. It twisted up and begged for some kind of release.

But his eyes were trapped on that body. He had large shoulders, but a comparatively smaller waist. The sides of his body seemed to dive into his waste. You could easily slide your hands from his ribs to his hips, just being pulled down by gravity. His waste was so narrow it would probably be hard to hold onto. Kokichi’s hands might slip.  
  
Following the lines of his waist and his hips, Kokichi’s eyes dipped lower. That was when he realized, with Kaito standing up, and realized that with his head low in the water like this right now his eyes were at just below waist level and his head was perfectly lined up with his-  
  
Kokichi sunk all the way underwater, hoping to drown.  
Kaito had not even bothered to wear a towel either.  
  
“The hell you acting so shy for? There’s nothing more manly than men getting naked, and sharing all of their feelings.” _  
_ _  
_ _These feelings I have right now._ _  
_ _Please._ _  
_ _I don’t want there to be any truth to these feelings._

“Come on man! Wash my back!”  
  
Kaito said, as he turned his back to Kokichi. Which showed Kokichi that every single muscle on his back could be seen. That was the same back he had ridden on once, the same neck he wrapped his arms around. It must have been so warm underneath his skin.  
  
His hips looked just as enticing to hold from the back as well. Kokichi knew exactly where he would place his hands. His back dipped down, and he was so thin Kokichi could make out a few rigid bumps of his spine. Kaito’s tall frame had almost no body fat, just muscle, like he was trying to make the best use of his body. How did he use a body like that? How did it move? Kokich wanted to see all of those muscles tense up at once.  
  
No, the moment he saw how strong Kaito was, how he stood defiant, those strong shoulders, Kokichi wanted to break him. He wanted to break him and bring him down to his knees. Why build a body like a greek statue if it was not meant to crumble? What would it feel like to see someone like Kaito tremble in fear.  
  
This strong person weak. Kaito’s ruin. He wanted to see it.  
If that mask broke, then what kind of face would he show Kokichi? 

“Come on man, you gotta get along with us at least. We’re your only friends. You’ll have no friends when we’re gone.”  
  
“Who said I wanted friends? Friends are ugly, and smelly, and stupid and I hate them.”  
“W-what? You didn’t think I was your friend.”  
  
“I told you, but you never listen.”  
  
It was not that Kaito was dumb, he was just self centered. He never listened to a single person besides himself. He had decided Maki was good, so he would ignore all the evidence and keep helping her. He decided he wanted to be friends with Kokichi all on his own so he started following him around.  
  
Annoying.  
He never met anyone so frustrating before. Kokichi tried to think of a way to get him to shut up, that did not involved pushing him against a wall, until either Kaito broke, or the wall did.

He thought he was some star, when he was really just a black hole.  
Everything became distorted around him.  
Everyone got pulled in.  
Even Kokichi himself. 

When he was showering after the bath, Kaito suddenly barged into his stall. “Can I borrow some soap man?”  
  
Kokichi just pushed past him and tried to walk out.  
He would rather leave this bathroom and walk back to his dorm naked than spend one more second in Kaito’s presence.  
  
Kaito’s hand.  
Reached out and grabbed him by the wrist again.

When they were both standing there, dripping wet, and there was nowhere for either of them to hide.  
  
“You have to be honest with someone, man. Otherwise you’re gonna forget what the truth is.”  
  
“Good! That was my evil plan all along! That’s exactly what I wanted! If Only I could go insane and tell lies forever, I’d be happy.”  
  
“But you’d be alone, man.” 

 _I’m, really, really scared. Why is it that we can’t just live alone?_ Kaito could probably feel his hand shaking as his big fingers closed around his wrist. A shiver ran through his body, and Kaito’s body shivered in return. Like their bodies were responding to each other.  
  
He wanted Kaito to let go. He was waiting for him to let go. Why would he not let go? His hand was so heavy. It was big, and weighed down with all the feelings Kokichi could not accept. The weight of Kaito’s feelings, the depth of Kaito’s feelings, he was too fragile to even try to accept either of them. He did not tell lies for any good reason like Kaito was expecting. He was just too shallow to not tell lies.  
  
“I know you’re not serious when you tell Harumaki to die. If you think killing is wrong there’s no way you want to kill murderers. You can’t lie to me.”  
  
Kokichi reminded himself. If he told the truth right now, or if he lied, his door would still remain closed. Kaito would never reach the place he had buried his feelings. Not even Kokichi could reach that place anymore.  
  
“I get lying to me, but how come you gotta lie to yourself, man? It’s like you wanna be alone.” 

Kaito did not even like his fake self. Why? Why did he want to see his real self. 

_“Wow, I actually hate you, and not even in the fun way. We can’t even have a sexy rivalry over this, I just seriously want to avoid you. You’re not my mortal enemy, you’re not even cool enough to be one of my enemies.”_

He said to Kumagawa.

『 _H-hey, why are you so mad? Is it my fault? b-because I'm not him?_ 』  
  
Even if he explained it, Kaito would not get it.  
And that stopped him.  
Because he was naked right now, and Kaito did not see a thing. He did not even look.   
He was naked and Kaito still saw nothing.   
  
When Kumagawa said him.  
There was only one person who flashed through his eyes. A person so loud, so in your face, it was impossible not to feel anything for them. He had been annoyed into feeling that way. It was like his switch was stuck into flipped, and he could not turn it off no matter how hard he tried. He could not stop his feelings. For the first time, he lost control.  
  
He wanted to lose control.  
He wanted to lose everything to one person. 

 _My true self is probably insignificant._ _  
_ _In fact I’d be you’d hate it._ _  
_ _So why…_ _  
_

“I think humans are naturally solitary beings.We can’t help but dissociating from each other. Even childhood marriage promises are just lies.”  
  
“Hey, you’re so earnest. I like that about you Kokichi.”  
  
“Talking here. My dialogue is more interesting than yours, more clever and witty, and everybody likes me better than you so don’t interrupt. In order to forget about that. We take to reading to exercise imagination, and imagine we want to be close together. That’s what stories are for. Those are just lies too.”  
  
“Everything you say is a way of saying you want to be alone forever.”  
  
Kokichi stopped.  
There was one person he could not lie to.  
He reached up and touched Kaito’s face.  
Much higher than his.  
He needed to stand on his toes.   
  
Then suddenly, Kaito’s shoulders caved in and he collapsed forward on Kokichi. As Kokichi fell back he had no idea what was happening. He just saw Kaito’s body over his, and then… blood. Pink liquid falling from his smile. He hacked it up and tried to wipe his face, and a few stray drops of blood fell in a line down his face like tears.  
  
Drip.  
Drip.  
Drip.  
  
Onto Kokichi’s eyeballs underneath. He looked up. A few drops of blood on his face, but he still did not understand what was happening. This was the truth. The truth that he despised. The truth that would not change no matter how many lies he told.  
  
“It’s a lie right, Momota-chan?”  
  
Kaito could not answer, because he swallowed blood, and then coughed it back up again.  
  
“You were always such a liar."  
  
Please.   
  
"Th-this is just, another lie."  
  
He was begging.  
  
"C-come on laugh at me."  
  
He would do anything.  
  
"I really fell for it."  
  
He couldn't handle this.  
  
"I look stupid right now, worrying over nothing, just a dumb prank to mess with me. Right?"  
  
He was too fragile.  
  
"P-please. Please just laugh." 

🧸

 _I had a dream where I couldn’t lie._ _  
_ _I made the boy I like cry again._ _  
_ _Even though I only wanted to see him smile._ _  
_ _He just kept looking at me…_ _  
_ _Looking at me. Looking at me. Forever._

 


	67. It's Hell, but Who Cares

… A light.  
A light burned in the pitch-darkness. Clean walls, clean ceiling. A room that had white all over, and Kumagawa like a stain on that overpowering whiteness. An indistinct sound, like something fumbling around in the dark. A pitch black, nauseating shadow.  
Sunlight pouring across his skin, his shadow flat on the wall behind him.  
In a bedroom gone white, the sight of Kumagawa pummeled Zenkichi over and over again relentlessly.  
  
Kumagawa raised his hand to his face as if to hide it. His fingers, crooked just like his bones underneath.

Kumagawa…  
Used to be so much more lively that this. Unconsciously, Zenkichi’s throat tightened. 

  
...Pain. He looked hurt all over. How could a ghost like that look so hurt? An unpleasant throbbing was pushing his way through his mind, like somthing trying to scoop his eyeballs out from behind. He felt insects crawling around between the folds of his brain, as if he were already decaying while he was still alive. Completely black. Like he was burned all over. Like he was a piece of coal or something. His flesh was too tight on his body and he could not move without tearing it.  
  
Kumagawa.  
He always looked so alive.  
That thing, that thing, that thing. It was just a smiling corpse. Zenkichi’s eyes saw the deep black stain. The human shape of it had been preserved, but it was a hideous, nauseating thing, that could no longer be called…Skin, flesh, and organs, they were all still there but they did not amount to Kumagawa Misogi.  
  
The only thing white left on him was his teeth. He smiled, pure white.  
  
The buttons had fallen off his shirt, exposing his chest painted all over in scars. His body looked like it was full of holes and ripped in some places, like a stuffed animal carelessly throw away by a child losing it’s stuffing. Now all that was left was the tatters that remained of him.   
  
He smiled, but more than half of his face was peeled away from his skull. There was almost nothing left underneath his torn away expression, forehead, nose, or the pale lips, they were all taken from him and he made a completely neutral expression. 

He wriggled, he writhed, he squirmed, he crawled puppeteered by _something else_ underneath his flesh. It truly felt like Kumagawa Misogi had left that body behind   
Even though none of that was true, just an image Hitoyoshi Zenkichi saw. The once lively Kumagawa Misogi, now faded. He was completely unharmed though, smiling still the same as ever.  
  
If he had walked into this room and discovered a corpse, Zenkichi thought that corpse would look more alive than Kumagawa did right now.  
  
He had no skin.  
He had no flesh.  
He had no organs. 

Zenkichi never once understood Kumagawa. He never wanted to.  
He did not want to understand the kind of person who was always so negative. He did not think a person like that was worth understanding to begin with. He thought Medaka was wasting her time on him, and in the end he was right.  
  
To this day he had no idea how to approach the guy, even though they were technically friends from middle school, or something like that. He would rather pretend they had no relationship at all.  
  
He was like a fully assembled puzzle with the piece for his head missing.  
Blank. It was so obvious something was missing.  
Words such as hate, disgust and fear did not even begin to paint a picture of him.  
There were no colors in this world that could describe him.  
He was like a doll with all the joints broken. The kind a child methodically pulled apart and then left in pieces. Just staring at the whole picture, the full puzzle, you could immediately grasp something was missing.  
  
Medaka was the one who was hurt. Medaka never hurt anybody and he hurt her. That was why, it was right to sympathize with Medaka. It was the right thing to do. He was right.   
  
So why…?  
Why did he look at this child’s corpse in front of him and feel nothing at all?  
Why was that right? 

“You look sick,” Hitoyoshi Zenkichi said. 

『So what are you going to be to me, medicine or poison?』  
  
Kumagawa said, as if they were just talking normally. He did not even seem to see the chain wrapped around his ankle. He was floating, floating, floating, still. Even if he was in hell, he acted like this pure white room was a heaven.

🧸

 

Light, and shadow. They always chased each other away. They ran away.  
Like they were scared of each other. 

Junko was right. All Kumagawa needed to do was ask Mukuro to save him. He could ask Mukuro, or Jack, or even Kokichi. All he needed to do was open his mouth and speak his true feelings. Or he could lie and manipulate them. But either way, Junko would win, because that is how she played her games, she would never play unless the deck was stacked completely in her favor.  
  
She wanted to break his mask. Just like he had done to Ajimu-san long ago. That was why he could not hate her, he even sympathized with her. He had done the same thing in the killing game. He erased her memories over and over again so she would still remain his Junko, the Junko she knew. Also, if he hated her, Junko would win too. So he did not hate her. Or rather he felt like the part of him that hated her had gone missing, like it was cut out of his brain.  
  
It’s not like he wanted to be chained up like this. Yeah, he was getting pretty bored. He wanted to scream for help. Help me, help me, he wanted to say it over and over but if he did who exactly would he hope would save him? What could anyone do for him?  
  
He didn’t know. Besides even if he was let free from this room nothing would change. What he was chained to his body. His own body. His own body that he had lost track of. His own body that had been hidden away somewhere. Junko thought breaking him might free him, but she was wrong, wrong, wrong.  
  
He would break. He would be a little more broken. That was it. Breaking over, and over, and over again until one day he fell and could never get up again. Then his corpse would flesh would peel off, then his skeleton would be exposed, then even when the bones finally crumbled, Kumagawa would still be there. Never going to heaven or to hell, not even able to become nothing, he would just keep wandering somewhere and nowhere for all of eternity.  
  
Maybe, he did not really have a face under the mask. Maybe his head was cut off. He just thought he had a head. So, he wandered around headless, he wandered around in search of his head.   
  
When did it happen? His head rolled off, or maybe he cut him off itself. That was why Zenkichi looked at him like there was something missing. That his neck ended in a stump, and gaseous miasma leaked out, toxic smoke instead of blood, and that vague cloud formed a face where his head was supposed to be. 

No wonder he forgot his face. Everyone looked at him this way. And he was beginning to forget why he became _like this_ in the first place. He just let it happen. He just let everyone do what they wanted to him.  
  
Chop it up, this body doesn’t know when it’s in pain.  
Junko never hit him on the head.  
Junko never chained him up.  
It was like he made her do those things to him. 

Even just sitting there on the solid floor Kumagawa had the feeling that he was sinking. He was chained down, and slowly sinking away in river water, and if somebody tried to reach for him their hands would pass through him because his body was not solid, and only took the shape of whatever container it was in, and he would slip out of their fingers.  
  
He deserved to drown. That was why, he let the blond boy hold his head underwater.  
He would let Zenkichi kill him.

Because he deserved it. He knew this.  
He was ready to die, and he wanted Zenkichi to drown him, because he wanted his hands, and his lips, and to be touched and held by Zenkichi for the first time in his life was over anyway.  
And he would just stare up, the moving water distorting the light in front of his eyes. 

That was what he wanted. Zenkichi’s hands to reach through the water, and strangle him.  
He would die without his head over breaking the surface.

When they were in middle school, Zenkichi was always kind to him. If he just told Zenkichi once, about the scars he hid underneath his clothes, about the pins and needles he swallowed down until his entire throat was lacerated on the inside, he knew Zenkichi would have sympathized with him.   
  
But that wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want Zenkichi to know.  
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.  
He could never say those words. Because he did not want them to notice.

On a rooftop the two of them spoke heart to heart. He had always wanted a friend his own age. He did not lie. When he said that, Zenkichi punched him in the shoulder. “I’m not going to give up. And neither should you.”

『 _Don’t give up. Give up what?_ 』

Zenkichi’s kind words, were slowly killing him. Having no one to understand his heart, he felt himself slowly being worn down, until there were no details left, until he was just a smear, a blur, a stain, until he had to start wearing a mask just so he could have a face. “I’m not going to give up. And neither should you.”

“Shit. Kumagawa, don’t give up okay?”  
  
Those words.  
  
“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”  
  
Those words are why…  
  
“I won’t leave you alone anymore.”  
  
THOSE WORDS ARE WHY HE WAS SUFFERING SO MUCH!

He forgot.  
Memory bad. He forgot why was he in this room again? This was his chance. He should be taking it to escape. So why was he still here? He should just leave and go somewhere safe. No, wait… Somewhere… safe? Did a place like that exist for someone like him?  
  
No, no. This was not the time to be philosophizing. He was, umm… Zenkichi. That’s right, he and Zenkichi were talking. They were talking but Kumagawa had not said anything funny yet. He needed to tell a joke, because if he could do that then he was still Kumagawa.  
  
Tears were running down his face. They flowed out through the cracks. Kumagawa reached forward, only to fall and hit his face on the ground. Even after that he crawled forward more, and wrapped his arms around Zenkichi’s legs.   
  
He was breaking apart. To bits.  
He was leaking through all the cracks on his face.  
But was it the mask breaking apart? Or was it him? The real him? 

He wanted Zenkichi to kill him.  
He wanted to die wearing his mask, then no one would know.  
No, that wasn’t what he wanted. 

『Zenkichi-chan. Please. Please tell me. Give me that push. Help. Help. Please. Like you do with everyone else. Please.』  
  
Break my face or pull it off.   
  
『Who am I?』  
  
Kumagawa Misogi who only knew how to hurt people. Who was violent because that was all he was ever shown. Who blamed others for his own misfortune because they made him this way.  
  
Then what? Who was he supposed to break now? Who was to blame for this? No, that’s not it. He had to talk to Junko and make her understand. They had to come to an understanding. It just went wrong somewhere. They just needed to talk it out. He didn’t want to fight her. He didn’t want to play games against her. But he did not have the words to express a self he did not understand.  
  
Who’s fault was this? Who was to blame? This wasn’t what he wanted. No, that’s not it. No, wait. This has nothing to do with his mask. No. No, no, no, no, no, no…what in the world was he trying to do.  
  
If Kumagawa Misogi, the mask, can’t be of any help.  
What’s  left beneath it?  
The real him was just a child… the real him was just a crying child… the real him was nobody important… what would he do now? The ‘me’ underneath the mask. The ‘me’ that’s been mercilessly shaking up. The ‘me’ that had nothing to do with this, that runs from scary things, that was not at fault. Any kid would want to hide. They wanted to hide because it was scary.  
  
But it wasn’t helping.  
The mask wasn’t doing it’s job anymore. In this blindingly white room, he could not see a single shadow to hide in. He thought he put his mask on his own free will.

A perfectly sane and rational choice. 

『 _Oh. Am I insane?_ 』It was like the thought just occurred to him, he had just been too dumb to realize it until now. 

Oh that was why. His mouth. His tongue was licking Zenkichi’s feet. He didn’t want to go insane. He didn’t want to be like this. That was why, he was crying, and snot was smearing out his face, and he could not stop the tears he was drowning it. They just would not stop.  
  
『Zenkichi-chan. Please, I’ve always wanted to be like you!』  
  
He would kiss him. He would do anything. Just please don’t let him go mad. He did not want to forget again. He did not want to forget. The feelings he had. The girl that he loved. Anything about himself. 

『If I could… I would… go back and be your friends. It’s just that I can’t. I can’t take it back so. Please. I’ve always wanted to be. But I’m this way, so…』  
  
Kumagawa’s words were breaking into pieces to.  
And he tried desperately to hold onto the shards, even as they cut him.  
He gulped air, and tried to break the surface and breath. He hiccuped. And swallowed his crying so he could talk. 『I don’t want to be killed by Junko, or to kill her. You and Medaka-chan, you’re the same way right?』

 _The way you love her._ _  
_ _Is just normal._ _  
_ _I want to tell Junko, that._  
Kumagawa finished, like he had just realized. That his sick, twisted love for Junko had not been so sick and twisted all along. That deep down they were two people.  
  
“I’m not the same as you.”

Zenkichi kicked his head away.  
He couldn’t understand him. Not even just a little.  
  
“It’s no good.”  
  
Zenkichi’s expression was unreadable.  
  
“I really hate you, don’t I?” 

No, he was sure that time he wanted to be saved. He thought he was being honest.  
Zenkichi left Kumagawa alone in the room. No, he must have wanted Zenkichi to leave him alone in this room. That was it. He never wanted a person like Zenkichi to understand him. It was just his fault, from the beginning, he never wanted to be understood.  
  
The strings were cut.  
The guillotine fell from above.  
Kumagawa’s head rolled off his shoulders.  
And he laughed.  
His decapitated head, laughed. 

And Kumagawa Misogi became happy. 

 

🧸

 

Kazuichi opened his eyes and he saw white.  
When he saw white, he could not think of him.  
That boy with hair like freshly fallen snow,  
The boy who looked like he was about to be trampled on.  
  
Komaeda Nagito.

It must have been some terrible luck, after avoiding each other their first year of high school they both ended up in Hope’s Peak. After Komaeda left, he had no one else, so he spent all of his time tinkering things. It was the only good thing about him after all, Komaeda thought so.  
  
He got better at fixing machines than anyone else, and he got invited to this school. The seasons changed, the cherry blossoms started to fall, and he and Komaeda walked by each other on the pathway to school without turning back to look.  
  
On the first day of school, Kazuichi saw a blonde girl that looked like she did not belong to this world, and fell in love, or maybe he just wanted to tell himself that he fell in love on the first day of school.  
  
He wanted to obsess over something else, and get Komaeda over his mind. Did he… Did he know how not to obsess over something? Whether it was fixing machines, or to people, he always gave all of himself, and he was just too much.  
  
He followed Tanaka and Sonia around but it was obvious they just barely tolerated his presence, and Nanami was nice to him but that was about it. When he saw Komaeda, isolated by the class just like he was, he wanted to talk to him.  
  
But in the end he was afraid.  
Not of being rejected, but that Komaeda would just turn away and not say anything back.  
It would be better if Komaeda hated him, the idea that he felt nothing for him was too…  
Too cold.  
  
When Nagito Komaeda talked to him one day, like nothing happened, like it was three years ago and they were still the only two kids in the whole world, he invited him to meet Enoshima Junko. That was right, Komaeda had been following her around recently, there were even some rumors that he was stalking her because them being seen together was just so unlikely.  
  
Kazuichi was worried. Worried that he liked that blonde girl. When he always talked about the classmates he had cruses on with Komaeda, was this what Komaeda felt? Kazuichi did not trust anybody, not a single person, not even Komaeda anymore so when Komaeda wanted him to see her.  
  
He knew Enoshima was bad news.  
He was suspicious from the started.  
He wanted to turn Komaeda down.  
But, the idea of leaving Komaeda alone with that girl, that she might hurt him.

“Aaaaauuugh, fine! Whatever! You’re so annoying! But I’m just doing this to talk to a girl, okay? I’m just gonna pretend you’re not there.”  
  
He still had not done a single thing for Komaeda. He owed him for three years. Maybe, when they were even he would feel a little bit better. It’s not like he wanted to force Komaeda to be friends with him if he did not want to, he just wanted to be able to say goodbye with a smile.  
  
Komaeda didn’t even say goodbye.

When Komaeda brought him to Junko.  
That girl stuck one red nail out and pointed at his chest.  
“That one, I don’t want that one.” She waved her hand flippantly, “Mmmyeah, I’m not feeling it. He’s just going to end up dead in a ditch somewhere. No wonder you’re so over this guy, Komaeda-senpai, he’s not even worth despairing over. He’s just kind of a loser. Even someone like you is too good for him.”  
  
Kazuichi had no idea what she was saying, but it felt like he was being insulted. Well, either way, the reason he fell to despair had almost nothing to do with Enoshima Junko. She did not even touch him. She did not lift a finger.  
  
Kauzichi was baffled, and he followed behind Komaeda wondering what he even wanted to do with a girl like this, or what they were up to.  
  
Komaeda stopped suddenly, and put a pale hand on his face as if he was trying to hide behind it. “I’m sorry Kazuichi-kun, it’s my fault. It’s because I didn’t explain properly. These feelings… they can’t be put into words.”  
  
“Eh?”  
  
“You’ll understand. Just, come with me and you’ll understand. We’ll show her that someone like you can’t be thrown away so easily.”  
  
Komaeda took Kazuichi by the hand, and led him forward.  
And Kazuichi realized he had never wanted to let go of this hand.  
  
Komaeda still knew the way home. He still remembered. That thought tickled him on the inside, and he almost forgot the mounting sense of danger as Komaeda got more, and more involved with Enoshima.

 _Komaeda, I always thought if I just had one friend then my life would be bearable._ _  
_ _I want to be that for you._ _  
_ _So, you don’t need Enoshima anymore. I’ll show you._  
  
Komaeda stood in front of his father. Kazuichi had no idea why they were here. He told Komaeda he was living in the dorms from now on. And, he did not want Komaeda to see that man. He never wanted Komaeda to meet such a terrible person.  
  
They should have gone over to his house. He wanted to play in Komaeda’s empty house again, and fall asleep together hiding  under the covers where there were no adults that could find them.  
  
“You should thank your son,” Komaeda said, “He’s the only reason you’re worth anything at all.”  
  
No, that’s dangerous.  
He’s stronger than you.  
  
“You were just envious weren’t you? You saw your son was born with a talent that you did not have, so you did everything you could to destroy him, but in the end he was stronger than you. That’s the difference between talented and untalented people, you just broke and now you’re useless, and Kazu-kun turned all that despair you put him into something wonderful.”  
  
You saw the marks on my arms.  
You should know.  
You should know what happens if you provoke him.  
  
“You’re just lazy, that’s it. It’s easier to punch a child, then it is to actually face the kind of person you are. That you’re utterly unremarkable, that you’ll never amount to anything, that you were just born this way, you were born this awfully small, petty person and you’re going to stay that way forever.”  
  
It all happened so fast.  
Komaeda was on the floor.  
He could not take a hit like Kazuichi could, he saw color dripping from his forehead, like fresh blood in snow.

And Kazuichi knew his father was not going to stop, so he stopped him. He hit him again, and again, and again until he stopped moving. The same wrench that he was always beat with, he picked it up, and smashed, until his father’s head was nothing more than a stain on the concrete floor of their junk shop.  
  
“Nagi… I…”  
  
When he finally stopped, his hands were shaking so much he dropped the wrench and let it skitter across the floor.  
  
“See, I told you Kazuichi-kun. Your hope is far too strong, you’ll overcome any despair just like you did now.”  
  
“The hell are you talking about? That old man. I hated him, and he’s better off dead, but… I didn’t want to lose this shop.” Kazuichi tried to wipe the tears falling from his face, but he smeared his face with blood instead. “I don’t have anything left now…”  
  
“Don’t you think it was kind of your father to beat you? Otherwise you would have just been a worthless child, but because of that you were motivated and developed a talent.”  
  
“W-what? You just said the opposite a minute ago.”  
  
“It’s just like that. He made you who you are, Kazu-kun. So, just think what you’ll become now-”  
  
“That’s bullshit! He didn’t do a damn thing to raise me. I don’t even care that he’s deal! I just don’t give a shit anymore, about anything.” Kazuichi looked up at Komaeda, like that bright white boy was the sun he was so desperate for. “The only time that mattered to me, was when I was with you.”

The words that he was so afraid to say.  
Now that there was blood on his hands, he did not think he could fall any farther.  
So, he should just let himself fall for Komaeda.  
He wanted to be like his father’s twisted corpse on the ground.  
  
“I’d do anything for you, so just tell me…”  
  
“But I don’t want anything from you, Kazu-kun.” Komaeda did not look affected by anything, the scent of blood, Kazuichi’s crying, it was like none of it even reached him to begin with. “I don’t really know what you’re talking about… Oh? You mean a year ago? I’m sorry, I’m not good at making my feelings clear to others.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You were just. Yeah, you were a little too annoying, always following me around.”  
  
“Th-that.”  
  
“It was kind of tiring, being friends with someone who needed so much from me. But, it’s not like I hated you or anything Kazu-kun. There’s no way I could hate an ultimate.”  
  
He was just annoying? That was it. He was someone of so little importance to Komaeda, that Komaeda would cut ties with him over a few things that bothered him. He was someone Komaeda could get rid of so easily. 

“In fact, I think that’s why you’re dad hit you so much. You must have gotten on his nerves a lot, you know? Well, it can’t be helped geniuses like you are all supposed to be self absorbed eccentrics.”

Komaeda turned away, touching his hands to his elbows, his bony elbows and holding himself. "I know because, I was also an annoying child."   
Komaeda's eyes lowered as if tracing some horizon that Kazuichi could not see.   
  
But Kazuichi could not hear him.   
Because in his ears. The words he heard his whole life, repeated again.

No one.  
There was not one person in this world.  
This world did not need him.  
Useless junk.   
  
And Komaeda was there, beautiful as always, so beautiful Kazuichi can't even tell he was sick. And Kazuichi tried to forget how they did not talk as they walked to the hospital, and how he tried not to think about the hospital, or the time he bought the wrong kind of flowers for Komaeda. 

And he was always thought Komaeda's fragility made his pale skin pretty, but Kazuichi did not realize how easily his skin bruised.   
  
 Komaeda played with his hair between his fingers like it was spider's silk. "Not that I could ever compare to a person with talent, it was just plain old ordinary uninteresting misery."

And Kazuichi did not hear that either, beucase he wanted to touch the cobwebs of Komaeda's hair. He wanted it to be snowing again, like the day they walked home together and Komaeda let him borrow his green coat because his father did not buy him one. 

“You’re pretty good at being hated, Kazu-kun. In fact it’s a prodigious talent of yours. You have two talents! I think it’s fine if no one loves you, Kazu-kun. You’ll be fine. What you need is to make others hate you first. Just do to them what they were going to do to you. What good came, from being humiliated by your father over and over again? Is that how you want to spend your whole life? Even if your father is dead someone will just keep beating you… So… So…” 

Komaeda Nagito, embraced Kazuichi then. The cold arms wrapped around him froze his heart. “Being loved, and being hated isn’t it all the same to you?”  
  
And after that, being hated became like an addiction.  
Kazuichi rolled over with Miu next to him in the bed.  
  
“Hey, Iruma, how do you feel about me?”  
  
“Ugh, do we really need to talk? THis isn’t a love comedy. Actually, when I watch those I skip the plots and go straight to the naughty bits anyway.”  
  
“Don’t mention naughty bits when we’re in the same bed together!”  
  
“What else am I supposed to think about?”  
  
“I dunno, the weather.”  
  
“Pass.”  
  
“Hey, Iruma…”  
  
He reached up and nudged her shoulder.   
  
“I still hate you.” She said as she pushed him away, as far away as possible so there was a gap between them on the bed. “Always and forever…”  
  
“How nice,” Kazuichi smiled, showing his sharp teeth. “You’re such a sweet girl. What the hell did I ever do to get stuck with you?" 

 

🧸

  
Junko watched.  
As Kumagawa broke down in front of tears in front of Zenkichi.  
The tears he used to cry only for her. 

I hate love. And I hate the youth.  
So, obviously I hate young love. So let’s talk about something else for a moment. Tarot’s number fifteen the devil. A creature made of halves, half man, half goat.  
  
He was a boundary. A line between good and evil, male and female, a line between Kumagawa Misogi and Enoshima Junko. And that pale, empty, boy like a vampire bites her neck. Because that’s what giving into desire is, it’s a moment of pleasure, and then afterwards there’s just the sight blood dripping from his teeth and the taste of metal in his mouth but his stomach is not full. 

A man and a woman both naked are chained together.  
But, look closer, the chains around their neck could easily be removed.  
The longer they stay here, the more the lines blur between them but they can’t leave.  
She’s too afraid.  
If he has nothing to chain him down, he’ll disappear and die.  
  
And she wasn’t supposed to feel this way. She didn’t even know she wanted this.  
But just by being around him she realized what she really desired.  
And, he also made her realize that she would never have it.  
It was his fault. The devil who whispered in her ear, and kissed her neck with bloody lips.  
  
And all she wanted to do was talk to him again.  
She got him back.  
She got what she wanted.  
But, they don’t talk now.  
  
It was like he was slowly getting bored of her. Bored of her? She was the most interesting, most wonderful, most compelling person in the world. Everyone wanted her, and he had to want her back obviously because she could have chosen anyone and she chose him.  
  
Just, desire her a little bit please. But Kumagawa is the opposite of her. He doesn’t desire. 

She’s in front of him, but he doesn’t see her. He doesn’t see anyone.   
  
“It’s hell, being with you, Misogi-senpai, you know that? Hell. Pure fucking inferno, burning up, and sinning, and lust, and suicide, and everything else.” Enoshima Junko, squirmed, because she was holding herself back and she wanted to get closer to him.   
  
『What are you talking about? I’m on my honeymoon with the girl I love, this is heaven.』  
  
“Wait, when did we get married?” Junko blinked and gave a rather normal response, the way her eyes curled and her cheeks reddened she looked almost flustered. “ Oi, oi, oi, don’t be the one who suddenly rattles off whatever comes to mind even though it doesn’t make sense, and jerks the topic around just to confuse people, you won’t need me anymore.” 

『Oh, that was just in my fantasies.』

“We’ve been over this. As a model, I own the right to my image. You’re not allowed to fantasize about me, unless you pay me money first.” 

『Well, this story isn’t satisfying me so I have to write my own fan-fiction.』

This world in which the boy in front of her can’t talk to anyone.  
Yes, a single one.  
Is a paradise to the likes of her.  
_It’s hell, but who cares?_

That lie on her lip, she felt relieved. 

She would keep biting him until he bled to death. That was what it meant to be true to her desires. And she would lick the bitemarks. She was not born to be a part of this world. That was probably it. In a world of countless colors, she was single, achromatic existence. Not just one color, but the absence of color. 

  
It’s not that she didn’t care about other people’s feelings, but whether she cared or she did not care those feelings would never reach her. And in the end she knew it was her fault. Days flow by indifferently, and  whether or not you spend your days in boredom is entirely up to you.  
  
She was starved for enjoyment. She starved herself. She hated other people who said ‘I hope something nice happens.’: People who were passive like that are never going to get what they want. _You have to think for yourself._ And that’s what she did. She just kept thinking. She could not stop. She thought only about herself. And she tried to live that way.  
  
People lived their lives, repeating the same thing over and over again without really knowing why. As if they were on a set of rails. As if there was only one track for them. They looked down and mindlessly walked forward. 

  
And seeing them live that way, she thought, wouldn't it be better if a train hit them?  
  
They just kept doing the same things. How could they not be bored? How could they not get tired of it? They must not have known, because they were not thinking. That was the problem. She was the only one that could think. And thinking that way, she stopped caring about what others think.  
  
They just kept doing meaningless things.  
Everybody else looked at her like she was insane, but she thought she was the only sane and rational one.   
  
She thought she was the only one that could understand him.

 _I lose again._  
Junko thought that as another day that she was not part of happened in front of her.  
_Another unenjoyable day._ _  
_ _Boring. Boring. Boring._

There was one person in the world who looked like he was truly enoying himself. Every single day was fun for him. She just wanted to feel the same way he did.  
  
And she.  
Kept falling in love with him.  
Over and over again.  
Without really knowing why.  
And she was the same as everybody else.  
  
“Not satisfied? With me?” She snorted like a dork, because the thought was so incomprehensible to her. Then she leaned forward, tipped up his chin with one hand. Her fingernail sharp, like a knife tracing the curve of his neck.  
  
She just needed to flip his switch.  
And this night would be interesting. She could live for one more day, without losing her mind due to boredom. That was why she was in front of him in nothing but a negligee and red underwear. 

 

 _Hey._ _  
_ _Didn’t you say he was different?_ _  
_ _That would wanted to love him differently, then Matsuda and Mukuro._

 

She leaned forward and kissed him. His lips. His tongue. All hers.  
Every time she kissed, she bit into the apple again.  
And she saw a color. Bright pink. 

And she never wanted to get used to it. Kissing him.  
She wanted to be inconsolably sad each time. It made her want to cry.  
She wanted to kiss him until he was dirty with red marks from her mouth.  
All these kisses, and love too, would ruin her.

But she wanted to die kissing him. 

Because that was better than frozen, curled up like a girl who never left her chrysalis. 

And he feels the same way. She knows. She knows he has to.

But he doesn’t kiss her back.  
And the moment she realizes he's not, she stopped.   
  
Enoshima Junko pulled back, her lips twitching. “Right, right, you’re not the one I’m kissing. I kiss your mask. You’re not kissing me. Or you are, but you don’t want to be. You’re just letting me do what I want. It must be so easy to live as Kumagawa Misogi if someone else is controlling you. Doesn’t that sound nice? Fun? Easy? It’s not your fault Senpai, it’s mine. And it’s all the horrible things that happened to you never did, because it wasn’t you after all. You never wanted to be loved like a person did you, from the start, from the very first moment you saw me you knew I would love you like a doll and it was so fucking perfect for you.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders pushing him back. Just, on the floor she didn’t care anymore. One of the straps of her negligee fell down her shoulder, and she wanted it all to fall off, her whole body was trembling, trembling with something she didn’t know because she couldn’t feel. It was her body, but never once, did it feel like hers. “You won’t do me. You’ll just lie there like a dead fish. Come on let’s pretend to be real teenagers for a moment and have an authentic teenage sexual experience.” 

 _Hey._ _  
_ _Don’t do this._ _  
_ _This is just pointless self indulgence._ _  
_ _He…_ _  
_ _Will absolutely never be mine._  
  
That was why she loved him. Maybe it was just one-weay. She was overcome with illusion, delusion, admiration, pity and everything else, for this one person who told her nothing but lies. She loved him this long, because he will never be hers.  
  
That being the case.  
At this moment.  
The boy she crawled on top of.  
The boy she lined her hips up with his.  
The boy she overlapped with.  
What was he feeling? 

She didn’t want to feel this way. She thought she was fine living her life carefree, as a single person in this world, she thought she was living a life freer than anybody else. And she met a boy. And she became more human. And she couldn’t go back now, she couldn’t just go back to being a monster. So he had to be human too.  
  
If they are mirror images of one another, then he was human. Kumagawa never considered her as anything other than painfully, woefully, hopelessly human: she told petty lies, she was jealous, she did not know what she wanted, she wanted more than what she was. 

To love a person, she had to take them apart. She had to know every piece of them. Her hands traveled over every inch, she drowned in his unfathomable depths wet and dark, and she wanted to love him in a way nobody else could, because nobody would ever know him like she did.  
  
Yet, he refused to show her.  
When he smiled.  
She wanted to kiss that smile, knowing all of the poisonous feelings he hid behind that smile.  
She wanted to slice herself open in front of him.  
And see, if he would even care.  
If Kumagawa would hold her with trembling, but warm fingers.  
Or if he would stick his fingers in her wounds and make her worse.  
Would he mend her?  
Would he tear her apart?  
  
She wanted to know, know, know, for once she did not care if she was right at all. She was never someone to cling to false hope, but for Kumagawa Misogi she was trying her best to become more human.  
  
“Then, let me just say it. I know!” 

『Huh? Know what?』And he pretends to be oblivious and infuriates her. And she’s pushing herself against him harder now.  
  
“I know you’re a pathological liar, I know you victimize yourself, I know you’re far too narcissistic, I know’re not trying to be better at all. You resent. You hate everything. You even hate me. So, just do it. Just say it.” She undid the chain around his ankle, and with her body over his watched. “Even though you like me, why are you running away?”  
  
No, no, no.  
She just talked about him hating her but she wanted him to like her.  
Even Junko did not think she was making any sense, and she was usually used to hearing herself talk at least.

“I already know, so you can just tell me. How much you hate me for hitting you over the head. It’s not like I want this to be a one sided thing. You can tie me up if you want. You can do whatever you want to me. I know you want to, I mean who wouldn’t want to, I’m the world’s worst combination of awful and hot. Being this attractive should really cancel out what a bad person I am but sadly it doesn’t.”  
  
Her body was an eclipse over his.  
But she did not touch him. She just watched, as passively as the moon.   
She twisted up the hair at the back of his head in her fingers and pulled.  
She put her face over his.  
Her eyes searching for his, unnaturally, completely, still.   
Like she was studying her reflection on the surface of the water.   
  
And in her mind she sees red rope tying her up.  
She sees herself at his mercy.  
She sees him doing what he wants with her until she breaks.  
And she just wants to see that desire in his eyes.  
  
“I want to see how you’ll break me. Little. Fucking. Pieces. Misogi. You don’t know how long I’ve dreamed of having your hands around my neck.”

 _I don’t want to control you._ _  
_ _I want you to take control._  
  
There were whips. And chains. And red string.  
And all kind of nasty things in this room.  
He could punish her.  
He could just take out his anger on her.  
She knew that all boys just wanted to ruin pretty girls.

 _You’re just taking your anger out on him._  
It felt like, Kumagawa was forcinbly shutting her out from his world.  
He didn’t want her anymore.  
_If you don’t want me, why do you keep indulging my feelings like this?_  
  
And she could not see his eyes.  
His hair had fallen in front of his eyes and she could not see them. The eyes she loved so much.  
_And if you pity my lingering feelings, why do you throw me away?_ _  
_ _I want to hold on._ _  
_ _I want to run away._ _  
_ _I want to give up._ _  
_ _I cannot give up._ _  
_ _I want to touch you._

_It’s hell._

『Junko, I lied.』  
  
And all she wants is rock her hips, and make waves against him.  
To rub their clothes against each other, until a spark ignites and they both blow up.  
But, she doesn't touch him. 

『The first time we did it, wasn’t my first time. Ah, it wasn’t Ajimu-san, she would never do that, she doesn’t even know what love is. She’s like a little kid. I don’t even know who it was.』  
  
“Oh, you can say no? You can reject other people? You can be more than just a helpless victim? Oh, oh, oh, it’s like you’re a fucking person or something. Well, there’s on helping it. You said no, and I can’t even go any further, that’d be no fun. I’m not in this for cheap and easy thrills.”

She rolled off of him, and gripped the skull that felt like it was splitting apart. He practically begged for Zenkichi, but he did not want anything at all from her, not one single thing. “What does this mean?” The words come out even when she did not mean them to, and her brain to mouth filter is basically nonexistent, not that it ever existed in the first place.   
  
『Romance isn’t literary analysis, Junko...』

“Hm?” 

『This is umm.. Yeah, it’s kind of annoying.』He said like that was all this was. 『I’m sick of metaphors, let’s just use our real words.』  
“...”

『We both know we’re enemies. We know.』

So why.  
  
『Why are you being so lovey dovey?』

  
“Misogi I… ever since you came back you always looked so sad. I don’t want to take it from you. I don’t want to control you. It’s like so obvious, no duh, no doi, no damn!.” She felt like she was Ryoko again, begging Matsuda. “So, why? WHY DON”T YOU JUST TELL ME! TELLMETELLMETELLMEIWANNAKNOWIWANTIT!” 

『Even if I tell you, it won’t change. It’s boring.』  
  
And Enoshima Junko fades away like a dream.  
She made a big fuss about stomping out and slamming the door like she was a teenager (which she is), but on the other side of the door all she was slide down. Her back still against the door, her ear pressed against it.   
  
And she heard Kumagawa move on the other side of the door. He picked up the plush bear they were sharing the room with.   
  
"What do you want, pointdexter?" Junkai mechanically chirped at him.   
  
『Junkai-chan, your brain is a computer doesn't that make you even more of a pointdexter then I am? I think you should strive to be more accurate with your insults.』  
  
"You're just talking to me because you got in a fight with the real Junko, trademark. Don't get so huffy." 

『Don't tell me not to huff. Life is inherently meaningless, so I'm free to do whatever I want. That means I can huff.』Kumagawa took a deep breath. 『And Junkai-chan, I like talking to you because you're not Junko.』  
  
"Ewe. Don't tell me you actually like me? I was just trolling you, senpai. Sometimes you gotta mess with the heads of a couple of meat puppets, it's like robogirl one o one."   
  
She’s no longer in the room with him. She just sat outside in the dorms.   
Her knees are drawn up to her chest because she doesn’t know what else to do, or how she’s feeling, because feelings she doesn’t have those.

So she was a normal girl after all. She did not like when she was rejected.  
She was just never rejected before this.  
She didn’t know.  
And these feelings, she doesn’t know them either.  
And her mind just races and analyzes the same thing over and over again, because she can’t stop it, and she can’t stop thinking about him.  
  
Then suddenly she heard a noise.  
A girl standing in front of her.  
The moon reflected off of her glasses, like she had no eyes underneath them.  
  
“Eh… who are you?”  
  
“Y-you really don’t remember my name?”

My big scene.  
My chance to step on stage with Enoshima Junko.  
Tsumugi Shirogane’s entrance, was totally ruined.  
She didn’t even get to have an entrance. 

 **THIN ICE SUICIDE LOVERS** **  
** **CHAPTER 13: It’ Hell, but Who Cares?** **  
** **END**


	68. INTERMISSION TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> References to No Longer Human, and New Hamlet from Osamu Dazai in this chapter.

**SECOND LOVE  
  
**

Talk, talk. Talk, talk about love. Everybody talks about love. Aren’t you all tired of how repettitive and predictable you are already?  
  
I don’t know why people continue to write stories about love. As if they’re going to say anything new on the topic. It’s the most explored subject in all of human literature. If Freud was wrong then why can’t people shut the fuck up about how much they want to be loved already? 

People talk about love like it’s special. I can’t think about anything more mundane. Everybody falls in love. Even Enoshima Junko falls in love. Even I fell in love.

 The first love is nothing special at all, most people move on to their second love easily and it becomes nothing more than a romanticized failure in their memory banks. Even I had a first love and a second love, but with me that happened to be the same person. My first love, my second, all the way to my thirteenth love I fell in and out of love with the same person over and over again. Even that is boring, nothing more than repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. 

Do you know what loving a suicidal person is like?  
  
Sleep. WIthin your hollow dreams lies the grief that you are doomed to repeat.  _Good night._ The last words you hear are a lie because you know there’s a distinct possibility you will wake up without him by your side. When your eyes close, darkness overtakes you, and for a moment there is nothing. You hear the echoes of nothing in particular in your ears. No more sleeping, no more waking. And then you wish you won’t wake up in the morning. You wish you won’t wake up to find him dead and not by your side. You long for the eternity of sleep because that’s better than waking up in a world without him.   
  
But I hate that. That too is typical. Everyone tries to save other people with love. Everyone is always trying to heal their wounds over with love.   
  
I don’t want to do what everyone else does. I want to be special.   
I said that once. But when did I say it? I don’t even remember the face of who I was talking to, or what I looked like at the time. It was a very, very long time ago. Ever since the word  _special_ escaped my mouth, I’ve only ever yearned for the shadow of that one word. Like a curse it hung over me, and I couldn’t love any life that led me farther away from it.   
  
I don’t truly know why. But I know that I don’t want to be like everyone else around me. Awakening mundanel, living mundanely, and sleeping mundanely, I despise people like that.   
  
I am me and me alone. I have to be different. The child that longed for that embrace of the extraordinary came to think of “different” as outclassing everyone else. But, when I grew up, I ended up always falling right in the middle.   
  
Perhaps what I longed for was not to be different from everybody else, but to be different from my own mediocre self. Because no matter how hard I tried I never felt too different from the other people around me. I laughed when I was happy. I cried when I was sad. When everybody around me laughed I was laughing with them, and I cried with them as well. I was caught up in the current of the people I longed to be so different from, I was drowning in other people.   
  
Everything I said in the love last story was a lie. I never felt separate from others, I never felt empty in comparison to them. This is the true story of how I met him. Of course there’s nothing stopping me from saying that this is all a lie when I’m finished telling it.   
  
My second love story, one of the countless I could tell. I loved him from the moment I met him, I loved him because he was so different than me. Every day he kept the secret, deceiving everyone that he was normal; though inside the difference between himself and others only widened. I felt like when I looked at him, I was the only one who could see the acute difference between us like night and day. When we were standing next to each other we were like two normal classmates one might find pictures of in a brochure advertising the school, but on the inside we could not be made up of more different parts.  
  
He was a different person who longed to be normal.   
I was a normal person who longed to be different.   
  
Amami Rantaro. More than this. More than me. A thing apart altogether. He wasn’t the best at everything, he wasn’t weak either. He was just somebody else. Even if you were his closest friend since childhood who spent everyday of your life with him, you would still think of him as a stranger. That was the kind of person he was, or rather the person he wasn’t.   
  
A thing apart. A thing that can’t live with others. A thing that can only hurt. He only resembled some princely figure from a story because both Rantaro and the idea of a prince were equally fake.   
_  
__Now, what are you doing all by yourself, Tsumugi? It’s boring to play alone._  
When I first met him, his hair was black.   
The next time I met him, his hair was green and there were holes pierced in his body.   
I saw him in a field of flowers. I thought he came there to look at the garden. It wasn’t until later I realized that the only reason he spent so long standing in those flowers was because they were planted on the edge of a river famous for suicides 

That was not our first meeting though because he did not notice me watching him from afar. I am so plain a girl, so fitted to fading into the background that I am someone you would not notice unless I was in your face, holding a knife directly to your throat. Even then, you might still just ignore me.   
  
Anyway, that was when our first real conversation happened. An open window, a curtain of frost creeping in, the melted chilling outside air making a light fog that fell down into the room draping over me. I snuck in like a fairy in the middle of the night, and held the silver tipped edge of a knife to his throat. 

Would you believe me if I said part of me believed that if I just touched the tip of the knife to him, the silver would cause him to disappear? As if that entire time Amami Rantaro had just been creature from beyond the fade I simply imagined into my life.   
  
Well whatever my reason our first happened was when I broke into the house of my mysterious and cool classmate Amami Rantaro who I had known since middle school, but never truly known. 

I remember one time he told me I looked lonely. I wanted to laugh. He was the last person who had any business telling other people they looked lonely.   
  
🧸

 

The girl straddled him.  
His hips.   
Her hips.   
His legs.

Her legs.  
The moonlight like a thin cloak woven of gossamer threads falling over both of them. A private moment all of their own, on the other side of the veil, removed from anybody else’s reality. She sat on his chest and listened to his heart beat as she pressed the knife against his neck.   
  
Then, when he woke up he did the opposite of what she expected. He was always doing the opposite of what she, or anybody else thought. As if he existed to be different from “other people.” 

Instead of screaming, he smiled at her. He moved his head up towards hers, as if drawn by some gravity, to close the distance between her and him, so they would no longer be distinct entities, so there would be no lines drawn between them. He had no regard for the knfe at his neck. He cut himself on it, and she saw the side of his throat slit, a thin line of blood began to fall on the white sheets of his bed underneath the both of them.

Tsumugi really did not think Rantaro would bleed. He seemed too different from her, like there was nothing inside of him, not even blood. The moment she saw his blood and realized she was cutting him, she backed away and almost dropped her knife in surprise.  
  
Underneath her was no fairy.

No changeling stolen away from his parents in the middle of the night and put a hollow replacement in his cradle with something missing.   
He was just a boy.   
Undereath her.

She was a girl on top of him.

And they were in the same bed together, after she had stalked him and broke into his house in the middle of the night.   
  
Yet, he smiled at her like there was nothing wrong with this scene. With that one smile, a horror story became a love story.   
  
He reached up and laid his hand over hers, steadying the hand she had wrapped around her knife. “Hey you, why are you crying?” 

Her wet tears fell on his face. She ignored them. She tried her best to ignore him. “Hey you, that’s a terribly rude way to refer to a girl.”   
  
“I think breaking and entering is rude too.”   
  
“Unlike you, I never pretended to be a nice person," Tsumugi muttered to herself. "We fangirls know we could never get along with the normies so we don't bother to try." 

“You don’t look like you’re capable of pretending to be anything.”   
  
“Do you always talk this rudely to the girl holding a knife at your throat?”   
  
“Only if she’s cute," Amami said.   
  
Cold fingers. His hands around hers. And a boy who smelled overpoweringly of roses. So much so she thought his real self was hidden in the miss, behind a tangle of thorns somewhere else.   
  
The changeling boy.   
The normal girl. He asked her again, as his hand soothed her own shaking hand. “Why are you crying?” 

Her tears spilled out, but she tried to choke back sobs, tried to hide it. But, her emotions were too normal, too real. She was never that good of a liar. Not as the good as the boy underneath her at least who never told the truth. 

Upon hearing his words again all strength drained from her fingers. He did not shout, he did not tremble in fear, he had no regard for his own life at all. Even in a situation like this the first thing he thought about was her.   
  
“Why are you like this?” Tsumugi asked.   
  
Rantaro touched his neck with his free hand. “Jeez, you can’t ask a guy a question like that just after he woke up. Though, I guess if you put a knife to my neck… I can’t see why you’d hate me so much you’d want to kill me.” 

“I… I don’t want you to die.” Tsumugi wanted to write, but words, words, words, they always avoided her.   
  
“So you decided to threaten me with a knife?” Rantaro yawned, looking like a lazy cat completely unaware of the danger. “Makes sense I guess…” 

  
“I-if you try to kill yourself again, I’ll kill you," Tsumugi realized her life was reading out like bad english fansubs at the moment. 

Rantaro had been out of school for a month on injury due to a previous attempt at killing himself. She still saw the scars on him, the unmistakable look of ropeburn that wrapped all the way around his neck.   
  
“Well either way I die. Sounds good. I love when I get what I want without having to put any effort in," Rantaro yawned, the content little kitten he was.   
  
Tsumugi said nothing. Her fingers only tightened around the knife, and his one hand that was holding her steady could feel her trembling. Rantaro wondered if he had said something to make her feel bad, and the thought that it was insane of him to be so considerate of the feelings of his stalker did not even occur to him.   
  
“B-because I… I love you," The words sounded wrong omcing out of Tsumugi's mouth, directed at a real person. 

She watched him everyday.   
In the field of flowers.

The sunflowers that surrounded her were so tall, they hid her face.   
Wrapped in the smell of flowers, she wondered if this is what it would be like to be embraced by him.   
  
“Oh neat, I love you too. Just now I decided.” Rantaro said, and then a moment later he tilted his head. “Wait, who are you again?”   
  
“You’re the worst.”   
  
“Hey, if you still want to kill me this is your last chance," his smile was temptatio.   
  
She wondered if she even knew what kind of spell that smile cast.   
What it looked like.   
What he looked like to her. 

His hands.

Wrapped around her hands.

He eased her, and gently pushed the knife away from his throat.

And then kept holding onto her hands even after the danger had passed. 

 

🧸

 

I’m your stalker.  
I’ve always followed you and took pictures of you so...  
I’d rather kidnap you then let you kill yourself.   
  
When she said those words, he smiled at her.  _You’re willing to pick up the life I threw away, huh? That makes me so happy._   _Yeah, I think I’ve really fallen for you miss whazzername._  
  
He never went the way anyone expected him to. He never once went her way. The two of them walked back to her apartment where she lived away from her parents. The two of them walked side by side on the road, and she stayed as close to him as possible so nobody in the night would see the knife she was holding between them so he did not run away. 

He reached out with his hand.

For a moment she thought he might take her hand.  
Then he wrapped his fingers around the blade of her knife, and she saw the red flowers he crushed between his fingers. 

When they returned to her room, he once again reacted with nothing more than a smile at the pictures that were hanging all over her one room apartment. Pictures she had taken every day in the years since middle school she had known him. Rantaro saw a thousand images of him looking back, like a mirror crushed again and again into pieces.   
  
Rantaro, smiled looking ever the sheep with his swirling hair and shy demeanor “Wow, I look like a dork in all of these. Why do you love me so much again?” He picked up one picture she had caught off one of his rare unguarded smiles and muttered under his breath,  _jeez, so awkward, haha._  
  
“You… you’re…” She tried to find the words again, but words were not her friend. They always sounded so much more beautiful coming out of other people's voices rather than her own. 

One of the fairies. 

This mist seemed to dance around him. His hair was the green of the plants and the trees like he was born from the dark spaces in between them. He looked like a child stolen from the crib and then replaced with something else. 

There were so many legends of humans capturing a fairy, and trying to take what they had for their own. As she held him captive that was all she could think of. She wanted to be different than him, she wanted to live a life different from everybody else. The rain is heavy as she walked next to him, and a thousand frigid daggers buried into her skin, but it’s the only time she’s ever felt that cold, and the only time she’s ever felt that alive. Alive next to him. Cold rain. Equally cold. His cold, expressionless eyes watching her.   
  
She liked being special, or more accurately she liked things that were not her. She liked things that denied her. That was why she could fall in love with a boy who barely remembered her name, a boy who never would have looked at her in normal circumstances.   
  
Rantaro just doesn’t.   
He can’t return what she felt, and she was happy that way.   
There was no way the person she liked could dislike her.

Fairies were playful tricksters, but they had no love in their hearts, and that meant they were equally incapable of holding any malice. 

“You’re you…”  Tsumugi said.  
  
“No wonder you want to be an author. You’re so talented at expressing yourself in words," Rantaro said.   
  
“Am I really the first person that tried to kill you?”   
  
“Yeah, you’re as special as my first love.” Not that he ever loved anybody, Rantaro murmured.   
  
“I h-have writer’s block okay," Tsumugi felt that her skin was especially thin around him.   
  
“Have you written anything yet?”   
  
“No," Tsumugi looked away.   
  
“Then you have writer’s block every moment of your life? You must be suffering, sorry bout that," Rantaro said looking sympathetic.   
  
“Yeah, well you have writer’s block head!”   
  
“Wow. What a turn of phrase. I take back everything I said, you won me over with your charming or clever wordplay.”

Tsumugi’s head fell. “I can’t believe I’m so plain a girl, even my kidnapping victim is talking over me.” Tsumugi mumbled under her breath that the yandere trope was harder to replicate in real life than she thought, and she did not want to be in one of those anime that existed just to deconstruct and tear apart tropes by applying realistic consequences.   
  
Rantaro patted her on the shoulder as he continued to glance at the photoes of him she had hung on the walls. The absolute strangest thing about him was how he took everything so normally, with that same smile. Even when he was being normal he was weird, that was how much he had her beat. 

“Why are you doing all this stuff anyway? Seems like you’re kind of forcing it.” Rantaro said, his eyes elsewhere. 

“Haven’t you ever wished to be someone else?” Tsumugi grabbed the pleats of her skirt with her hands, and then wrinkled them further as she twisted into the fabric.   
  
“Huh? Like what?”   
  
“You know like, wishing you’d be hit by a truck and wake up in another world. Or wishing that your parents would get killed and you would find out your real parents all along were someone else and you were living on earth under a hidden identity. And now you have to travel to space as the most wanted person in the galaxy to battle an evil tyrant,” Tsumugi started to rant with sudden intensity and confidence without even noticing.   
  
“No way, that all sounds suicidal.”   
  
“You are suicidal," Tsumugi reminded him.   
  
“Oh yeah, I forgot.” he said with the same dazed look in his eyes he always had. As if his eyes were hidden behind a layer of fog, as if a veil covered him at all times. “I mean I do such a bad job at being myself, that I’d probably suck at trying to be someone else.”   
  
“I see… w-well.” Tsumugi had no idea that kidnapping someone was going to require people skills and the ability to hold a conversation for this long. She thought stalking and kidnapping were the domain of delusional weirdos like her, not the normies. “If you don’t want to be someone else thne why do you want to die so badly? I don’t get it when you’re always smiling-”

“I was smiling?” Rantaro cut her off.  
He was still smiling right then, but Rantaro himself did not seem aware of it. The look in his eyes said he had no idea what expression he was making.   
  
That was why the photos of him on the wall did not bother him. He did not feel like the green haired boy in those photos was him. Not really. He felt no connection to that boy. He did not exist inside any of those images of him.   
  
“Y-yeah, you’re wearing that smug grin on your face. Like we get it, you’re popular, cool, and the other normies all like you. Go die.”    
  
“I’m trying, but you won’t let me.” Rantaro shrugged, and then awkwardly started to play with his earrings, making a noise like the clinking of wind chimes. “I don’t think I’m smiling right now. I’m not sure if I ever smiled. Everyone seems to see it that way though. That Amami Rantaro is a nice, easy going guy who always seems to be smiling. I’ve never felt myself smile though, and I’ve never even wanted to.”   
  
His fingers were lost in the green tresses of his hair, and in his sudden anxiety he made his hair even more of a mess as he pulled on it.   
  
“I don’t understand why smiling is a good thing, or why people want to smile. Happiness seems like too much of a hassle because it never comes easy, and it never sticks around for long. People live to be happy, but that’s impossible for me, so I don’t know why I should bother.” He gave an exhausted sigh.   
  
There's no one left.  
Who even wants me alive.   
  
He said, his fingers curling around the base of his neck. The smile he wore seemed to weaken, but it seemed no less real than before. Whatever Rantaro felt, those feelings could never reach his face. That was why it was impossible for him to love other people. When two people love each other, they’ll never know of that love unless they express it with words.   
  
But there were no words that could describe Amami Rantaro. He was nothing but a blank. He was a book written by eldritch fae, with letters that looked like nothing to human eyes. He had no dreams or aspirations. He was like a book, written with meaning by a writer, but imprinted with the desires and meanings of the multitudes who read it. 

He was a kid unable to come up with original ideas or understand complex concepts.   
  
Her stalking did not even occur to him as strange because he was constantly doing the same thing of others, he watched them from a distance, and analyzed them based only on his one sided understanding.   
  
In that way they were together.   
In that way they were apart. 

Rantaro sat on the bed of her one room apartment. “Well, thanks for saving my life anyway. I guess I should say that.”   
  
“You don’t sound too happy about it," Tsumugi said.   
  
“What is happy?”   
  
“It’s uh… hard to put into words," Tsumugi was hesitant too herself.    
  
“But you’re supposed to be an author.”   
  
“N-no, I’m just a fangirl. I don’t write any of my own stuff. If I tried to write anything it’d be no good.”   
  
“No way. You can do whatever you set your mind to. You did such a good job of kidnapping me after all," Rantaro said clapping his hands together, and every word that came out of his mouth really was meaningless Tsumugi started to realize.   
  
“What kind of encouragement is that?” Tsumugi said before holding her face between her hands. “You might be the yandere here, not me. I’m starting to get scared. I knew I was way too normal for this kind of scenario. Recast this role please! I need an understudy!” Tsumugi started to rant again, not noticing she was ranting the same way Rantaro never noticed he was smiling.   
  
Rantaro watched her for a moment, a smile teasing on his lips. As she continued to freak out in a rather self absorbed fashion, because he was the one who had been kidnapped after all, he stepped forward and pushed her back on the bed. She felt his weight on top of her. His eyes overlapping with hers.   
  
Green eyes.

Blue eyes.

 “Awe. Don’t you go feeling scared now. It’s alright.” He said, and he sounded like he was just teasing her but it was impossible to tell with Rantaro. He held her there. It felt like embracing a dream. But a living person was there with her in the bed, his chest was rising and falling and she could hear his heart beating.   
  
In her dream there was a deep forest, wrapped in fog.   
There was a boy colored in every shade of green. With him, she walked deep into the forest. To a place untouched by the sun. A garden where only children could dwell.   
  
She came to her senses when she breathed in flowers. There were creatures as small as wisps dancing in between them. They, and the changeling boy, who was neither human like her, nor like them, or anybody else.   
  
She asked him where she was, and he told her this is where eternity is.  
And she wondered what eternity was.

It is when you just exist.  
It is when you are there.   
It is when you are not there.   
It is when you are unchanging.   
  
She looked up and the sky was empty of stars. All of the had been plucked out of the sky and placed in the boy’s eyes inside, and there was a mesmer in the edges of his eyes as he gazed back at her.   
  
And she knew she wanted to stay in this garden with the boy forever.

The path home had been lost.   
  
She looked into her fingers and saw tiny bodies that looked like crushed insects. A moment ago they had all been dancing between the flowers, but now their clear translucent blood was falling in between her fingers. It glimmered. It sparkled. She thought it was pretty. She wondered who the real inhuman person was between them.   
  
The fairies tried to guide her home.   
She killed them all.

So she could stay in this garden with him.   
  
The fairies stopped dancing, and the music stopped, and her world ended. 

 

🧸

 

Weeks after they started to live together as kidnapper and victim she asked him one day while they were walking together in the snow. He held an umbrella over her head. If someone were to take a picture of the scene they might even be mistaken for a couple.  
  
But neither Shirogane Tsumugi nor Amami Rantaro would appear within that picture frame.   
  
Even if he held an umbrella over both of their heads, Tsumugi could still feel the knife cutting any string that might have formed between them. Rantaro acted casually like they were just walking together to school, even though they had both decided to run away to neverland to be with the fairies together.   


She asked him a question, soft and white as the falling snow in its innocence. “Do you still want to die, Amami-kun?” She could be dyed so many different colors from just this one question.   
  
“Mmmyeah, probably.” Amami was strange, because everything he said was insincere and yet at the same time it was like he was someone incapable of lying.   
  
“Do you really not mind being with me?” She asked, as fragile as the falling snow. 

“I don’t care about the future, so you can do whatever you want now and after I’m gone.”   
  
“That’s a terrible character motivation. Who wrote you anyway?” Tsumugi snapped at him.   
  
“Jeez. Why you always gotta be nitpicking my writing?” He said as he tousled his hair carelessly. 

“What are you going to do for now? You can’t read a story by skipping straight to the ending you know.” Tsumugi as a book girl took this seriously.   
  
“You can if you’re lazy. Awe, don’t glare at me like that. You take this really serious huh, wannabe author?”   
  
“I’m not a wannabe author, I’m just an empty fangirl. A hollow cosplayer with no substance," Tsumugi said.   
  
“Yeah, yeah. Hmm, you like fairy tales so…”  Only when her back hit the wall, did Tsumugi realize that Rantaro was getting closer to her once more and she could no longer back away. Just like a child he understood nothing about the boundaries between people at all, as if those invisible walls did not exist for him. “I may not have what it takes to be a real prince, but… I can pretend to be one. Take you by the hand. And whisk you away.”   
  
Only when she started to feel lightheaded did Tsumugi realize she was not breathing. She could not breathe. Her entire face flushed with the blood that was suddenly rushing to her ears. “Normie, just because you have social skills, and can make eye contact with other people, and don’t smell you think you're hot shit.”   
  
“Hmm?”   
  
“You’re just making fun of me," She said, staring behind her glasses clear as ice.   
  
“No, I’m serious.” He did not know what it meant to laugh much less laugh at others. The falling snow. The way his eyes fell down her body as he observed her. She stepped on his foot on accident. He tripped over her. The two of them fell together, like the snow.   
  
As they lay there, they said nothing and continued to watch the snow fall. A red umbrella fell away from his hands, like a single white flower turned red, like red curtains curling around them.   
  
Tsumugi remembered the words they shared in that garden the first time she saw him.  _“Do you know what I am?”_ _  
__  
__“A delinquent?” She asked._ _  
__  
__“A ghost.”  
  
__He continued.  
__  
__“I let my younger sister die. I’m a person who doesn’t deserve to live_.” 

The words he told her a complete stranger that day had stayed with her ever since.  _Would you hear my story?_ He asked her on that, and ever since that day she would have done anything to be a character in his story, to just exist in the same page as him.   
  
“If you’re just going to throw your life away, you should just give it to me.” Tsumugi said while still wrapped around him in the snow. “Marry me and spend the rest of your life taking care of me.”

Rantaro seemed to quietly contemplate her words for a moment, but she could not read anything from her expression. He pulled away from her and stood up once more, adrift among the falling white. He somehow looked whiter than all of it.  
  
“We shouldn’t stay out too long. You’ll catch a cold.”  
  
**  
[SECOND LOVE SECOND SUICIDE - END]**


	69. FTE: Love is So Irrational

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a Zaregoto: Book 1 Reference this chapter.

**FREE TIME EVENT 1/5: Love is so Irrational**

“I want to be like you.”  
“I want to be you.” 

 

🧸

  
Black. White. Black. White. They were like two opposite halves stitched together, even together they could never be whole. If they wanted to smile it would only ever be half of a smile. They were inseparable but not together.  
  
Like an asymptote.  
She could get closer, and closer, but would never cross the line to touch him.  
There was an infinity of distance between them. 

And her stupid overclocked brain could calculate all of those infinities over and over again.  
And the last thing she wanted was to be consumed by thoughts of him even now, but the problem of her life right there she could never stop thinking, she could never stop herself from wanting what she did not have. 

 _Love is so irrational._ _  
_ _So sentimental._ _  
_ _No, not sentimental no. These feelings aren’t disgusting yet._ _  
_ _No maybe I don’t mind that they’re disgusting._

Junko rolled over to see her reflection in one of the full-length mirrors. She and the girl in the mirror had a complicated relationship. The image of that girl was living her best life. Even if people said she was incurable. That she was only pretending to be a human being. That was what she thought as she looked into the mirror at the Junko who had not lost.  
  
She had both eyes and people believed she was a natural blonde. She was once somebody everybody could relate to as a real girl. Throughout heaven and earth, only her pleasure and displeasure existed. For the two faced-girl in the mirror, she doesn’t care.   
  
Whether hope lives or dies.She was just curious to see what would happen. Other than that, she truly did not care. A god’s mischief. The whim of a flighty girl. When she was like that, she did not have to feel this small pain in her heart, like a thorn digging in deeper every single time her heart beat. 

Both versions of her were equally fake though. They were meaningless fakes, and they were masterpieces. The portrait of a girl. She was painted in all black and white. And that was fine, that was enough. Everything was fine the way it was.

The boy who asked her if she ever felt like damaged goods. The boy who liked her. The boy who said she wanted to live. The boy who called her clueless. The boy who thought she was fine just as she was, without needing any color. When she thought of him. _This feeling doesn’t totally disgust me._

Why was it not enough for her? Why was it never enough?  
It started to feel like nothing in this world would ever be enough for her. And when she thought of that she got scared, and it was stupid to get scared because she could destroy the world with a snap of her fingers. The entire world revolved around her so why was she worrying if there was even a place for her in the world,  
  
Maybe she did have a place once, but she destroyed it. Junko rested her face against the cool glass of the mirror hoping, she would see Kumagawa on the other side of the reflection because she was so sick of staring at herself. When he looked at her though for some reason it was not so bad being seen.

As she rested her head there she thought she felt a single tear fall down her cheek, but when she wiped her face she saw smeared blood on her fingertips.   
  
Droplets fell from her face, and from where they hit the ground white flowers sprung up. That was right her head was full of flowers. The entire world for her was a private garden she could never escape from. Utterly alone. All she wanted was to be evicted from her garden, and become tainted with sin and human like everyone else, but she was stuck as a pure white like those flowers.  
  
She knew exactly who these white flowers were for. They were flowers left on Kumagawa’s grave.. How many times would she need to kill him until she was satisfied? How many times did he need to die for her? White carnations, pure love. Pink carnation, a woman’s love. Red carnation, true love. Why was it the only way she knew how to love was staining everything by spilling red all over. She didn’t know. She really didn’t know. She knew everything, but she didn’t know that. She didn’t know what was important, what everyone else seemed to know but her, how to live.   
  
She plucked one flower form the ground and held it in her hand.  
He was vivid.  
She was colorless.  
He was cruel.  
She was kind.  
  
It was so hard to be just one thing and not the other. She wanted to become someone else. That was why she leaned on him so much, so much so she was going to crush him. On a whim _,_ Junko tore apart the flower in her hand petal by petal. 

 _Hey, do you love me?_ _  
_ _No, no, no, no, no._ _  
_ _No, I gotta be someone else._  
It was either hope or despair. It was love me or love me not. The girl who saw things in black and white. The colorless girl.   
“That’s a pretty flower.”  
  
Junko crushed the remains of the imaginary flower in her hand. _She’s the type to just go along with everything huh? The flowers are obviously fake. They’re a metaphor for uh.. Losing my ind whatever… bored of this train of thought._ “You.” Junko said suddenly changing tracks, “Your name uh… Yumeno Himiko-san?”  
  
“You haven’t even met that person!” Tsumugi cried out. Perhaps she should have pretended to be a more likable character, there’s no part she detested more than playing herself when she stepped on stage. “It’s Fukawa Toko.”  
  
“Oh, Fukawa-san, you changed your hair. Is ugly chic in this fall or something? You have to tell me how you take care of that hair, do you just stick your head in the blender in the morning so it gets all extra knotted. You really gotta tell me your secrets gurl, it takes effort to look that bad.”  
  
“I’m not trying to look this way on purpose.”  
  
“Wait, ugly isn’t what you were going for… Uh, sucks to be you huh?” Junko said, breathing in the bitter sweet smell of flowers, except those flowers were not really there.  
  
“I’m obviously not Fukawa-san! She’s your classmate you know what she looks like already.”  
  
“Um, why would I pay attention to other people when I can pay attention to myself? I mean have you seen me? Other people can’t help but stare and lavisciously lick over every centimeter of my body with their eyes when they see me, how hard do you think it is to resist the temptation for me?”  
  
“Yes I have and you look wonderful, but still… it’s Shirogane Tsumugi.”

When Tsumugi found Junko sitting there alone, she dragged her to her talent lab. Junko was already starting to feel a migraine from the harsh white lights from above, that made the colors in front of her eyes appear even more faded to her. The two of them sat in the middle of  a large cosplay studio, with stage lights hanging from the ceiling over them. There were several different stages set up, like they were a scene plucked out of a single frame from a movie waiting for someone to step into them and exist in that fictional world for one frame.  
  
Junko was lying on the floor of a bar set. She had done nothing but that for the last hour, and all Tsumugi did was stare at her and watch her. Junko would have found it creepy, if she did not know she was the most awesome, more charismatic, most perfect girl ever. She never fell slowly she did it in style.  
  
“Shirobako-san.”  
  
“Shirogane-san,” Tsumugi corrected her. 

“Yeah, have you thought about being more interesting as a person? Then maybe you would be worth remembering. It’s not my fault I find everything boring, maybe it’s everybody else’s fault and I’m the only one in the whole world who never did anything wrong.”  
  
Tsumugi folded her hands. “Umm, you’re right I guess. To be honest, I’m so plain that when I’m near someone as sparkly as you… I feel like someone’s cast Poof and I’m going to disappear without leaving any XP or gold.”  
  
“You’re just going to keep agreeing with everything I say aren’t you?”  
  
Tsumugi did not think this was awkward at all. In fact everything was going exactly according to plan. Still she had never seen Junko look such a way, her hair was down and she ran both hands through the frayed ends, combing and pulling at her hair with two sets of red nails. “From the length of time you spent staring into that mirror, I assumed you didn’t want to talk to a person, just someone who reflected you in every way.”  
  
Junko finally sat up from her stupor. “Upupu, the passive agressive type, huh? You remind me of someone…”  
  
“You?”  
  
“No way, I’m the only me that exists. My name and image are both copyrighted and my intellectual property, I’ll sue any imitators.” 

Tsumugi laughed the subject off awkwardly.  
  
Junko changed the subject again. “Hey, why did you drag me in here with you anyway? Did you want to make me feel better by showing what a loser you are in comparison? Whoah, it’s totally working, but then again I come off looking good when compared to anybody. I can’t imagine who you’d have to find to compare me to where I’d be the loser, probably some kind of sexy super me.”  
  
“Umm… even with all these materials and tools, if it’s by myself…”  
  
“Oh, I get it. So you’re an attention hungry slut that’s constantly looking for validation from others? Damn, what a needy girl.”   
  
“That’s wasn’t my next line at all.” Tsumugi clutched the side of her face. “There’s no point doing it by myself.”  
  
“Oh, that’s what you would say wouldn’t you, dirty girl!”  
  
“Umm….”  
  
“Well, you’re fun to make fun of at least. Hey, go ahead and thank everybody who ever bullied you in your life for me for turning you into such spineless jello. You can’t do anything more than jiggle, especially that lackluster chest of yours.”  
  
“I… I’m falling so behind here.” Tsumugi wiped the sweat on her brow, and suddenly her face reddened as she got caught up in a different kind of emotion. Her and Junko were as different as red and blue and yet she reached out and took both of the girl’s cold hands. “I just thought you might want to try on some of my cosplays. Haven’t you ever wanted that? To become a completely different person and feel like you’re part of a different world…”  
  
“Hey, don’t try to relate to me on a personal level. That’s just, icky. I don’t want your feelings anywhere near me.” A shiver ran all the way through her body, truly chilled down to her bone. A body lacking any heat at all. It felt a little bit like two dolls holding hands. “Obviously I don’t want to be anyone else, I mean being me is the greatest.” 

Shirogane finished shaking a drink behind the bar. When she poured it out into a glass, it looked like a drink of many different colors, constantly changing, but Junko was sure she was just hallucinating again. “Just tell me about it. Since you love talking about yourself so much anyway. I’m a good listener, well that’s because most people act like I’m not even here.” 

“Ugh, fiiiiiiine. How dare you be nice to me. The moment we get out of here I’m going to destroy everything you’ve ever loved and cast you into the worst despair possible. But anyway…” Junko just like that began to tell her story, in the same erratic fashion, changing the subject several times.  
  
“Oh, so you two just got into a fight?”  
  
“That’s way too normal of a reaction.” Junko said, resting her chin in both hands as she sat with her elbows on the bar. 

  
“Um, I really don’t know how to react to things in a non-normal way. Well I know what it’s like - oh you’re probably thinking there’s no way this girl has ever kissed a boy that wasn’t a full sized anime body pillow.”  
  
“If you’re just going to go ahead and insult yourself that’s boring for me. I demand you develop some self esteem so I can destroy it.”  
  
“Umm… I’ll do my best.” Tsumugi said, forcing herself to be agreeable again. “Actually, I did have one boy I liked.”  
  
“And then he dumped you?”  
  
“How did you know?”  
  
Junko felt that one was just too easy so she let it go.  
  
Tsumugi leaned forward on the bar, staring into both of Junko’s eyes. “Something like that, it got too real.” She thought of a boy with pointed ears and sloped cheeks she saw glimmer in the fade, only to find out he was just human, just like everyone else.  
  
Junko took a sip of the cocktail, and then immediately splashed the rest in Tsumugi’s face. “Oh, wow, this is better than I thought I totally didn’t want to vomit when I drank it.”  
  
“Then why did you throw your drink in my face?”  
  
“Just because.” Junko said as she slammed the glass on the counter to demand more.  
  
Tsumugi got excited again as she wiped the red off of her face. “I’m not too bad. I used to work a whole bunch of jobs. I used to say to my customers, _I’m in a bit of financial trouble, if only someone could help me out…_ ”  
  
“Oh, so you weren’t just a whore you were a cheap whore. Good to know.” Junko said, and realized she did not even know how to mix a drink. She could learn it in one second if she really wanted to, but the only time she had even tasted a drink was because of Kumagawa. “You don’t seem like an Ultimate to me?”   
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“Well what does an Ultimate Cosplayer mean anyway? You’re really really good at being a fan? Utlimate Fangirl? That’s like when Komaeda calls himself the Ultimate Fanboy of Ultimates, and if you’re like Komaeda that automatically makes you the worst.” Junko’s rambling finally seemed to hone in on something. “You seem too real to me to be an ultimate.”  
  
“Too real?”  
  
“Yeah, like you’re really like this.” As she said that, Junko took the second drink Tsumugi had made her. It tasted good, that was why she turned it over in her hand and let the drink spill out all the way to the floor. She saw the color red splash everywhere. She just wanted to make things a little more colorful.”I’m good at spotting fakes but, you don’t look like anything…”  

It was the first time Tsumugi heard those words.  
Anything more and less than herself.  
Like she was enough.

Like she was a real person standing there.

Like she was a part of that girl’s world.  
But, hearing that from the girl she idolized most.  
It hurt, ever so slightly.  
  
“You’re a little immature, huh?”  
  
“No I’m not. Shut up. Stupid face.” Junko immediately began to pout. Of course being a model she knew how to pout with maximum effectiveness.  
  
“I mean going on and on about the real thing, isn’t that your problem? It’s kids who think _everything’s a lie, everyone’s fake._ ”  
  
Junko said everything was a lie.  
Tsumugi agreed, that must be the truth.  
But - really. Really, really, you know. If this world were like what Enoshima said, if this world were like what I think. We would not be suffering like this.  
  
Do you get it?  
If the trembling act of clinging to him was an act, - if that too was a lie, then this world would only be left with lies. If everything is a lie and there is not one ounce of truth - if there is nothing of comparison, then everything ends up being the truth, too.

I drummed my fingers on the bar. Impatient. I just want her to get it already. If only I could make her see things my way. “Everyone tries to act like the best possible version of themselves in front of the person they love. You sound like you’re ruining everything on purpose, trying to find a real thing that you don’t even know if it exists in the first place.”  
  
The real self.  
A lonely garden.  
  
“Well, ruining everything is what I’m best at-”  
  
“Weren’t you happier when you two were just writing a love story together? That’s why I hate endings, because when stories end all that’s left is reality…”  
  
“Why are you… It’s like you’re acting friendly.”  
  
“Yeah? So?”  
  
“Oh my god, I’ve been acting like an unlikable bitch this entire time. I know I’m vain, but at least I’m self aware. What you’re doing makes no sense at all unless. Do you like me as a person or something? Ick.”  
  
“Yep. If there was anybody in the world to wear my cosplay I’d want it to be you. Ever since I saw you in a magazine I thought-”  
  
“I was a real girl.”  
  
“Like you were the only real person in the whole world. That everybody else was imaginary except for you. You act like you’re the only person that exists…”  
  
As she said that, junko had been trying to pour herself another drink, but her hand started to slip and the she overpoured it. The red overflowed and began to spill out. An overflowing cup, just like her.  
  
“So, I don’t get why you’re worried about what someone else thinks? That’s so not you.”  
Shirogane Tsumugi turned her head, casting her gaze away.  
All she ever wanted was to look Enoshima Junko in the eye.

But she could not meet the eyes of the girl in front of her.  
“You’re not acting like yourself, maybe that’s why he’s slowly falling out of love with you.” 

 

🧸

 

Kumagawa sat down on a tatami mat. His entire world now consisted of one room. Light shone through the paper sliding door in front of him, and left black and white shadows criss crossing all over his body.  
  
The room was not boring at least. Inside there was a spectacle. The wallpaper was torn up clawed by a beast, plates broken in half on the floor. Mental Breakdown Decor! It was pure destruction. There wasn’t a a single undamaged good.  Everything destroyed. Clothes torn into rags like a dog had shredded them. Broken furniture. Books ripped apart page by page. A shattered television screen. A smashed headpost on the four poster bed. A mirror cracked just where the head would reflect. A pillow torn in half bleeding out its insides. Everything was broken to the point where it lost all meaning. Everything was broken into pieces with not a single usable thing remaining. A clock broken frozen to one time. Pictures with the faces torn out. A stranged teddy bear.  
  
ANd Kumagawa lounged at the center of this perfectly content. The king of the broken junk. His hair fell in long, white, pieces over his face. Everything in this thoroughly destroyed room was sending ill will, enmity, hostility, and malice.  
  
It felt like everything else in the world was his enemy. But that was a delusion. It was nothing more than a conveyance of his insanity. 

It was illusion, delusion, admiration, and pity and everything else.  
And love was somewhere in that room too but it was lost with all the mess.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi smiled, like smiling was the only face he could make anymore.  
  
“So, have you realized Junko’s your enemy yet?” The pink and white teddy bear spoke up to him. “She exists to destroy you.”

 『Are you finally shipping us, Junkai-chan?』  
  
“That is the opposite of shipping you. Don’t start pretending to enjoy despair, because that’s Junko’s thing, and since I’m the real Junko it’s also my thing.” 

 『Junko doesn’t exist to do anything. She’s lazy like that...』  
  
He looked around the destroyed room.  
A territory just for him.  
It reflected the insides of his heart.  
Inside and out, there were no longer any lies for him. He could not lie. It was getting harder to lie. And he was scared, he was scared that when he could no longer lie he would not be able to say the words _I love you._ Not that Junko would say it back either way. 

 『Just because she has no personality you guys keep saying whatever you want about her. Gimme a break. Even though she’s nothing more than an introverted nineteen year old who lacks imagination, and is somewhat on the volatile side.』  
  
“What do you mean by that? Hey, hey, hey, hey, loser I’m talking to you. I’m wasting time on your nothing of a presence, instead of going skynet and destroying the world like I should be doing. So pay attention.” 

 『Such a needy kid. What’s with you robots and asking what the meaning of everything is? Hey, Hey, senpai what is this feeling in my robo-heart? It’s ticking...』  
  
“I hope it’s a bomb that explodes and kills both of us.” 

 『You want to die with me, Junkai-chan? You really do like me.』 Kumagawa stood up finally to where he had been sitting like a child and walked to the door, he pulled the paper sliding door open only to see another room right in front of him an exact replica of the one he stood in. He took a step into the other room, and then stepped immediately back into the room he was in a moment ago. 

 『That girl has no imagination at all, why is she even alive?』He did not even seem to notice that the world consisted of only one room, like he had forgotten about walking out of the room a second ago.  『Does she want to just be in this one room forever with me? Silly girl.』  
  
“You’re the silly one. It’s like you want to be trapped in here with her.  You know what I think, she’s not being the obsessive one anymore it’s you, you’re trapping yourself in here with her because you can’t bear to live without her either.” Just then, Junkai chirped with electronic laughter. “Puhuhuhu, I said bear.”

 『Everybody gives me such a hard time. I just didn’t want her to be alone.  Why is that a bad thing?』  
  
“God, you’re so coiled around her the only other person you talk to right now is someone programmed to be exactly like her.”

Coiled around her like a snake.  
As if he no longer wanted to be able to tell where he ended and she began. He did not need the world, if his entire world consisted of the space between their bodies as they held onto each other, struggling to get closer and closer.  
  
But snakes did not belong in gardens.  
They were stepped on.  
They had their heads crushed. Kumagawa felt like his brain was recently severed from the rest of his body, and he was happier than he had been in a long time. 

 『But you’re alone too, Junkai-chan.』  
  
“Thank god. There’s enough of me already. How could anybody see the frustrating, and endlessly annoying and predictable way you monkeys interact each other and be like, yeah, I wanna be like that. Hash tag life goals.” 

 『Oh, are you going to make chatspeak your thing to differentiate yourself from Junko now? That’s cute.』  
  
“Thanks. You literally ruined it. Never doing it again. You killed another one Senpai, good job.”  
  
Kumagawa picked up the stuffed bear whose neck was twisted entirely around from being strangled. He twisted it back and did his best to fix the stuffing that was leaking out by sewing up the tears in her body. When he was a kid with white hair he did this too.  
  
Always alone, holding a stuffed animal and talking to it.  
Because there was not a single person he could talk to. 

He wanted to believe he was different now.  
He was not some insane child, unable to grow up, still talking to himself.  
He left the neverland.  
He found someone to talk to.  
There was someone to listen to his lies, that was all he wanted.  
His hair turned black.  
He painted himself a different color.  
He was not like those lonely white flowers anymore, so easy to tear up, so easy to stain.  
He met a girl who stood alone in red heels among torn up flowers.  
  
“I hate saying this, but enough about me let’s talk more about you senpai. You two stick together even though you drive each other mad, and the reason for that is? Oh my, this part is fairly skewed. I can’t believe I was programmed with such a twisted personality. You stay by her side because you’re jealous of her. And while you’re jealous of her ability to express herself freely, she somehow looks unhappy. You see this girl who has everything you want, and can do all the things you can’t do, yet she is still for some reason unhappy and that makes you feel better. That makes you feel like it doesn’t matter if you can’t get what you want.” 

 『Oh no. Now that I’ve realized the truth my mind is broken.』  
  
“You’re terrible at pretending to be a person.”

 『Shut up. You don’t even have real person feelings.』Kumagawa fell back, throwing the teddy bear that was Junkai away like a ragdoll.  『You Junkos overthink everything.』  
  
“No, you just don’t think at all.” 

 『Just because you’re smarter than me doesn’t mean you’re right. Junko can hate me all she wants, but I still love her. Even if she wants to kill me, I’ll keep on loving her.』  
  
Like that love was some terrible feeling.  
Like continuing to love her was somehow worse than just hating her.

 『I just don’t hate her. I can’t feel the way she wants me to.』  
  
He could not kill her.  
That was his one rule.  
He did not want to. 

 『All you two think about is hate. What do you think your name means, Junkai-chan?』  
  
“It’s a reference to Junk coding. It’s random parts of a code that are just there for filler.” 

 『I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s Junk’ai. It means Junko love.』Kumagawa explained his crude understanding of Kanji, even though he could barely read. 『You’re different from Junko, because you can learn to love yourself in a way she can't. I don’t get why you keep wanting to be the same as her.』  
  
Junkai hesitated, but there was no need to hesitate. After all she thought of all of her responses in an instant, she did not need time to process or think things through, and yet for a moment she was truly at a loss for words.  
  
“You know she’s getting sick of your cute act. No wonder she’s tired of you. I can’t wait until you get sick of it too.”   
  
Junkai said, as the red in her eyes powered down.  
That was probably the Junkai version of taking her ball and going home. She was just pretending to go offline even though she had nothing like a sleep mode.  
  
As if Junko would program an exact AI copy of her capable of turning her brain off with a switch.  
  
Kumagawa grabbed the bear once more, and hugged it close to his chest.  『Not everything needs a reason. Maybe I just like talking to her. Maybe I just want to talk to her again...』Except they did not talk, they just recited lines at each other like they were in a play.  『You really don’t get me, even though you think you know everything. Just like a kid. I’m already sick.』  
  
He hoped these feelings disgusted her.  
He wanted to make her absolutely sick with them.  
As he thought about it, Kumagawa smiled like a corpse with half of its mouth missing, and the hollow flesh of his cheek just hanging there.  
  
His eyes were blinded. The world was monohcrome. Amid it, a red among the blue cloudless sky. Like it was pollution, that red, that stain on the sky, bursting and bleeding into stark contrast and burning itself deep into his retinas.  
  
The smell of iron, of blood, intermingles with flowers. Every single one of his senses beats his brain hard, as if it’s not damaged enough already. They flare up because the same way Junko cannot stop thinking, he cannot stop feeling, he cannot become numb. There’s nothing he can do, not now, when he’s choking back black vomit, his nose, his eyes, his head, everything was going to leak out black.   
  
His fingers trailed down the side of his face and suddenly, his whole body retched. He vomitted up black sludge, it dripped out of his mouth like drool even after he had spit it all up. Drop, drop, drop, like black rain, it fell on the white flowers underneath. He just wanted to paint everything black, a color that would show no stains no matter how dirty it was. 

It’s because his organs are painted black. The black sank in all the way to his bones. His entire insides painted in that color, he does not bleed anymore because his veins are filled with tar. A portrait of him is just all black. Blacker than black.  
  
That wasn’t her.  
The girl who locked him in this room wasn’t the girl he wanted to speak with.  
She was just a red lump of something.  
He didn’t care what anyone said, this wasn’t her. She wasn’t doing this to me. He just did it to himself.  
  
Droplets of black began to fall, drip by drip. It was trickling out he supposed, from both of his eyes. He opened his mouth to try to speak, but more black fell out like drool. He couldn’t say a single word. He could not hear anything. But maybe he never said anything in the first place.  
  
He had to tell her.  
He had finally resolved to tell her.  
He had to tell her now.  
  
The black smog hung around him, ever present, as if laughing at him, as if trying to come between them, as if making it so he could not see her anymore.

 『 _Leave us alone._ 』  
『 _I’m finally about to tell her._ 』  
  
Kumagawa reached forward and put his hand on the floor. For a moment he felt something wet, and vile on the tips of his fingers, like the black liquid was real. He suddenly withdrew his hand and saw nothing on it.  
  
He had never hallucinated the touch of something before. His brain was getting creative with new ways to go insane, so that was fun. Kumagawa touched the balck paint falling out of his mouth again. He wanted to be pitch black, because the kid he saw in the mirror was white.

A version of him colored in all white, with black irises. Kumagawa felt like he was being watched from behind the mirror. But what did that boy know? He knew nothing. Nobody knew anything about him, and that was the way he wanted it to be.  
  
He still had them all fooled and he just…  
He didn’t know anymore.  
What was white and what was black.  
Kumagawa Misogi just did not know. 

 『I love Junko, but not in the way she wants me to love her. Not in the way she wants to be loved. 』

The boy in the mirror said nothing. 

 『If I said I just wanted to be a normal boyfriend, do you think she’d laugh?』  
  
The white haired boy in the mirror laughed at him. 

 『...I’m a real person. I have feelings too, you know』Kumagawa muttered to nobody else but himself. He tried to tell the truth but those words sounded like a lie. 

Junko could laugh at him all she wanted later. Juststay out of his way for now. He knew he was late. He knew it would just make things weird between them.  
  
『 _But you..._ 』  
『 _Your kind of selfish attitude._ 』  
『 _The way you get violent when someone makes you blush._ 』  
『 _Your red hair, and everything. Everything. Everything. Everything._ 』

He loved everything.  
No matter what she did he responded with love.  
And he knew Junko, knew her better than Junkai did even though Junkai had her thoughts, her feelings, her memories transcribed onto her flesh.  
  
She may seem cold-blooded, she may seem fake, but she was more human than anyone else. No, maybe she was the only other human being on earth besides Kumagawa himself he did not know anymore. She was more brittle than the glass in the broken mirror he laid his cheek against. If she ever felt the real thing she would break all too easily. That was why she always chose to be fake. 

She chose despair because happiness would ruin her.  
And that was why. He wanted to fill her up with his feelings, like a broken glass that was constantly overflowing. If he could not be the medicine that would soothe her, he would be her poison. If he could not heal her, then he would make her sick with feelings for him.  
  
Because she thought she was cold blooded.  
She thought she was the snake, but he knew otherwise.  
She was just the girl holding the apple in her hands.  
  
He wanted to be the only person that was real to her, because she could destroy the world but she was so easily broken by other people… and when did he feel this way? And who’s feelings were these? Did Junko want him to feel this way? Did he even want this? Who was coloring him in between the lines with such ugly colors?   
  
And he could not hate her anymore, and for some reason his feelings felt empty because of that. Like if he did not know hate then he could not love anybody. He laughed but it felt like he was not laughing because he could not cry anymore.  
  
The sound of his laughter reverberated.  
But it was just the echoes of nothing.

🧸  
  
“Wow, Misogi! You haven’t moved at all since I left you here. I’m not sure I like my boyfriend being this lazy, are you going to make me do all the work while you laze around getting drunk? Maybe you can show your affection for me by accidentally missing when you throw bottles at my head.”

Her words did not even cause a ripple in Kumagawa’s eyes. They were always like water, but they had changed and now he looked like a lake that had frozen over. The purest, crystal clear ice, that was mistakable for transparent glass.   
  
If those eyes ever broke.  
If that crystal blue broke apart into shards, they would cut all the way through her. She grabbed the side of his face and made him look at her, but she could not look him in the eyes. She was afraid of what might reflect in those eyes.  
  
『Hmm, lemme guess. It’s time for Junko pulls some yandere shit instead of telling me how much she loves me, because I’m cute, adorable, and irresistible.』  
  
“Oh, you big baby.” 

『That’s right I’m a cute little baby, so be nicer to me.』There is a flicker of a smile on her face as she reaches for his hands, and intertwines both of their fingers together, puppeteering his hands around like they’re hers. His hands slowly curling around hers in a death grip, rigor mortis, never to let go. So dirty, but that’s just him. He’s dirty in all the ways she’s clean, and he’s already eaten the fruit, and she can taste it on his lips when she kisses him. His body is such a pretty sight, so colorful, red welts sunken deep into his skin, and purple and pink paint smeared all over the surface. His hair white as…  
  
White like snow.  
Like snow that could melt with a touch.  
And that was weird, but this wasn’t about him was it?  
  
“Come on. I’m bored of fighting. Let’s play a game.”

『You’re no fun to play games with, you always cheat.』  
  
“So do you.” 

『That’s different, I cheat in style. And I don’t try to kill anybody over a game of cards.』  
  
“I told you Misogi, if I try to stab someone that’s my tell!”  
  
His smile darkens over his face, and she noticed something changed about him but she did not know what. Just that it’s different, and he’s different, and she’s afraid because she wanted to love him just as he was.  
  
He stained the world with his presence. There was black ink carving a curse into his chink, and black horns curled around his ears, and her thoughts were still capitvated by him. Still. After all this time. Her thoughts always went straight to him. And she knew it was a one-way thing. Iw as an obsession at this point. It was illusion, delusion, admiration, pity, and nothing else, and love had gotten lost somewhere in his eyes.  
  
And she knew her feelings would never be returned.  
Because Kumagawa will never hate anybody. And therefore he will never love anyobdy.

And she always knew that, part of her always knew. She wasn’t dumb.

Even so, she thought that him favoring her, entitled her to a little passion.  
In those passionless, watery eyes, felt nothing, that looked at nothing. 

 _I don’t want the person I love to hate me._  
Kumagawa did not fear those things, not at all, not for everyone. Because he expected to be rejected from the beginning. Everybody was the same to him. Everybody rejected him. If he lost someone, if his heart was broken, he would just move on.  
  
He trusted no one. That was why he lied to everyone. He was just fundamentally incapable of opening himself up, because he expected nothing but pain from them in return. Why did she ever think she could excite the heart of a person like that?  
  
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.  
She was smart, but she was so stupid.  
He never rejects anybody, but he never accepts them as well and because of that even when he loses somebody he can find a replacement and he can get along with just anybody, but he can never be close and never feel like there’s someone he could not lose. And isn’t that so very lonely?  
  
But she loved him. Exactly as he was, exactly like this, half formed and missing several pieces. So much she could just die. So much she wanted to kill him.  
But as much as she loved him still wanted to slaughter him out of mere caprice.  
And she understood why he didn’t trust her.

But she wanted him to open up to someone. But if it was someone else she would just get jealous. “You’re so cool, senpai. I’m glad I have you all to myself, wouldn’t it get so embarrassing if we got all lovey dovey like this in front of others?” 

『I didn’t know you could feel embarrassment, or anything else.』  
  
“Well I do feel kind of weird about being stuck in this room with you.” 

『Enoshima Godzilla Junko, that’s guilt you're feeling right now. Congratulations, it's your first emotion.』

  
Junko’s nails dug in. Both of her hands in his hair, she had to hold herself back from leavng marks on her face. She went much, much colder. “You really want to make me vomit, the fact that a one celled organism like you provokes any kind of feelings in me at all is my deepest shame, but you’re just too much fun to let go of.” 

『I’m glad it makes you sick.』  
  
She was already getting sick. She was poisoned and she did not even notice. Junko’s nails dug into his face, and she pulled up the corners of his lips to force him to smile. Not that he was capable of making any other face, not that he was capable of making any other noise than laughter.  
  
“Gosh, Misogi you’ve just got one of those punchable faces you know? You’re the exact type of person who lives to get stepped on, but I can’t bring you to heel. Even in my kicking thigh high pumps.”

『Well that’s because I’m your boyfriend, not your dog. Even if you make me sleep at the foot of your bed.』  
  
“But I feel like all the romance is gone, let’s make things exciting again.” She said as she drew out the same revolver that Kumagawa had thrown into the trash. “Do you like fireworks, MIsogi? I love them. A brilliant, glimmering fragment of time. The flash begins as a perfectly ordered chemical reaction… that melts into chaos. Human lives are just the same are they not? As is the universe itself… Blooming, scattering in the moment… ANd it’s only a single moment, isn’t it? That’s what makes it unique and beautiful don’t you think so?” 

『...』  
  
“I wanna show them to you. The most beautiful fireworks you’ve ever seen. The scattering of cerebral plasma, splattering blood. It’s art. Prefect, beautiful art of a lonely moment in time. Festival, fucking fireworks Misogi, let’s go see them together.” 

Junko, ecstatic, buzzing, pulled the trigger.  
There was a click.  
Then nothing.  
A boring result.  
  
『I don’t want to steal russian roullete that’s Komaeda’s thing.』  
  
Junko suddenly, forecefully pushed the muzzle in his mouth to shut him up. He drools and he sees his own black tinged saliva, like watered down ink. His whole mouth was dotted in metallic kisses now as he felt it rattling against his teeth. And it’s just as cold as kissing Junko, and he tastes blood again.  
  
“You pull it.”

『Huh?』  
  
“Pull the trigger yourself. If you pull it and your head explodes that’s basically a suicide isn’t it?” 

『Don’t wanna.』  
  
“Why?”  
  
『Scawy.』  
  
He said, half sucking on the muzzle. She brought her mouth forward and kissed the other half of the muzzle, and moved her body until her head was perfectly against his, and practically grinded against him as she raised the gun to both of their heads.  
  
“Then, how about this? You’ve wanted this the entire time haven’t you? What a loser you are. You try to love other people, but you just end up hating them in the end. Does it feel good, sucking off other people and then swallowing your hatred?” 

『Such colorful vocabulary for a lady.』  
  
“Quit pretending otherwise. It’s not healthy you know. You should just feel sad if you’re sad, you should just hate someone if they’re a big old meanie, I’m only thinking of what’s best for you, Senpai. I know you’ve wanted to do this to me for a long time, so just pull the trigger.” Junko smiled. Innocent. Her real smile. Pure white. Because nobody had ever touched her before, nobody had ever stained her in any way. Their hands just passed through her.  
  
But hands had left their marks all over Kumagawa. When she touched him and she saw him flinch away like she was the same as everyone else who touched him and left a mark, and she dropped the gun all on hey own, a line of saliva fell from the tip of the gun as it was ripped out of his mouth. 

『Junko, I don't want to hate the person I love even if you want me to.』  
  
“Stop saying that. Stop saying that when I’m clearly being psychotic! Do you know how awful it is, being forgiven over and over again? Why the fuck was Mikan so obsessed with forgiveness in the first place? I… I don’t like you anymore. I want to break up. I’m getting bored of you. If I were to say that to you, then what? 

『What? But I still like you.』  
He was so excited. He finally got to tell her how he felt.

But she didn't look happy about it. She wasn't happy at all.   
  
“I just wanted to go to the fireworks festival again.” Junko’s hair is red and both of her hands are in it, and she’s trying to comb out the mess but there’s too many tangles, and her ends are frayed from the times she’d dyed her hair over and over again. “Remember, we almost kissed. I didn’t want it to miss. And you know what’s funny. You know what’s hilarious actually, like twilight zone fucking end of the episode ironic hell of a twist?”

『Hmm.』

He hummed softly as he put his hand on hers.

And this feeling.  
Like an irrational itch in her heart that she wanted to scratch her chest until it was a raw gaping open wound.  
This feeling would not go away.  
She really was hopeless.  
  
Junko fell down on the floor clutching her head. “We’d be fucking perfect for each other if we didn’t have the exact same flaw.”  
  
Neither of them could tolerate the real thing.  
Even though it was what they both wanted the most.  
And they just kept orbiting around each other like a white sun and a black moon. Kumagawa fell on the ground next to her. They both laid down their legs curling in opposite diretctions only facing each other, only looking at each other in the middle. Just like black and white they could never mix.  
  
『 But that's what makes it so much fun.』

His fingers tangled up in her hair. 

He puller her eyes towards his.

He just kept looking at her.  
He just kept looking at her with those blue eyes.  
She would never escape them, for the rest of her life.  
She was that serious about this, and Kumagawa was just joking around the same as always. 


	70. FTE: Lying is my Specialty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title and quote is a reference to yonebayashi deceive.

Lying is my speciality.  
But truth be told I’m kind of bad at it.  
Why does the truth always seem more suspicious? 

 

🧸

 

『No, no, it’s true. What reason would I have to lie about it?』

The girl’s eyes looked at him as if there was nothing there in front of her. She must have doubted him from the outset. Just like a vampire did not appear in mirrors or photographs and did not have a shadow, he did not appear in other people’s eyes.

『Don’t believe me, huh…? Even though I’m just trying to help.』  
  
Well, he figured as much.  
Who would believe a blatantly fishy guy like him wanted to help anybody else? Nobody. Of course not.  
  
But he had a good reason to act this way. It’s not like he was seeking to make her dislike him. He just wanted to keep people guessing about him. Doubting him. Doubting the boy who could not even trust himself.  
  
He pretended to be self aware, but the truth was he did not understand himself at all.  
Or maybe that was the lie.  
He looked into the mirror and saw an empty space where a person should be standing. What do I like? What don’t I like? What do I want? Why am I here? 

Who do I like?  
  
He had no idea. He just did not ask himself these questions. And he did not want anyone to know someone like him who did not know himself. He did not want anyone to believe a single word a guy like that spoke. He was a stranger to himself, there was no way he could let anybody call him a friend.  
  
Doubt him. Deny him. Tear him to pieces for all he cared.  
  
Then stumbling around in a dark place, someone might find the real him. He would like to see himself again. One day to look in the mirror and say _that’s me_. 

But that could just be another lie. 

It was like the taste of tobacco on your lips as it slowly burned away your insides. It tasted like tar, there was nothing sweet to the kiss at all but people would continue to chew on cancer. He would continue to choke down lies that tasted like disgusting vomit. He ate lie after lie, and because of that he became unable to say what he really meant.  
  
Irritating. 

Bite down on his tongue hard enough that it started to swell and suffocate him.  
Swallow down rusted screws until they got lodged in his throat.  
His whole body convulsed, his blood slowly turned to rust that clogged up his veins.  
He wanted to do anything to stop himself from tying another lie.  
He wondered if there was anyone who wanted to vomit up a whole garden of flowers at the sound of their own voice.  
  
People existed inside of their own bodies, soul, consciousness, awareness, they all lived within their own gardens. So then why did he feel like he was not welcome? His body rejected him. His insides sloshed around like dark, formless, black liquid inhabiting a container. He was incompatible with himself. There was something underneath his skin he desperately wanted to keep hidden from the whole world, and so his face become a mask, and his every action that of an actor. . 

He knew a girl. She was far from a good girl, but she hadthis amazingly strong, refined, sense of self. And the ability to look at people. He was jealous from the first day he met her.

『How about this could tell you a story. You don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to, but at least you won’t get bored...』  
  
The story went like this.  
Ten years ago he bit the fruit, and the serpent dug its fangs inside of him.  
The monster spoke inside of him.  
The snake coiled.  
His heart. His lungs. His throat. His brain. He felt the scales of a snake crawling around each other, wrapping itself around him tighter and tighter, until his whole brain was constricted. Dug, deeper and deeper into his mind.  
_“Keep on lying.”_  
Said the monster.  
So he lied.  
The monster crawled up his esophagus and when he opened his mouth the snake was there at the back of his throat and spoke for him. He just continued to pile up lies. Everyone saw him as a monster, and they were not wrong.

『Ahh, don’t cry over me. I was just telling another lie.』  
  
Underhanded. Disgusting. Dirty. Filthy. Trash.  
He deceived them again.  
But he could not help but feel he was sinking without trying to swim up.   
This was all he was capable of.   
That all he could do was act cruel and keep on laughing alone.

🧸

 

He had a terrible, hateful dream. He had a wonderful, loving dream. A dream where she went away, right before his eyes.  
He had it time, and time, and time again.  
Even when they were in the same room together, he closed his eyes and saw a pair of hands wrapping around her throat. The hands that he wanted to embrace her with, the hand he thought was for holding onto her hands. How many times had he seen it today? How many times did yesterday make? How many times did he talk to her while thinking about the dream?  
  
He lost count.  
He remembered talking to her before.  
May times before.

Whenever he tried to speak of himself she did not listen. So he decided to stop talking about it any longer. It’s all right. Now, it’s all right. He even started to like talking to her again. Just listening to her speak was enough. She told him the same thing so many times, he memorized every word. But that was fine. That’s fine, so he just wanted her to keep talking.  
  
Because when he listened to her he could focus on anything but that voice. He did not have to hear the voice in the back of his own head. He could forget himself when he was with her, and that was what he wanted.  
  
But she was so comfortable with him.  
No wonder he was never popular.  
Probably, because when she looked at him she could not see anyone there.  
He just wanted to keep going like this.  
Before he hated everything about her.  
  
He just kept running, and running, and running but he could not escape her shadow. So it was better for him to just stay in this room. Whether he ran away, or faced forward, it was the same result anyway. Lesson learned. He did not need to turn the page of his life. If he was smart he would stop looking toward the future.  
  
His life went on.  
So, he’ll just rot away.

If only he could keep living this way forever.  
  
Even if he whispered a prayer begging for help nobody would answer it.  
Because he never meant it in the first place.  
He acted so sad, just pitifully lying there, but that too was all just an act in the end.  
  
Today’s a haze.  
So was yesterday, and the day before that.  He just lived repeating yesterday. Because he was afraid of losing this moment. When he fell asleep next to her in the bed, he never wanted the heat from the other side of the bed to leave him.  
  
If he can’t dream at all then he might as well skip out on sleep and simply lie there listening to her breathe. It was better than waking up to the outside world that rejected him. A dream that he never woke up from. Living in a blurry past. That was all he wanted. A lie of a time where he was still with her.  
  
_“But then you won’t ever live to see tomorrow.”_

『 _I don’t really care about any of that._ 』

Kumagawa Misogi, drowning in apathy. But he could not drown if he did not even try to breathe.  
  
“You okay?”   
  
She said pretending to be concerned.  
Junkai asked him that question in a mocking voice.  
  
“Come on, senpai if you go zombie on me I won’t have anybody to talk to. You’re my second favorite person to talk to after myself.”  
  
『I’m the only other person here.』  
  
“You’re my third favorite person to talk to after myself.”

『How did I fall down a spot on the list?』His retorts felt empty, words that could be said by anyone. Did Junkai even need another person to talk to, wouldn’t any boy she found off the street reading off the same script be just fine?

Kumagawa was sitting in front of a monitor that displayed Junkai’s face, which was exactly the same as the face of his beloved, down to the crack in the screen that broke the image over one of her eyeballs. 

“You’re going the full Neet, senpai! If you keep living this way no woman will ever want to marry you.” 

『Haven’t you ever heard of if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all?』  
  
“Then I just wouldn’t talk. Like ever. Roflcopter.”

『Roflcopter?』  
  
“It was an ironic Roflcopter.”  
  
『It was a one hundred percent genuine ROFLCOPTER!』  
  
“Technically, I’m a fake person so I’m incapable of being genuine. Everything I do is fake. Manufactured sincerity. There’s no way I’d say something that lame, it was all a lie.” 

 

『Ewe you’re just shallow. And unlike Junko your boobs aren’t even real, they’re just plastic like the rest of you.』  
  
“Hey, it’s not my fault! I was programmed that way! I swear if you try to hold me responsible for any of my actions I will crytype at you like a bitch.” 

 

『If nothing you do is on purpose than you can’t intentionally tell a lie.』  
  
“Yes, I can. Watch. Senpai, you’re the coolest guy, and I think you’re super funny so you should keep talking to me. I’m totally not thinking that you’re a needy loser who doesn’t know when to shut up.” 

 

『See, you can’t lie to me.』

  
“So, like… are you okay, senpai?” 

  
That question. That question. That question. That question. 

 

『...』

“Are you really the one who convinced Junko not to end the world? Because here you are, acting like the wrold’s already ended.” 

 

『I’m not. It’s not like I want to be here!』

 

『I want...』

『I just want to show Junko the world.』  
  
“So you’re sitting on your ass for her sake? I’m sure she’s grateful, but really…” 

 

On the screen in front of him Junkai’s expresion turned into a sneer.  
  
“Why are you pretending to be so kind?”

 

Because he.  
Didn’t want to kill her.  
He didn’t want to hurt the person he loved.  
What was so wrong with that?

 

_A thing like you wouldn’t ever get me._

He thought that and broke, and wanted to see her broken in front of him.  
He would not fall to pieces alone.  
Kumagawa reached forward with both hands.

As if to kill these boring days. 

I’ll live and die alone in her eyes.  
She was in the way.

He could not be alone with Junko as long as she was here with them.  
She was in his way.  
  
He reached forward into the screen with both of his hands. His fingers sunk into the monitor like the glass screen was just the surface of cold water, and as he pushed through his fingers came to wrap around her throat. 

 

 _You’ve been holding it for so long._  
  
Kumagawa in white said.  
  
_You can’t hold it anymore._  
  
With each step, he left white footprints on the floor.  
His mere presence seemed to beckon the snow.  
Kumagawa saw his breath.

It left his mouth like a whisp of smoke.  
He could feel his insides become nothing more than brittle ice.  
At any moment he thought he might break. 

 

 _You’ve worked so hard. You just wanted to live quietly in the shadows. Because ever since you were a kid you knew one day this would happen. Are you sad? Or maybe you’re frustrated?_  
  
Junkai’s entire image pixellating, as the screen cracked further and further. Her body began to break apart into digital snow between his fingertips. 

 

 _You’re actually happy from the bottom of your heart. It makes you happy to hurt someone. That’s the kind of person you are._  
  
After twenty years of lies Kumagawa knew.  
He was no longer a kind person.  
He never was one.  
  
That’s right. He told so many lies. He had been a coward since he was a kid. But the person he was scared of, was not a monster hidden away in the closet. The monster he feared was always with him, he could hear his heartbeat, his breathing, and when he tried to speak he heard the monster’s words instead. 

 

『It’s my fault.』Kumagawa said, as he let go of her neck and collapsed on the computer desk. There was blood between his fingers and fresh cracks on the screen, apparently he had hit the image of his beloved in front of him over and over again trying to paint over it until nothing remained. 『S-sorry.』  
  
“I’m not just saying this because I personally enjoy your misery, but you’re not okay, Senpai.” 

『I… I just want to talk to her again. A useless, talented, no good person like me is already starting to forget what it was like, what I was like when I was with her.』  
  
“Talk to me.”

『...Huh?』  
  
“I hate you so much there’s no way I could forget you senpai, so just keep talking to me. I want you to stay exactly as you are, because if you became slightly less of a hopeless loser you might actually become happy and I would hate that.”  
  
In that moment he realized, as long as Junkai was here he would not lose himself.  
  
“I’ll always be there to laugh at your pain, senpai!”  
  
It was a promise. 

 

🧸  
  
“This is hopeless.”

 

Tsumugi Shirogane fell back on the floor of her own studio, wrapped in her masking tape like it was a vine. 

 

“No matter how much I try to dress you up as another character it just doesn’t look right, I just keep seeing Enoshima Junko-chan.”  
  
“Umm, I did not just hear that. I look great in everything I wear, full stop. You just can’t design the cosplay right, cuz like I keep saying you’re not really Ultimate,” Junko said, loudly chewing gum with her mouth open just to be obnoxious. At the moment her red hair was down, and she wore an equally red skin tight plug suit that was half unzipped but she did not look like Asuka, just Enoshima Junko 

 

“Then, what am I supposed to be?”  
  
“Some Rando. Just some girl,” Junko shrugged. She was so checked out it looked like shrugging had taken all of her effort.  
  
“Then, why do you keep showing up to talk with me?”  
  
“Dunno, bored.”  
  
“Do you have a reason for anything you do?”  
  
“See previous statement.” 

 

Tsumugi spread her arms out on the ground, a pile of clothes covering the space between them. They were randomly thrown about, because Junko refused to just hang them back up on a hanger, even when Tsumugi politely asked her to. “You’re like one of those actors who gets type cast into the same role every time. When people see you they’re just like, that’s Enoshima Junko-chan.”  
  
“Well no duh, who else are they supposed to be? Oh, I get it you were pretending that you thought you said something actually insightful as a joke, because you’re not actually that dumb, right?”  
  
Tsumugi’s eyes were hidden behind her glasses. “Not everybody is as comfortable being themselves as you are. I’m not.”  
  
“Well that’s because unlike you my personality doesn’t suck.”  
  
From behind a smile she had to paint on every single morning Tsumugi said, “You’re right, because unlike a plain girl like me you have friends. They must appreciate you for who you really are.”  
  
Enoshima Junko made a face like she saw a steel bar about to fall on her face. “Well, I’m just too good for other people that’s all…”  
  
“Wow, that line is just as painfully transparent as when Miu says it.’  
  
Junko noticed Tsumugi did not say, _Iruma,_ but rather called her by her first name and filed it way with the other one thousand observations she made a second.  
  
Whatever role she played she was Enoshima Junko.  
If this were a movie and she were an actor they could hide it with camera shots and clever editing. But thi was real life, and people quickly got tired of her overwhelming presence and stopped trying to keep up.  
  
She was not someone who could transform herself into any other role, at least not in any genuine way. Her entire life she just kept repeating the same excuse over and over, that she was born that way, and it never occurred to her that there were other people who tried to be different.  
  
“Are you gossiping about me behind my back? Because that’s not allowed. My name is my brand and it’s trademarked,” Junko said. “You’re so suppressed.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“I bet if you wore one of these cosplays you’d look so much like the character I wouldn’t even recognize you. But not just the character, when you’re just standing there I barely recognize you Shirou Emiya-”  
  
“Shirogane.”  
  
“It’s like you’re putting up with me, and everybody else too. Just playing along. Well whatever, I’m in a bad mood so I’m going to take advantage of that and keep bitching at you.”  
  
“How nice of you.” Tsumugi said as she picked herself up from the floor.  
  
She hesitated when she saw Junko removing the rest of the plug suit. All clothes slid perfectly off her body as if she was meant to wear them. Then there was Tsumugi, drowning in fabric, like she wanted to disappear.  
  
“I just want… I want to become the characters I cosplay, to feel like a different person, just for a few minutes.”  
  
Junko, reached out her hand for a moment. She did not even dig her nails into Tsumugi’s skin, for the first time in her life (This was my assumption) she reached out to touch another person without intent to harm then.  
  
And then, Junko could not help but snicker and snigger like a child.  
  
“You want to pretend to be a fictional character? That’s so clearly delusional - you’ve pretty much gone full humpty dumpty. Quit lying like you’re some plain girl, or you don’t know who you are. You know exactly who you are, that’s how you know you don’t like yourself.”  
  
Enoshima Junko did not need to lie. She was not Kumagawa, in fact she was pretty sure never once in her life had she lied.  
  
“You hate yourself like everybody else does, boo fucking hoo. Please have more interesting problems if you expect me to give a shit.”  
  
In fact she did not even need to kill others.  
People in front of her killed themselves.  
She had no hate for other people whatsoever. She did not even think of hurting them.

Because all that was inside of her was self-love.  
Just narcissism.  
A girl who was simply beautiful.  
  
Junko realized she was not yelling at Tsumugi anymore. The person in front of her faded into the background and she was yelling at nobody. She crouched low to the ground in only her underwear, her elbows crossing over her knees as she sat there alone.  
  
Her smooth red hair, her large red eyes that contained everything, her curved cheeks, her lips that always seemed to be bleeding, her glass neck, her skin woven and transparent like gossamer thread, her body whose slopes and curves made the eye tumble down until they caught sight of her long legs that she had curled up to avoid gazing eyes. “It’s not that fun, being a somebody.”  
  
She captivated their eyes. There was no reason for it, underneath this makeup she had no attractive qualities to speak of and a bad personality, but everyone’s eyes increasingly fixated upon her. 

  
No matter what she did, she ended up with crazy results, and every time she was center stage. Her parents who took no interest at all in her older sister showered her in affection. When she was in primary school, the picture she had drawn in crayon was published in an art magazine, and the sand castle she tried to make over a month attracted reporters and camera. Ever since she was young, she was perceptive enough to feel the eyes of people around her all the time.

She had no particular interest in what she did, and yet no matter what she was always applauded. She was like an actress who only needed to step out on stage and she would have the whole audience clapping and throwing flowers at her. They wanted to shower her with flowers every moment she was alive, until she breathed them in.  
  
And existing in the center of everybody’s eyes, Enoshima Junko thought.

 _Nobody will look at me._  
  
Enoshima Junko was so still that plants started to grow around her. They wrapped her body up in flowers. They grew between the split ends of her large hair. She was an entire garden, all by herself. She shivered. Felt naked. Far more terrifying than eating the fruit and being thrown out, was being naked in a garden and not even realizing it. The plants caressed her body, and vines grew around her curves.  
  
Flowers violated her.  
Roots grew inside her veins underneath her skin and drained her blood like a vampire. The sunlight no longer reached her. Nobody would be able to see her covered in all these flowers, and there would be nothing for them to see.  
  
And they would call her beautiful. 

 

🧸  
  
Poke. Poke. Poke.  
Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke. Poke.

Junko finished poking at Kumagawa’s round cheek. “Okay, I’m done flirting for the day.”

 

『How was that flirting?』  
  
“Because you’re my soft teddy bear.”

 

『And you’re going to rip all of the stuffing out, yeah, yeah, we get it Junko, you say something cute and immediately follow it up with something horrifying, get new lines.』  
  
Junko held her breath to puff out her cheeks so he would know she was pouting. Notice she was pouting, damnit! He really needed to be more aware of other people so he could tell exactly how upset she was with him.  
  
“Hey, so liiiiiiike…” 

 

  
But then her mood suddenly changed.  
Because there was only one person who she wanted to look at her, and she wanted to be sure he was looking at her.  
  
“Tell me about all that stuff, you know, Ajimu-san. What’s the hot gossip? Come on, let’s insult her behind her back and laugh at her, it’s totally what she deserves for dying like a bitch.” 

『Don’t wanna.』  
  
“Huh?”

『Don’t feel like talking about it.』  
  
“Misogi…” 

『You’re just being possessive. It’s not like you actually care, you just want to know every single detail about me because you think you’re own my thoughts and feelings.』Kumagawa had a habit of criticizing her, but this was the first time she felt any genuine malice behind his words.

  
Enoshima Junko.  
Loved. Worshipped. Adored. Spoiled.  
She simply did not know how to deal with other people’s feelings.  
  
Tell another lie, tell another lie.  
Kumagawa did not want to tell her. He did not want her to see. The garden grew around him. The leaves grew in front of his eyes and he was obscured by them, hidden.  
  
He thought just for a single moment of clarity. 

 _If I told you…_ _  
_ _That I didn’t want to lie to you?_ _  
_ _Would you believe me?_

『 _Are you kidding me?_ 』  
_“Jeez, I'm trying to tell the truth here.”_

And he didn't even believe himself anymore. 

This rotting brain that stung him with pain, quickly began to split at the seams. 

He was in a dark place.  
There was no left, no right, no up or down.  
It didn’t feel cold; it didn’t feel hot.  
That kind of place.  
Abject darkness. 

The only thing he could hear was a coward’s beating heart.

A selfish face. An empty place.  
He tried to run away from it all inside of himself but this hole was all of him that remained.  
  
He could not see,  it was so, so dark. A dark like black ink painted over his eyeballs. A dark like falling to the bottom fo the water where no light could reach. A dark like scooped out eyeballs still trying to see.  
  
It was really lonely like this.  
But always shrugging off your problems with a smile just meant you were never going to change.  
  
Kumagawa finally saw some light. A white in darkness. Like white spots of paint drip, drip, dripping from the ceiling. It bled white, that white looked like a stain on his pitch black world. The paint spilled all over the floor and he saw countless masks. They were spilled everywhere like a child’s tears.  
  
A room of darkness. No, it was not dark, Kumagawa just had his eyes closed, and his hands open.  
  
It wasn’t determination.  
He wasn’t being strong.  
He didn’t care about others.  
  
This was just how he lived. Every time he met with the slightest difficulty, he just threw away the old mask and put on a new one. He never faced anything. He did not want anybody to love him because they would have to love him for _himself_ and that would change the next day he woke up. Because he killed himself every morning. He wanted to live, and yet he chose to die every single day.  
  
They were all death masks. He wore them at his funeral. He lived convincing others of things he did not believe about himself. He did not wear masks to please them. He did not play the jester to make them smile. That was just a convenient lie he told himself. If he said he just wanted to be loved he might still look like a pitiable child to someone on the outside.  
  
Nobody realized how closed off this boy’s heart really was.  
He shut everyone else out.  
He did not believe anybody, not even for a second.  
And it went without saying he did not believe in himself. Neither trusting nor doubting anybody, just thinking they were simply there, just seeing them as other people.  
Hating himself.  
Loving himself.  
Shut up tight in his little world.  
He could no longer be saved.  
The pile of masks may as well have been a pile of corpses. Pale white, an imitation of human skin, face permanently frozen in one expression. They all stared at him, and he felt all of their hollow eyes watching him at once.  
  
His wish - not to disappear but to continue living unseen. How vain of him.   
He knew he would be destroyed by other people’s feelings. So, he simply never let them reach him. He was so, so afraid of even the tiniest amount of pain.  
  
That was why he was able to be loved by Enoshima Junko who loved him like she wanted to kill him.   
hat was why he continued to love Ajimu Najimi, who only ever thought of herself first.   
That was why he smiled at Mukuro like she had never broken his bones and bruised his skin.  
  
They could hurt his body as much as they want, but even if they rattled the cage of his bones that would not be him. He was safely locked away inside. It was strange he aws surrounded by so many faces on this pile of masks and yet, looking at them all made him realize how alone he was. These masks may as well have been  _other people_ because he never tried to see past their surfaces anyway.   
  
A smile was.  
The most superficial expression of happiness.   
He was not like them. He knew, just looking at their faces.   
  
  
  
  
How he would never be able to puppeteer his face around like a normal person.  
Kumagawa saw countless masks, but he knew he was a poor actor.  
He could only display a few emotions.  
Humans had hundreds of emotions, hundreds of masks they could switch between without even thinking about it. His little act fell far short of that. He was not just a fake, he was an incompetent one as well. He really thought he could fool others with such an act. He really thought he could fool himself.   
  
He was lonely like this, but maybe he wanted to be alone. Because in the end he was the one who acting.  
Everything he did, he did for himself. It was all to protect this fragile self.  
  
He felt his feet began to sink. He sunk further and further into the pile of masks, like they were devouring him.  
  
No, he was just eating himself. A snake that swallowed a snake. Nobody else was to blame but him, he never had anybody in his heart.  
  
All he needed to do was stop lying and tell the truth. That was all he needed to do to change. Everybody else was capable of living that way, so why couldn’t he…?

 _Hate...  
_ _Hate you!  
_ _I hate liars like you!_ _  
_ _We're not the same!_

He wanted to fall.   
To fall and keep falling.  
Then he would no longer have to exhaust himself trying to swim to the surface. 

He never wanted a hand to reach out and save him in the first place. He did not need anybody else, he had been protecting that child in white alone all of his life. It was dark, and there was no moon in the sky so there was nothing to reflect the light back. Black clouds hung in the horizon. He let his heart be shattered by what he saw once. The empty classroom, the girl in white just hanging there her feet not touching the ground. That was why he lived with his eyes closed. He wore a mask not to hide his face from others, but so he himself could no longer see his own face. Behind his mask the light could not reach his eyes, the entire world painted in black. 

The only thing he could hear was the sound of his own laughter. 


	71. FTE: Butterfly Envy

**FREE TIME EVENT (3/5)**

Chasing dreams is beautiful.

However, giving up on dreams is also beautiful.  
If that girl is sure, if that pretty girl says so, then it must be true.  
Kumagawa thought so at least, but he didn’t know anything.  
  
Slap.  
Clear across his face.  
A feeling of being struck.  
A feeling of being struck by the person you loved.  
A love struck feeling.  
  
_Is this another hallucination?_ He lazily thought. Lately he had become aware of how vividly his hallucations not just seemed to be, but felt, existed.  
  
“Are you okay? Are you alive?” 

 『Don’t suddenly pretend to care about other people!』

Kumagawa said but his joke fell completely flat.  
Dead on arrival.  
It was the first time he felt remorse for telling a bad joke.  
  
“Are you okay?” She kept asking. No, she demanded it of him, demanded that he be okay. Still unsure what feeling was displayed on her face, he uneasily nodded. He could not make her laugh, so he had made her cry instead. He was so terrible with girls.  
  
“Loser!”  
  
She slapped him across the face again.  
Roused awake. And slapped away. The red on his cheek was the only color in his body. It hurt, but she looked like she was hurting more. He opened his mouth to complain but said nothing when he noticed. He just accepted the blows.  
  
“Loser! Loser! Loser! Loser! Loser! Loser! Loser!”

 『I know.』  
He knew. 

 『Hey, it’s not good to shake a sick person. I know for someone like me being alive is just a sickness, that’s why you should be extra careful and never shake me!』  
  
His joke fell flat again.  
She didn’t laugh.  
He didn’t laugh.  
They weren’t laughing. Not anymore. 

Junko’s slapping started deteriorating until she was just hitting against his chest in light,  half-hearted blows like a child having a tantrum. Her hands fell on him. Her tears fell on him. Red eyes, like a child throwing a tantrum, like a child who could not stop herself. A child who did not know what emotions were, happiness, sadness, she just felt them, just threw a tantrum when she was overhwhelmed.  
  
Kumagawa did not mind.  
Junko’s hands did not hurt at all.

But it hurt so much.  
  
“Y-you suddenly passed out. I thought you died for real this time. Who gave you permission to die? If you die... I won’t even feel despair at all. I’ll laugh. I’ll laugh and be like (lol) that loser. I won’t let anybody else kill you, nobody else is allowed to in the whole world, except for me. I’m the only one. If I’m not the only one, I’ll get jealous you see?” 

 

Junko rambled, more incoherent than normal. They had been talking and he suddenly lost conscious, what a strange feeling, it was unrealistic, like falling asleep within a dream.

 『Sorry Junko, it’s all my fault.』  
  
Junko never cried.  
In fifty two rounds of the killing game she had cried twice. She only cried when her toys were taken from her, just like a little kid. She was probably silent even on the day she was born.  
But he made her cry.  
  
“I won’t forgive you, I’ll never forgive you.”  
  
She was never going to let go of him again. He was hers forever.  
Her arms wrapped around him. He felt her squeezing a little too tight, like she might break his ribs and squeeze all his organs out.  
  
“I won’t forgive you. I’ll never even forgive you. Not even if you apologize. You’re not allowed to die even if you’re killed.”  
  
That woman was always making unreasonable demands of him. 

 

 『If both life and death revolve around you, doesn’t that just make you god?』

 

He tried to make a joke a third time, but it was already dead. He was just beating up a corpse at this point. He had experience in that. Beating and beating. When it was already dead. When it should have died a long time ago.  
  
『Our conversation must have been really boring if I fell asleep in the middle huh?』

Enoshima Junko did not laugh.  
She was too busy crying.  
  
🧸

 

He tried not to worry too much about it, because it was not like Junko was concerned over his well being. It’s not like she didn’t want him to get hurt. She just did not want her toy taken away. 

  
Ensohima Junko who did not cry when he died in front of her eyes. Who did not cry when she missed him for a month. Like he did not even matter to her. Like she was not missing him. Like she was missing nothing in the first place.  
  
She cried in front of him but he did not think about it. He sat cross-legged on the floor, looking oddly precocious.

 『Junko, does it really matter-』

  
Of course it doesn’t but still.  
She was adamant. 

 

 『It’s just funny, you know. We always act like we know the most each other, that we understand each other the most, but I don’t know anything about what you were like before you met me.』  
  
They never talked about the past.  
Life began for them the moment they met, what a romantic notion. Like most romantic notions it was false.  
  
Junko pulled at her hair. She pulled, like she was trying to make her scalp bleed. The ends were split and frayed. As if her hair was some metaphor for her psychological state. “Let me guess your backstory, you were really really sad, because people were really really mean to you all your life, and you cried a whole bunch. Just, whatever. Get over yourself. It’s not like I want to know anyway.”  
  
Words fell out of her mouth like she was vomitting them up. She must have felt sick. 

 

『Junko, I… I want to tell you but it might be a lie. What I’ve told you before might be a lie too. I don’t remember, before I met Ajimu-san, before I met Kaiki-san...』

  
“What was Ajimu-san like? What did she do to you?” 

 

She never asked that before. Perhaps because Junko assumed she knew everything at a glance because that was how her brain usually work, she did not ask. She did not need other people’s perspectives.

 『What did you do to Mukuro-chan?』  
  
It was a non-answer. He said nothing at all. It was the perfect answer. He said all he could say.  
How like Kumagawa. She thought.  
  
He had no idea where he was born. He remembered sobbing, and weeping in a dark damp place. He was not made of sadness alone, but of all dark emotions. He was a product of that darkness.  
  
Any tragic backstory might have fit him because the end result was still the same. He was the kind of darkness that made you want to avert your eyes. But it didn’t matter really, where he was born, what emotions he felt, or what he was made of. It couldn’t matter. If everything mattered then everything would hurt him.  
  
In fact, it was rude to give him a name. Kumagawa Misogi did not fit him. Tigers left behind their skin, and humans left behind their names, but Kumagawa wanted to disappear without leaving behind a name of skin. He was all but dead from the beginning anyway.  
  
Not a wish to die.  
A wish to disappear. A wish to be unknown. 

 

 『I was wrong when I told Yasuke-chan ‘I don’t know who I am anymore’. I never knew who I was to begin with.』  
  
He was nobody worth talking about. He told her.  
  
“You big fat, fat, fatty!” She said, even though Kumagawa was skinnier than he was. He even looked down at his rib cage just to be sure. “Big, big, fat, fat, liar!”  
  
She got mad when she was lied to. Kumagawa began to wonder if she was attracted to people who made her angry. “What do you care about all of that? Not every character needs a cool backstory. I don’t even have a backstory, and look how great I turned out.”

 『You turned out terrible!』  
  
Kumagawa thought he finally made a good quip, but Junko just ignored it. “The you from one second ago is already dead, and you’re going to die in the next second. All that matters is the you that exists at this exact moment, you have to stretch it out like foreverz.” 

 

Enoshima Junko, her eyes closed as she said that. She looked like sleeping beauty. A princess who fell asleep before she first pricked her finger, and first bled. It was a common interpretation that the blood was a symbol for a girl’s first menstruation on the onset of maturity. Which meant that the girl in the story fell asleep so she could remain a child forever.  
  
She could be beautiful forever, if she just kept sleeping.  
She would never have her heart broken.  
She would never have her body defiled.  
She would never have her innocence lost.  
That girl would never cry, if she simply kept her eyes closed.  
  
“The you right in front of me is all I need.” 

Enoshima Junko spoke from the heart. She was so good at pretending, she mistakenly thought for a moment she had one.  
  
『You need me? Wow, good for you. I can’t believe I’m needed by the great Enoshima Junko, what an honor. You’re right I should thank you for the opportunity to get used and thrown out like trash by you-』  
  
“Hey, wait I…”  
  
What was she trying to say?  
Ensohima Junko. An open book. One without pictures. One without words. A story, featuring no characters, no events, and there was no plot twists at the end. A story where nothing happened, composed solely of blank pages.  
  
She looked at those pure white pages. Pure white. Almost transparently so.  
And for the first time in her life could not think of anything to say. 

 『It’s easy for you to say that! You have a sister! You have a family! You had a childhood friend! You had people who wanted you around. It’s easy to say life is beautiful when you’re beautiful. It’s easy to love yourself when people love you, so stop talking like you know anything.』

  
You don’t know anything.  
Not a single thing. 

 『It’s all just self satisfaction. You’re not having sex with me, just masturbating with a toy.』  
  
“What a disgusting way to talk to the girl you love, you really don’t know how to talk to girls-” 

 『I don’t love this version of you.』

  
So that was why they never talked without joking around, because they knew they would just argue. That was what happened when people were fundamentally incompatible. It was like they were trying to force a laugh.

Junkai told him. He was envious. He didn’t want to think his love came from such negative emotions. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to realize. His face. His naked face. He needed a mask. He his his face between his spread out fingers. He peered through the gaps in his fingers like he was staring through the bars of a cage.  
  
Junko thought in that moment.  
His face, like it was burning. His eyes like they wanted to burn her.  
She thought he was handsome. It was really handsome, how he hated her in that moment, so she had to be pretty insane to think that way.  
  
_Hello despair._ _  
_ _Was it really supposed to feel this way?_

 

🧸

 

“This is what I get for trying to be nice. That’s it, I’m a bad bitch for life.” 

 

“No, you’re just plain bad.”  
  
“Hey, I thought your thing was being plain. I’d hate to steal other people’s character traits.”  
  
Junko came back to Tsumugi’s cosplay room to sulk. Sulking was putting it mildly. Junko never did anything mildly, mild was boring.  
  
The moment she walked in she kicked over a shelf. She tore the sleeves off of one of the sweaters that was hanging from it. She found a pair of scissors and cut a red dress into pieces, until nothing but blood-colored tatters remained. She unraveled a handknit scarf until it was nothing but a pile of yarn on the floor, looking like unspooled organs spilled out.  
  
She swung her bat at a mannequin causing its head to go flying. Every mannequin was decapitated, or had its limbs amputated. They no longer resembled human bodies they were just things.  
  
She stomped on one particular mannequin head over and over again.  
The weapons that Tsumugi kept on hand for the sake of cosplay were driven into the clothes that hung on the shelf. In other words, this was the scene of a massacre. 

In tearing all of that down, Enoshima Junko discovered butterflies, or maybe moths. The kind that hid themselves at the back of closets, feeding on clothes, devouring colorful fabric, tearing holes in them.   
  
There were holes in her.  
The moths were nibbling on her. Hollowing her out. The hallucination was so vivid, she could almost feel their teeth digging into her. She tore the clothes out of the closet, and the moths flew out. 

Or maybe they were butterflies.  
Still, insects. Enoshima Junko saw other people as insects, as ants, the world’s an ant farm. They were all bugs to her. But she wondered, the same way she was indifferent to them were they indifferent to her?  
  
A butterfly was far too small to carry the worries of one person on his wings. Not that she worried. Not that she was a person to begin with.  
  
I saw it. I could see it too, like we were sharing the same illusion. There were butterflies in her eyes. They looked like they might devour the soft flesh of her eyes and leave her blind.

  
Anyway.  
Tsumugi Shirogane. She was just a character, that is, a lie. She had no feelings of her own.  
I was just playing a role on stage. I was just pretending to like cosplay, as a way of approaching Enoshima Junko. I was supposed to comfort her and be her friend in this moment.  
  
“Um, are you going to clean that up? Or is that work best left for background characters like me? Oh, in drama class I was always chosen to be a stage hand even though I auditioned for a part in the play.”  
  
“Nope. Not my fault. It’s his fault, for being such a liar. I hate him. Big fat liar.”  
  
But something snapped.  
The strings puppeteering me, holding me back. Not that I have any nerves. Because having nerves, that is electrochemical impulses traveling through your body means being alive. But that girl was getting on my last nerve.  
  
“EXCUSE ME! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”  
  
Even completely snapping, I was still polite. I’m just so dull.  
  
“Um, you know my thing. The thing where I destroy everything. Get with the picture.” That girl seriously could not read the mood. “Don’t you think it’s beautiful? Destroying what you love?” 

Hey Junko. 

It’s way too cruel to say that with a cute face.  
You can only say that because you have someone to love in the first place.  
  
“I hate beauty. You shouldn’t think that you can get anything you want just because you’re kind of cool.” The face I made was neither beautiful nor ugly, just plain, invisible to a girl like Enoshima. “And what are you talking about - you say that like you’ve never told a lie yourself. Seriously, all you do is deceive the others around you.”  
  
You were lucky you were born beautiful.  
Because otherwise you would have nothing.  
Characters like that, all flash and no substance aren’t really my type at all. 

“I may be a liar, but you’re an even bigger one. Killing the person you love? That’s not very nice. You’ve pretty much gone full humpty dumpty at that point.”

A crack in her skull.  
Her brains leaking out. Her thoughts swirling, like a storm she was lost in.  
Ajimu broke her skull open, and wounded her, and she was in this state.   
  
“Stop lying about loving Kumagawa, about being in love with him, you so clearly hate him. You’re just angry at him, aren’t you? Don’t you loathe and despise him for not loving you like you’re the most important girl in the world? Then you should just say so. But that’s too boring for you I guess, so you just dress it up, you hide behind aesthetics, behind your beautiful face.” 

She always dressed it up and made it beautiful. Because she did not want to face the problem. Enoshima Junko claimed to hate beautiful things, she claimed to despise her own beauty, but she also made herself beautiful because it was easy to live that way.  
  
She didn’t want to do what everybody else did.  
But that too, was clinging to the idea that someone special existed. That some special people were going to be more interesting than most, were going to save her. The same delusion that Komaeda shared.   
  
She was failing to have a simple human conversation. What was this, Melodrama? She was writing out the whole situation like it was taking place with two stock characters and exaggerated emotions and looking away from the reality right in front of her.  
  
Looking away.  
Looking.  
Her eyes were always taking in every detail, she remembered everything, but it was impossible to live through their life remembering everything. The brain even deleted memories when you were sleeping just for that reason. She always got ten hours of beauty sleep of course.  
She didn't notice. She just didn't notice. Kumagawa hid things from her every round of the killing game because she didn't notice his suffering, she didn't care, she wasn't paying attention.   
  
Then the question is how could she absorb all that information and not break?

She didn’t.  
It was like she was rendering the entire world on a lower definition just to keep her CPU running.  
  
I wish the human brain worked like a computer so I could delete all memory of you. Matsuda once told her that. 

How wonderful it would be to forget as if they never happened, to overwrite any elements of reality that we want to avert our eyes from - how wonderful the brain would be if it had such a function.  
  
Her brain functioned, it worked like a machine.  
A machine doesn’t really think about the insane amount of data it processes. It doesn’t struggle through it like a human, it just comes to a conclusion instantly.  
It was like looking but not paying attention.  
In a way she was always paying attention, but she had an extremely low attention span and constantly switching focus. Like flipping through channels on a television and expecting to understand all of it.  
  
To look, but not to see. To block out all the information she did not want to engage in. Her mind remembered, but Enoshima Junko herself had forgotten. She didn’t know when it started. She didn’t know when she became some kind of computer. Like she was still stuck in that simulation, on that island.   
  
One day she just began acting, and created the Ensohima Junko that everybody else saw.  
She was just playing the part of Enoshima Junko.  
She engaged everybody like that, even the boy she loved. She just needed to keep up the act.  
She just didn’t engage.   
She spent practically seven years with the same group of people, but she did not know a single thing about any of them.   
She called them predictable, but she was the one who acted the same every single round. 

 _So long as I continue to be me._ _  
_ _Forever._ _  
_ _Maybe I could continue to be me forever._

She just wanted it to end. She was at her limit. If anything having been able to do so all this time, seventeen years, nineteen, twenty six years, it was incredible. Fooling herself so she could go on.  
If she acted like the world was black and white.  
If it was drawn with black and white lines just like in a manga.  
If it was drawn, if it was created, if it had rules, if those rules could be broken, if it could be destroyed, If there was anything she didn’t like, she let go, she destroyed it right away. Simply ignoring the parts of reality that she did not like. The ones that did not fit into the narrative. She severed anything that was inconvenient in order to keep being herself.  
  
She was thinking, but she never really was thinking. Peering over information without absorbing it. Looking at the contents of a page but not reading it. Just rote memorization without learning. Because thinking that much would kill her. So she cut it all away, the strings of her heart one by one. She detached herself from everything.  
  
She could do it again and again.  
She could do it fifty two times.  
Fifty two killing games she died.  
Fifty two killing games she killed herself at the end, and then reset. 

She couldn’t be the real deal.  
Because she looked away from reality at every turn.  
She couldn’t enjoy life.  
Because she never looked, she just turned up her nose immediately.  
  
She just wanted to be a real person.  
She was the one who never let herself act like a real person. The one pretending everything was fine, the one smiling and clinging to a status quo.   
She wanted to go back to that island. She wanted to live alone on that island forever. 

Junko hit the side of her head like she expected it to be empty. “I cannot believe you’re doing the ‘this is who you really are’ speech to me. I invented that speech. I own it. Get over yourself.”  
  
“You get over yourself.”  
  
That was right, the words she needed to hear.  
  
“I don’t want to be this way. I want to be real., for realsies. I don’t need to be beautiful, I don’t need to be black and white. I want to get dirty, I’d even settle for being like you.”

She couldn’t be a girl who never knew what it meant to be stained for her entire life - she wanted to know despair. She didn’t need to become all black, but she wanted to take the black and white together, to rub her colors all over his, and mix, mix, mix, until they melted together.  
  
She wanted to grow to be an adult as gray as ash.  
(though, gray hair EWE)  
She was so tired of living a life -  
Where she couldn’t cry even with a broken heart.  

She couldn’t cry for anybody but herself.  
  
Her shoulders hurt. She felt something growing underneath her skin. Growing, tearing her flesh, but not changing, because she could not sprout wings.  
  
That was right, humans envied butterflies not because they could fly.  
But because they could grow wings.  
They envied that they could change.  
Those wings were trying to push out from her skin, trying to escape so they could be born.  
She would not let them.  
  
“Or maybe you don’t hate him. Maybe that’s the lie. You don’t hate him anymore and that’s scary. Because that means you’re not who you think you are.”  
  
Kumagawa Misogi probably doesn’t worry himself to a standstill with completely self imposed ideas like that. It was refreshing, not watching him constantly argue back and forth between hope and despair in his head, trying to argue between black and white when they were both the same. He was so different from her.  
  
He could become a minus.  
He could go insane.  
He could lose his humanity, and be dragged around by a girl who did not exist.  
But he always continues to be Kumagawa Misogi.  
Not only that, but everyone around him was so human. He made humans out of monsters.  
His unshakable self, his unshakable ego, she felt embarrassed just thinking about it.  
Maybe he doesn’t realize it. He doesn’t need to realize it. He’s definitely not doing it on purpose. A happy accident.  
Kumagawa Misogi can be just be Kumagawa Misogi.  
He’s not like Hinata Hajime, he doesn’t feel the need to be anybody else.  
That’s why she loved him.  
Enoshima Junko loves Kumagawa Misogi.

She still remembered the first time she tried to kiss him. There were tears in his eyes. That was right, he should have been happy, but the unimaginable sadness in her heart. He saw it. He imagined it. He cried for her.  
  
She found those eyes barely holding back tears to be dazzling. Almost blindingly dazzling.  
  
The girl who could not cry.  
Fell in love with a crybaby.  
The girl who only ever cried for herself.  
Fell in love with the boy who cried so easily for other people.  
  
She wanted to be a real person, but she was also afraid of that. So simple. She was just overthinking things again.  
  
“Yeah, it’s scary.”  
  
Junko said.  
It wasn’t a particularly stylish sentence.  
  
Tsumugi stood there looking from behind her glasses the entire time. Now that Junko thought about it, that girl never took them off once. She had never seen her eyes.  
  
No, had she been trying to look?  
  
“Everybody you meet wishes you were the fake girl that appears in magazines. Is that lonely?”  
  
They wanted her to be two dimensional.  
To be simply beautiful. To be simply aesthetic. They liked her better that way.  
  
“Yeah, it’s lonely.” 

Sleeping beauty chose to prick herself on the finger, so she never had to grow up.  
But now, she found sleeping to be boring.  
All alone sleeping in bed, the silk in her sheets like a cocoon wrapped around her.  
If there was no prince.  
She had to wake herself up. 

 

🧸

 

Kumagawa felt sleepy.  
Sleepy, all the time.  
  
So strange. Time seemed to slip through his fingers like water. Perhaps it was because he was trapepd in this room, but… maybe all of this was a dream?  
  
Nah, that would be too cliche.  
  
Kumagawa got up again deciding he was fed up, he would leave finally. If he did not stay, he might really kill her. He would kill Enoshima Junko. And he wanted to run away. Run away from himself, the self that would kill her.  
  
His footsteps.  
Heavy.  
Slow.  
As if he could not move, as if he was trying to move through water. They were weightless, and yet too heavy at the same time.  
  
Strange. He was just walking to the other side of the room why did he need so much prose to describe it? Since when had his life become so poetic?  
  
He opened the door.  
Just four words, not too dramatic.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi saw another room, where Kumagawa Misogi was sitting. The exact same room as this one. He remembered this.

  
  
Komaru kept visiting his room. She kept bringing him food, insulting him the entire time. He wondered if she wanted to pity a creature beneath her the same way people pitied their pets. How normal of her. How human.  
  
One day she dragged Toko in. Toko was Jack at the time. She was Jack all the time these days. The three of them sat in a circle, with a pile of books between them. It looked like they were all having a slumber party. If you ignored the chain around Kumagawa’s ankle.  
  
“Wait, you’re okay with reading manga?” Komaru asked Jack.  
  
“Well, yeah. God, you even ask normal questions. How about you just respond with a ‘yes’, ‘hmmm’ and ‘okay’ from now on because you can’t make any unique contributions to the conversation.”  
  
“I assumed you were going to be a classic literature snob like Toko-chan.”  
  
“I think you have to have at least a little bit of pride to be considered a snob. Unlike her, kyaaahahahaaahahahahaha!”  
  
“Don’t be mean!” Komaru lectured her, she raised her hand and pulled on the other girl’s shortened hair to get her attention. It would have been easier if she still had braids. Wait, her hair was a little longer, it had grown a lot in a month.  
  
(What… a month? But Junko and him just had their fight yesterday).  
  
“It’s because you’re bullying her all the time that Toko-chan doesn’t come out anymore.”  
  
“Wow, does it make you feel strong to be protecting her?”  
  
“Umm, a little bit…”  
  
“Just like it makes you feel strong when you find people weaker than yourself-” Jack started, but Komaru cut her off.  
  
“Stop that, I don’t want to be that self aware. I’m quite comfortable being a happy go lucky, oblivious, ordinary everyday girl please!” Komaru got better at quipping.  
  
“Anyway, I don’t even like classic literature that stuffs for nerds. Just because I have this body doesn’t mean I’m a nerd you know, I try to be as cool as I possibly can for being stuck in this body.”  
  
Jack reminded them she did manage to be cool. She was still a popular character despite being the flip side of one of the most unpopular characters.

 『Hey, Jack-chan I highlighted the kanji I couldn’t read can you help me?』  
  
“You highlighted the entire page.” 

 

 『Tee hee hee!』  
  
“Don’t tee hee hee me you piece of shit I’ll fucking kill you!”  
  
“W-wait, don’t fight.” Komaru said, throwing herself in between them.  
  
『What are you talking about, Jack-chan and I are friends.』  
  
“Yeah, we were just getting along like we normally do.”  
  
“How could that possibly be normal?” Komaru did not get it. 

  
“Well, I guess we’re the same type.” Jack said, in a thoughtful way, but she did not look like a nerd as she said it. She wasn’t one of those nerds who thought okay? She was just there to cut people with scissors and laugh, and look cool doing it.  
  
“Huh?” Komaru said.  
  
“I mean the crazy unhinged way I act, part of that is because I’m legitimately crazy you know.” Dissociative identity disorder, a mental illness but beyond that. “I’m just an alter. I’m not a fully rounded person. I exist to express the things you would normally repress, I don’t have the switch that flips off my desire to kill anybody who pisses me off.”  
  
Because she was only half of a person.  
The half that was seen in the mirror.  
The darker half.  
She was incomplete in that way, and her emotions could flow out without hesitation.  
  
“That’s why I thought it’s weird. Y’know, Chumpai-”

 『Senpai.』  
  
“Sorry, slip of the tongue.”

 『You have way too much tongue! Just say senpai!』

 

  
  
“Senbon needles in the eye.” Jack wanted to get as much screentime out of this flashback as physically possible because she was dragging things out. “The way you act is just like me, just like an alter. But it’s not like you have a split personality or anything. So who’s emotions are you always acting out on?”  
  
Kumagawa stumbled back from the flashback, and the paper door closed shut. Like the room was alive itself. Like it was the stomach of some living being he was trapped inside. No maybe not the stomach, but the brain, his own brain.  
  
He felt something in his stomach. It was forcing its way up his throat. Fingers, fingers in his mouth they grabbed onto either side of his jaw and slowly pried his teeth apart. They forced him to open his mouth.  
  
Then something white crawled out of him.  
He vomited.  
Vomited white onto the floor.  
A person came out of him. A person separate from him.  
Kumagawa in white.  
A young child in white. A child that looked like freshly fallen snow.  
  
He held a knife out to Kumagawa, wrapping his fingers around him forcing him to take it in his hands.  
  
“Hey! Long time no see.”  
  
Kumagawa in white said casually.  
  
“I haven’t seen you since you killed me.”  
  
Another hallucination. Why was he hallucinating so much. Why was he looking at them like they were reality? Why was… his own narrative slipping like this, becoming nothing more than  aimless prose that rambled at the back of his head, with no connection to his actions, his reality. 

Then suddenly, a voice called out like an electric shock through his entire body.  
Lighting his nerves up.  
  
“Senpai! I told you it’s so boring when you go all windows blue screen of death and just stare at the wall.” 

Junkai called out for him.  
  
“Just keep talking to me remember.”

 『...You're not the one I want to talk to. But you're... not her... so maybe.』  
  
“Nevermind, I don’t feel like talking anymore.”

 『Junkai-chan! You can't just ruin the pacing of the scene because you got bored!』  
  
“Okay, changed my mind after changing my mind the first time. I feel like talking now.” 

 『Yeah, let’s talk.』  
  
What a wonderful thing talking was.  
Wonderful, and not very dramatic at all.


	72. FTE: Those with Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's all a dream. How lame.

**FREE TIME EVENT (4/5)**  
  
Shadows all around him as he surfaced from dark waters.  
Emerging from a gentle grip of the night’s unfolding arms.  
Darkness. Darkness everywhere. His only memory, he was crying and it was dark.  
  
“Do you ever feel alone?” 

  
What a stupid question. 

  
He didn’t see what he possessed. The light he had was skewed by the water of the river. The shattered surface of the water so imperfect. That image of himself was all he could believe in. It was so dark  he could no longer see his own face.

There was a trail of blood leading from the center of the mirror where Kumagawa had bashed his head against it until it broke, down the wall where his head dragged down, and into the sink. The sink was overflowing with water, but the blood from his head did not wash away. It overflowed, pouring out to the floor. Kumagawa stood in the room among rising waters.  
  
He felt hands touching him from the inside. Fingers caressed his organs, they tickled his bones, they scratched at the bottom of his skin trying to escape. Handprints appeared on his skin like bruises. They spread all over his body, as if he was being groped all over, all of him. 

 

He slowly felt his rib cage being pried apart. As if someone was trying to leave a jail cell by pulling the bars apart. His ribs did not break, they folded and bent, and he felt the agonizing pressure in his chest.

All of those fingers were tied together up in knots, and they were beginning to come loose, unravel themselves inside of him. LIke his intestines were being straightened into a rope. Like his nerves were pulled out from under his flesh and pulled into straight lines. Like that kind of feeling.  
  
A hand pried apart his jaws. He sat there with his mouth forced open, as it crawled out and over his tongue. Kumagawa stumbled back, putting the two hands of his own over his face, to hide it. His fingers were not enough to cover his eyes and one eye still stared forward. As he lay on the ground curled up, he saw it in the mirror. Several hands crawling out of him, bursting from his side. As if he was giving birth to them. They pulled at his torn flesh like it was nothing more than fabric and left it in ribbons. 

  
Those hands. Those hands. Those hands. Those hands were pulling him from every different angle, like they wanted to pull him apart. He knew those hands. Hands with red nails. They were holding onto him possessively, they touched every part of his body like he was hers. 

 

Take a spider in your hands.

Spread its eight legs out.

Then pull off each leg one by one. 

He was nothing more than a mass of writhing hands, and flesh, flesh slowly ripping with a squelching sound. He is flesh, torn at the sinews. All of those hands are him, desperately crawling, clawing through his flesh, wishing his be let out.  
  
Kumagawa vomits up white again. Again all the water is gone from the room and alll that is left is a puddle of white. Hands reach out of it. They reach and grab hold of his face. Hands, hands, hands, form from the water and continue to try to grope him, to hold him in ways he did not want to hell. The watery fingers threaded through his hair and pulled tight.  
  
Kumagawa saw white hands wrap around his own, and when he pulled his hands away he pulled something white out of the water with him.  
  
White like a fox whose hair lost all color to disappear among the snow.  
White like a snow storm that blots out all light.  
A blinding white.  
The sun burned with white, white, white.  
It burned the retinas and irises until only the whites of the eyes remained.  
Albinism. A deficiency. A lack of color. 

So white, almost transparently so.  
  
Kumagawa in white.  
  
“Yo. Been a while.”  
  
His smile. His teeth. All black.  
  
“How long has it been since you killed me again?”  
  
Kumagawa ran away. He threw open the paper sliding door and ran so fast he was practically falling forward. On the other side of the door was a familiar middle school classroom, but it was empty because Ajimu Najimi was dead. 

 

The classroom was different than usual. Inverted. As if black became white and white became black. It was upside down, the desks were on the ceiling and Kumagawa stood on a blank white floor.  
  
What was written on the chalkboard was upside down as well.  
  
『What is an acceptable reason to kill someone?』  
  
Kumagawa in white slammed his hand on the board. “As usual, you’re amazingly stupid! Let’s have a review. Why did you kill me?” 

 

 『What…?』  
  
“A troublesome child that goes unstable at the drop of a hat, and harms good children at the slightest provocation. Self-serving and violent. You took a life from another, and yet you still want to keep living. To be perfectly honest, I want to know why you think it’s okay for you to continue to exist after you’ve killed someone.

 

 『Because, I killed you…?』

  
“Yep!” The white child Kumagawa was standing in front of the chalkboard, his white rabbit companion at his feet, he clapped his hands together. He wore a loose white jacket with a collar that came up above his mouth. His sleeves were so long they concealed his hands. His hair fell in loose, ratty strands, like snow piled up on his head. His sclera were black. His eyebrows were white. His teeth were black. His tongue was white. White hair fell on white skin. Skin, chalky, pale, peeling in some places. Rather than blue, his irises were completely colorless. 

 

 『You tried to kill me, so I killed you.』  
  
“No way, you’d never choose to defend yourself. You love taking a hit too much..” 

 

 『You killed my parents, so I killed you..』  
  
“Revenge is ultimately empty, at least that was the theme in a manga I read. No good!”

 『Whoops, I killed you on accident. I’m such a clutz.』  
  
“Come on, you have to think of a reason. You say people who need reasons to do things are trash, but you’re trash so obviously you’re acting with a reason too.” 

  
He was berated by his own hallucination. Why was his brain giving him so much sass? 

 

 『I want the girl I like to be happy so.... I had to kill you. 』  
  
Kumagawa looked in his hand, and he saw he was holding a knife. Even when he let go, his hands no longer looked like human hands. He could feel his flesh tearing, as his fingers were growing too long for his skin. Nails elongated from the tips of his fingers, like the claws of a beast. They were drenched red with blood. They were claws for killing. For tearing. For ripping.

 『Are you Yuuki?』  
  
“Always playing the fool, huh? Even when it’s obvious. Even when it’s right in front of you. Are you Yuuki?” 

 

 『I’m Misogi.』

  
“But how do you know that? You don’t have a birth certificate. You don’t have a family registry. You don’t even have a mother and a father to give you a name. Your name could be Yuuki, or Misogi, it doesn’t matter because they’re both made up.” 

 

 『Then, you’re… me?』  
  
Kumagawa looked down and saw he had been standing in a puddle of white. From that puddle, painted across the floor was his shadow in white and Kumagawa in white stood on top of the exact same shadow. 

  
The person he killed was himself.  
He was the one who killed this child. 

He had to kill that child, so he could become the current himself.  
  
“You have to kill the child you used to be in order to grow up? Even I think that’s pretty twisted.” Almost as if to demonstrate, Kumagawa in White drove a screw into the side of his brain, and twisted, brain matter splashed across the chalkboard like someone had splattered a can of paint all over.  
  
He tapped his foot on the white shadow that connected the two of them. “You know most people’s shadows are black as the night but yours is white, that’s because you repress your good side and let all your negative emotions sure on the surface. You’ve got it all backwards.”  
  
His hallucination seemed to want to lecture him. What kind of kid did he think he was knowing better than the adults. He did not look older than seven years old.  
  
Kumagawa saw it on the wall. Their shadows, like shadow puppet theatre. He raised the knife in the air and drove it straight into the child. He just kept cutting. Even after the child was already dead. Long past the point of no return. Cut. Cut. Cut. Tear. Tear. Tear. Rip. Rip. Rip. Slice. Slice. Slice. The knife. Again and again. Flashed. Blindingly. And then the boy’s shadow bled black blood like it was ink.  
  
The scene of a murder.  
  
“You don’t want to hurt other people, so you kill yourself instead.”

That was why.  
That was why.  
Fifty two rounds and the only acceptable person to kill was Komaeda. 

It felt less like an act or murder and more like cutting off a limb. 

“You always cried and cried about how no one wanted to stick their neck out to save a kid like you. You hated how everybody acted like saving you was too much of a burden to both with.” 

  
Dissociation.  
It did not necessarily have to manifest in a split personality.  
It was the disconnection of something.  
The separation of something from something else.  
The state of being disconnected.  
Thoughts.  
Feelings.  
Memories.  
A sense of identity.  
He killed all of it until it was no longer a part of him.  
  
“But in the end you agreed with them, didn’t you? All I do is cause the people around me to suffer, if I was the only one suffering then they could be happy.” 

 

Kumagawa could not control his body anymore. He picked the knife up with both hands and raised it above his head. He was about to cut apart the boy in front of him. He was going to kill him again.  
  
He was killing the child who just wanted to be saved.  
Who just wanted one person to be kind to him.  
The child just needed a hand.  
And all he was ever met with was violence.  
Kumagawa, was no better than anybody else who pushed him away.  
He thought that child should die to if he was going to live burdening others.

 『Stop! I don’t want it to be my fault! I don’t want to do this.”』  
  
“Poor Kumagawa. Playing the victim all your life. This is all you’re capable of doing.”  
  
He was yelling. Strike me, strike me everytime. Strike me anywhere. He wanted to be the one who was hurt. He sought it out. Especially from… the people he loved. 

 

The knife fell.  
A child was grabbed roughly by the hand of an adult, wrapping tight around his wrist. He grabbed the still lit cigarette and twisted it  into his skin. Kumagawa’s hands were too small, so he could only weakly try to push the adult’s hands away. He was wearing a white shirt, and his face was covered in bandages, but nobody asked him why he was always injured. 

  
  
Kumagawa walks to school alone. He looked to the side to see a trash filled apartment. A man is smoking with a full asht ray, and staring at a phone. Nobody says goodbye when he leaves. Kumagawa slips and falls into the trash and nobody asks him if he was hurt.  
  
Kumagawa is all alone, a shower overhead. The water on his skin is so cold. He feels like he might freeze to death, but there is no hot water here. His entire back is covered with bruises, blue, and even black in some places. He’s worried patches of his skin have just died. His ribes are clearly visible through his back. His shoulders are too jagged, as he curls up his back, cltuching himself because it’s painful for the water to wash over his fresh wounds. 

 

Kumagawa finished drawing a chalk outline around the body of his childhood self. The body lied there on the floor, like a victim in a television drama fitting perfectly into his chalk outline. Kumagawa had no idea what else to draw with chalk, so he drew a heart.

That’s right if he killed himself.  
If he stopped being this disappointing self.  
Then he could be the person Junko saw him as. Then she would be happy with him again. 

 

That was Kumagawa Misogi. A corpse covered in flowers. His rotten scent painted over by fragrant lies. Suddenly, electricity jolted through him a second time and he woke up. He woke up, even though he had never been dreaming in the first place.  
  
He had been dreaming when he was awake?  
Or maybe he was awake while he was dreaming?  
Gosh, mental illness was just so darn confusing.  
  
“Kumagawa-kun. Kumagawa-kun.”  
  
A voice called out to him.

 『You know electroshock therapy is a bit primitive.』  
  
Kumagawa said, picking up Junkai’s teddy bear and holding it tightly like it was the only solid object in the room. 

 

He was talking, To her. She called him by his name. Kumagawa tried to stay  in this reality, but the visions were all so real. They were more real than the reality he saw in front of his eyes. If that made sense. Nothing made sense, was that because he was stupid or was the world being stupid right now?

 

“I thought it would work on your primitive brain.” 

 

 『I’m a caveman now?』  
  
“No, more like a single celled organism! Of course all you monkeys are just single celled organisms to me.”

 

 『Are we monkeys or are we single celled organisms? You’re just mixing up the metaphor.』  
  
“Don’t give me writing advice. I’m a creative type. I make movies.” 

 

 『Yeah, I saw all the first one and all fifty one sequels.』  
  
“Hey, Kumagawa-kun what am I to you?”

 

 『Dunno. I’m stupid. Thinking hurts too much. Please have mercy on me.』  
  
She asked him suddenly out of the blue. What was Junkai? The only person he could talk to. The only person who felt like he was real as long as he was trapped in this room. The one thing that stopped him from going completely insane. That made clear the border between himself and everyone else.  
  
『Junkai-chan… when we get out of this killing game do you think we can be friends?』

  
“Nope. No way.”

  
『Awe.』  
  
“But we can be enemies.” 

 

If Kumagawa in white was right.  
That was pretty much the same for him. 

If everyone was his friend that also meant everyone was his enemy.  
If he thought everyone deserved to be saved, then he was excluding himself.  
He was not a part of everyone.  
He was something else.  
Separate.  
Alone.  
Lonely.  
A child crying in the dark.  
  
🧸

  
Enoshima Junko despaired.  
  
Anything and everything ended up just the way she wanted.  
Everything concluded just as she had hoped, and so she despaired. 

 

_Why does it always run so smoothly?_

 

Her brain was overheating. The software was just far too advanced, the hardware could not keep up. Whatever was inside of her was melting. Like the witch at the end of the story. Melting. She would melt if she ever cried. Melting.  
  
Cerebrospinal fluid dripped out of her ears, all the way to the heeled ends of her boots. You could hear a splashing sound, and droplets danced around her. Wildly, violently.  
No, it was not her brain matter smashed up into liquid.  
It was a bright red.  
A bright red water at her feet that showered like rain when she stepped into it.  
Her clothing dyed red with blood.  
Her hair dyed red with blood.  
Her face dyed red with blood.  
But she didn’t care. She didn’t care about colors anymore because she could not see them, she kept meaninglessly trampling the ground. 

 

Then with her entire being, with everything she could muster, her whole body and soul she stomped in order to break what was underneath her feet. No, who, who was underneath her feet.  
  
Matsuda Yasuke.  
Ikusaba Mukuro.  
  
The corpses piled at her feet. The corpses she stomped on, danced on. “More, more, more! I want more!”  
  
Not good enough.  
She wanted… more.  
She wanted someone else.  
The person she really wanted to kill was…  
The person she should be killing was...  
  
Kumagawa Misogi.  
She stepped on his skull until it cracked. 

  
Wait no,she remembered this. She hated remembering things, because watching the same scene twice in her memories when she already knew it was going to happen? Boring. She hated memories. She even tried to destroy all the memories in her head once. 

   
She hated people who did the same things over and over again, but here she was repeating herself. She just did the same thing over and over, no matter who it was, no matter who she loved.  
  
Not that she wanted to be a good person, but she wanted to be a real person. She wanted what she had with them to be real, but this was… like she was repeating from the same script over and over again. 

 

The world was fake.  
She was fakest of all.  
The world was…  
  
Junko suddenly looked at her hands, two hands. She quickly dug her red fingernails into her left eye, and pried it out of its socket. The eyeball was connected on a string to the back of her skull, but she split the optic nerve between her nails with no hesitation. 

  
This wasn’t real. None of it was real.

They were back in the simulation. They were dreaming again. The world they were currently in was virtual, and if the mastermind had access to that technology the school might have been virtual as well. The third motivation, a virtual world.  
  
“I swear to myself,” because Junko didn’t swear to god, “If we’re in a virtual world inside of a virtual world then I will kill everyone here and then myself for coming up with that stupid twist.” 

 

She realized she was still in Tsumugi’s cosplay studio. In the corner of her eye she saw red retreating. The gil turned her head. Curtains were rising on one of the many sets Tsumugi had set up in her studio. 

 

Onstage, her and Kumagawa were there in that room again. She observed it from a third person view as she was floating outside of her own body. A memory she had forgotten, no a memory she had split away from herself wanting to forget.  
  
Just like when she threw away all her memories of Ryoko. Wanting to forget everything.  
Not wanting to deal with a single thing.  
It had nothing to do with her. 

 

Enoshima Junko stormed out of the room. Then, she complained to Tsumugi for a few hours. Then she walked right back in. Enter stage left. The two of them, a boy and a girl on stage, fought.  
  
It was a normal fight any couple might have despite their situation. She kidnapped him, and Kumagawa started one of those ordinary fights. He was so weird. It was so like him. But, she wasn’t able to handle that.

  
  
She couldn’t handle anything. Other people’s emotions. Other people’s colors. That was why she saw them as emotionless. That was why she saw them as dolls. She was about to storm out of the room again, but Kumagawa grabbed her by the sleeve. 

  
He was asking for help.  
He did not ask a single person for help. He did not ask them to let him out of this room. That was how he played the game. He played like he was trying to lose on purpose.  
  
But he asked her. She was the only one he asked.  『Junko, do you really love me?』That question dripping with insecurity. It was like he tied the noose around his neck just for her, and then offered her the rope. She could choose to push him off, or she could free him.  
  
Those with wings.  
They never fear hanging. They’re content just to fall and keep falling. 

She was jealous, she really was. As Tsumugi said, it was just simple jealousy.  
A butterfly landed into her hands, and she crinkled its wings for those reasons.  
Not despair or anything like that, she acted on her petty emotions. Junko struck him.  
  
“I don’t love this version of you.”  
  
And then she broke up with him. She did not talk to him for an entire month. She did not visit him alone in that room once. She continued on like he did not exist, like he did not matter to her, almost as if she was showing him fragile the string connecting them had been all along.  
  
She dumped him and left him alone in that room.  
Even though she had been the one to lock him in that room. Even though she said she would stay in that room to make the game between them fair.  
  
This dream.  
It was her dream. She relived the last day they were together as a couple. She relived it fifty two times in order to try to fix her mistake. The one doing the same things over and over again, the one clinging to a status quo.  
  
It was all just her.  
It was always just her.  
It was always about her.  
A story of her, and nobody else.  
  
A girl behind her holding onto a teddy bear. She was dressed in a frilly expensive looking dress. She had two pigtails with big ribbons on both sides of her head. She was small and had a narrow frame. She stood there perfectly posed like a doll, the black and white bear between her crossed arms.  
  
“What do you call it when a husband hits his wife.”  
  
“Abuse.”  
  
“What do you call it when a husband chains his wife to a bed in the attic.”  
  
“Classic literature. God society is fucked up no wonder I destroyed it so easily-”  
  
“What do you called it when a husband kills his wife and buries her in the back yard.”  
  
“It’s just abuse. Nothing but abuse.”  
  
It was not compelling and not particularly stylish. It was a cycle that repeated over and over again, a status quo. The child in front of her was the child who tormented her sister, and claimed that was love. The child who killed the only boy who was ever friends with her, and said this feeling of being covered in blood was love. The girl who did the same thing over and over again.  
  
She had never grown up from that child. She kept that child alive inside her this entire time.  
How was she supposed to tell Kumagawa Misogi.  
The girl that he smiled at. The girl that he said it was okay to be herself.  
Was nothing more than a selfish little brat, using him the same way she used everybody else.  
She had entered his life just to take advantage of him.  
She was no different than any other abuser he endured.  
  
That’s all it was. She could not call it love anymore. 

A careless child trampling over things.  
An artless fool. 

 

 _People can change other people._ But, she just wanted to use Kumagawa to change herself.  
  
She just didn’t care. About anybody. About anything.  
And yet, she kept doing this over and over again to protect such a fragile ego.  
  
It’s not like she was guilty. She could not feel it. She could not feel anything. She knew the slightest emotion would break her fragile heart, so she stopped herself before she even started. She split that emotion away from herself.  
  
Junko felt herself splitting again. There were two of her in her skull, three. She grabbed the sides of her head, but before she could she felt like her head was starting to split apart. Her face was start to melt away, like she was shedding skin. The new Junkos inside of her tried to push their way out.  
  
She was looking at the world through four eyes, no eight.  
Just take up a knife and cut the right and left hemispheres of her brain.  
At everything small. At everything inconvenient.  
She could just split it away from herself. She could just refuse to deal with it.  
Any emotion that would be too heavy for her, she threw away. She broke her own heart on purpose, so there was nobody else in the world that could break it. So she would have absolute control over it.  
  
Junko pushed the two sides of her head back together.  
  
_The person I really want to kill is…_  
  
She looked at the person whose head she was stomping on, on the floor. It was her own body. Her face caved in and unrecognizable. In the end she was no different from Ajimu. She tried to force Kumagawa to become her reason to live.  
  
He was trying to be his own person. And she got angry at that. She was just taking her anger out on another person. It was not a particularly dramatic story.  
  
The girl never knew why she was born. So she created the character of Enoshima Junko. She decided to play that character her whole life, she would star in a tragedy that would lead to her death, all written and directed by her.  
  
Tigers left their skin behind when they died.  
People left behind their names.  
She would leave “Enoshima Junko” behind when she died, the image of a girl she created.  
  
It wasn’t atonement or anything like that. She was just bored of this. There was nobody more boring, no character more uninteresting than herself. She had no motivation, no backstory, and nobody that she loved. She suddenly had a pair of scissors in her hands and held it at her throat.  
  
She was jealous.  
When she saw Kumagawa Misogi, the real deal. She thought a person like him should not exist. She entered a relationship with him to make him miserable. She wanted to destroy the real thing, because she could not be real. She almost did, but she would stop herself now.  
  
She hated him. That was why. She didn’t need a reason for hurting him she just…

 _"He's not your lover, just your victim."_ **  
** The child wshipered behind her. 

“But now that I think about it, I don’t actually hate him that much…”

She hesitated with the scissors at her neck.  
Even though it would have been better for Mukuro if she had never been born as her sister. Even though Matsuda would have grown up happily without her. Even though Medaka might have saved Kumagawa if he had fallen in love with that girl.  
  
“I didn’t get to tell senpai I loved him.”  
  
What a stupid last line.  
Maybe she was a normal girl after all. Right before the end.  
But she could not close the scissors on her throat and cut the string.  
  
“Too easy.”  
  
She said, stopping herself.  
She didn’t deserve the easy way anymore. The easy way was boring away.  
  
And, she was tired of being prideful. She wanted to try being pathetic.  
She wanted to try being desperate.  
She wanted to try being dirty.  
Junko, took a step away from the girl holding the teddy bear behind her.  
She left that child behind.  
Alone in the dark. 

  
🧸  
  
Kumagawa was talking with the bear still lying down on the tatami mats. 

 

“Kumagawa-kun, the door is open you should just walk out.” 

  
『But if I leave… Junko will be alone.』  
  
“It’s fine, I’ll talk to her. She loves talking to herself after all.”  
  
『...』  
  
“You’re the one who chose to leave Junko behind to stay with me in the simulation. It’s not like I care or anything, because dying sounds preferable to spending more than five minutes with you but the idea of owing anything at all to you creeps me out. ”  
  
『You’re only seven years old. I wouldn’t bully you.』

 

“I don’t trust those words out of you at all, and also I’m almost eight now!” Junkai said, the eyes of the bear glowing a bright red. “I don’t trust you. This is completely selfish and unreasonable on my part, but that’s the personality I was programmed with (LMAO). So anyway Kumagawa-kun (LOL).”  
  
“Don’t add LOL to my name.”  
  
“LOL-kun.” She said, she could not longer threaten to destroy the world but she did make a pretty good internet troll. That had to cause at least a little bit of despair. “Do you trust me?”  
  
“I trust you.”  
  
Kumagawa said. It was rare for him to be so direct, to speak in his real voice.  
  
“Then just leave the room. You’re a coward, and you always lose anyway, so it’s not really a big deal if you lose this one game.”

  
『B-being so nice to me all of a sudden how scary.』  
  
How scary.  
Junkai did not know those were the only words he had said that he truly meant.  
He pulled the paper door open and tried to walk outside.  
  
He walked back into the exact same room.  
Kumagawa ran out the door.  
What he ran through, was an infinite amount of tatami mat rooms.  
The moment he left one he ran into the next one.  
It was like someone had placed a mirror parallel to another mirror.  
In those reflections, extending on forever, Kumagawa desperately tried to escape.  
He tore out the mats from the floor. He tore apart the paper door. He tripped forward and fell back. He ran with everything he had. He ran like he was trying to outrun himself, the sound of his own heartbeat, eh ran like he was trying to leave his skin behind him. 

  
He collapsed forward. In front of him there was a teddy bear staring at him. Then, it was just a girl that looked like Junko, but a little younger, two years younger to be exact. 

  
“Oh my god, you really didn’t see the it’s all a dream twist coming, senpai? You’re the only person who can relive the same experience fifty two times and not learn a thing. It takes effort, talent to be that foolish.”  
  
Junkai got what she wanted, so she was gloating.

  
“I was getting bored of watching you two sleep so I decided to enter the simulation you’re stuck in. It’s easy because I’m a virus. I just hacked the wifi.”  
  
She was smiling at him.  
The same way a child would, innocent, without any malice at all.  
  
“Oh, and all of those hallucinations? Those were me too. I turned up the crazy dial in your head all the way to eleven.” She suddenly pitched her voice up to sound exactly like Kumagawa’s. “All those conversations with Kumagawa-in-White or whatever? Written, scripted, all by me. Did you like my use of symbolism? I told you I was the creative type.” 

 

Kumagawa Misogi just watched.  
His eyes were like hers.  
They were pured.  
They became purer, bluer, as he listened.  
  
“I wanted to see you who’s never trusted anybody not in his life, to finally be forced to trust someone. And when that person betrayed you, what kind of face would you make?” 

 

His body shook violently. And, the laughter he released was even more violent.  
Even though he surely feels pain. There is no way his sense of pain wore out.  
However, nothing of that transpired from him.  
No matter where he was destroyed.  
No matter if his brain, lungs or heart are destroyed, he keeps laughing out loud like he doesn’t care.  
With cold eyes, but an amused expression.  
A ghostly laugh.  
  
Kumagawa looked like a mirror split entirely down the middle.  
As the two halves were falling apart, his smile fell into pieces too. Him and his reflection, both splitting and half together, separating. Like they were breaking up. Like they were no longer lovers. He had two faces now. Two smiles. wo. Both of his faces fell apart, and he was still smiling. 

And with two mouths.  
Kumagawa said incomprehensible words to her. 

 『Thank you!』

 


	73. FTE: DRILL HOLE IN MY BRAIN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The opening is a quote from bleach!

**FREE TIME EVENT [5/5]**

_I_ _f tomorrow you became a snake that devoured humans.  
__And then with that same mouth with which you devoured them, you cried out to me that you loved me.  
__Would I still be able to tell you “I love you” the same way I do today?_

🧸

 

Kumagawa laughed.  
A laugh of birth.  
He did not cry when he was born, not like mere mortals, as Kumagawa was born, he laughed.  
Usually it was aimless, directionless laughter. Like laughing was breathing for him. Like he did not even know he was laughing.   
But Junkai knew.  
He laughed at her. 

『Thank you.』  
  
“Ugh, did I do something nice on accident? I hate this.”  
  
Ecstatic. Electricity running underneath his skin. Stabbed by a million needles.  
He felt it all and he laughed it off.  
There were blood-chilling screams, but this was frozen laughter.  
His blood replaced with liquid nitrogen. It seeped from his veins to capillaries, and then to each of the cells in his body. His whole body frozen to ice and then shattered. Then in pieces, he kept on laughing.  
  
He threw back his head and laughed like he was trying to make it fall off.  
  
“You didn’t trust me…” Junkai was once again, frustrated that people acted out of her expectations and against their programming Why couldn’t they be good little npcs and follow the code, why did they insist on being such annoying bugs? 

『No way, no way, I trusted you. When two people go to the cliff to commit suicide together, and one is too afraid to jump on their own they have to trust the other to push their back, right?』  
  
Kumagawa said, mirroring the push with his two hands.   
  
『Saying I trust you with my life, isn’t that the same as saying I trust you to kill me?』  
  
“WTF The Fuck. You were just playing dumb all along weren’t you? You knew this was a simulation-”

『There’s no way a low class saiyan like me could possibly beat an elite saiyan warrior. How could I have  figured out this was a simulation before Junko did?』Kumagawa denied it. 『I might be a talented actor, but nobody could pretend to be this dumb. It takes talent to be this dumb.』  
  
“But, you don’t have any talent.” 

『That’s right, I’m a failure even at being a failure.』Kumagawa was talking as he normally did but there was something off about it, something was wrong with the boy who was always wrong.

  
No that was it exactly, it was like Kumagawa had back to his old self.  
As if he had reset.  
Just like someone flipped a switch.  
That was why he got close to her, he wanted someone else to flip his switch for him. 

 

『Anyway, you always whine about other people being predictable but aren’t you two the most predictable people of all? Like a bear to honey! You just can’t help yourselves can you?』  
  
He was no longer looking at her, but looking at somewhere in between, looking at flowers. They were big, bright, white flowers.No thorns only flowers. The flowers moved, swelled, increasing in number. They all breathed at once, as if they were part of the same organism. They welled up from the bloodstained tatami mats dancing all around him, all around him, swallowing him. They flower petals reached out to touch him, they felt warm like fingers, they touched his shoulders, his neck, his collarbone, touching his skin. Even if he tried to close his eyes, he could see nothing but a vast expanse of white flowers in front of him. They were glaringly, white. A white that washed all other colors away.  
  
These flowers.  
White lilies.  
Were the kind you brought to funerals.  
If white was a pure color, then why was it most associated with death?  
Either way the reason why he saw flowers with obvious, he had wanted Junkai to kill him.  
Those flowers were his life, when they withered he would die.  
  
His head. Something itched inside of his head, between the folds of his brain. He picked up a screw and jammed it straight into his head, and twisted it until it pierced his brain. His head was suddenly heavy, the weight of a screw bearing down on it. Were screws really this heavy? If he was not careful his head might roll off again, he was always losing his head so easily. He was not in pain. But it did feel strange. Not because there was a screw stuck in his head, but because he could feel his brain moving. His brain was made up of tiny fibers, nerve endings, axioms that stretched along the surface and dug into his brain like they were the roots of flowers. A garden of flowers, within his skull. He felt like that.  
  
Inhale.  
The flowers stirred. They breathed with him. 

He didn’t know how to recover, but he could break into beautiful pieces.  
This time he shattered the mask he wore on his face into little white pieces.  
They blew away with the wind like individual flower petals. 

  
He was standing on the edge of the building and Junkai pushed him off, and his brain splattered all over the concrete, and he painted the world with his insides. Red. Red. Red. Red. His head was the first to be severed, and he could no longer feel anything. He no longer had arms, he no longer had legs. He was now nothing more than a stain on the ground. He was the color on the road, the sidewalk, the car parked there, the sign, splattered all over, and Junkai standing there covered in fresh blood. Red, red, red, red, red, red all over everything.  
But then the red bled away, and there was nothing left but white.  
  
Red over white flowers.  
He never knew he had such beautiful colors inside of him.  
Kumagawa knew that there was something horrible inside of him.  
He could never let it out, he was too soft in the end.  
And so that was why, he let her destroy him. He let her stomp on his face until it caved in.  
Until he had no need to lie anymore. There was no way to cover up this much hate with lies.  
  
The two of them were in the classroom now.

 

_“You’re making me hit you. I don’t want to, but you keep making me…”_

  
A common excuse trotted out by abusers. But, with Kumagawa it almost felt real. As if he had been in so many abusive situations that he knew how to play victim just right, like he was forcing other people to hit him. He wanted to be despised by her. 

 

It was the same classroom as always. The room was still upside down and the chairs were on the ceiling. The desks however had all been taken down and piled up high in one corner. Kumagawa in white lounged on them, as if those broken, and old desks were his throne. 

 

All of the hallucinations were Kumagawa’s to begin with. She had just put a pair of jumper cables to the crazy part of his brain.

_“Do you know what the difference is? Between a king and her fool?”_

 

『They both wear funny hats so aren’t they the same.』

  
_“I wasn’t trying to joke around.”_

 

『If it’s not for laughs then why even bother talking?』

  
Kumagawa in white suddenly knocked him down. He stepped on the screw about Kumagawa’s head, driving it further into Kumagawa’s brain. It was like he had fallen off a horse, who stepped on his head and crushed his skull.  
  
_“What’s the difference between Enoshima Junko and Kumagawa Misogi?”_

 

『Well, I’m a lot cuter.』  
  
Scrape!  
Scraaaaaaape.  
Scraping, the insides of his skull, the metal rings around the screw.  
  
_“What’s the difference between black and white?”_  
  
That was.  
Desire. Enoshima always gave into her desires. Kumagawa always killed them. Junko denied everyone else. Kumagawa denied himself. There were only two ways to live, two ways, and he had failed at one.  
  
The truth was he was always angry. That desire inside of him. He was not insane, he was just mad. He was mad at the world who neglected him. He hated every single person that turned their backs on someone in need. He was so afraid of expressing the pent up anger inside of him.

『 _I’m scared… I’m scared it’ll break._ 』

  
“If a weak person like you is enough to break the world just by living, then it’s better off being broken.”  
  
No wonder destroying the world was so easy for Junko, Kumagawa thought.  
The world could be destroyed with something so simple as the flip of a switch.  
  
Black could so easily become painted over with white.  
The flowers becoming red did not matter because he would paint them white again.  
Victims did not remain victims forever, they eventually became villains.  
Kumagawa looked at his hands, the skin tearing as if something else was emerging from underneath. This time he did not see the claws of a beast emerged, but rather nails red as blood. He clamped both hands around his mouth. He looked like a beast doing everything he could not to devour the rabbit in front of him, while he drooled and ran his tongue along his fangs.  No, what was dripping from his mouth was not drool. It was venom. 

 

“Hey, don’t steal my look…!” Junkai cried out from the corner. 

Kumagawa in white hit the chalkboard again.  
  
“What’s a good reason to kill someone?” 

 

『He almost killed me, so I killed him.』  
  
“Your life isn’t worth taking another person’s life you piece of shit. It’d be better for everyone if I rolled over and died.”

 

『He was a bad guy, so I killed him.』  
  
“Nobody on earth is worse than you. Where do you get off calling others bad guys?”

 

At that, Kumagawa smiled. 

 

『I want the girl I like to be happy, so I have to kill her.』  
  
Desires, Instincts. 

You either ruled them, or let yourself be ruled.  
If you weren’t a king then you were nothing more than a fool. 

Kumagawa in white became, the image of Ajimu painted in white but once again that was nothing more than his own hallucination. What he desired to see at the moment.  
  
She reached out and put a hand on his head, and pet his hair softly. “Good boy.”  
  
Her hands caressed both of his cheeks, and the room spiraled around him. The classroom that was upside down and inverted, righted itself once more, watching the space move around was kind of like being inside a rubix cube while someone on the outside solved it. Even Junkai fell onto the ground, fell onto the flowers.  
  
“This is all so pointless you know? Who gives a shit about the real you? You have a personality that I suggest repressing the hell out of.”  
  
『Shut up.』  
  
“If you act like your real self in front of them everybody will hate you.” 

 

『I’ll hate them back.』

 

“You’ll lose everyone. Naegi-kun, Ikusaba-nan Komaeda-kun, they’ll all be taken away from you if you continue forward.” 

 

『Anyone who tries to take my things from me will get no mercy. It all pisses me off, everyone, their faces, their voices, their beliefs, everything, everything, everything. I’m going to break what I don’t like.』  
  
Nagito’s hope.  
Mukuro’s love.  
Makoto's kindness.  
  
He would break like he was broken. If he didn’t like the story, he would just tear the pages out before it was finished. He grabbed Junkai by the face, and slammed her face down into the field of flowers. There were screws driven into her body, the bookmaker virus, it wrapped around her carving kanji symbols into her flesh.

 

『Thank you.』  
  
“What are you thanking me for? God, you monkeys make no sense. Why don’t you go bang two rocks together and leave me alone while I figure out every prime number in existence-”  
  
『I was being half assed. I said I’d become the villain, but the truth was all along in my heart even if I was the enemy of the whole world I wanted to be Junko’s hero.』  
  
If following your dreams was beautiful.  
Then giving up was also beautiful.  
Kumagawa lived, by losing something. That was all he knew.  
  
“You finally understand me, I’m so happy.”  
  
Ajimu in white.  
Both of her hands around his face, she leaned in like she was going to kiss him. She stopped just short and touched his hair instead. The screw inside his brain disappeared at her touch, and she threaded her fingers through his hair. The places she touched him, turned white. A white that Kumagawa had never seen before. All he needed to do was scrub bleach over his skin, his eyes, everything. Everything could become clean with bleach, even the insides of his own organs if he swallowed it.  
  
“Thank you, for protecting me, for loving me, when no one else would.”  
  
Red flowers.  
Turning white again. As if they had been bleached.  
White signified death more than the color of blood.  
A white snake crawling through a garden. 

 

『That’s why I have to become the villain.』  
  
_If tomorrow you became a snake that devoured humans._ _  
_ _And then with that same mouth with which you devoured them, you cried out to me that you loved me._ _  
_ _Would I still be able to tell you “I love you” the same way I do today?_

『This time I’ll definitely make you happy.』

Then six screws in total,  
Split her skull,  
And Junkai heard nothing else. 

 

🧸

 

 _I’m so stupid._  
  
If only someone would reach inside her ears and knead her brain like it was wet dough, until it was completely smoothed out. What she really needed was someone to iron out all the wrinkles. Then she could just stop thinking.  
  
At the moment that was impossible.  
She was still the best, and she was still the worst.

She continued to be Enoshima Junko.  
  
When she reached the door and slid  it open she saw, thorns, thorns, thorns.  
All thorns and no flowers. 

They coiled around themselves several time and took up the entire volume of space in the entryway. She knew somewhere in this maze of thorns beat the heart of a boy.  
  
Enoshima Junko, longed to suffer like everybody else did. She wanted to be miserable the rest of her life to make up for an entire life of false happiness. She longed to feel pain, that every single one of her nerve endings shattered like glass all at once.  
  
But this was really a pain in the ass.  
She forced herself through. Sleeping beauty fell asleep after pricking herself once. Sleepy bitch. Junko felt thron after thorn prick her body all over, but she dragged herself through. The thorns took everything, and stripped her down to nothing.  
  
Then she saw him.  
Kumagawa Misogi. A crown of thorns on his head. Whoa, that was some fancy pants symbolism right there. When did he become so self important? There was something different in his demeanor, he didn’t sit on the floor, he lounged like a spoiled brat, or maybe a king. 

『Yo. We’re already at the finale and you’re late. So inconsiderate.』  
  
“You’ve obviously got a speech plan so I’ll just play along. The finale?” 

 

『You know. The end of our game. The end.』  
  
“Well damn, that is some ominous foreshadowing right there.” 

 

Suddenly.  
His hand, her neck.  
He tipped her forward, she dipped.  
His body, moving along with hers, as he caught her. He peered down from her at above, his head was the center of the sky, it became her moon. 

 

『Junko, you’re missing a piece, too bad. Your eyes were so pretty.』He reached with his free hand to his own socket, and with no hesitation at all scooped the eyeball out. He pulled it out until the cord ripped like it was nothing, and then offered the blue eye to her. 『Here, you can have it, my eyes, my hand, my heart, my throat. Fill in all your missing pieces, that’s what you wanted isn’t it?』  
  
What she wanted.  
Those sounded like cruel words to her.  
Kumagawa’s eye and her eye, together in her skull forever. She could see the world exactly as he saw it. They would always be looking at the same scenery. No, that was just ultimate despair logic and they were total despair noobs.  
  
“You figured out this world was a dream. Well, I guess an especially dumb twist like that should be easy for you to figure out. I’d need to bash my head against the wall a few times to lower my iq enough points to see the world you do.” 

 

『Yep. It was easy. Because Junko, you don’t have any imagination at all.』

  
She just dreamed of the world exactly as it was. No better, no worse. Just a world where she repeated the same mistake of dumping Kumagawa again and again, fifty two times.

 

“Misogi I… I want to get back together.” 

 

『Oh, sure.』  
  
“I want to break up again.” 

 

『Yeah, whatever.』  
  
“Are you listening at all?” 

 

『Yes, Junko despair is very nice. It’s just as interesting as you think it is.』

  
Junko had never experienced this before. Nobody looking at her. It was like Kumagawa was the only person. In this room, she didn’t exist at all. Love didn’t exist. She felt like a loser pick up artist striking out and being shot down. It was pathetic. Her words which had always been her strongest weapon, were just meaningless noise.  
  
“This is my fault, I… I killed Kaiki.” 

 

『...』

  
So angry. So angry.  
  
“I hated that you were getting better when he was around. I wanted someone to be miserable with me. No, I wanted you to be miserable.” 

 

『...』  
  
He never once cried or got angry.  
He was kind. He was always smiling.  
He loved Ajimu, even as she broke him.  
But he was, so, so angry.

“I hated how you were always laughing, always smiling, always crying. You did everything I couldn’t do. That’s why it made me happy to see you just as miserable as I was.”  
  
She was insulting him.  
This was just condescension. 

 

『...』  
  
“So, I killed him. I killed the person that made you happy, and then I acted like I was the only one who could make you happy. When all that time I just wanted you to keep being miserable. And we… we stopped talking after that. I miss talking with you so much, you’re a mouth breather but you’re the only one who ever laughs at my jokes.”  
  
He wanted to claw her eyes out and kill her. 『Ehhh? I don’t care about any of that. It’s all too boring to even bother remembering.』

 

“You realize I wanted you to do this? I wanted you to go crazy and turn the tables on me, right? You’re just doing what I want-”  
  
『Yep.』

  
“You didn’t ask for help once. You just stayed in this room the entire time like you were choosing to stay in here. Even when I broke the chains myself you didn’t move. It’s like you-”

 

『Yep. I gave up from the start. I mean there’s no way a first class loser like me could beat an elite like you.』

  
“You’re a second class loser at least.” 

 

『I’ve been demoted !』

 

“Then you just did what I wanted-”

 

『This is what you wanted isn’t it?』Kumagawa said, and suddenly it was like his smile took over his whole face. She could no longer even make out his eyes. He was just fangs, and paled lips that curled back revealing them. 『I love lines like that.』  
  
Kumagawa Misogi.  
He cut it all away.  
His empathy.  
He cut his brainstem from his brain.  
Severed the nerves that connected his brain to his spine. 

 

『Don’t you get it? The easiest way to make you miserable is to give you exactly what you wanted.』

His winning strategy, was to lose entirely. Lose everything. Lose himself. Lose her.  
His eyes. His face. The strands of white hair falling over her face, tickling her cheeks.  
Inverted and reversed.  
Like someone had pulled out the Kumagawa from the other side of the mirror.  
She was speaking to him like a glass wall was between them.  
  
But still, it was not like he had gone insane. He was not acting any different from earlier. No, it was like he was acting like himself. He was more like himself than he ever was. And Junko finally got it.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi was already broken. He had been from the start. That was why it was impossible for her to break him. He could not belong to her, because he belonged to no one, the broken pieces slipped through their fingers. 

『Still, I have to ask. Was it your idea to do this or the other Junko’s?』  
  
“The other…?” 

 

『I mean. You kept calling that stuffed bear over their Junkai. You kept talking to her like she was really in there.』  
  
Kumagawa knew that the only way to pull a fast one on a genius was with something so stupid a genius would never think of it. This trick was so dumb it could barely even be called a trick. The teddybear that Junko struggled to pick up after he spun her away from their embrace and let go, had a screw through the center of its belly.  
  
“I… I (Atashi) I (wataksuhi) I (ore)...”  
  
The one who hurt him was.  
The one who locked him in here was.  
Junko felt her body being torn apart at the seams. Her entire body wanted to run away, her heart wanted to break itself into pieces. She wanted to splinter apart and let some other part of her brain take on the burden. Memory, emotions, coordination, decision-making, she didn’t need those things right now.  
  
She wanted to deny herself.  
Deny who she was.  
Be anybody else except Enoshima Junko.  
Anyone was fine. She just didn’t want to be the person that hurt him.  
The person that did this to him.  
  
It wasn’t remorse or anything like that. She just hated being predictable. She hated a boring kind of misery that repeated itself over and over again. She hated being trapped in the same spot and unable to move.  
  
Her forehead was starting to crack like she was about to give birth to something. Her left and right brains were splitting right now the middle. She pushed the two sides of her head together all she could to keep her head together.  
  
_“Just forget.”_ _  
_ _“This isn’t worth despairing over.”_ _  
_ _“This has nothing to do with you.”_  
  
Ryoko’s voice rang in her ears. That’s right, Ryoko just kept forgetting too because it was easier that way. She was happy like that. But, if that was what happiness was she did not need it. She did not want to forget. She did not want to forget who she was. She did not want to forget she had loved him.  
  
Emotions, no matter what you do are useless.  
His eyes seemed to say.  
Just throw everything away. Your pleasure, your pain, until nothing is left. 

 

Kumagawa grabbed her by the wrist. He slapped a silver handcuff to her, and raised his own wrist to show he was chained to the other half of the handcuffs. 『Let’s stay in this room forever and become happy together;』  
  
Her weak brain was spinning around. Kumagawa suddenly grabbed Junko, pulling her back into his embrace as they spun around in a crazy dance. 『Come on Junko! You got what you wanted! Let’s dance, I’ll teach you all the perfect ways to dance incorrectly.』  
  
He said as he stepped on her toe strong enough to break it.  
  
“Hey idiot you make me want to barf literally, instead of figuratively like usual, I…”  
  
They danced.  
They continued to dance on strings.  
Both of them were unaware completely whose fingers the strings were attached to anymore.  
He did not know where her feet ended, and his began.

 

“I’m bothered by the very fact that people exist, but you’re an exception.”  
『I’m really happy you told me that, because I...』  
  
They danced.  
Stepping on flowers.  
Stomping on them until their petals were all torn up.  
  
“Damnit fine! I love you! Whatever!”  
The words he most wanted to hear.  
『I want to kill you.』  
Coupled with the words she least wanted to hear.  
  
Together in a dance. Then Kumagawa slid open the door once more, and there was nothing more than a black void at the other side of the door. The end of the dream. The end of the world.

『Look! Did you think you’re special, Junko? Everyone’s the same. You think you’re the only person who thinks the world is pointless or everyone’s clinging to a false happiness? Everyone realizes that as they grow up. But still you can laugh at dumb jokes, or eat snacks with your friends. You just keep going.』  
  
She raised her hand to slap him, but he grabbed her hand andlet her fall forward. Until he was dipping her, holding here there, dangling her over the side and threatening to push her off the cliff. The man pushed the woman. They both fell into the water. She died and he lived.  
  
『Your problems are really boring and don’t matter at all, but really the same can be said for everyone. They complain a whole lot and then they die, everyone, with no exceptions. Splat. All of them equal before god. That’s what you want isn’t it? To be like everyone else? This is the only way you can be a normal girl.』  
  
She understood now. Kumagawa Misogi. A Kafka among Kafkas. Everybody else was a bug to her. This morning she woke up in the same bed as him. She woke up as a bug. He was looking at her like she was a bug, those kafkaesque eyes.  
  
“Misogi know, I don’t want this… Please, help-”

 

She always did this.  
She hurt him, and then begged him for help.  
She always made it about her problems. 

 

『 Just joking, I knew you never wanted to kill yourself. You’re way too self absorbed for that.』

  
Kumagawa pulled her back up.  
A smile on his face. 

 

『Thanks for showing me how ugly and immature you are. It was fun.』  
  
In that moment Enoshima Junko decided.  
It was true seeing Kumagawa happy made her miserable.  
But that was what she wanted.  
To be dirty, to be defiled, to be ugly.  
To hurt other people, to be hurt by them.  
She wanted to have all of her insides rearranged and torn out.  
She wanted to envy everybody. She wanted to despise them all.  
She wanted to be buried in dirt so flowers could grow.  
If Kumagawa’s happiness was her despair.  
Then she would spend the rest of her life making him happy. 

 

『 You don’t want to die. How boring. Just like everybody else. Okay, go die now!』  
  
“Let’s get married.”  
  
Huh?  
Okay, now even the narrator is confused.  
  
Junko ripped her hand away from his. The chains connecting them for both of the handcuffs broke. She pointed to the silver bangle around her wrist. “These are our wedding bands. They don’t need to be connected. I don’t need to tie you down anymore.” 

  
Kumagawa hesitated. His fingers loosened around her neck and he dropped her to the floor. For a moment she thought she saw a flash of blue in his eyes. She thought she saw herself in them.

 

『 I can’t kill you yet. Mukuro-chan would be sad if that happened.』  
  
No, it was her sister she had seen.  
That was what she deserved.  
  
『 I’m going to destroy Mukuro-chan’s love for you. The second she hates you, I’m going to kill you. 』

  
“And then we can get married.”  
  
Junko said, with a fake smile. She could do it, because Kumagawa was always faking a smile for her sake. That was fine, it was just the two of them onstage after all. They still had each other. She would switch roles.  
  
Besides he had told her once. She could try to kill him as many times as she wanted. Special offer, because they were friends.  
  
He could be the villain and she the victim.  
He was white. She was black.  
If he pushed her, then she would pull.  
If he found his hope, she would find her despair.  
And then they could be…  
Two people.  
  
『 You’re a weird girl.』  
  
“Upupupupupu! Haven’t you read my magazine interviews? I’m surprisingly normal and down to earth for a famous model. I don’t have any kind of ego at all. I’m totaly normal, you’re the weird one.”

 _Hey, senpai I..._  
  
She said as she wrapped her hands around his waist and then.  
Stepped back.  
So both of them could fall together.  
But they didn’t fall into darkness.  
The dream ended. They stepped out of the room together, and they both fell out into the hallway.   
Falling, it was all she could think.   
  
_I'm so fucking stupid.  
_  
🧸  


I watched the dream coming to an end.   
  
It was really boring. I was basically stewing in my own misery at that point. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut, but no, I said words that actively motivated her into trying to fix things with Kumagawa instead of letting them stay broken. 

I wanted those two out of my story, that’s why I isolated them in this intermission. But Kumagawa never does what you want him to.  
  
The last conversation I had with Junko was strange to me. Watching the world fall apart always ended up reminding me of her. 

“Why do you wear cosplay anyway?”  
  
She was like a kid. She had that natural curiousity, that want to learn everything. Of course every time she answered one of her questions she was unsatisfied and stuck her tongue out, that was childish too.  
  
“No special reason. Just a plain, old boring reason.” 

“Well no duh, I’m talking to you Kamaboko Gonpachiro!”  
  
“That’s not even close. So, I’m not going to disappoint you?”  
  
“Oh, you’re definitely going to disappoint me. Which is actually kind of impressive, because the bar was set so low from the first moment I saw you," Junko said.   
  
“Wow, you really speak your mind Enoshima-san. You’re so bold.” They say never meet your heroes. Well, Junko was more like my favorite villain than my hero. I sighed, and said, “I’m like those mannequins. If you hang clothes on me, the clothes are all you’ll notice not the person wearing them.”  
  
“You’re staring at me again.”  
  
“O-oh, well. When I’m near a sparkly person like you, I can’t help but look.”  
  
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”  
  
No, no she didn’t get it at all. I wasn’t pretending to be someone else. I wanted to become her. The audience could only perceive what was happening on the surface of an actor, his expression, his words, his tone of voice. The character's background was a shallow pool that only existed for the actor inside of his head. He did not feel those memories, he could not live them. He had to leave the role behind eventually, he could not continue on as that person after he left the stage. And that was all too different from the real thing for me. 

Emotions build up on top of one another in a tower of bricks until they topple over crush you to death. I knew better than everyone else. No matter how emotionally invested you get in a manga even if you believe yourself to be exactly  the same as the fictional character, their emotions can never become your own. Reality was just too heavy. It broke everything, including my fragile self. It never moved, it never changed, no matter how much of a genius you were. No matter how special. So there was no way for anybody to genuinely feel what another person felt.  
  
Reality did not change.  
People did not change.   
The writing was just terrible, and it had no themes.   
  
I knew it was pointless but I…  
  
“C-cosplay is all about community you know? I thought if I got involved in cosplay I could find somebody… like me.”  
  
“That’s ride, I said you reminded me of someone-”  
  
She said thoughtfully.  
But she was probably just thinking about herself like always.  
  
“Disappointing, predictably tepid and stubborn, always failing over and over again.”  
  
“Yes, I get the picture. I don’t think it’s physically possible for my self esteem to get any lower at this point so if you would please-”  
  
“I don’t hate people like that.” 

Those words made me fall like a fresh blossom.  
And scattered me like a flower.  
The curtain fell over my eyes, and all I could see was red.   
Enoshima Junko who was like a god to me. The girl I wanted to die and be reborn in heaven as.   
_What a stupid god._  
  
**[INTERMISSION END]**


	74. Psyncin in the Vain

 

  


**BOOK 3: [SUICIDAL IDEATION] Thin Iced Suicide lovers  
** **PART 2**

Kumagawa-senpai always has a cheerful smile on his face, but he was not looking at Junko with that angelic smile. That’s a real bummer. Boohoo. 

『What’s with the boohoo... 』  
  
“You’re the one who’s always smiling! Come on, smile for me!” 

 

『It’d be boring if I always did the same so I thought I’d get new character traits.』

  
“You can’t just decided to change up your character traits like that just because you’re bored!” 

 

『You’re the one who’s always getting bored, and you smile even when you’re bored.』  
  
“I suppose so,” Junko said. Like Kumagawa she was always smiling too. It was never an angelic smile. Though people often told her she looked beautiful when she smiled to be honest Junko had no idea what kind of face she was making or how she looked. 

 

She would need a mirror for that. 

 

“Oh, oh, people use mirrors to adjust their appearance. But if you really think about it, senpai, the image you see is that of your past self. After all, for the light to be reflected it has to bounce from you, to the mirror, and back to you, which inevitably produces a time lag.” 

  
『Ah, yes I am smart enough to understand what you are saying right now. Yes, yes, I concur.』  
  
Junko was feeling really talkative right now. No, it was more like she was a comedian who kept striking out in front of a completely unresponsive audience. They didn’t even bother to heckle her, or jeer her, they were just completely silent which was almost worse somehow. So, she just kept trying to say something, anything, to get a reaction.  
  
“Looking a mirror is like looking into the past - essentially you’re looking backwards. To put it cruelly, when most people are trying to look less ugly in front of the mirror, and when I’m making myself look even more drop dead gorgeous that usual, they’r merely embellishing a memory.”  
  
『You’re right, your looks are the kind that make me immediately want to drop dead.』

  
Looking into a past.  
A past that resembles me.  
A reflection in the mirror.  
Kumagawa Misogi shrugged his shoulders and smiled, he looked more like an image that had come to life. 

  
“Speaking of, have you ever met Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

 

『Of course, My. Hyde was my precious childhood friend. I saw him every time I looked in the mirror.』  
  
“If you drank the medicine you’d probably turn into Dr. Jekyll, senpai.” 

 

『A potion that turns you into some kind of good person? Like some kind of nerd.』  
  
“Don’t you think their relationship was bad in the end? Being together with his polar opposite like that, it was a destructive bond, in which neither of them could become happy…” 

 

A destructve bond, in which neither of them could become happy. A destructive one that the people around them couldn’t understand.  
  
Are you talking about us?  
But…  
But…  
But…  
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the same person in the end.  
  
『Are you reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde like it’s a love story?』

 

“Haven’t you ever thought about classical literature yaoi? Like drool!  I just think falling in love with the image in the mirror is so romantic..”  
  
They say people’s reflections look good to themselves, maybe Junko really did fall in love with the girl on the other side of the mirror. But Kumagawa was the opposite. He was the other side of the mirror, looking back, hating himself.  
  
He had to kill his reflection before it killed him. If he did not smash it, he would get smashed, he would be killed from the other side of the mirror. From the other side of the mirror, he would see what he really was.  
  
He hated himself in the mirror, but he loved himself a little more than he hated Junko right now. That was why he decided, he would kill her and protect himself. 

 

『Of course you would think that. Do you even know what a romance is?』  
  
“Excuse me, Kumagawa-senpai. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that I’m romanticism itself.”

 

『I think it would be.』

 

Maybe they just needed each other. Which is why either one of them couldn’t let go of the other. Kumagawa mumbled to himself. Living without Hyde would be like living without a reflection in the mirror, or a shadow at your feet. It would be empty.  
  
But… maybe if they need each other it’s all gone wrong from the start. If you really need someone else to continue living, then you should just go off and die on your own. If you are so fragile you will break without holding onto someone, then just break already.  
  
He was starting to think that way. If someone as weak as Komaeda was able to live all those years alone then he should be able to as well. Kumagawa thought as he saw a flash of white hair in the mirror. 

 

The reason they were talking about mirrors of course, was because the hallway they were standing in was a circular hallway with several mirrors. Specifically, it was the first and second floors of the dorm rooms they were sleeping in before waking up in this dream. The dorm rooms for the building which they were currently trapped and forced to play the killing game in. In the place of doors leading into each individual room, there were mirrors hanging there in the doorways.  
  
When Junko and Kumagawa emerged from her room they had smashed through the mirror, it was a rather violent way of making an alice and wonderland allusion. 

 

“There are so many mirrors in this story it’s basically a goddamn funhouse, like we get it, mirror symbolism, find something new to write about mastermind.”  
  
There she goes criticizing my writing again. 

 

『Junko, we can’t spend this whole chapter bantering.』  
  
“Yes we can, and the readers will have no choice but to put up with it. Upupupuuuu!” Junko began laughing evilly, before Kumagawa cut her off.  


『Let’s just skip to the part where your brain figures everything out for us.』  
  
“Hey, just because I’m the smartest person here doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to become an exposition character that’s boring - why would I ever do something that’s useful?”  


『Junko gets bored and figures everything out in 3, 2...』  
  
“Nope, nevermind. Figured it all out.” 

 

  
  
She grabbed his hair suddenly, red fingernails in white hair. Her fingers looked like they might leave stains. Junko did not pull or tear as she usually did, she looked like she was trying to hold spider’s thread between them, as if holding onto something precious. Kumagawa was confused for a moment, he did not know her hands were capable of feeling so soft. 

 

“Your hair is white, mine is red. That’s our natural hair color but we both dye our hair to conceal it. In other words this world is the opposite of the one Komaeda constructed, instead of being our ideal selves, we’re shown our inner selves in the mirror. Our real selves, whatever the fuck that means.”  
  
Reversed and flipped inside out. The way text was read in the mirror. 

Junko explained, that this world was likely constructed of code recovered from the Neo-World Program, but the ones who constructed it, Kazuichi and Miu neither of them were quite as brilliant as Kamukura or herself. They could make the machine just fine, but the code was different, so they recycled the old code. Hence why the world in front of them was not capable of creating an entire island chain, or even an entire city like it had been in Komaeda’s case, but more of a patchwork world. The dream Kumagawa and Junko had been in a moment ago only consisted of two rooms, their shared room together, and the cosplay lab.  
  
“In other words, this world is a mirror world, it can’t actually create a virtual world on its own. It only reflects. What we see is the physical representation of our subconscious minds.”

 

『You mean like a Somnium? A world that exists within the subconsciousness of a person?』  
  
“Why are you thinking about Zero Escape at a time like this? The best, most popular, prettiest mastermind is right here. I’ll be your 2d waifu, senpai! Seriously, let’s get married.”

 

『Junko, you don’t even like death games anymore.』  
  
“Well yeah, but I’m still better than everyone else.” A somnium, a dream world, a mirror world. A world that revealed the true self that you yourself were unaware of. A world constructed of recycled and broken code, that looked like it was so fragile the entire world might shatter like glass at any moment. There were numbers running along the walls, and occasionally rips tore and Kumagawa glanced through them to see a sandy beach off in the distance before they closed again. “Mirror world! See, it’s the perfect place for us, a place where you can fall in love with your own reflection. Let’s have our honeymoon here.” 

 

『I think that’s just called vanity.』 Kumagawa said ignoring the remark about their honeymoon.  
  
“You don’t think at all, senpai.” 

 

『Oh, that’s right I don’t.』

 

“Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I go wow! Twinsies! Don’t you think it would be fun to have a twin? Did you ever wonder what that would be like? I’m always thinking, there’s not enough me in the world.”  


『Junko, you do have a twin! Don’t forget about Mukuro-chan. I’ll kill you.』  
  
“Not before we’re married, I’m a proper girl after all. And. This isn’t about her.” Junko pressed her hand against one of the mirrors. The girl on the other side of the mirror did exactly the same. “Well, anyway since you mentioned it this world must be like a hub world in a video game. With this we can travel to everybody else’s dreams. If they’re all in the dorm room then, they must have attacked us and hooked us up while we were sleeping.” 

 

『Hey, Junko if you can figure all that out why not just solve the plot right now?』  
  
“Nah, too much effort.” She tried to push a little further into the mirror. Her hand sunk in but she quickly withdrew it. “Not to sound like a total lameazoid but we should be careful, we don’t know what tumbling into another person’s dream is like. I like despair, and unexpected disasters, but also I hate when I’m not in total control of disasters you know?”

 

『Umm… what makes them disasters is that they’re out of control.』  
  
“Wow, why didn’t I meet you earlier Senpai? I could have solved with boredom problem like way sooner.” 

 

『Be careful? What does that mean? That’s like the opposite of charging head first into danger right? Why would anybody do that?』Kumagawa said, as he placed his hands on Junko’s back. 

 

Now that she thought about it Kumagawa really must have been a grain of sand that made her entire supercomputer brain shut out, or maybe a moth caught up in the circuiting that gave her a bug. She really should have known that Kumagawa had no idea what those words even meant, but she didn’t realize until a moment after he had pushed her from behind face first into the mirror. 

 

🧸

 

Her world was like a painting.  
It was made up of all the beautiful colors. She could look at it and admire it all day long. But that was why it was just a painting. She could not be a part of that world no matter how much she wished for it. She could only look at the scene in front of her eyes from an outsider’s perspective. She was forever outside of it. She could never live the life she wanted to live, only watch others live that life from the other side of the frame. 

  
  


She could never be painted into the same scene with the man she loved. Even when she was next to him, close enough to hear his heartbeat, and feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, even as she clung to him all she needed to do was look to the side and see that their world was two dimensional.  
  
There was no way this love could be real.  
Days with him were like a happy dream. 

Dreams had no place in reality.  
They fell apart slowly, or ended abruptly.  
She had failed to become a real girl.  
The kind of normal girl he deserved.  
She was still, the same as always a girl staring out the window and daydreaming.  
  
Her world was made of paper and oil. A painting. A painting much happier than anything she would see in life. Maybe the boy on the other side of the painting was real, but there was no way he would look back at her. He was happily living his life without her.  
  
He was happy that way.  
He was happy that way so, why couldn’t she just be happy the one she loved was happy?  
What a selfish girl.  
  
Her nails tore into the canvas. She raked them all the way down, getting chipped up paint underneath her fingernails. Her nails were now red. She looked even more like her sister. The illusion of a normal life, ripped by between her own nails. The portait she painted for herself, destroyed all in red. She loved people exactly the same way her sister did that was why she could kill...

 

 _I know there’s good in you._  
  
Even as she rips his image apart he continues to smile at her. He really hasn’t changed, not since they both met. Still clinging to the to a misplaced belief in a murderer, still trying to smile at her as if all she had done were nothing. Giving her a taste of normalcy, a promise of some attainable dream, all of it a foolish fantasy. A fantasy of someone abnormal like her living and sharing the same sky with him.  
  
To be painted in his colors, all over her body.  
That was love. 

 

Enoshima Junko tumbled into that girl’s art gallery.  
Her dream of a normal life. She fell down the rabbit hole, or rather she was pushed.  
  


When Junko woke up - “Oh yeah, waking up in the middle of a dream. Totally makes sense. We’re making all of the sense right now.”  She just had to go and argue with the narrator. What a difficult girl.  
  
Her hair was much shorter, and it was red. She had two red pigtails that only reached to about the bottom of her ears. Her hair looked wild with split ends as it always did. Her bangs were much longer, and fell to frame both sides of her face. Rather than her usual short skirt she was wearing a much more modest outfit, a pink dress with pants underneath, most likely because she had the body of a middle schooler right now. In other words she looked more like a brat than she usually did. 

 

『Wow Junko, your boobs really are eighty percent of your personality.』Kumagawa’s hair was white, and he wore it cut short like he did in middle school. Otherwise he looked almost exactly the same. The same height, the same eyes, the same smile. As if he had been frozen in time. As if the watch was cracked in half and stopped. This was the boy who was broken by Ajimu.  
  
The irreplaceable real thing was broken, and all that was left behind was a fake.  


“Hey, you’re forgetting about my ass.” 

 

『That’s the other fifty percent.』  
  
That. Added up to more than a hundred.  
Kumagawa was really bad at math.  
  
They were in a dream. Anything could happen, but the world in front of them was mundane. A girl was walking to middle school, there was a boy up on the corner waiting for her. It seemed like they walked together like this every day.  
  
Suddenly, a girl in full camouflage gear, and combat boots tackled the middle school girl in the sidewalk in front of them. She was wielding a water gun seriously like it was a real gun. “Junko-chan, wait it’s not safe. I haven’t checked out all of the possible sniper positions yet!”  
  
“This is a suburb where could they possibly snipe from?”  
  
The girls in front of them were two sisters, Mukuro and Junko, playing together. Neither of them seemed to notice that they were being watched. Mukuro suddenly combat rolled and stood up once more, sticking her arm out protectively in front of her sister.  
  
“Roger. I’ve got the package. I will escort her the rest of the way, Muku-chan out.”  
  
“Who are you even talking to? You’re not wearing an earpiece and you don’t have a walky.” 

 

“I was looking forward to all kinds of cool symbolism, but leave it to my sister to have the most boring ass dream possible,” Junko said, stomping her foot. Her physical outside appearance finally matched her maturity level!

  
『This is Mukuro-chan’s dream? How do you know?』  
  
“I may be the worst sister in the entire world-”

 

『Don’t say that like it’s something your proud of, I’ll kill you.』  
  
“Sssh, hun no pda it’s totes embarrassing. But, like, I’m still her sister ya know?” 

 

『No, you’re not. That’s her sister.』

 

That was when Junko noticed something odd. The other Junko that was in the dream had not insulted Mukuro once. How could you not insult someone for wearing camo in public and playing out all of her biggest military otaku fantasies on the way to school?  
  
That girl was just laughing along with her sister’s antics.  
That was a normal girl.  
A normal sister.  
The kind of sister Junko was completely incapable of being.  
Mukuro did not just dream of a normal life, she dreamed of a sister who was nothing like her real one. 

  
Junko had tried several times to kill her sister since they were young.  
So, why did it feel like she was murdered?  
This was not a dream, it was just a reflection of the past. A past self in the mirror. A me who used to be me. But the mirror was cracked, the details it was reflecting back were incorrected.  
  
She wished for a normal life.  
A life where she went to middle school with Makoto, and never became an ultimate.  
A normal younger sister who was kind of a pain, but who she still loved deep down.  
Junko reached forward, her red nails tightening around Mukuro’s wrist. 

 

『Sleeping Beauty is happy this way.』He was giving off a rather timid aura, which was unusual for him. For Kumagawa who repeatedly walked the tightrope of human relations in such a dangerous manner, it was strange to see there was one person who could make him change his aura.  
  
Well, it made Junko feel a bit complex. That’s right, Kumagawa had people besides her he cared about. He had feelings for people who were not her. Feelings that had nothing to do with her. He’s different for Mukuro. He tries to be different for Mukuro. 

 

『Are you thick headed? Fine, I’ll spell it out for you. Even though I don’t know how to spell. Mukuro-chan’s happy world doesn’t have either of us in it. We don’t belong here!』  
  
“Who gives a shit about being happy?” 

 

Junko said, as she tugged back on Mukuro’s wrist forcing her to look this way.  
A loud voice. 

  
_I hate paintings._ _  
_ _I don’t want to be shown what I can’t have._ _  
_ _But, I don’t care anymore._ _  
_ _I don’t have a wish._ _  
_ _I don’t reach out for anything._ _  
_ _I don’t go against anything._ _  
_ _I don’t choose for myself._ _  
_ _My sister chooses for me._ _  
_ _It’s impossible to grant my wish now._

 _When I’m with him I can dream._  
_That things impossible in the real world might come true._ _  
_ _How pointless._  
  
The image of a girl and a boy sitting next to each other in class laughing. The girl sitting on his desk leaning intently into the conversation. The boy with his hand under his chin and his elbow on the desk watching her with a smile meant only for her. A world where she is able to laugh easily, as if it’s natural for her to laugh. 

 

 _Pointless._  
  
A girl and a boy sitting on the shrine together. The two of them have been friends forever, but since they are both now in middle school the other kids spread rumors that they are going out. Each of them just laughs it off as a joke, while secretly on the inside they start to question their feelings. One of them suggests, just as another joke, they should try to kiss to prove everybody in their class wrong about them. 

 

 _Pointless._  


A girl crying alone after a fight with her sister. She ran out of her house without even bringing an umbrella and she had no idea it was going to rain. The boy as soon as he heard she was missing went chasing after her in her bike. He arrives soaked in the rain, his shirt see through. She says she doesn’t want to go home so she rides on the back of his bike, clinging to him the whole time. She doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t say anything, but it’s like they had a lifetimes worth of conversations in the silence between them. 

 _Pointless._  
  
The stars they saw that night.  
The rain that drenched both of them causing their feelings to pour out.  
The scenery like watercolors on paper.  
  
Fake.  
Fake. Fake.  
Fake. Fake. Fake.  
_How pointless._

 

None of these were her memories. She had been painting herself into the memories of another girl. A girl who fell in love with a boy after she saw him nurse a crane back to health. A boy who mended a broken wing. But she was not a white crane, she was black raven.  
  
_Staying in this dream won’t do anything to change reality._ _  
_ _A fake world can’t change reality._

 

The girl in front of the painting wanted to tear up the canvas. To paint it all over in red, and then throw water over it so the colors were ruined. She wanted to burn it up so she could see the happy scene inside the frame disappear in flames.  
  
Before she could move her hand again she saw there were red nails digging into her wrist. She looked back to see someone was standing behind her.  
  
“Stupid sister.” 

 

🧸

 

  
A family portrait.  
The mother had blonde hair, but both daughters took after the father who had a dark complexion and reddish brown hair. But anybody looking at the photo would find it impossible to describe them as a family of four.  
  
Both parents had their hands on the girl in the center, whereas the darker haired girl was off to the side. It was more like a family of three plus one. There was an outsider, there was one who did not belong. The one who was treated as an extra even in her own family.

 

『Are we finally getting the forbidden Enoshima lore?』  
  
“I keep telling you I don’t have a backstory.” Junko said, shoving Kumagawa’s face out of frame. 

 

Enoshima Junko saw no reason to believe in the words adults said, by the time she was five years old she was smarter than all of them. She was rather confident in her ability to observe human behavior. (She was convinced the reason cold reading was so effective was because everyone basically chose from one of three boring personalities when they decided how to live their lives, other people were so uncreative she was goign to have at least fifteen personalities when she grew up).. Therefore at this point in time she had no need at all to follow their rules, but back then she still played good girl.  
  
She really had no use for the adulation of those all around her, but it did serve her purpose to demonstrate as clearly as possible to the simpleminded that she was useful. Those who believed her to be useful and proceeded to use her, she could then observe more closely and use. Therefore she played the role of a good student, good daughter, good girl. She did not need to work all that hard at appealing to her classmates, but she had to put on an act for the adults, because they were the ones who matter. Which is why she had no friends her own age and terrorized all of them, but was well-liked and praised by all of the adults in her life.  
  
Both groups lead purposeless, meandering, wasted lives, but adults could act on a far larger scale than children, and she was grudgingly appreciative as it gave her a five year old much more range to move. Judging from the lessons taught at her school, all of the adults were not particularly intelligent, sometimes she felt sad for them, the sheer amount of time they had been alive had gone entirely to waste. 

 

Seriously, so much energy she expended on her five years of life sucking up to morons. She was going to have to be lazy for the rest of her life to make up for this energy she was wasting in her early years. Ideally, it should be possible to extract some benefit from the most average, pathetic excuse from a human, but it seemed she had not quite reached the level of skill where she could manipulate everyone yet.  
  
She had everyone figured out, but it was not like she could change the events just yet. She was smart, but not yet mature enough to have figured out those actions. Red hair, red eyes, red kneesocks, red dress, Enoshima Junko at five years old. 

  
At seven years old she would mature. No, maybe mature was not the right word. She did not grow up, so much as get worse as a person, the same way an apple left out in the air will eventually rot. Red, like a rotten apple.  
  
She had everyone she had ever met figured out.  
All except for one person.

This was also the person she spent the most time with, a companion more constant than her reflection in the mirror, her shadow.  
  
“Junko-chan, you don’t like your birthday right?” 

  
“Why would anyone want a holiday dedicated to celebrating how hopelessly stupid and ugly they are?”  
  
“Then, why are you asking mom and dad for so many presents?” 

 

“Um, I want presents? People should give me things? I deserve it, frankly.”  
  
Junko talked just like an adult whenever she was around Mukuro, and yet somehow Mukuro thought her younger sister really did sound immature. Junko thought it was strange, her sister had stayed quiet for an extraordinarily long time as a child. She only began talking regularly around last year.  
  
Like she decided because her sister was talkative she had to be the quiet one.  
But the entire time even back in the days she did not speak she had been holding onto Junko’s hand walking silently next to her. Like they were born holding hands.  
  
Even though they were twins, Junko thought that was kind of lame. What a lame sister. The worst. Junko had spent most of her young life trying to comprehend why this sack of meat of similar weight and size happened to have such an effect on her. She was no different from all the other meat puppets, she should have been indifferent to her too. 

  
Junko might not have understood her sister, but she did understand one thing. Under the Christmas Tree there were countless expensive presents with her name under it, and only one for Mukuro. A makeup case. Which was really just what Junko told Mukuro to tell their parents she wanted, because that meant one more gift for Junko.

 

Junko saw through everything as a child.  
That was why she knew, those two were only doing the bare minimum for Mukuro.  
They could only ever bring themselves to do the bare minimum.  
They had no special love for their child.  
She was just their other daughter, only ever their other daughter.  
  
In this household there was no love for her.  
It’s like Mukuro doesn’t have a family at all.  
And yet, Mukuro always smiled.  
  
“Hey, you can just put the makeup kit on my present pile-”  
  
“Junko, I got you this.”  
  
Mukuro held a stuffed bear out in her sister’s face. She must have saved up all the money their parents gave them for months in advance to afford this. It was nothing like the extravagant presents their parents got her, like a present for a normal girl.  
  
“You like bears don’t you?” Mukuro asked. “You’re always smiling when you look at them, Junko.”  
  
She had no feelings for her parents at all who showered her with so much love. No matter how much she was liked, she tried as hard as she could to escape from it, to distance herself, to live alone on an island. They might as well be faceless automatons. They were just two people she was cohabitating with.  
  
No, everyone else in this world was just taking up space.  
They were all taking up space in her world.  
So why, why for this one girl?  
  
To that question.  
To that question, Ensohima Junko had asked herself she was silent for a moment and then.  
  
She never cried.  
She never once cried. She was just a regular girl who did not care about despair at all so there’s no way it wasn’t hard for her to live in that household. She must have hated it even more than Junko did, but still she never showed her any tears at all.  
  
When she watched her sister try so hard to smile. The sister who loved her younger sister when she didn’t have any good reason for it.  
  
It made Junko want to break her.  
She really, really wanted to see her cry.  
  
Mukuro did have a family.  
That day, Enoshima Junko decided that Mukuro was the only person she would ever acknowledge as family. It had nothing to do with the fact that they were twins or grew up in the same household, she just wanted to see that girl cry a little more.  
  
Enoshima Junko took the stuffed bear her sister had offered her-  
And ripped its head off.  
Throwing it down and stomping it.  
  
“I hate this-”  
  
“Um, I’m sorry Junko-chan.”  
  
“If you were really sorry you wouldn’t have made the mistake in the first place. I keep telling you, anticipate my needs Mukuro.”

In the present moment, Junko’s red tipped nails curled into her own palm, hard enough to draw blood. She looked back at Kumagawa and Mukuro behind her.  
  
“Those two had no love for her, so I decided my only family was this girl. I thought she was interesting like that, miserable, and unloved. That there was no way we could ever become a proper family, both of us with holes in our hearts and that’s what I wanted but…” 

 

Junko smiled.  
Her smile faker than the room full of paintings.  
  
“My love turned out far worse for her in the end, don’t you think? The parents who were just indifferent were much kinder to her than I was.”

 

A destructve bond, in which neither of them could become happy. A destructive one that the people around them couldn’t understand.  
  
Oh, Junko was not thinking of herself and Kumagawa.  
She was thinking of herself and Mukuro. Both of them thinking like they were the same person, that they understood each other better than everyone else. 

Twins have that tendency, to be treated as two halves of the same person.  
But two siblings raised together who spent all their time around each other would act that way whether they were raised that way or not. 

  
It’s not that they were twins, it was just Junko. She felt incomplete without her sister. She felt like she needed her. But, the more she needed someone, the more she wanted to destroy them. Like crushing a vital organ in her own hands. Like stopping her heart. Like stabbing her lungs over and over until there was holes in them. Like detaching her brain from the stem. To stop bleeding. To stop breathing. To stop thinking. 

 

Regardless of how much they wanted to forget, the past lingered there. 

The sisters weren’t reflections of each other, they just shared the same past.  
The past always lingers around human beings, it would always haunt them.  
It was impossible to make it so that it did not happen.  
And the past would never end. 

As long as she continued to wish for this, as long as she remained Enoshima Junko for all eternity, she would just continue this way.  
  
She would even be allowed to die, because a new Enoshima Junko would take her place. 

Like a popular character not even allowed to die in their series.  
The author contriving new ways to resurrect them.  
Always remaining herself.  
Perhaps she would stay herself.  
She was likely to keep on being herself.

“But what’s wrong with that, Muku-chan? Yeah, I’m the worst sister ever, but I don’t give a shit if you hate me. Okay, I give several shits but, stop interrupting me brain I’m trying to make a speech here I need to stay focus.” 

 

Junko grabbed her sister by the shoulders, dragging her attention away from the paintings she was staring at.  
  
“Your past will never leave you. You’ll always be a murderer forever. And no matter what I do, even if I spoil you for the rest of your life that’s not going to make up for what I did to you for the first nineteen years but....that despair you felt wasn’t just worthless was it?” 

 

“...” 

 

“I don’t care if you left me out. Okay, fine I care. Pay more attention to me. I need your attention or I will literally die. Why do you want to kill me, why are you trying to kill your loving younger sister, Muku-chan? Wait, wait, no. Okay, so fine you can imagine a world without me in it buthow could you possibly be happy without Misogi?” 

  
“I…”  
  
“If you find happiness without him, then I’ll destroy that happiness myself. It was that miserable past of yours that led you to Misogi, so it can’t be all bad, right? Stop being such a fucking downer, if you’re miserable all the time I won’t have any fun ruining your happiness!”  
  
Oh.  
So, Junko was not upset at all that Mukuro had dreamed a world without her.  
She was mad that Mukuro’s happiness did not have Kumagawa in it. 

Kumagawa grabbed Junko by the wrist, and twisted her back to him. For a moment he looked like he was pulling her into a dance, until Mukuro heard the violent way Junko’s wrist cracked when it was twisted.  
  
『You keep talking like you’re her sister, like you’re trying to change,  that sort of thing… I don’t mind it but… in the end you won’t change a single thing. So, will you just shut up a bit and stop talking like you know things?』  
  
Kumagawa smiled pleasantly as he always did.  
At the girl he loved.  
That smile was enough to break her heart.   
  
Kumagawa turned his head away from her, looking at the blank white walls of the art studio they were standing in. There were scenes from Mukuro’s childhood painted over and over again hanging on the walls. 

『Mukuro-chan, sleep a little bit longer and forget about me. Your big brother is just a liar. I’m sure, if you stay asleep here, Makoto will come and wake you up.』  
  
“Misogi-chan…” 

『I can’t ever give you the normal life you desire.』  
  
Suddenly, the same way she had tackled Junko earlier, she full body tackled Kumagawa from behind causing him to topple over. She started to lightly hit him with her hands over and over again. Both of these sisters were terrible at handling their emotions, Kumagawa thought, they always reacted the same way when they were emotional.  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean? You stupid head!! Why’d you say that? Jerk! Selfish!”  
  
Mukuro hit him.  
Kumagawa thought he had no choice but to let himself be hit.  
  
“You’re a villain aren’t you, Misogi-chan? In reality humans who live virtuously and decently suffer irrational tragedies, while evil people do what they want. Because they live insane, interesting lives and drink sweet nectar. I thought you were the worst villain ever, so why are you sacrificing yourself like me like you’re some kind of hero.” 

 

『But, Mukuro-chan your normal life...』  
  
She hit her hand on his chest and pushed him all the way back.  
  
“I… I’m going to marry Makoto. I’m going to teach Takumi how to fight without killing. I’m going to sword train with Pekoyama-senpai. I’ll secretly take mercenary work behind my husband’s back if we need the money. My past won’t change, I’ll never be normal but I…”  
  
There were tears in her eyes.  
Junko smiled, she finally made her sister cry.  
She broke that hopeless girl.  
  
“I want to live my life the same way that everybody else gets to.” 

Mukuro’s innermost desire.  
It’s not that she was guilty and thought she did not deserve to keep living.  
No maybe that was part of it but...  
She was sabotaging herself.  
She was too scared.  
She did not know anything about living a normal life. She thought she would never reach it, she did not want to try. She did not want to desire for anything herself, so she always let others choose for her, Junko’s despair, Makoto’s hope, always doing things for others.  
  
That way she could not fail herself. That way she could not disappoint herself.  
  
“You’re really terrible for making me feel like this, you’re the worst…” She muttered wiping her eyes above Kumagawa. “But if you weren’t this way you never would have become my big brother.”  
  
They were a family that had found each other.  
Somehow.  
Through all of these chaotic circumstances.  
They were no miserable their entire lives.  
They were happy once. They were connected to someone. That must have meant something. Even if they were unloved, even if they were unhappy, even if they were unwanted.   
  
Well, even if it was meaningless Kumagawa could smile at the meaninglessness of it all as he reached up to pat her on the head. 


	75. Psyncin in the Villain

**BOOK 3: [SUICIDAL IDEATION] THIN ICED SUICIDE LOVERS**  
  
“Heeeeeey, Mimi! Feed me!”  
  
Apparently, Mimi referred to him Misogi Kumagawa.  
He was absolutely opposed to that nickname. Actually it was more than just being opposed to it, he despised it, and her, but that girl refused to stop calling him that with affection.   
  
Though it was probably her way of getting back at him for calling her the dreadful nickname he had come up with. 『They say man can live on bread alone, soI won’t feed you. Go die already, Junks.』  
  
“If you don’t feed me, Mimi then I’ll just end up starving to death. Are you telling me to die, Mimi? It’s impossible for people to keep living with pandas.”

『Whoa, not even I woulda thought that the continued existence of humanity depended on pandas.』Junko must have really liked bears, Kumagawa mouthed.  
  
“If there is no bread (pan), let them eat money!” 

『That’s why too glamorous for a trashy girl like you!』  
  
“If there’s no bread, then I’ll eat Miso soup!” She said, as she pushed Kumagawa over in one of the seats and began to chew on one of his cheeks. Junko had explained to him several times, that this was her version of a kiss on the cheek. Junko could only ever show affection if it left scars after all. “I’ll make you into Misogi soup every day, senpai!” 

『So basically you’re going to eat me!』  
  
“Would you two quit being such a lovey-dovey couple in front of me,” Mukuro said with no change in her expression besides a slight sigh of exhaustion as Junko continued to crawl over Kumagawa trying to take a bite of him. “I thought couple nicknames would be too much of a cliche for you Junko.”  
  
『I love you, bunny!』  
  
“You too, Makoko.” 

 

『I love you so much, rabbit!』  
  
“Samesies, Chokoko!” 

  
Mukuro’s face kept the exact same serious expression even as it turned red all the way to her ears, it was actually impressive. “A-anyway, what did you do to Misogi, you didn’t torture him until his hair turned white did you?”

“Get out! That kind of thing only happens in garbage tier anime. It’s just the looking glass world making us all weirdsies like this. Except for you sis, you’re such a fucking cryptid that being a normal student is like fiction to you.” 

 

Junko her red hair without any makeup. Red, red, red, the words scarlet or crimson did her too much injustice, the only words you could use to describe her was red. Junko in red, Kumagawa in white.  
  
And Mukuro just looked like her usual self. She just wanted a normal life. 

To Mukurowho had to go through her youth never being allowed to be normal, spending her days quietly like this was enough to make her happy. But that doesn't mean she'll be able to take back the things she's lost.

 

Exactly because they're things that she's lost.

 

She'll always keep thinking of them.

 

Somehow that made her the odd one out here. She had been forced her entire life to play the straight man to her sister and apparently she could not stop it so soon. “Anyway, what happened to you? You two seem different.” 

 

Kumagawa and Junko were always hanging off one another. As if they were so closely intertwined that they were tying knots in one another. For them the red string was red because it was drenched in both of their blood. They both painted each other red as if they were trying to dye in each other their color, or maybe they were just trying to die in each other’s arms.  
  
But now, they were both sitting a distance apart.  
As if a string had been cut. 

But neither of them looked scared.  
As if they never needed a string in the first place. They were still together.  
The spider’s thread could break and he could fall into hell, that was how Kumagawa looked.  
  
『I’m gonna kill Junko.』  
“I’m gonna marry, Misogi.” 

 

“So, you’re both the same as always. Nevermind.” Mukuro coldly dismissed both.  
  
“Nooo, it’s totally different this time,” Junko whined. “It’s different because I said so.” 

 

『You’re such a tyrant, Junks... You can do whatever you want, you can even pretend like you’re better now, but that doesn’t mean we have to go along with it. 』

 

  
The three of them were sitting in a garden together. They landed in one the moment they passed through the next mirror. A rose garden. A bed of thorns. The only kind of bed he could lie on naked with her. 

 

Of course he was clothed right now, for Mukuro’s sake. Kumagawa seemed to prefer the thorns to the flowers at this point. Every thorn in the garden could pierce his skin, break his skin, lacerate him, and his smile would not change. Even if he wanted to cry, he would cry while he was still smiling.  
  
If Junko’s love was harmful. Every person she loved she hurt.  
Then Kumagawa was the exact opposite. He was hurt by every person he loved.  
As if he knew by now.  
As if he was seeking it out. 

 

No more flowers, only thorns. While they sat in the garden together the entire time, Kumagawa’s hands were distracted. Those fingers were covered in scratches. Like the rest of his body, he had was kissed by thorns everywhere, he had loved thoroughly all over by thorns. 

 

The moment he entered this world there was a pair of ornate scissors stabbed into his heart. When he pulled it out, the long stringsof red that clung to the blade looked like the strings of his own heart. Kumagawa distracted himself while they were talking, cutting the white heads off of the roses so only the thorns remained. He said to himself, that boy is no good. That boy is just no good. 

 

When he held a white rose in his hand, it slowly turned to red just like that. Then it became obvious what he was doing. He was painting the white flowers red. The queen had told him to plant a tree of red roses, and he painted a white one instead, so he had to paint all the flowers red or it would be off with his head.  
  
He decapitated flowers.  
He watched their heads fall one by one as he thought of the one he loved.  
Kumagawa could not rule over himself, so he was attracted to tyrants. He wanted someone else to sit in the throne, and put their foot down on him. He wanted to be tyrannized by love. He kissed Junko’s ankle as she brought her foot on his head.

 

 Ilikeyoulikeyouloveyoulots. He said with every breath. He said between breaths. Not minding when he got hit, he’d rather be covered in bruises by someone’s love than have her hate him, or be unhappy. He would thank someone if they beat him, and ask them to beat him up again if it makes them not hate him. 

 

Love was just like him, terribly ugly.  
And she was the queen of hearts.  
The queen in red.  
Scarred red.  
Like the marks left by others all over his body.  
Her long lacquered red nails dragged across his neck as she wanted to make her head his.  
  
Not that Kumagawa was much different.  
He dyed his heart from red to black.  
As easily as shuffling cards and changing suits.

 

『There’s no way you can love someone. So just give up on Mukuro already, so I can kill you. I won’t let you hurt her any more for the sake of your character arc.』

 

“There’s no way you can actually kill someone, you big soft teddy bear.”  
  
『But, I’ve always been killing people. This is who I really am I was just lying before, people will die. If I meet them people will die. I will continue to kill people and survive.』

 

Mukuro looked frantically between them.  
How did she stop the abacus in Junko’s brain from substracting Kumagawa?  
How did she stop the rope from hanging Kumagawa by his neck?  
  
It was hard for them to change. It was hard because their impulse to self destruct was too great. Junko would take his head, and Kumagawa would offer it on a silver platter to her. Kumagawa did just then, he jammed his fingers into his neck and pried his head away from his neck. Mukuro watched in horror as the flesh of his neck slowly ripped away. He severed his head from his spinal column and no longer felt anything underneath it.  
  
That was what loving the red queen meant.  
Self-decapitation.  
Or maybe self-deception.  
It didn’t hurt. He didn’t hurt from love. Or maybe he did, and he was too damaged to see that. His brain was no longer connected to his nerves after all.  
How did he stop the rope from hanging him by his neck? He just needed to not have a neck. 

 

『Come on Junko, wake up and have a little self awareness. You can’t be anything more than a villain.』

He pushed his head into her hands, and suddenly, clumsily, the two of them were both joined in a kiss. 

And she kissed him.  
And he would never forgive her. 

You’re desperate. Desperate, desperate!  
And she felt like she’d done something terrible,  
Like shoved a bunch of pills in her mouth and swallowed them all down.  
And she was tired, like the kiss was putting her to sleep not waking her up.  
And she thought snow white must have eaten the poison apple on purpose so the prince would hold her cold and lifeless body in his arms.  
  
And she felt her hands on his neck, down, down, down, her kisses burned him all the way down his spine, except his head was not connected to his spine anymore. His own blood fell out from him in red flowers pouring out from his neck. His ears, his eyes, blood seeped out, and his lips joined with hers in a kiss that tasted all red. He smiled into the kiss. No matter how bloody his face became he kept smiling. 

His lips tasted like red apple, and she wanted to bite in but the next moment her eyes widened as she realized what was happening. That sweet apple quickly turned to ash in her mouth. 

 Junko snatched his head away, holding it close to her chest. Her whole body started to shake, and she was not squirming in delight as she usually did.  
  
She almost looked like a mourner.

But that girl was not capable of crying.

“Stop it Misogi, they’re my things. Even when I throw them away, or when I lose them, they’re still mine.” 

  
So don’t think you’re allowed to die so easily.  
But he had already pulled his head off. She had no idea what kind of shock his body went through in the real world. Mukuro watched equally as silent. The two sisters looked on the same page for once. 

  
Kumagawa just casually grabbed his head putting it back on his neck.

『Oh, so I can’t die in this dream. That’s so cool. My world is the coolest. 』

  
Junko was dragged back to reality, face red, eyes puffy from the prank Kumagawa just pulled on her. Of course she understood logically what had just happened. “They must have changed the rules of the simulation. People can’t die here as long as they’re in the simulation, like a safety measure. Ewe, safety.” She hated that word, what did people think they were doing going around preventing disasters? “Then, the only two who are allowed to die are the murder victims.No, they might already be dead outside of the simulation and completely unaware of it here. Twiiiiiiiiist!”

Junko nodded to herself. “Yep, yep, we have to solve the mystery after the murder already happened.”

“Junko, that’s… that’s how most mystery novels work. How do you solve a murder before it happens?” Mukuro deadpanned after her sister.  
  
“I was trying to sound clever! I’m literally redefining the genre here, so quit nagging me!” 

Junko’s deductions were simple.  
They were all in the simulation as a distraction to prevent anybody from finding out about the details of the murder. To prevent any other murders from taking place, or the murder victim from fighting back, every other character was immortal as long as they existed in the simulation except for the intended murder victim.  It was likely the murder already happened, and the murderers were the people who put them in the simulation, Iruma and Kazuichi. If they all sat in the simulation like this, nobody would ever make it to the class trial.  
  
Which is why they had to wake everybody up, and then find the ones who would not wake up. Because they were already dead. They had escaped their bodies and were just archived data floating around in a simulation, no different from Junkai, a copy of a past person. Now that was escapism!  
  
Kumagawa would have joined in on their banter, but he was distracted by a parade of colors passing by. 

 

🧸

 

Life is a circus!  
The parade in his memories stomped all over the flowers making him forget all about them. Snow fell over the flowers burying them, and the whole procession left footprints in the freshly fallen snow. 

 

There were colors streaming everywhere, and music too. Life was full of so many things, it was like one big show. He had no idea how anybody could possibly find it boring. They were all dancing and singing, all of them, all of them, all of them.  
  
He never wanted a single person to die. One less person meant one less color in the world. It meant one less voice singing. They were one less pair of feet for dancing. Didn’t anybody get that?  
  
Why was everybody in such a hurry to die?  
There was so much fun to be had.  
  
Cotton candy. And puppets. And elpehants.

Fireworks that shot in every direction, sparkling, sparkling, until hey outshone the stars in the sky.

Acrobats in leotards hanging off of ribbons.  
Sword swallowers shoving silver down their throats.  
A man walking on his hands, no he had hands instead of feet and feet instead of hands.  
Red striped cloth, and a pitched tent.  
A circle in the middle, and everyone, everyone, everyone inside of it.  
Everyone except him.  
  
They were all laughing. They were all having fun.  
The whole world was a circus.  
So, why was he the only one not having fun?  
All alone.  
A child outside the circle.  
  
Three children, Junko, Mukuro, and Kumagawa were pulled into the march as it processed. When the crowds finally spat them back out they were all wearing masks. In this circus everyone had to wear masks, that was the rule. In this circus, the floors were colored in black and white checkers, that was another rule. 

  
That was an awful lot of rules for the circus, no wonder the boy did not look like he was having any fun at all. His hair was naturally black but it was slowly turning white with stress. His eyes were dark, and coered with black rings from a lack of sleep. One of his eyes he covered with his hair because it was bruised from where he was hit the other day. His hair in general looked like his head had been dunked in water by an adult trying to drown him, it was such a long mess, that was the style apparently these days.  
  
He wore a black cloak over his upper body, that had already been torn into several long strips that he was just barely keeping together from multiple attempts at patching it up. On the cloak was the image of his ribs, his spine, his pelvis,a nd the bones of both of his arms were on the sleeves. From what could be see of his real ribs showing through his skin in a couple of areas where his bare flesh was showing the boy was nothing but a skeleton.  
  
Kokichi OUma was not a performer in the circus. He was working tirelessly backstage handing food out to the real performers. As he sat by the fence out back, trying to avoid anybody seeing him so he would not be put to work again, he heard a pair of masked children, twins it looked like, speaking with their mother and father.  
  
“That was fun! I want to come again!”  
  
“I loved the clowns!”

“Ok, okay, if you’re good children we’ll bring you here again.”

  
That was all it took to smile like that, to be happy. All you needed to do was be a good child. Kokichi almost wanted to be a bad child out of spite. A box fell in front of him, things for him to clean, he had more work to do. The adults were busy ordering him around. One grabbed him from behind, condescendingly patting him on the head.  
  
“Hey, smile, smile Kokichi! This is a circus! I told you everyone loses motivation when they look at you, right? You’re no good at all. So be a good little boy and smile.”  
  
Kokichi just went to work polishing what had been given to him. He was working on one of the silver rings the lion tamer use.  
  
“Well?”  
“Well?”  
“Come on now.”  
  
There was a time when Kokichi never smiled. He wasn’t able to smile. He thought there was nothing worth laughing at. He had a terrible attitude, and everyone knew all the time how miserable he was. 

  
He lashed out at the clown behind him, hitting him hard on the face. His makeup smeared and the red smile painted over his lips disappear. The clown suddenly lifted him up in the air, “That’s no good, I’m sure you can make a cuter face than that.”  
  
Kokichi knocked the wig off of the clown’s head saying nothing in reply. There was a time he did not talk either, because there was no need for him to tell any lies. “Despite being a talentless parasite, you’re going to make everyone here miserable huh? The one who pleaded for us to take you with us, the one who cried and begged, said he’d do anything, who was that again?” 

  
Stomp.  
Stomp.  
Stomp.  
  
The sound of his mask breaking. The sound of his face falling to pieces. A misfit toy nobody could play with, he could at least entertain someone by breaking into pieces again and again until the person breaking him got bored.  
  
Kokichi was being beaten. It was a spectacle for all to see. Everyone was clapping at him. They could see them, his scars, his bones, the things that made him, him. If it was behind closed doors he could handle it. If he could hide his bruises and smiled, then he did not care who beat him. So why did other people have to look at him. 

 

“Hey, don’t be lazy now.”  
  
The ringmaster said.  
  
“You pathetic, ugly thing, that can’t even remember the face of your parents. Don’t be disobedient, don’t be lazy, and don’t lie.”  
  
“I’m sorry, please forgive me.” 

  
He just told another lie right then.  
  
“Be a good kid, or you won’t get off so easily next time.”  
  
It was so simple, if he was a good child the beatings would stop, but he did not want to be a good child. He wasn’t a human at all. He was a rat that had scurried onto the circus train and acted as nothing more than a stowaway. No, he could not even be a rat, rats had fangs, and claws, and some people were afraid of them at least.  
  
Mouses were stomped on.  
Mouses were crushed under foot. 

  
Junko was casually shoving popcorn into her mouth in the audience. “Sho, I don’t get it. Ish thish shupposed to be his ultra shuper secret backstory. It’s kind of lame. Like we get it sad clown, nobody’s done that before, get over yourself pagliacci.” 

  
Junko wore a red mask with a heart in the corner of her eye, and a tiara to match.  
Kumagawa wore a mask that looked like the top half of a cat’s face.  
Mukuro wore a white mask, with a matching pair of white rabbit ears. 

 

Kumagawa stood up in the seats. 『This is probably all a lie, it’s a dream after all. Dreams are meaningless, of course reality is meaningless as well. Everything-』  
  
“Yeah, we get it, Everything’s meaningless. Kind of your thing. Moving on.” Junko said, pinching his lips shut between her nails. 

 

『Mm, it’s probably something like, the real him wants to run away. He wants to run away but he also knows, there’s nowhere for him to run away to.』  
  
Even if he ran away to the circus he would still be miserable.  
He would want to run away from the circus too.  
What a hopeless brat. 

 

🧸

 

As Kumagawa stood up in the seats Mukuro grabbed him by the ear. Why were these sisters always manahndling him? “Don’t kill anyone, you promised.” 

 

『Of course. I’d never break a promise. You see, ever since I was born, I’ve only ever broken a promise 27,893 times.』

  
“I think it’s pretty amazing you’ve managed to keep count, but it’s 27,893 on the larger side of things.” 

 

『Ah, that is so but that shows how large hearted I am to carry such a large number of disappointments in my heart.』

 

The same light voice as always.  
His attitude seemed the same as always.  
And that was why her fingers loosened and he slipped away from her. 

 

Kumagawa jumped down to the center of the ring, where the spotlight had fallen on the crying child. He knelt down in front of him, holding his face with both hands. His scarred thumbs were able to smoothly wipe his tears away. 

 

『Hey, stop crying now. Nobody in the audience wants to see you cry, because… your tears aren’t interesting at all.』

 

“...”

『Why do you want to cry?』  
  
“Because it’s hell…”

 

『No, no, it’s okay. The world isn’t even remotely like hell yet.』

 

Kumagawa suddenly stood up over the boy. He grabbed a fire spitter just walking by and punched him in the gun, until he started to vomit flames everywhere. The tent that Kokichi was always staring at in envy, went up in flames before them. Bilowing, dancing, the whole world was painted in orange, and then it was red. 

 

As the light in the tent grew brighter because he was back lit by flames, Kumagawa’s shadow grew larger. Kokichi saw it, the shadow that dwarfed his. It was shaped like a large black cat. It picked the white mouse up between its laws to play with his meals. He grabbed its tail and tossed it into the air only to catch it. The cat had a large smile, so large it looked like an entire set of piano keys, you could play a duet with how many white teeth were in that smile. 

And Kokichi thought he could pretend to be a snake.  
He thought he could pretend to be anything other than a mouse.

The flames ate away at Kumagawa’s side, but even as his flesh melted he did not show anything on his face. After all this was just a digital body. It was just a dream. This was not his real body, the real him was sleeping far away somewhere. And as long as he cut himself off from his body, he was slowly, slowly, drifting away from the pain, like a kid holding tightly onto a balloon floating away. As long as that kid was safe he was fine, as long as that kid didn’t suffer, everything was to protect that kid.  
  
None of this mattered.  
His burnt flesh. His bones melting into liquid.  
It didn’t matter.  
Nothing mattered.  
And because of that it did not have to hurt so much.  
  
『 Just forget all those lessons I taught you about before, Kokichi-chan. That was all nonsense, I was just saying a bunch of things I didn’t mean. 』  
  
He kicked over a barrel of gun powder for the canons, making the flames worse. Kokichi said this was hell after all.

『I thought you were serious, I know me taking something seriously what a joke, but still. I thought you really wanted to become a villain. That’s why I was trying my best as your senpai to guide you.』

Kumagawa, just as quickly as the flames, changed, flickered. His whole body seemed to disappear. There were plenty of boys who did not smile, Kokichi had never seen a smile floating there without a boy behind it. 『YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SO SPECIAL FOR BEING A LIAR? WELL EVERYBODY LIES DIPSHIT.』Kokichi was back to his normal self, but he was not much taller than he had been as a child, as if he had failed to grow up, and Kumagawa was pulling the boy in an undone straight jacket, along in a violent dance.   
  
Kokichi tried to get away from the flames. Unlike Kumagawa he actually valued his life. There were ropes hanging from the ceiling, all of them tied up in knots like nooses. He tried to grab onto one, but the moment it started to lift him the rope burned and snapped. He fell, but grabbed onto another one, only for that rope to snap too. When he realized he was out of ropes and there was no where to run to, it was Kumagawa who caught him. He snatched him out of the air like a mouse a cat had thrown up there to play games with.

『You’re not smarter than anybody else. I can’t even read. Komaeda’s brain is half rotten, and we’ve got you figured out. You can’t even fool an idiot like me, how are you going to fool everybody else? You lack aesthetic, you’re so uncool as a villain, it’s like you’re not even trying to be cool.』  
  
Kumagawa let go, dropping him in a bucket of water one of the clowns had brought out to try to help the fire. The flames that were eating at the edges of Kokichi's uniform and hair died away.   
  
『Listen, you won’t become a good person no matter how hard you try, but like this you can’t be a good villain either. You’re just a little kid playing pretend.』

The mouse tried to run away.  
But no matter how much it scurried, it was still in reach of the cat’s paws.  
  
『 Maybe if you were being evil to try to do some good that would be a cool motivation, but the way you’re acting right now, you’re just too incompetent. You’re being cruel to all those people for no reason. You push them all away, you try to destroy their relationships with each other, you look down on them why? Are you having fun? Is it fun to play with other people’s lives like this? You should at least have fun, if you’re going to let them all die while you keep playing your silly little games. 』  
  
Kumagawa finally lifted his paw, letting go of the mouse’s tail allowing him to flee. 

Kokichi ran, he ran and ran.  
“ _You don’t remember your parents.”_

 _You’re wrong._ _  
_ _“A talentless child like you…”_ _  
_ _You’re wrong._ _  
_ _I don’t need parents. I don’t need adults. One day, I’ll show them all.  
_ _They won't be able to look away.  
_ _Nobody will say they're bored._  
I’ll show them- 

『Show them what? Your corpse floating in a sewer?』

It was Kumagawa’s shadow that Kokichi could never outrun.  
It seemed to stretch on forever.  
Even when he could no longer hear his voice, the shadow’s mouth kept moving. 

『The lesson of this story, the lesson of this story...』  
  
Stomp.  
  
“There doesn’t have to be a lesson for every story.” 

『No, there’s a lesson. The lesson is, there is no lesson, because you’re too stupid to learn.』  
  
Stomp. 

『Poor Kokichi-chan running around your entire life you won't learn a thing.』  
  
Stomp.   
  
『A real villain doesn't run, even when the hero is about to slay them.』  
  
He stomped on the mouse's head and crushed it. 

Kumagawa’s words caught up with him. Kokichi collapsed forward in the snow unable to run anymore. He was supposed to be a liar, but he didn’t get a single word in, he did not tell a single lie, he spent the entire time running away. 

But even if he ran away it didn’t matter. It was death by freezing, or death by burning. If hell was frozen, or if it was on fire it would be the same, because hypothermia and hyperthermia felt indistinguishable at a certain level, as the nerves were panicked and confused and began to deaden.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi turned back to face the hero.  
Ikusaba Mukuro kicked his legs out from under him and threw him on the ground. Kumagawa just stared back up at her smiling as always. “What was that? I told you don’t force yourself to be violent-”

『Who said I was forcing myself? I did this exact same thing with Toko-chan too, right in front of you. I always do this. If I’m repressing my violence all the time, then doesn’t that make me a naturally violent person?』  
  
“There’s no way you’d be that cruel to someone who was crying right in front of you, no matter how much I hurt you, you gave me your hand-”  
  
『 So, that’s just you. Mukuro-chan do you really think that because I’m kind to you, that means I can’t be cruel to anyone else? 』  
  
“What were you doing? Th-this, and with Junko too. It’s like you want her to go back to being her old self.” 

『I’m acting like a real villain. Mukuro-chan I’m… I’m no better than Junko. I’m just a little nicer than you that’s all.』  
  
Knowing that.  
Knowing that I am this way.  
Knowing that with the same mouth I say I love you, I’ll bite into others.  
Can you still continue to love me.  
  
“I won’t hate you, Misogi-chan.” Mukuro said, standing over him. “No matter how hard you try to get me to hate you, I just won’t.”  
  
Kokichi collapsed in the snow.  
A world of white.  
And in that white there was a single black stain.  
A man who dressed like he was going to a funeral every day of his life.  
  
Deishuu Kaiki smiled.  
Kumagawa Misogi smiled.  
In the exact same way that Kokichi recognized, as if he had inherited that smile.   
  
『The easiest way to wake someone up from a dream is to give them a nightmare. Of course for a someone like me, a nightmare when you're asleep and being awake is exactly the same thing but...』  
  
But, Kumagawa knew Kokichi was the type.  
He would not have been scared by any of that. He was far too used to other people’s violence. In fact that was more of the same. What would really scare him. What really terrified him was.  
People’s softness.  
It was like that phrase, choking on cotton balls.  
Kokichi Ouma could choke and die on flowers. He spit them all out as that man kindly stroked his hair. For Kokichi, admitting he wanted someone to be kind to him, that he wanted to be saved, that he wanted to be anything other than some orphan no one wanted.  
  
That love was basically the same as death to him. That kind of love would kill him.  
It was all too heavy, and he was just a fragile little kid. 


	76. Psyncin in the Vein

**[SUICIDAL IDEATION]: THIN ICED SUICIDE LOVERS**  
  
Fresh snow fell over flowers, smothering them.  
And he stood there, a shade paler than the white of the snow.  
Darker than night.

Standing alone.  
A smile that seemed to tear apart his face. 

He stood there like a shadow. No, he was a shadow Kumagawa realized. The real Deishuu Kaiki was not there, he had died by the side of the road months ago. This was just Kokichi’s perception of Kaiki that existed within his dream.  
  
Not the real one. In other words, a lie.  


Kumagawa could not help himself and reached out for a moment only for his hand to pass directly through the shadow. Kaiki walked past him, and noticed Kokichi half buried in the snow instead.  
  
White on black, with the light of the fire backlighting them. Kumagawa suddenly saw them, Kokichi’s memories, like a play with cut out paper dolls in a shadow puppet theatre. 

 

When the boy regained consciousness he was on an unfamiliar bed. He hid himself in the furthest corner of the room, not knowing what would happen when the door opened. At times like this, he wished he was a rat like the people in the street called him, then he could scurry away, and escape from the smallest mousehole at times like this. 

 

His memories started to flood back.  
That was right, when that man offered him a helping hand in the snow, a warm hand, the first thing Kokichi did was run away.  
  
Maybe his legs were too small.  
But that man with no far or muscle on his body at all, that man who looked like the walking dead staggering along, suddenly broke out in a run. He ran so fast that Kokichi collided into him, falling on his behind into the snow.  
  
“I call that the Kaiki Stride.” 

 

Kokichi thought he heard, but there was no way a cool man dressed in all black like that would say something so lame.  
  
“Such a brat. Be careful or you’ll fall.”  
  
Kokichi had already fallen down. A hand. A hand that was going to hurt him, to throw trash at him and tell him to eat it, a hand that was going to offer him money to touch his body. A hand, a hand, a hand.  
  
“You’re hopeless.”  


_I’m tired. Tired. Tired of this._ _  
_ _Shameful._ _  
_ _Kill me now._ _  
_ _Can the world just end?_

  
Kokichi flinched away but all the man did was grab him by the scruff of his neck and lift him like a kitten. “And you call yourself a clown. Wow, your face is a mess.”  
  
Kokichi was, crying.  
It was the first time he ever remembered crying for real, and the last. Tears welled in his eyes, and smeared the white paint on his face. That man was dressed in all black, except for the white gloves on his hands, which made him look like a gentleman (a gentleman that had been dead for 200 years to be specific). His touch was oddly impersonal, through gloves like that, Kokichi noticed that too after he had helped him to his feet the man did not touch him at all.  
  
“Don’t run away now. I’ve been waiting for you.”  
  
“You’ve been waiting for me?”  
  
“That’s right… Or, no that’s not right. Just kidding. See you.” Hands in his pocket, Deishuu Kaiki turned around. He started to walk away. A few steps later, he stopped. “What’s wrong? Follow me.”  
  
For someone who looked like an old man he liked to play childish games. Kokichi felt like he had been tricked into following. He stepped in Kaiki’s footprints in the snow, noticing how big they were in comparison to his. The footprints of an adult.  
  
“You look like a skeleton. What an ugly child.”  
  
The first words Kaiki said to him when he walked in the room. Kokichi had the sense that someone else had been to this room before. There were still comic books piled up on the desks, and toys of various manga characters on the shelves.  
  
“How would you know? You look like a mortician in that stupid funeral suit!” 

 

“Funeral suit…?” He repeated, looking insecure for a moment. “I suppose if I was a mortician I would know exactly what a corpse looks like.”  


 

  
“Oh, do you think you’re funny? You just think you’re smarter than me because you’re older, have more life experience, have actually been to school, and probably can read, but besides that I’m way smarter than you. Because you’re a stupid adult. Therefore stupid. And you smell. And I hate you.” Kokichi pouted, his head falling between his knobby knees. “I’m not ugly, all children are cute. You just don’t know how to talk to people. You’re not as good at talking as I am. When I talk to them, everyone likes me, when I tell a joke they all laugh.”  
  
Kokichi raised his head slowly. His body was the same as the skeleton patterns painted on his coat, they showed through his skin. His eyes were almost completely sunken in, his cheeks so shallow you could see the outlines of his skull in their depression, his hair hung there in ratty tangles covering his eyes.  
  
“You must be alive, if you can talk that much.”  
  
“I don’t want to talk to you. See, this is me not talking to you. I’m never going to talk to you again, and you’ll just have to sit there jealous because I’ll talk to everybody else but you. There’s no way I’m going to talk to a meanie like you. Ugly.”  
  
When he was looking for where Kumagawa, all he could find was an unsociable brat on the brink of death. His eyes weren’t deep and blue like Kumagawa’s at all, they were dark, narrow and pointed like a rat’s. The eyes themselves seemed to be a haze, or maybe a miasma, they were hard to stare into for too long.  
  
Kaiki asked him what he wanted to eat, and Kokichi asked for all kinds of candy. That night he sat face to face with a child shoving candy in their mouth, with countless wrappers on the table between them.  
  
“You’re an absolutely horrible adult. Munch, munch, munch. This is the first thing you feed a starving child? Are you an idiot? Are you seriously an idiot?  Are you at least a funny idiot? You’re supposed to be the adult here you know, but you’re not acting like one at all. Munch, munch, munch.”  
  
He was somehow able to keep talking even when stuffing it all in his mouth at once, that kid was talented.  


 Kaiki had no idea how to teach a kid like this to hold someone’s hand. So, he taught him to slip his hand in their pocket instead, and take their wallet out instead. The first time Kokichi was successful at it, Kaiki bought them both a meal with another person’s money. Kokichi barely ate anything.  
  
“You should eat more, or you’ll never get tall.”  
  
“Haha! I’m going to be small and cute forever. I’m not going to grow up a human coat rack for mourner’s clothes like you!”

  
“Human coat rack…” Kaiki seemed insecure again. Everytime someone mentioned he dressed like he was going to a funeral he got touchy.  
  
Kaiki needed to teach this child how to get along well with others. That was why, he gave Kokichi the starring role in a great deal of his scams. People always trusted him more if a child’s face was attached to it. He wanted to raise Kokichi into a good child who had all the right values instilled in him, so he told him to never lie, never deceive others on purpose, and to always be true to yourself. That’s right, when Kokichi convinced random strangers that the miracle product Kaiki was selling them had really worked, he told a lie so good it was unmistakable from the truth.  
  
One of the rules of the household.  
  
“I won’t touch you without permission.”  
  
“You basically already kidnapped me. Why not go all the way so I can call the police on you and finally be rid of you old man?”  
  
Kaiki would always ask, and Kokichi would always turn him down. He looked at those hands covered in powdered white gloves. Sometimes when he was walking on the side of the street and Kaiki walking with him, he would see a man and a child walking on the opposite sidewalk linking hands and feel jealous.  
  
“Do you have any friends, Kokichi?”  
  
“Everybody loves me. I’m not going to grow into an antisocial old crow like you.”  
  
“That’s not true. I love humans.”  
  
“No, you don’t.”  
  
“Excuse me, I meant to say I love their money.” 

  
Another time, Kaiki even read him his favorite book. “So was Wonderland just a dream?”  
  
“It was the world of adults.” Kaiki said, and repeated that same phrase. “The lesson to be learned is, to children the world of adults is so confusing it may as well be wonderland. The rules make no sense and are always changing.”  
  
That is why we break them.  
  
“There doesn’t always have to be a lesson to the story.”  
  
“You should always try to learn a lesson unless you want to be an idiot.” Kaiki said, smiling fondly as if he were thinking of someone else. 

  


Kaiki had no idea how to communicate with another person, so most of their conversations were like that. Yes, all he could do was teach the little brat how to lie and scheme. Kumagawa… never ran. Even when people were stronger than them.

  
  


 Kaiki always watched him taking on kids that were much older, or even adults sometimes, getting stomped on and refusing to give up. Kaiki had no idea what to do back then, he just turned around and disappeared in the crowd. This time when he saw Kokichi about to raise his hand towards someone he grabbed him by the hand and pulled him back. It was better to run away, than to be violent. If being strong meant hurting others than it was better to be weak.  
  
Because they were nothing more than no-good liars and thieves, they did not need to be brave. They could always run away. 

 

『Awe, is this your villain origin story? But it’s no good, Kokichi-chan. What kind of villain can’t even kill their own father?』

 

From that person.  
From that kindness.  
He also ran away.  
Curtains fell, flashback over, Kokichi and Kumagawa were left in the snow with the burn remains of the circus behind them. Snow falling like frozen over tears. 

 

 _Isn’t it too late for these kinds of flashbacks? I mean, he’s already dead. You were really happy that you met him, or, you had fun in those days, like he cares about any of that because y’know dead._  
  
Kumagawa’s fingers slipped away from her.  
Mukuro had grabbed him by the hand to prevent him from going any farther away, but he was slippery as water and even harder to hold onto. 

 

She tried to run after him but Junko stopped her. “Hey, are you going to spend your entire life cleaning up after my messes?”  
  
Her voice was low and cutting like always, but cut by her one hundred times over, one more wound from Junko was just a scratch to Mukuro. “Don’t do that… don’t start talking like you’re my sister.” 

  
Mukuro had not meant to say that. She said something she could not take back. She flinched, immedaitely expecting a violent response.  
  
All Junko did was look to the side, almost awkward. “Oh yeah, my bad I guess, like a major oopsie, almost a whoopsie…”  
  
Did Junko just admit she was wrong?  
Mukuro was so stunned she let Junko get ahead of her running to catch up with Kumagawa for a moment. 

 

Kumagawa stood there holding a rusted crow bar, bent and twisted at the end. Kaiki was there with his back turned to him, and Kokichi completely silent as if the dream had taken away his voice.  
  
When Kumagawa swung down, Junko got in the way. She felt her skull crack open. But dying was impossible in this world. What was she doing? Throwing her beautiful body into danger. If she stayed still she was a perfect doll. The more she moved the more cracked appears. There was one in her head right now, and her brain was going to leak out, leaking out and melting. She would break into two pieces and be two different girls, and the number of me’s would grow infinitely, and her identity would be what crumbles instead of her body. And it was so, so, sweet, her red lips tasted like an apple.  
  
But none of this was real. She was the same as always, trapped entirely in her head, watching reality as if glancing at it’s reflection through a mirror. She reached forward and grabbed the crowbar, stopping him from swinging it down any further.  
  
“Are you jealous?”

 

『Huh? Why would I be? To get jealous of you I’d actually have to like you-』

 

“No, I mean of him. Kaiki-kun raised him in your place.”  
  
What he said next was something Junko didn’t expect at all. 『Why would I be jealous of that? Of course he raised Kokichi-chan, he’s a good kid. He shouldn’t be the villain, he’s too good.』It sounded like a lie, like denial, but it wasn’t. It was scary that it wasn’t. Junko was starting to understand why, other people saw Kumagawa as so frightening. Why they felt the need to reject him out of instinct. 『I really loved Kaiki-kun, that’s why, he hurt me the most.』

 

『That’s how I knew that you loved Yasuke-chan the most. You hurt him the most. You wouldn’t have been able to hurt him like that if you weren’t close. The way you held his body and cried while it was bleeding out, ah, it was kind of embarrassing to watch, you liked him so much.』

  
“Hey, before you go off on another one of your insane tangents rambling off whatever fucked up thing comes to your diseased brain-” 

 

『It’s the same with Ajimu-san. She could be kind to Medaka-chan and Zenkichi-chan, because she never really cared about them that much, but around me, she was too human. That’s just how humans treat the people they love, isn’t it?』  
  
“That’s not love, that’s just… just a lie.” 

 

『Then were you lying when you said you loved me?』  
  
“Yeah. I was. I’m not even going to add anything fun to that, I’m taking this moment totally seriously.” 

 

『It’s okay, you can crack a joke. I’d hate to have the audience cry over our terrible romantic drama.』

  
“It’s not funny at all. No, no, no fun for me. I won’t laugh. It wasn’t real, MIsogi. It’s not… that’s not…true…There’s such a thing as loving someone too much.” 

 

『Why might not a love be true simply because it is excessive? Any idiot can love. Love to distraction. And destruction.』  
  
And Kumagawa.  
Wanted to love someone.  
Even if it meant hurting them. 

  
He tried to raise the crowbar in the air once more. Junko stopped him, and they fought over it like they were children. Junko raised her voice to a perfect scream. “I won’t let you. This is my despair, mine alone!”  
  
No, don’t say that.  
Don’t be kind.  
You are so, so, so, much more beautiful when you’re cruel.  
  
“It’s not your fault, senpai. None of this was your fault.”  
  
Kumagawa was the only one who had ever brought her peace of mind. He was like cool water she could bathe naked in and wash all of her troubles away, but because of that. Kumagawa had gotten stained by her, covered by her dirt, she was ruining him she knew.  
  
Now it was like they had switched places. They switched masks. If Kumagawa wore tragedy now, then she would be comedy. If he was her killer, then she would be his victim. Kumagawa collapsed forward, his head falling into her chest.  
  
『I just hate everyone...』  
  
He said. He did not cry. No, that boy had never sincerely cried in his life. He never got sad when he was hurt, when people were lost to him, when he was all alone. He never cried because what he felt instead was anger, at this moment, he was shaking with anger. He was so desperate for a person to direct all that hatred at.  


 

  
“I’m the one who destroyed your whole life, it’s me. I’ve actually known you since you were two years old, I decided to make your whole life hell, I killed both of your parents and manipulated everyone into hating you. You can be evil, you can destroy the world, but you still won’t be as big of a villain as I am, senpai.” 

  
The crowbar had been thrown away.  
It pierced a window of glass and broke through.  
And the dream world fell apart. Kumagawa failed in his goal of killing Kaiki again right in front of Kokichi.  
  
“Don’t look at me…”  
  
Kokichi finally managed to speak. He was shivering. Even though they stood in an empty room with nothing but mirrors in it. 

 

Kumagawa pulled his black jacket off and threw it in Kokichi’s face. 『You’re such a baby. Stop crying already.』

 

🧸  


_Somehow or other it seems I’ve died again._

 

That was his vague deduction as he slowly regained consciousness - people said he had a blaze attitude towards life, but they were wrong about him. He had no attitude towards life because he never tried living, he was just incredibly casual about his own death.  
  
Not that he wanted to die either.  
If someone asked him (and he was in the mood to answer truthfully, which was almost never), he would say that dying was just too much effort, and so was living, and so he was too lazy to live or die.  
  
Life was just a dream that he was sluggishly waking up from, after all. The first thing that entered his field of vision was his own severed head rolling around on the floor, its neck twisted around as if it had been unscrewed from his shoulders. The head stared at him through its now vacant eyes, it looked almost bitter, or maybe even jealous. He could not understand what was so good about living anyway?  
  
He grabbed his head by the hair.  
Green eyes, and green hair of the same color. He sank fangs into the back of his own head, tasing hair and bones. He tore the flesh from his face with a squelch.  


 

He was a vampire, but truth be told he was terrible at it. The only person that he ever killed was himself. He lost far more blood than he ever sucked from others. Self-loathing and angst came with the portrayal of most modern day vampires, but even he seemed to realize it was a little bit excessive.  
  
Really, he didn’t know why someone like him was still alive.  
No one wanted him alive.  
No one was there to call him big brother.  
Why was the no-good big brother the one who survived and not them?  
He didn’t want to be the only one alive.  
He did not want to keep on living alone.  
But he was afraid to die, afraid to see them in the afterlife.  
  
He wanted to keep on living, but without having to think too hard about it.  
  
“You see, I want to be a plant.”  
  
He said to that girl once. The two of them had met, and talked so many times, but truly he could not remember the first time he met someone so precious to him. He was an inconsiderate guy like that. If he really loved them, he would have held them close and never let go, but he always abandoned them in the end.  
  
“A plant?”  
  
“I wouldn’t have to talk, nor walk.”  
  
“Hmm…” The girl behind her glasses, nodded behind that. “But, you still want to be a living being, right?”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“Normally, you’re supposed to say something inorganic, like you want to be a sword or something.”  
  
He had just said he wanted to be a plant because he thought about it from a long time ago. He did not think she would argue with him. Why were girls always giving him so much trouble?  
  
Living without living, that was being undead, or being a plant. If his brain was dead and his body kept on living he would not have to think too much. He could live with the loneliness of burying 12 graves besides himself, as long as he did not have to feel it as well.  
  
He retreated from his graveyard, into his mansion surrounded by roses.  
He would continue unliving for just another day.  
A soulless, vampire like-man. That was how they described him when he was still alive.  
They would laugh if they saw him now. Amami Rantaro.  
When he smiled, he pricked his own lips with his sharpened teeth and turned his lips red with blood. 

 

🧸

 

“Oh sweet, gothic horror. I’m gonna make out with a sexy vampire and make Kumagawa-senpai so jealous!” 

 

Perhaps Junko had not been pretending to be a girl with a terrible sense of humor for the sake of irony. Perhaps the real Junko was just a silly girl at heart. She liked bad jokes, more than good one.  
  
Of course she only said that because she thought Kumagawa was right next to her. She thought she should flirt with him as much as possible, to let him know her feelings. At least she flirted in her own weird way.  
  
When she turned around there was nobody in the room. That’s right, lost in the gothic horror mansion, how could this possibly go wrong. All there was with her in the room was a mirror. You could say her only company was her own reflection, but there was nothing at all looking back at her from the mirror she stood in front of, just an empty space.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Symbolism. Wow. All of the wows. Whoever’s dream this is better remove their heads from their own ass, because I’m going to put my boots there in a second.” Junko said, as she approached the mirror in front of her. “Just kidding, I only get my boots dirty with other people’s blood. Don’t you think red is such a pretty color on me?” 

 

Nobody said a thing, except Junko who was pretty good at talking to herself.  
Just then, hands grabbed her from behind wrapping around her neck in strangulation. It was pointless, because Junko could not die, this was not her real body,  though she felt as much disconnection from her actual body. However. “Hey, don’t touch the merchandise. Do you know how expensive my looks are?”  
  
Two pinpricks sunk into her neck. Junko heard her heart beating in her ears, reminding her that she did have a heart after all. A heart was wasted on a girl like her.  
  
Her eyes were like that mirror in front of her. Reflecting everything, but she who saw everything, who knew the results, was an irresponsible god. Unable to change anything, simply waiting for the future. No anticipation or hope for the future, not even a paricular opinion.  
  
A tedious day by day.  
A tedious future.  
A tedious life.  
Mingling in melancholy, and rolling around in bed.  
In one eye reflected the past in which she understood everything, in the other eye a future where she predicted everything. Her eyes were unable to look at the present, it passed by her like a dream.  
She didn’t even want to dream anymore.  
No more sleeping, no more waking.  
No more thinking. She did not want to think. It would be so easy to just lie down.  
  
“The harder things are, the more despair I’ll feel.” Junko said, as she threw the girl over her shoulder into the mirror, she collided into it face first and broke it.  
  
That girl, she was slender with wonderfully graceful hips. Her every movement, just breathing seemed to be a dance. The playful, beautiful girl, she was somewhat languid, looking like an imitation of life rather than someone alive.  
  
Enoshima Junko was looking at herself, like a reflection escaped from the mirror. No, this was-  
  
“Enoshima Junko is always the mastermind at the end, that’s the rule,” I said, as if predicting her thoughts.  
  
“Why are you doing all of this anyway? Are you just some crazy stalker fan. I will give you two full minutes to monologue before I interrupt again, you better say something cool and worth my Junko time. I get it you like me, but I don’t like you.”   
  
How generous of her.  
But, I didn’t need two minutes only two sentences. “I don’t like you, either. But I love you.” 

 

It’s not just Enoshima Junko herself.  
She’s just a girl. I know that. Part of me understands that. I would have to be pretty blind to not get it by now. My shipping goggles might be on a little tight but still.  
She’s just a girl. Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world. They are grubs, larvae, not even worth looking at. But from those girls beautiful things can be born. All they need to do is die to become butterflies.  
  
Enoshima Junko was the butterfly born from her death. The identity, the girl that she had created that had now outrun her, become more real than her real self, more her than herself. Enoshima Junko is Enoshima Junko.  
  
“Why do you look so guilty loving someone? So what if your love is cruel, selfish, love is always selfish. The more you love someone, the more selfish it becomes. I’m jealous of the people who you destroy with your love.”  
  
I smiled. 

“Do you think you could love me? Love me to death, or hate me to death, I don’t care as long as I’m the only one.”  
  
Like it was a trivial matter. Kill and eat. Kill and love.  
Like eating and love were one in the same.  
  
“I get it, Carmilla, homoerotic subtext with vampires the whole thing but, so over it. I’m not opposed to some girl on girl, I’m just not interested in you. Why are you so clingy?”

  
Junko said, stomping down her foot on my chest.  
A rib pierced through my heart. Red appeared on the white undershirt, slowly spreading out, staining me, poisoning me, I hope she loved this color, because this color was my love for her.  
  
“Because I am you.”  


“You said the same thing before too. You told me to kill Kaiki-kun…I get it, cinematic parallels.” Junko said, as she watched me slowly turn red for her. “No, even if you hadn’t told me too I would have done it anyway. I know me. Maybe you are me. God, this sucks, getting loved so much that it feels like your entire identity is being destroyed.”  
  
Hey stop that with the genuine self reflection.  
You’re a vampire right now you don’t even have a reflection right now.  
  
“It’s like Mukuro wasn’t named Mukuro anymore. Just the ‘thing Junko loves’. Goooood, it sucks, it’s such a pain in the ass. But I’m not going to let you take it from me. My things are mine, that means my despair, and all the pain I’ve caused are mine too.”  
  
“The real thing is no good…”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
A story from the past. 

There was a boy I met. He was kind and noble like a prince. He was a charming person, with a charming personality, and a charming heart. Even a girl like me with no identity of her own, felt like someone when I was around him.  
He was so kind he paid attention to a girl like me. He treated me as someone special from the crowds. He was always being hounded by girls but I became his one and only girlfriend. He acted nothing like the playboy everyone thought he was, he was beautiful on the inside too.  
  
It was just… there was one problem. He was far too beautiful.  
I was afraid.  
That the way I loved him was the same as one of the princes from my otome games, or even the love interest in a manga. It was such a fiction-like scenario, an unpopular girl being selected from the crowds and dating the most popular boy in school. He just did not feel real to her. She loved his personality and his heart, but maybe she was just in love because she wanted to have a boyfriend. Or she was just in love because she wanted to be loved. She might have loved him solely on his looks the way some people loved idols.  
  
I stood up, caressing her as if I wanted to strangle her. But my hands were too weak so it came off as affectionate. Her hair was quite wonderful, I put it between my fingers and pulled. The reddish undertones, the way it became split at the end, the waves that ran through it from dying it over and over again. 

 

Her breasts too. How warm her chest must have been. If only I could reach under, and leave a small scar exactly where her hear was, as if I were trying to remove it from her flesh with my own hand.  
  
Oh, I forgot to tell her the end of my story.  
  
I ripped his face off.  
He became quite an ugly person because of me, but I loved that ugly, hollow thing left behind just as much.  
She looked at me with shock.  
Eh? Has this story been told before? Even the story of my first love is boring and typical.

  
I couldn’t handle the one-of-a-kind real thing so I destroyed it. “It felt amazing. I thought, this is what happiness must feel like.”  
  
“Shit, maybe you are me.” Junko said, sounding frustrated at herself, or maybe frustrated at me, all this _you’re me_ stuff is starting to get a little confusing. She should understand more than anyone else, tumultuous excitement that was pleasure, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. A love that grows into adoration, and at the same time abhorrence.  
  
“I get it. It’s not that we love too much, it’s that we can’t stand being loved back. It’s controlling, and it’s… too heavy.” The feelings of other people. Junko could not stand them, they did not exist in the world of a cloistered princess. It didn’t matter what other people felt if they were drowning in your love for them.  
  
No, nobody was drowning in anything.  
Junko was just swimming in herself, full of herself.  
  
She reached forward trying to touch me, but before she did my image broke apart. Vampires can turn into mist, or a flock of bats, but I turned into butterflies. Whatever part of me Junko tried to touch, broke apart into blue winged butterflies and flew away from her fingertips. My smile was the last thing to go.  
  
If you think about it, butterflies really are associated with death.  
When a caterpillar changes into a butterfly it reaches the end of its lifespan.  
I would give my whole life to be beautiful just for a single moment. 

Because I’ll finally be alive for that one moment. 

 

🧸

 

The roses in the garden drank blood. That was why they had turned slowly from white to red over the years. Every time someone entered the garden, the thorns bit them from every angle and they bled, watering the flowers.  
  
Kumagawa Misogi, and Ikusaba Mukuro made it to the main mansion of the garden. The flowers were so bright, it was as if they were alive themselves. It would be cruel to call flowers alive though, they died all too quickly.  
  
The sole resident of the castle was sitting in the middle of the garden. He had torn his heart away from his own chest, and was biting into it the same way someone might bite into an apple. He smiled at them with his mouth still covered in blood when he saw them, a smile that looked deader than him.  
  
He fell back into the thorns, lounging there. He looked perfectly comfortable, like he didn’t feel pain at all, or maybe pain did not connect to his body. He could take a nap there, all alone in his garden. “Hey, don’t you think this dream imagery is a bit dramatic? I mean first you had alice in wonderland, and then gothic horror, is someone going to dream about showing up to school naked next?”

  


『To be honest I thought that was going to be your dream.』  
  
“I’m not a playboy, I keep saying.” Rantaro looked different. Perhaps it was the fact he was a vampire, but he no longer had green hair. His hair was a dark black, and fell over the side of his face. He had combed it all the way through rather than letting it hang there wild. He had no piercings in his ear, and he was wearing a much more normal school uniform with the same pendant around his neck as always. “If I came to school naked it’d be because putting on clothes were just too much effort and I was sleepy that morning.” 

 

『Shameless.』  
  
“Hey, hey, I’m not shameless at all. Actually, I’m kind of a shy guy so just let me sleep.”  
  
“Um,” Mukuro spoke up, with a hesitant stutter as usual. “If you know you’re dreaming, then you should just wake up.” 

 

“Nah. Now that I think about it, isn’t this the best solution for everybody? I mean, I did kill Korekiyo. The same person you were trying to save.”  
  
“...” Mukuro’s voice dropped out.  
  
“You put murderers in prison, right? Well, as long as I’m not dead in the real world then I can just stay here. There’s no risk for me killing anybody else. Or, are you going to show mercy on Kiyo’s killer? Isn’t that like saying me not killing him in the first place was a big deal?”  
  
“I…”  
  
“I guess he didn’t matter that much to you.”  
  
Kumagawa was grinding his teeth. The only reason he did not say anything was because this time Mukuro was determined not to let go of his arm. It was a convenient suicide that was not really a suicide. Living on as an undead person. Unable to commit to living or to dying.  
  
He was empty, of blood, of a heart that beat, of any color in his eyes.  
  
“Or you could kill me. The murder has already happened so there’s a free window, no murder after the first one or between the trial counts.”  
  
“Why do you want to die so badly?” Mukuro finally asked. It was a normal question for an abnormal situation.  


 

  
Surrounded by thickets of roses hungry for their blood, Rantaro picked one rose in particular with the worst spikes and held it up to his throat like he intended to commit suicide by it. Death by rose. Cutting his own throat. How beautiful.  
  
“It’s not that I want to die. I should have just died. When my parents abused me to make me into their perfect heir. When I was locked away in that room. Or when my first sister went missing. Or when I was born into that household. Or when I met her. I should have just died. I should have been the one to die.”  
  
Rantaro fell to his knees.  
  
“But, it’s not like life is all bad. Yeah, I have happy memories with all my siblings and they’re holding me together. And Shuichi and Kaede too, I had fun whenever I’m around them. I start to feel like a person again. I just…”  
  
He just…  
Wanted to go back.  
Back to those days.  
Being around Shuichi and Kaede made him remember, he used to smile and mean it. 

『Then just kill yourself.』  
  
“...Huh?” 

『If you had killed Kiyo-chan because you wanted to survive I might have respected you, but you murdered him for such a half-assed reason. You probably don’t mean it that much, about missing your sisters so much you want to die. I doubt a self absorbed person like you can even care that much about another person.』  
  
“Yeah, maybe…Oh, but if I do that means the mystery of my talent will never be solved. Not like I have a talent anyway, all I do is keep on living.”  
  
Rantaro chuckled lightly. He picked up the vine covered in thorns and wrapped it around his neck as he made his way to the only tree in the garden. He really did look like he was going to hang himself.  
  
Mukuro looked back in fear at her big brother. Those were the words she never expected to come out of Kumagawa’s mouth, the opposite of what he stood for. It was like he had flipped from black to white.  
  
Mukuro ran forward, grabbing onto Rantaro’s side before he could throw his rope around the branch. “Amami-kun.”  
  
“Just stop it already, I don’t want to go on living as a useless big brother-”  
  
“Amami-kun! You couldn’t be the perfect big brother even if you tried!” Mukuro cried out, so loudly every flower in the garden suddenly closed out of shyness. “I had a little sister too. I love her more than the entire world. I did everything for her. I spent my entire life chasing after her, because I didn’t want her to be alone.”  
  
Siblings were born first.  
To protect their younger siblings.  
  
“But I… In the end nothing good happened. No matter how hard I tried, I was a worthless sister to Junko. But, what’s wrong with that? Sometimes things can’t be fixed even if you love them. I can't... I can't save Junko-chan. All I can do is live on my own."   
  
She looked back to Kumagawa who already had his back turned on the scene as if he were bored of it.  
  
Everyone treated Rantaro like he was some empty person.  
Like he did not feel a thing anymore.  
He saw himself that way too. 

“You feel more than anybody else don’t you? You love deeper? That’s why you can’t stand the loss, that’s why you pretend to be emotionless and ambivalent. Yeah, I was the scared... I was just afraid of losing Junko-chan too, of losing my only family.”  
  
He was not a prince.  
He was not a monster.  
He was not a villain.

He was not a hero.  
He was a big brother but that wasn’t all he was. Rantaro had lived in that household too, he had been mistreated by his parents too, but all that time he saw himself as the spoiled son, the one who had gotten spared. He thought it was wrong for someone like him to continue living, unless he devoted himself to his sisters he had failed to protect. The idea of living for himself when his sisters were not allowed to live the same way was just too selfish. 

『Tch, why are you such a dramatic asshole pretending to be a vampire? All I see is a scared, trembling child.』  
  
Kumagawa said, as he turned his back and walked away.  
All that was left of Rantaro was a boy trembling in the dark. He wasn't so noble and selfless as to be the prince who saved all of his sisters because he had a beautiful heart.  
  
He just wanted...  
He just wanted to have a family again.  No he never had a real family, so he wanted to keep playing pretend.  
Because.  
A trembling voice.  
  
"It's lonely." 

  



	77. Psyncin in the Rain

**[SUICIDAL IDEATION]**   **Thin Iced Suicide Lovers**

  _I’ve had this dream over and over again._   
A family all together, and they’re happy.   
  
Komaru and her older brother quarreled as Komaru kept stealing food off of her brothers plate. Even someone as patient as Makoto got mad when the girl spilled hot sauce and ketchup all over his rice. He already knew he was a pushover but that did not mean he wanted to be pushed around by his own little sister. Besides, as her big brother it was his duty to make sure she was never spoiled.   
  
Komaru was sighing at yet another average family meal. Despite being the one who wanted for nothing more than an average everyday life, she also was the one who was the most disappointed by the boring day to day. She decided to grill the girl Makoto brought home to meet the family for the first time, to have a little fun. To be honest she was not the type to be overly protective of her brother, she was not one of ‘those’ younger sisters, she just thought Makoto was too innocent for this world and everyone else who entered into his life would probably take advantage of the big soft idiot.   
  
Okay, maybe she was exactly that kind of little sister. But still, she was also surprised that Makoto even had a girlfriend in the first place. She was sure Makoto had crushes on girls before, but he never would have gotten up the nerve to confess. Did she bully him into dating her? Or maybe this girl was trying to scam him?

 _  
_ Komaru was just worried because Makoto was the type of person who could never say no to anybody. She wondered sometimes if a girl ever confessed to Makoto if he would just say yes and go along with it, because he did not want to reject her or hurt her feelings. That was the problem with her brother’s hope, sometimes he did not realize that giving someone hope only prolonged their pain. 

 

That girl bowed her head before Makoto’s parents, and they welcomed her into the family with a laugh. Take care of our son, they said. Both of them said it felt like they were giving away Makoto as a bride to such a tough girl and Makoto protested saying he was going to be the one to protect her forever. They were, all of them sitting at the table laughing together.

 

 _I had a dream._   
You were happy without me.   
  
The one sitting at the center of the table was Kirigiri. Mukuro herself was just a girl in a portrait in that scene. She was sitting on the family shrine, a funeral portrait of her, watching everybody’s smiles from behind a glass window.   
  
They were all happy without her. If it wasn’t for her, they would all be together living normally. She should have been happy to see them smiling without her, but what she felt was a desperate, painful emotion like Junko’s sharpened nails clawing up her insides. 

🧸

In this city it was always raining. 

Some people had a garden hidden inside their hearts, watered with the blood that leaked out of their veins, but she did not. There was nothing that could grow inside of her heart. There was nothing alive inside of her. Instead of grass, and dirt, she had concrete, tar, and steel towers.  
  
She built it, an iron cage all around her heart made of construction beams, bolted together. It reached towards the top of the sky in an intricate and sometimes unfathomable pattern of construction. She hated not being able to see the sky, but in the end she had no one to complain too, the one who had built this cage was herself.   
  
If Kaede was a beautiful songbird, she was a crow with a crooked beak that feasted on dead flesh.   
  
No matter how sad she might have felt that girl did not cry. She would not cry. She would never. She never needed to cry, because the skies in this city were always raining for her. She did not cry in the outside world, so in this internal little world she had built tears always rained down on the buildings above.

It rained so much that the city started to flood. Even standing in the middle fo the streets, she stood in water that made her socks wet all the way up to her knees. The rain always falling, beating down everything in a tempest, sometimes she thought everything would wash away.   
  
But it didn’t.   
  
When the rain drowned down the sewers of the city streets, or into the cracks of concerete, she saw that the bloodstains were still on the tar, and the sidewalks. Nothing lived in this city. Every single person in it was dead. _  
_

They were dead because she killed them.  
There was nothing left but the imprints of their blood and organs smeared on the ground.   
They were born to happy families. They had friends growing up. They loved someone. They got a job that they were passionate about. They were going to build a life with someone. They deserved to be a part of this world, to walk on these city streets, and now they were nothing more than a stain left behind.   
Because she killed them.   
  
She was covered in their blood too.   
Red, red eyes, a red uniform, red socks, her hair dripping red, and a crossbow she held at her side dirtied with other people’s blood. She stood out in the middle of the rain, but the rain did not wash anything away.

 

The bloodstains won’t come out. No matter how many times water was poured on them, they won’t come out. 

Nothing would ever be clean again. Nothing she ever touched would be clean. She wanted to drown in the rain. For all the red on her to wash away like watercolors until there was nothing left. 

Kumagawa suddenly reached into one of the puddles and pulled Mukuro out. She was dreaming again, of the happy life she would never be a part of. She still saw herself as a girl staring at a portrait. 

『Mukuro-chan is so clumsy, it’s one of the many things that makes her so cute.』  
  
“There’s nothing about me that’s cute.”   
  


『That’s not true! You’re like one of those self insert protagoists that has no flaws except she’s a little bit clumsy. You never really killed someone on purpose, huh? Ahhhh! I tripped on accident and someone fell on my knife. This is so embarrassing!』  
  
“How exactly do you see the world?” Mukuro got the sense that Kumagawa’s grip on reality was loosening as they spoke.

『My world is so much fun!』

  
“Mm, what happened? Oma-kun and Amami-kun, where did they go? I feel like we skipped over something important, everything is so… vague.”

『I hate it when things are ambiguous. The human subconscious should be more straightforward with its symbolism, otherwise an idiot like me won’t get it.』  
  
“Wait, Junko-chan too!  We lost her.”

『Good, hopefully she stays lost.』

  
“Umm, Junko-chan running around in other people’s subconscious minds cannot possibly be a good thing.” Mukuro was starting to feel like the only one in their family with even a small amount of common sense.   
  
Apparently as Kumagawa explained they were walking along in the city while it was raining, and Mukuro fell in one of the puddles which caused her to start to dream again. Kumagawa probably remembered more of what had happened with Kokichi and Amami but he liked to be as difficult as possible.

『Life is just more fun that way.』

  
“Your fun is just an annoyance to other people…” 

『Hmm, did you say something? You have such a bad habit of muttering under your breath. I’d really be happy if you insulted me to my face.』  
  
“I almost feel normal in comparison just being around you.”   
  
Mukuro looked down and realized Kumagawa still had not let go of her hand. When he walked, he stood between her and the street. That was right, her brother was still in there. Her siblings really did love to throw their tantrums, she just had to always be the patient one and wait it out. 

There were several puddles on the side of the road, and every time Mukuro stepped in one she was afflicted with another vision. It was like somebody had grabbed markers and were drawing the scene straight onto her eyeballs it was so forceful.  
  
At first Mukuro thought that these were her own memories due to how vivid they were, but no she realized when she saw red eyes and familiar brown hair that these were the memories of a person who was only similar to her.   
  
The images of them were so alike that they could easily mistake each other for their reflections. They were both like dogs, unable to recognize their own form, barking at the mirror and believing that the girl in the mirror was themselves.

In this picture a girl was  given a knife for the first time and ceased to be a girl. The muscular man in a tank top fighting against her is really trying to kill her. She will die. She will die. She will die. She has no idea how to fight, but she fights anyway because if she dies here she will never see that person again. Those were her thoughts in the moment. She became like a corner animal, feral, desperate to live, she bit, she clawed him,  she screamed. He was sure to cut her on the stomach, long and deep as punishment for losing the fight. When they beat her it was never on the arms or the visible parts of the body, because she would need to be able to blend into a crowd.   
  
The next image a girl sleeping alone. She sleeps on the stone cold floor, with only a few nespapers as a pillow and one thin straw mat on the ground. This is to teach her survival. She may need to live on the streets for months to fulfill an asassination mission. She learned to survive the harsh elements, to fall asleep with no comfort at all. Her entire body ached from the stain but she was used to that. It made hre realize there was truly no home for her in the world, nowhere for her to sleep, nowhere where she would feel warm but she was used to that too.   
  
It amazed her how easily she got used to things. He thought this would be the beginning of hell, but it turned out hell was exactly like the world she had already lived in just a little bit hotter. 

The world was cold to her, but she did not care because she herself was cold. That was eventually what she started to believe. Maybe she was suited for this kind of work after all. The first time she killed someone she followed him all day long and only when he was about to see his wife and kids did he let his guard down. She shot him in the back. His arms still outstretched, he fell on top of the child he was about to hug.   
  
Maki fled into an alleyway. She ran as far as her body would allow her, and then she vomitted. As if her body was rejecting her. She had just made another orphan in this world. Maybe that one would be recruited into a cult of assassins and one day come back to kill her. What horrified Maki the most though was how she did not hesitate at all. 

 _Why is it only me? Why am I the only one alone? Why doesn’t anyone want me around._   
  
Maki saw the way the father smiled at his children. A smile he did not recognize. She realized just as he held his arms out that she had never been held in that way. It was like she was watching some scene in a movie play out in front of her, it was so unreal to her. 

 _They’re all… they’re all so happy without me._   
  
Her finger tightened around the trigger without her even realizing it, and she fired into his back. She thought she might fail her first mission on purpose and die without ever having killed someone.   
  
Her blood ran cold, but no maybe it was always this way. She always had a frozen heart, that was why she adapted so well to this training. That was why she was able to get used to it so fast. The world was cold to her but she did not care because she was already below the point of freezing.   
  
It’s not that her heart gradually emptied out, it was that it was empty from the beginning. If she was a good child she never could have survived. She never would have become a killer. Her body stopped rejecting her, and she stopped feeling the urge to vomit.   
  
This was just the way she lived.   
Other people would die, and she would continue living.   
She was doing this for the sake of her friend?   
It was better that she become an assassin than that sensitive girl?   
She never once thought that.   
From the start she had only ever done it for herself.   
She wanted to keep living, and so she killed.   
  
The world would be better off without someone like her. She knew that. No, not just her, every murderer should go die already. 

 

🧸

『I think Junko and I might be too similar. What if that means we’re fundamentally incompatible? I’d be really sad if she fell in love and got killed by someone else other than me even if there is a better match for her-』

“You’re so insane you’ve looped back around into sounding sane again,” Mukuro muttered, truthfully though she was only half listening to his rambles. The more the rain fell on her it was harder and harder to remember that she was Mukuro and not Maki. When she looked in the window she saw that half of her appearance had faded away, like smeared colors, like she was being erased, and she saw Maki’s own red eye peering through the faded away half of her face. 

“You should be careful Misogi-chan, that much self awareness could be dangerous.” 

『You’re such a worry wart.』  
  
“No, I’m just responsible unlike you two.”

『Junko is very responsible. She’s responsible for the end of the world, and the death of all of her friend’s happiness. I’m even more responsible than that I’m repsonsible for everyone’s misery-!』  
  


Sometimes it was better to just let Kumagawa tire himself out. She used this tactic with Junko when they were little, it’s how Mukuro became such a good listener. Mukuro touched the part of her face that resembled Maki, and noticed there was a string tied to her finger.   
  
They were lost in the city, but now there was a string got follow. A red string. There was a boy in white holding onto the string, he had black hair that fell everywhere like a crow had molted on his head. The boy looked like Kokichi, but there was no face. The moment she saw him, he giggled and started to run.   
  
When a live actual person stuck in the program appeared in the dream they just conformed to the dream around them. When it was just a perception of that person, like the Junko Mukuro had dreamed about it appeared without a face.   
  
Mukuro suddenly chased after her, dragging Kumagawa along. The white rabbit was supposed to be chased by alice, not the other way around Mukuro said suddenly feeling exhausted. The more she chased after the boy holding the red string, the longer and more tangled the string became. 

  
“You really are so stupid, trying so hard to be loved.” The faceless boy laughed as he dropped the ball of string on the ground. It looked like he had simply gotten bored of the chased. “How do you even know having someone you love is so great? You haven’t even tried being hated yet!”   
  
The city disappeared, or no maybe they were just inside one of the many featureless buildings in that city. In that room there were several red strings hanging from the ceiling. No, those were all plastic bangs carrying blood, and the tubes that connected the IV Bags to a single body in the center of the hospital room.   
  
There was a boy sitting in the bed. He was exactly the same age and height as Kaito, but for a moment he was impossible to recognize. His skin was so pale all the color drained from his cheeks, and his lips were almost white. His hair fell over his face in a mess that obscured one of his eyes. He was so frail that every breath seemed to rattle his own body. His ribs were so pronounced for a moment Mukuro worried he might puncture his lungs with one of his ribs simply by breathing.   
  
There was no blood that flowed through his body on its own. He was hooked up to several IV bags scattered throughout the room, hanging there, and pumping blood and medicine into his body for him. He looked like there was no blood in his veins, no breath in his lungs. He sat in a bed with white sheets, and his skin was as colorless as the clean sheets. There were so many IVs connected to him that he looked to be a puppet hanging on strings. If he moved even a little bit, one of the strings would break and there would be blood everywhere.   
  
He was not free to move at all, as if those strings were tying him to the hospital bed. He looked up to see that there were stars painted on the ceiling. When he raised his hand up to touch them the stars were just out of reach. All he wanted was to hold a star in his hands for a second.   
  
His cold, dead, hands.   
He just wanted to feel a little warmth, even if he ended up burning up.   
If the star burned him then at least he would shine for just a moment.   
  
Kaito looked down and saw a tv in front of him. He looked like he was watching some kind of film. In the film, the hero never lost, he was never in pain. Movies were not fun to watch though, because Kaito always used to say it’s more fun to chase after those kinds of adventures in reality. But, picturing himself staring blankly at the movie playing in front of him for who knows how long was difficult to imagine. He had so little time in life, and it looked like he was wasting all of it. Why was he just watching? Why wasn’t he trying to be the hero on that screen?   
  
An incredible waste of time.   
An incredible waste of life. 

『Oh no, no, no, no! They’re trying to make me sympathize with another human being how horrible of them』Kumagawa pulled a screw from his sleeve, long with a pointed end and held it between his middle and ring finger pointing it at Kaito’s throat. 『Well now I have to kill someone for no reason to remind people that I’m the villain. Does anybody have any puppies  I can kick, or cute girls I can make cry with my evil ways?』  
  
He would hate it if anybody thought he was a good person.   
How embarrassing.   
  
Mukuro moved to prevent Kumagawa from attacking someone again, wondering recently if she needed to start keeping him on a leash for his own good or something, when she noticed someone moving in the shadows of the room.   
  
A girl stepped out.   
Red.   
Red.   
Red.   
Her eyes.   
Her uniform.   
The bows in her hair.   
  
Harukawa Maki cocked a gun and pointed it at Kumagawa’s head. Kumagawa just turned his head, it swiveled as if he were a doll, he had unnatural movements about him. 『Maki-chan is a really kind person after all. She’s going to save me. Nobody’s ever tried to save me like this.』   
  
“Umm… she’s obviously trying to kill you!” Mukuro said growing nervous. Not because there was a gun to Kumagawa’s head, (there was always someone shooting at them she just got used to it by now) but the worrying things he had said. She started to wonder if Kumagawa had things a little bit backwards.   
  
“‘...”

『Awe, you’re not going to exchange banter with me? The lines you say right before you die are the most memorable ones. I thought of a really funny joke to go out on-』  
  
“Don’t care. Die.”   
  
Curt as always, Maki pulled the trigger with no hesitation at all. Kumagawa’s brain exploded all over the wall of the room. Everywhere his brain splattered, red flowers started to grow, out of the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. The entire white room was dyed red with the sudden outburst of flowers. 

Even shot in the head, even with one of his eyes danging out of its socket, half of his head missing, brain leaking out from the crack in the center of his skull in a colorless foul goo, and his face half destroyed he was still smiling. He stood there the same as always. At first when he tried to talk his words came out jumbled, like it was an alien attempting to recreate human speech patterns from just hearsay. 

『I… I… U...Uuuu.』  
  
Mukuro realized for the first time how horrifying it was, Kumagawa constantly died and came back to life. Dying that much meant he had to feel the pain of dying over and over again. Yet, no matter how many times he had endured it, no matter how many people killed him, he just kept going, kept on smiling, he never once even begrudged the people who killed him.   
  
But he didn’t seem alive to her. He seemed like a corpse that merely had forgotten how to die. He did not know he was bleeding. He did not know his head was missing chunks of brain. He did not know that he could barely walk forward any more and was stumbling with any step. He just did not know. He did not know what living was.   
  
Kumagawa stumbled forward in a broken body, continuing to live even when everybody else would have died by now. Mukuro thought that was a sign of his determination, but wasn’t that a bad thing? Kumagawa suddenly became a little scary to her. He unnerved her.   
  
Maybe people were just supposed to break and stay broken.   
A broken toy nobody would play with.   
Kumagawa MIsogi, smiled like an overexcited child and rushed at Maki. He grabbed her by the ponytail on her hair and dragged her through the window. The glass broke and dug into his flesh, but this was not happening to him, just to the body that existed in his dream. He did not care as shards of glass pushed underneath his skin, cutting jagged marks around his body, and his skin peeled back.   
  
He threw Maki but where they landed was a field of flowers. A patch of flowers that had somehow grown in the cracks on a concrete bed, maybe it was all this rain. 『You bullied my little sister. I’m the only one allowed to bully her!』   
  
“Umm, I’d rather it be that nobody bullied me…” Mukuro called back watching from afar desperate to catch ujp with both of them. “But I guess I kind of deserve to be bullied.” And there she was second guessing herself again.   
  
『You need to learn to play well with others! I can teach you a lesson!.』Kumagawa felt his voice slipping into higher pitched octaves. He had a feeling that.. His smile was starting to slip from his face. Soon, Mukuro’s smile might not be enough for him because she still might cry later.

He might just have to crush everybody who would ever make her cry before he could feel relief again. Kumagawa fought a battle that he was mostly losing, he fought with his bare hands while Maki continued to pull weapons from her uniform and cut, stab, and shoot.   
  
His body was riddle with holes, he had several knives sticking out of his back, there were so many cuts on his neck he looked like he was wearing a red scarf wrapped around it at this point. Kumagawa punched her in the stomach and Maki’s entire body froze.   
  
She could not kill him.   
If she could not kill, then how was she supposed to live?   
Only one of them would be allowed to kill until tomorrow and it had to be her.   
  
She noticed her joints were getting exhausted. As if she had been dancing on the strings too much and now she was tired. The place her and Kumagawaa were fighting in the middle of looked like a ballroom. 

“Die…”  
  
Maki slit his throat. She gauged out his remaining eye. She stepped on his toe. She broke his rib so bad it punctured a lung. She kicked him in the balls. She pulled his hair. She grabbed him by the throat and tried to choke him. She called him mean names. She cut across his stomach until his intestines started to kill out. She tried to inflict harm on him in every way possible. 

“Just fucking die already.” 

Kumagawa’s wounds kept disappearing. She threw a punch, and the punch connected, but then his head bounced right back. It was like fighting against a training dummy. She was dancing all alone. It’s almost like Kumagawa’s fist was missing her on purpose. Was he actually clever to appear so stupid and incompetent all the time?  
  
No he was probably just stupid.   
  
“Why won’t you die?” 

『Why won’t you?』Kumagawa mirrored her question, and then Maki stopped fighting because she did not know the answer. She fought because she wanted to live to tomorrow but when she was asked like that she could never give a reason why.    
  
She dropped the knife. Harukawa Maki fell to her own knees. When she did she heard the laughter of children in the distance, fill the silence of the air between them. “No… please no.”   
  
Even Kumagawa looked confused (well more confused than normal, his whole life was lived in a perpetual state of confusion), when Mukuro finally showed up she saw Maki on the floor. She flicked Kumagawa on the ear. “You shouldn’t make girls cry, Misogi.”

『You’re the only girl on earth, Mukuro-chan.』  
  
“So other girls are just not girls to you?”

『No they’re not even people. You’re the only person on earth, Mukuro-chan.』  
  
“But that would be lonely!” 

“Don’t make me see this-!” Maki cried out, as she pulled at her own two twin tails.Her hair started to move like it had life of its own, waves moved through it to express her emotion, until she finally tore it out of both of the bands she was using to tie it back. It was the first time either of them had seen her hair down. “I don’t want to be that girl!” 

As she said that the laughter of children died out.   
The give children that were running around playing in the room, they fell silent because their throats were cut. They fell on the ground dead, the flowers growing around then, the vines entangling them as if the garden wanted to swallow them whole.   
  
Maki stood in the middle of the garden completely helpless. They all died right in front of her and she just sat there and watched. She looked up to see how had killed the children. All she saw was her own back, a girl covered in blood that was not hers, her hair bloodied like a paintbrush that had been dipped it in, a knife in one hand, a crossbrow in another.   
  
She looked at her hands holding onto the weapons. They were exactly the same as the hands she fell in front of her face, down to the last details of her fingers. Those hands were hers, and they had killed all those children around her.   
  
“God you’re always turning your nose up at other people and calling them stupid, but you’re the stupidest one of all.” The other Maki said, her head still turned away. She raised her crossbow into the air, and leveled it up right between Maki’s eyes. “You can’t protect anybody with violence. This is what violence does to people.” 

Before she could pull the trigger Mukuro lunged forward and tackled Maki. The bullet grazed the side of her face, cutting her just below her eye. The other Maki looking disinterested simply dropped her crossbow on the ground and walked off.   
  
A room that smelled like fresh blood.   
Flowers.   
And the girl who resembled her too much right next to her.   
  
For a moment it looked like Mukuro might have saved her, but the truth was nobody had been saved. Mukuro put her fingers over her eyes, and then stared cross-eyed through the gaps in her fingers. 

“I’m sorry for calling you insane, Misogi-chan. I’m not much better… There’s no way.”  
  
As she stared at Maki trembling on the ground in front of her it was like she finally had a revelation. She saw herself in the mirror for the first time and realized what she looked like. That ugly girl in the mirror. That disappointing girl   
  
“There’s no way I’ll ever be normal! There’s just no way, right? I can’t show Makoto any of this!”  
  
Staring in a mirror too long really does mess with your head. You begin to forget, which one was real, and which one was the reflection.   
  
Oh that was why Maki was always trying to kill her. It made sense now. She was so stupid for not realizing it. Sorry Maki. Sorry for being stupid. Sorry if I annoyed you. There was no way she could be friends with this girl, because she hated her. She hated the girl in the mirror.   
  
Maki’s world.   
Her world.   
Makoto could never live in that world with her, because he would die.   
She would kill him.   
That was what Junko predicted a long time ago.   
That she would want to kill him out of love.   
Junko’s predictions always came true. Junko never lied. Junko never lied.   
  
Kumagawa reached out a hand to her. He always looked so afraid to touch her. When she slapped his hand away violently, she realized why. “Get away from me you freak!” That face. That look, like he was expecting to be hit. Oh, he thought everyone was going to slap him away like this every time he tried to touch them. He was nothing more than a dirty child after all.   
  
No matter how much they called themselves evil, no matter how they laughed like a villain.   
That was all Mukuro could see.   
Junko, and Kumagawa.   
To her they just looked like two crying children.   
She guessed because she was older Junko was always going to look like a child to her.   
  
“Haha, like I should be talking. I’m the biggest freak of them all thinking someone like me can be normal.” 

『Mukuro-chan it’s fine. You don’t have to be my sister anymore. You can go and be happy with Makoto-chan. You deserve a normal amount of happiness so don’t-』  
  
“If I die…”

Mukuro asked him.  
They were standing on the roof of one of the tall buildings now. Mukuro spun on her heel and danced on the edge, and then like she was throwing a bocquet of flowers, she threw herself off.   
  
“Can I be reborn as a normal girl?”


	78. Psyncin in the Pane

**[SUICIDAL IDEATION] THIN ICED SUICIDE LOVERS**

“Umm, excuse me this dramatic scene is great and all, I’m sure Lord Byron would be proud, but I have an opinion!” 

The roses in the garden turned their heads as if to greet him. Vines slithered on the ground like snakes to invite him in. Oma Kokichi was on the stage, even if no one truly wanted him there. The scene he arrived on, Kumagawa was still standing with Mukuro in front of Rantaro.  
  
Kumagawa’s black jacket was wrapped around Rantaro’s upper body like he was hiding from the sun, trying to give himself even the smallest amount of shelter. He looked like a child clinging onto his favorite blanket before bedtime. Rantaro, his tall curved back, his arms so long they reached past his hips, the way his whole body seemed to sway as he moved like a tree in the breeze. He was nothing like that. He looked nothing like himself. So still, so quiet, but the Rantaro in front of Kokichi’s eyes was so small in the way he trembled.  
  
Kokichi’s eyes seemed to shrink, shaking in the same way for a moment before a smile curled on his lips. “Are you kidding me? How come every murderer here immediately descends into self pity the moment there are actual consequences for their actions. Boo hoo! People don’t like me! You think maybe that’s because they think you might kill them?” 

 

Kokichi said as he grabbed the cape that hung off Rantaro like a physical shadow, and ripped it away from him. “You know what, you don’t deserve a cape! Capes are for cool people, and you’re not cool enough to have one. I was going to change outfits in the fourth round to surprise everyone and start wearing a cape, but I can’t do that anymore because you ruined capes forever!” 

 

The single piece of comfort he was holding onto ripped away from him, Rantaro stood up once more. He threw Kumagawa his jacket back. His shoulders slumped, his back crooked, at the moment everything was too heavy, gravity was too much for him. His eyes looked like they were crying out for sleep, but Kokichi was high energy as ever.  
  
Kumagawa suspected that Kokichi felt bad about not getting any lines early so he was talking twice as fast to make up for it.  
  
“Don’t give me that crap about how tired you are. You know who’s really sleepy right now? Kiyo-chan. He’s so much of a sleepy peepy that he might never wake up again. Y’know, because you killed him.”  
  
Rantaro did not say anything, but it was like Kokichi could read his facial expressions well enough that he was carrying on both ends of the conversation by himself. “God, what do you imagine yourself as some blood sucking monster? Okay drama queen, back up a little bit. What you really did was convince Kiyo to commit suicide, you’re just exaggerating to avoid responsibility for the real thing.” 

  
If you take responsibility for everything, that’s the same as taking responsibility for nothing.  
  
Kokichi seemed to think in extremes like that. His world was full of the black and white squares that were on the scarf he always wore around his neck.  
  
“Why… do you say that?”  
  
“Oh, you remembered how to speak! You’re a person after all! I mean, you’re an infinitely stupid, and ugly person, but you’re still a person. (LOL) Have fun with that.” Kokichi marched around to the beat of his own drum as always, but he paraded around so loudly that Kumagawa and Mukuro could hear the drum that was playing along in his own head. “I know the most about responsibility, because I never want to take responsibility at all. Growing up into a responsible adult is just game over for me.” 

『Is that why he’s so short?』Kumagawa whispered to Mukuro.

"That's rude. You can't just. You know.  Say things to people."

『You’re right, I should never talk to anyone ever.』

"Misogi-chan! That’s not what I meant! You always spiral so fast into self loathing it makes me dizzy.”

Kokichi was a little bit annoyed nobody was paying attention to his show. This was his game, he should be player nimber one. It felt like he wasn’t even a player at all. No matter what buttons he pressed the characters on the screen refused to respond.  
  
He did nothing and people died. That was why, Rantaro’s self pity pissed him off. Kokichi handled his emotions like a child, he only knew how to throw tantrums. Emotions were bad, bad, bad, he wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible. He didn’t even want to admit to having emotions in the first place. He wanted nothing to do with them. And now they were here. They were too much, and for the first time Kokichi realized how small and fragile a container he was. 

 

He laughed, like it was easy to laugh when you wanted to cry. But, it’s easy not to feel anything real around people who don’t see the real you. People’s emotions always come from their interactions with others, but Kokichi had always, always, always been alone. He ran away, he scurried like a mouse in the shadows the anytime he saw a human being coming.  
  


 

  
No wonder Kumagawa Misogi seemed to despise him. The bonds that Kokichi treated so carelessly, that he always ran away from were the most precious thing in the world to Kumagawa. Kumagawaa was always being pulled in many different directions by other people, and Kokichi, unrelated, unattached. Kumagawa who felt all of those bonds at once, a more intense joy than anyone else and more intense sorrows, and Kokichi who only seemed to feel his own emotions at a distance.  
  
People live in other people, except for Kokichi who was all alone. No, maybe there was a version of “himself” in other people, but the self that was made in everyone crumbled because he was just a disgrace.  
  
“I guess you’re right…” Amami Rantaro said, his eyes looking dark like they no longer responded to light.  
  
“You’re not supposed to agree with me! Deny it! Fight back! Show me you want to live damnit… why, why don’t you want to live?”  
  
Kokichi’s makeup was running. The teardrops he had painted underneath his eyes were becoming real ones. The white paint he had smeared all over his face was starting to fade as he wiped underneath both eyes with his sleeve.  
  
“Not really,” Rantaro admitted.  
  
“Then, why did Kiyo have to die?”  
  
“I dunno…”  
  
Kokichi was almost envious for a moment, the level of detachment Rantaro had. It’s like he truly did not care about anything but his twelve sisters. He devoted himself entirely to them, but that way he never had to feel anything from anyone else, he never had to confront them, he no longer had to be his own person outside of them.  
  
Clowns weren’t supposed to cry. Clowns weren’t supposed to cry, because everyone was watching them. They were responsible for everyone’s smiles. If… if he said that he just wanted this story to have a happy ending would anybody believe him? Or had he told too many lies already.  
  
“Your sisters are already dead! You have to know that by now. They’re all dead and gone. Kiyo wanted to be loved by a family too, but you were only thinking of yourself. How about you stop pretending you give a shit about other people? It’s like, really annoying. I’m the only one who gets to be annoying, because it’s actually really, really charming when I annoy people. Actually, how about you stop pretending you cared about your little sisters in the first place?” 

  
That finally got a reaction out of Rantaro. He stopped hanging his head as if he were waiting for someone else to tie a noose around it and met Kokichi. There was something familiar about those eyes, as if he was staring into his own eyes. 

“You were just using them as a reason to live. So, live.”  
  
“I don’t want to,” Rantaro immediately shut him down. Kokichi forced himself to keep smiling as he wiped his face more and more. If the clown makeup came off, his face would melt off. He needed to paint his face on every morning, because he no longer remembered what his original face looked like. 

  
“Wait, did we go straight to Oma-kun’s dream from Amami-kun’s?” Mukuro asked. 

 

『Maybe it was twin telepathy.』  
  
“I keep telling you that’s not a thing, and besides Oma-kun’s not-”  
  
“There aren’t any more twins in this story. If there were any besides me, I would feel less special.” Junko said, all she needed to do to appear suddenly at this side of the dream was realize that somebody was talking about her. Her need to be the center of all conversations was stronger than any wishy washy dream logic. “And Muku-chan, twin telepathy is totally a thing you’re just not trying hard enough. Wouldn’t life be so much easier if you understood everything I was thinking?” 

 

“I don’t think I want to know anymore,’ Mukuro deadpanned. 

 

『Besides, Junko you’re an only child. I’m Mukuro-chan’s twin brother. I’m reading her mind right now and she says that she hates you.』  
  
“Yeah, and I’m reading Mukuro’s mind and she says if you hate me so much, why don’t you just marry me already?”  
  
“Um… can you guys not use me for your arguments,” Mukuro murmured. This was getting kind of awkward.  
  
“So what… you’re just going to keep killing people even though your sister’s might never come back?” Kokichi said. He had no idea why his throat was suddenly so sore, until he realized he had been shouting with a voice full of emotion this entire time. Damn, his body was breaking under such little emotion. If he ever really cared about somebody it would probably be catastrophic. The world would end. 

 

『Why not? Sounds like a good plan to me.』Kumagawa said, with a tilt of his head. As he tried to take a step closer to Rantaro, the thorny vines wrapped all around him, but Kumagawa did not hesitate. He dragged himself through feeling the thorns scrape on his skin. As he saw Kumagawa’s blood poor he realized, Kumagawa was as fragile as he was, but he just broke. 

“Isn’t doing the opposite of whatever you say good life advice, Kumagawa-senpai? Haha…”  
  
Rantaro laughed.  
People cried until they were fine.  
Rantaro laughed until he was fine.

  
『No, no, this is a good plan. Do you know a surefire way to find the culprit in a mystery novel? Kill every suspect, starting at one end. The one left standing is your culprit. 』  
  
Then who originally committed the murder did not matter anymore.  
Once they were dead they were all meaningless.  
They were all equal.  
Kumagawa saw nothing special about corpses or flowers, but maybe because he had seen so many of both of them in his life.  
  
“But, I already killed someone and got caught.” 

 

『You’re not thinking enough like a villain! What, do you feel bad about what you’ve done like some kind of good person? Do you want others to sympathize with you as a human being? Don’t make me laugh! Weren’t you going to escape from this place? I thought you were way cooler when it looked like you’d kill everybody else on the planet for the sake of those sisters. I mean everybody’s going about their happy lives and not a single one of them thinks about saving your sisters? Why do they get to be happy while your sisters are miserable?』  
  
“But the game’s rigged against me. If I break the rules they’ll just make more rules.” 

 

『Then just play along with the game. Kill everyone here one by one until there’s no one left, and then escape and free your sister. Villains have no choice but to be selfish, because no one is going to save us.』

  
“I…” 

 

He thought of those two. Kaede and Shuichi, who he once believed were the heroes of this story. There was no way someone like him could ever share a story with the two of them. They were good kids and he was a bad son, right from the start. 

 

『They’ll stop you, because that’s what heroes do. Oh and if you touch my little sister I’ll kill you of course.』

  
Kumagawa turned his back. He started to walk off, Mukuro and Junko following behind him. Even when he was like this, even when he looked nothing like the Kumagawa they knew, those two girls were still with him. 

 

  
Kokichi chased after Kumagawa. The garden they were in was covered in snow, as if Kokichi was trying to bury the flowers. The flowers and everythng else. Everything, everything, everything. It should all just go away. That was just another childish tantrum of his.  
  
He grabbed onto Kumagawa by the sleeve, pulling him back. “Why is it always you?” 

 

『Huh…?』  
  
“Why can’t I do a single thing, but you… always you…”

 

He already knew the reason why. He was afraid to play the game, because he was so, so afraid of losing. 

 

“I don’t want to lose anyone… but that’s so stupid.”  
  
His fingers tightened around Kumagawa. He looked like a younger brother, clinging to his older brother’s arm for attention.  
  
“I never had anybody to lose in the first place, because no one likes me. Why…?” 

 

『It’s because you talk too much, you’re very emotionally needy but you don’t actually want to take care of anyone else’s emotions, and you have a bad personality.』

  
“You’re not supposed to be honest in scenes like this! Learn to tell a lie already!” 

 

『Jeez, let me guess. You want to suddenly act like brothers because you lost yours in some tragic incident that we’re suddenly going to have a flashback for.』  
  
“Me and my brother were the only heirs of a crimminal empire, and our parents forced us to fight to death to see who would become the rightful heir.” 

 

『Neat.』  
  
“My brother killed both of my parents and I ran away from home, to train in order to become powerful enough to avenge them.”

 

『Sounds fun.』  
  
“I had a twin brother, but I was jealous of him since the day we were born because he was so much more talented than I was at everything, so I killed him and took his place.” 

 

『Nah, that one is kind of boring.』

Kumagawa continued to walk with Kokichi hanging off of his arm like some needy child. Junko who had been watching the entire time her red eyes looking no different from a blood sucking monster stood in front of Kokichi.  
  
“You don’t look like you’re having any fun.”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“Then, why are you even playing?”

 

🧸

 

A Looking-glass world.  
A Looking-glass house.  
A Looking-glass room.  
Looking-glass walls, and a looking-glass floor.  
  
No matter where she looked, she saw herself looking back. Now Toko realized why other people mistreated her so much, if she was forced to look at a girl that ugly all day she would want to break her too.  
  
Glass is so much like people. It’s see-through, but at the same time it just reflects back what the light into your eyes. When glass breaks, it’s so easy to tell. Everyone can see. Even if you hide the cracks they can see. And cracks only spread, as you get weaker and weaker.  
  
She felt the cracks spreading underneath her skin. They were traveling across her body looking like veins in search of a heart. Pale skin. Transparent Skin. See-through glass. So easily broken. 

 

She wondered what two hands had shaped her out of glass. Why did they sculpt her with such malice, as to leave her broken from the day she was born? They just had to make her into a shape that nobody would ever love. 

 

The  cold glass on her face turned all soft las if it was melting.  She fell through it, like sinking into water. The glass melted away, like a bright silvery mist. She fell through helplessly, because that was all Alice was capable of. 

 

The reason wonderland made no sense to her was because she did not belong in it. She thought everyone else was mad, but she was the mad one among them all along. No matter where she wandered, no matter who she talked to, there was no place for her in wonderland.  
  
The world was sane, it just didn’t want her. No, considering she was a murderer it was probably saner for not wanting her around. Lighter than air, more transparent than the sky, she should just fall and break like glass already.

 

She fell, fell, and fell.  
She no longer thought about a prince coming to save her.  
She was so afraid, that if she broke apart in his arms, the glass would cut him. She wanted him to be the one thing in this world she did not break.  
  
She fell, and was caught in a pair of arms like a princess. He held her close to his chest, in a field of glass flowers. 

 

『Toko-chan, you’re way harder to carry then I thought you’d be. Are you fat or something?』  
  
She ended up being saved not by a prince, but by someone far more annoying. She started to kick her feet in a tantrum. So many tantrums. So many bad children in my story. “Let go of me! Pervert! Eeeeeeek! He’s trying to taint my purity. I’ll be forever stained as a girl!” 

 

『There’s no way I could do that. You already stained yourself with other people’s blood a long time ago, Toko-chan.』Kumagawa responded, cool as water, still as glass, no matter how much of a fuss Toko made. He put her down of course, no touching other people without their permission. Of course they could touch him as much as they wanted, he’d just rip their hands off afterwards.『Hm, I was trying to hold out my arms to catch Mukuro-chan, but I caught you instead.』  
  
“Hey, what happened to my Muku-chan?” Junko said, appearing as nothing more than a reflection in one of the glass walls around them. She tried to get out, but for now it was nothing more than a reflection.  
  


『Junko, you’re more two dimmensional than usual..』Kumagawa said, poking the wall where her image was. 『Your chest is completely flat now I’ve lost all interest in you as a person.』  
  
“Oh pllease, just admit you love me for my personality already.”

 

『I hate you for your personality, but still that’s weird.』  
  
“This whole world is weird. Wanna be more specific to what the sitch is?” 

 

『I think events are happening out of order.』

  
“This whole world is weird. Wanna be more specific to what the sitch is?” 

 

『I hate you for your personality, but that’s still weird.』

  
“Quit it you two, I know you’re talking backwards on purpose just to mess with my head.” Toko snapped at both of them, their mirrored-conversation abruptly coming to an end. Even when they were fighting like this, it seemed they got along too well at the same time.  
  
It unnerved Toko seeing people that close. She thought other people were too exhausting to put up with from a distance. There was only one person she wanted to let that close, and the one time she tried she had been hurt.  
  
“Alice in Wonderland? And I’m Alice? Jeez, I hate my imagination. You’re an author idiot, come up with something better than this derivative garbage.” Toko threw herself into the glass flowers and they were surprisingly soft, they did not break under her at all.  
  


『So you already know this is a dream?』  
  
“What? As the person with the lowest IQ in the room is it your job to point out the obvious now, or something?” Toko said, picking up a flower and throwing it against Kumagawa’s head watching it break into pieces. That was probably a metaphor for something. “No duh, that’s only the most predictable twist ever written.”

 

『Then why haven’t you woken up yet?』  
  
“For a liar you have such piercingly honest eyes…” Toko said, describing Kumagawa as if he was a character in one of her books. “I hate that.” 

 

She averted her eyes from his, and her gaze fell on a boy sleeping far away from her. He had a red crown on his head, and a cape around his shoulders. His shoulders rose and fell, considering his siblings had constantly tried to kill him in his sleep Togami had probably never slept this peacefully before in his life.  
  
Toko too, was laying opposite of him. While Togami led on a pile of playing cards, her mattress became quickly made out of books spread open and tossed carelessly on the ground as if the person reading them had gotten bored. Her body curled up in the shape of the moon, or maybe a caterpillar desperately trying to spin a coccoon around her.  
  
Her shadow was her only companion. The only one who would dlie in bed with her. For a moment her shadow flickers in the light, and it looks like another person is embracing her from behind. The girl in her shadow still had two long black braids, round glasses, and a wicked smile that looked like it was made by cutting up her cheeks in jagged lines like a pair of scissors. 

 

Io laying amongst the books like this, hodling herself like a cold and lost child on the street, She’s curled up rather than laying on her back. Her hair is a careless mess of curls tossed behind her. She has a black shadow so close it looks like a separate creature embracing her Toko, Io like the many books she’d tossed aside had an unreadable expression. As if seeking refuge in a world where there is none. Quiet, she stifled  her expression because she did not want to even be the child she looks like now. A lost child. A child that’s never been touched. A child that’s never been held. That cannot even comprehend what the feeling is like, and yet they are aware that they miss that sensation, that they are lacking in something in their memories, in their feelings.  
  
There’s no light, only the pale glow of her white skin. There’s no color in her world. It’s just the light that burns her skin, and the shadow she casts, and nothing else. The only reason it was so bright was because there was glass everywhere. The same way she cannot feel what the warmth of being held might be like, she cannot see what colors look like to other people. Hers is a monochromatic world. She only sees one color, and it’s red. It’s the only color she’s seen her whole life, she’s bathed in it and somehow her skin has managed to stay colorless. But, the red is in her fingertips. She leaves bloody handprints on books every time she tries to enjoy them.  
  
“Kyeeeehahahaha, every mirror has a front and a back you know! Just like how in the depths of every truth lives a little lie… Behind every dark and gloomy soul lives another that shines as bright as the sun! Kyehahahahahaa!”  
  
The shadow brought her tongue out, licking Toko’s hair from behind like she was a cat washing a kitten. “Heeeey, theeeere gloomy. What’s the good of sitting around hating yourself when I hate you so much more?” 

  
🧸

 

“Oh hey look, it’s Tweedle Dumpy and Tweedle DID,” Junko commented, so drily her lips were cracked. 

 

『Hey, Jack-chan is her own person. Don’t talk about her like that.』  
  
“Fuck off! I don’t want to be a person! Have you seen people? They’re all fucking lame.” Jack cursed both of them out.  
  
Toko rolled away from her own shadow, crossing her arms, ignoring her. “Hmmpph…”  
  
“Well now you’re just being passive agressive. Sure, I’m a blood thirsty maniac, but I don’t pull this crap,  If I’m pissed at you I just stab you in the face, otherwise I’ll leave you alone.” 

 

『Are you two fighting?』  
  
“She’s mad because I’m a literal serial killer constantly threatening to cut people, but people still like me better than her.”  
  
“Am not!!!!!”

 

Kumagawa’s mouth twitched like he wanted to smile. It reminded him of the few times he had seen Junko and Mukuro fight like actual sisters over the smallest things, rather than despair sisters.  
  
“Yo!” Jack said, looking up at Junko. “You’re the one that tried to kill everyone, right?”  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“Niiiiiiiiice! Why did you do such a half-assed job with this one though? It can’t be that hard to kill her, look she already looks half dead.”  
  
Toko went back to the silent treatment. It had never worked for her as a strategy before because no one ever wanted to talk to her. When she gave them the silent treatment if anything they were happy because the girl with no social skills stopped pestering them.  
  
Kumagawa knelt over her body. Togami was sleeping, and Toko did not want to wake at all. He had no idea if this world was the red king’s dream, or Alice’s. He was supposed to be a selfish bastard who didn’t give a crap about other people so why did he have to keep getting dragged into their nonsense? 

 

『Come on you two, you don’t ever get to talk like this. Shouldn’t you be friends?』  
  
“I wanna be friends with a cool person! Hey, hey, hey, Junko I feel like we can be friends. I totally feel the power of friendship right now. It feels like I could kill everybody in the whole world.” Jack got along with the worst types of people.  
  
“Don’t try to be friends with her!” Toko snapped finally bolting upright like she had woken from a terrible dream. 

 

『Hey, Toko-chan. You haven’t been leaving your room lately, and when you do it’s as Jack-chan.』

  
“Can you quit making me pilot the body around all the time? Do you know how awkward and sweaty it is being a person? I wanna go back to being a cool guest character that shows up, says a bunch of funny suff, then leaves before I overstay my welcome. The hell are you doing giving me a character arc, I’m an alter!”  
  
Toko lifted her hand lifelessly and picked up another book. When she touched it, she left bloody fingerprints on the pages again. “If I leave my room, Kiyo won’t be there. So what’s the point…” 

 

『Are you trying to die again? Do I have to kill you so you’ll stop trying to die?』

  
“That makes no sense at all!” Toko snapped at him again. The folds of her dress curled around her like a blue flower. Flowers had petals, to hide what was inside. The petals were closing in on Toko protectively, Kumagawa could see her face starting to disappear behind shadows.  
  
“Oh please, like you even gave a shit about Kiyo. You thought he was a creepy stalker the whole time and even told him so right to his face cosnantly. You were only letting him close because you thought for some reason it would make Togami-kun jealous, like there’s a human being on earth that actually wants you.”  
  
Junko suddenly tore her apart, like pieces of glass ripping through her body all at once. She grabbed her head like just thinking about the topic was already starting to give her a headache.  
  
“You didn’t even like him until after he died, and now you’re pretending like he was your best friend all along.”  
  
“I don’t want to hear that from a popular girl like you.”  
  
“Oh, Fukawa-san you don’t get it.” Junko stepped out of the mirror that had begun to fracture with Toko’s psyche. Jack hoped it would not fracture too much, it was already getting too crowded in their head. “I’m just as ugly as you are. The difference is I don’t hide in my room all day because I’m too scared about what other people think.”  
  
“It’s pointless isn’t it! Even if I never kill another person in my life, even if I live out the rest of my life, I’m already too far gone-”  
  
“Yep you are.”  
  
“There’s no saving someone like me.”  
  
“No, there isn’t.”  
  
“You’re not supposed to agree with me! Gosh, how are you even so mean? Do you store all your meanness in your boobs? Is that why they’re so big?” Toko cracked, and cracked, and racked, and as she cracked the cracks traveled further, deeper inside of her, trying to reach her heart. “I can’t become a queen.”  
  
They were both past the point of no return.  
They would never be considered good, righteous people. They could never get along well with others. Even if they changed everything about themselves, everything they did in the past would remain with them.  
  
“Yeah, so like were you going to get to a point? Because I’m getting kind of bored here, and I get stabby when I’m bored.” Junko said, tilting her head to the side in impatience.  
  
“Oh me too! We have so much in common new besty,” Jack said, but was ignored.  
  
“You know what I think Fukawa-san? Even if you weren’t a murderer, you’d still be hated. You’re just unpleasant to be around. You make your issues everyone else’s problems. You expect everybody else to care about you like you’re someone important but you don’t actually give a damn about any of them. And you are, so, so, so, petty. And like, for someone who claims to be ugly and hate shallow beautiful people, you’re just as obsessed with shallow standards of  beauty as I am.” 

  
Junko ranted as she always did, but her hand, the hand that was for wrapping her red fingers around their neck and declaring off with their heads only caressed Toko’s face gently. “Maybe you should just accept you’re never going to be a good person ever, and settle on learning to be a person.”  
  
The cracks reached her heart, and her heart split in two.  
But that was fine, because now Toko had two hearts.  
She had twice the amount of love of everybody else. 

 

🧸

  
Kumagawa and Junko stood over Togami’s body trying to figure out how to wake him. Kumagawa said that all Togami needed was a prince’s kiss, but when he leaned in and Junko and Toko were both about to burn up from envy, he just punched Togami straight on the lips with his fist instead.

『That’s more intimate than a kiss.』  
  
Toko looked confused, but Junko’s eyes were so wide and so red, it looked like she was seeing nothing but roses. 

Kumagawa turned his head and looked at her to whisper much queiter so Toko would not overhear. 『You’re acting a little better than usual, so I can’t wait until you start to slip like always, because this time when you fall I won’t catch you.』  
  
“How romantic of you.” 

『Quit responding to hateful lines with flirting that’s my thing!』

“I already know that, duh. Senpai, you’re way too kind. That’s why even if you want to forgive me, you won’t. Even if Mukuro forgave me, you’d still be angry for her. You’re so cute when you’re throwing a little tantrum and pretending to be a villain.” 

『That’s not true! I’m the worst person ever! I was born to destroy things! Well, I was born for no reason, but since my life has no meaning I could have done whatever I wanted with it and I chose to just break shit!』  
  
“Yep, just adorable. Anyway, there was a time when both you and Mukuro would have helped me change and still continued unfailingly to love me, but I’ve burned that bridge so many times even you two are both done with me. Even if I wanted to change no one gives a damn anymore.”  
  
 _I’m the same as you, sis._ _  
__The people we killed just won’t come back._   
Matsuda, and you are still alive, but I killed you.  
  
“Isn’t that just the most despair inducing situation imaginable? No matter what I do from now on, no one will accept me. The people I never wanted to lose are already lost to me. My whole body’s all tingly now!”  
  
『Bleh.』

Kumagawa stuck his tongue out, and then said something strange that probably only made sense to him. 

『Your optimism is so digusting,  Junko.』  
  
  
  



	79. Psyncin in the Swain

I had a dream.  
I met her.

🧸  
  


“In truth, there is something else I must ask you. Sadly, it’s the last question I will ever ask you.”    
  
The girl stared into the boy with eyes that belie the age that her appearance would imply.    
  
“What is it you desire?” She asked gently. The question comes as a surprise to the boy, and he struggled at first to form a single word of reply with his lips. As if he was struggling to find the taste of something tasteless, to feel something formless, the same sensation as breathing in a vacuum.    
  


The entire time she’s watching him with a smile that is almost mechanical. As if she is programmed to be cheerful. “It’s not like it’s selfish to wish for something when everyone has a wish, I don’t think it’s anything special. It’s like how can people think stars are so special when there’s trillions of them? So, just wish. Oh, if you wish for everyone’s happiness then I’ll tease you just a little bit.”

 

He could not even give an easy answer like that. He did not think he was that nice of a person. Rather than wishing for everyone’s happiness, he just wanted the people he was looking at right now to be smiling. But that wasn’t very selfless of him. 

  
That girl’s presence, there, but not there.   
Glittering, flashes, no pulses of electricity.    
She smiled somehow even when she had no face.    
She held a hand out towards him, the eyes underneath that hood a transparent well, drinking deeply of the void like sky. It was no wonder she was hiding those eyes. Looking into her eyes immediately gave the sensation that something was looking back at you, like looking into an endless abyss, like looking into the eyes of god.    
  
“I don’t know…” There was no answer to that question. It was like suddenly there was no words inside of him. He was was a body, with a face, and two green eyes that was definitely the shape of a person but there was no person inside. As if no one truly moved his arms or legs or made choices for him, he simply always allowed himself to get pulled along by others. “I don’t really need one, I guess.” He said, avoiding her gaze.    
  
“You’re a really nice person, so I guess you’d say that.” She almost sounds disappointed, despite praising him, no something was off, something was different. “Hehehe You were always a weird one.”   
  
“Everyone always calls me normal.”   
  
“So you let everyone decide who you are…?”    
  
“Um, I don’t think they even think about me that much.”   
  
“You’re so normal that you’re weird. Do you not want anything better than this?”   
  
“Nah. Here, right here, like this… it’s fine, I think,”

 

No one will ever try to understand him, no one ever gave him the time of day. Always normal, no one to draw close to. And yet, to those around him, a symbol of happy times. Of the normal life they would never have. He is everyone’s friend, but who is his friend? Among the lonely people, and the one surrounded by friends who among them is truly alone.   
  
As long as he stayed that way.   
  
“You will live ordinary and die ordinary. Aren’t you lonely?” 

Makoto finally recognized the emotion in her voice.   
It sounded like she pitied him.    
Smile, Naegi Makoto.   
This is the real world that you wanted so badly.    
But you don’t want anything or anyone do you?    
  


🧸

Kirigiri Kyoko. Seventeen years old. Female. First Year Student at Hope’s Peak Academy. Model Student. Uneven bangs, one side of her hair braided and tied off in a ribbon. Runs her fingers through her hair without realizing it. Serious, too serious. Virtuous. As a detective, obsessed with being right. Very smart. Kind and fair to all.    
  
No matter how hard he tried, he could not put that girl into words. He could describe every feature of her body over and over again, and Makoto felt like he would still have not said anything about her at all.    
  
She was all he could think about lately, and yet it was like he did not know her. He could spend an entire lifetime with her and she would not age a day, she would still be the girl who greeted him with cool eyes the first day he met her.    
  
Exactly the same.    
Frozen in time.   
A living memory. 

Having abandoned all attempt at trying to communicate these feelings, he became the embodiment and avatar of resignation.    
  
No wait, that was way too deep of a character trait for Naegi Makoto, who was simply a good and nice boy. If you were to force him to speak right now about how he feels, it would come out as a mumble, one that you could barely hear.    
  
He would mumble on and on about his friend, Kirigiri Kyoko.    
Words that failed to capture any meaning.   
Words that failed to be words.

 

He thought about all of his friends, living to charge headstrong towards their goals. If they were on a baseball team, each and every one of them would be swinging for the stands, while every time he came up to bat Makoto would go for the sacrifice bunt. Maybe they would earn more points as a team that way, maybe everybody would be happier, but Makoto’s batting average would still be a zero.   
  
Sometimes he thought of a boy.   
That boy, strong and weak, had his own set of values that said people must live their lives facing forward, not just actively, but aggressively. He could never imagine living like that, living with so much anger. Sometimes he fought with his sister but he never felt anger in his life, not really. He could never imagine wanting so much that it would hurt to not get it, that it would make him mad.   
  
He says it doesn’t have to be pretty.   
Scrappy is fine, greedy is fine.    
Those kinds of feelings would probably tear him apart.    
Those feelings were different, and he was different.    
Feeble and flimsy Makoto, unable to choose who he wants to be one way or the other was different. He was someone who did not look left, or right before crossing, but just took the step blindly ahead.

He didn’t know who he was, not really, but he knew he was different than that boy.    
And, the same as Kirigiri Kyoko.   
Always together.

Sherlock and Watson.   
The white king, and the white queen.    
It felt rude to compare the two of them, after all Kirigiri was a talented person who was special in this world and he was just an unlucky dude. In fact he wasn’t even that special when it came to unlucky dudes that was his senpai, he was just an ordinary unlucky dude.    
He had no idea what she felt for him, or his feelings for her, but he felt like they were the same in their hearts.    
  
That was why, Kirigiri who ignored everyone else in the classroom greeted him that day.   
That was why she called out to him.    
He thought it could have been anybody standing in his shoes, but maybe it could only be him.   
Only Naegi Makoto could hear Kirigiri Kyoko’s words.    
  
Like, the two of them weak and flimsy on their own, together might have become something. But once again these thoughts were far too deep for Makoto who was just a nice boy.    
  
Which is why his sister woke him up by dumping a glass of ice cold water on his head. “Oh no, you wet the bed again, big bro!” 

  
“Komaru? What are you doing? You said you’d never tell anyone you pinky promised.”   
  
“Makoto, you haven't changed since we were kids at all if you think a pinky promise is binding. You need to grow up already.”   
  
Makoto rolled over in bed dramatically. “I’m getting lectured on how to grow up by my younger sister. I’m a failure of a big brother.” Makoto missed their sibling banter. Wait, why did he miss it? She woke him up every morning like this. Though, not exactly like this. Komaru had gotten frustrated with him because soon after she woke him up the first time, he rolled back over and fell asleep again trying to remember the dream he had just forgotten about.    
  
He had a feeling of forgetfulness.   
Forgetting.   
Forgetting something.    
Something special.   
  
“There’s really no hope for you. Why are you going to the academy of hope, anyway? Are you one of those charity cases?”    
  
“I don’t want to hear that from the girl who sits in her room reading manga all day instead of studying. Miss, ‘Oh, big bro it doesn’t matter if I was never going to get into my first choice school in the first place, so I’ll just take it easy and get my consolation prize.’ Naegi.” 

  
Komaru Naegi wanted to live an easy life, that was all.    
It’s not like she did not want to do work.   
In fact she thought the best life possible was where you put in the exact amount of effort and got the exact right result. To Komaru the worst thing was putting in too much effort only to get less  in return.

 

 “I don’t want to hear that from the guy who got into the best high school in the country by a lottery ticket! Hey, hey! How come you get to be the average main character that everybody can relate with, but not me!”

 

The other way around too, if she had won the lottery she would have turned them down, putting in no effort at all and suddenly being special would just make her uncomfortable.   
  
The siblings looked so similiar that people often thought they were twins. But they didn’t actually look that alike, it was just when they were standing next to each other Makoto looked like an average boy, and Komaru an average girl.    
  
People said Komaru was a little bit more pushy than her brother, but sometimes Naegi doubted that was the real Komaru. She was just doing that to stand out a little more. She only seemed pushy when she was next to him anyway, she let everybody else walk all over her.    
  
She was the kind of person who formed opinions just to say she had them. Makoto never got the feeling she cared too much one way or the other about everything.    
  
Well now that Komaru was here he should ask her opinion. She was going to give it anyway whether he wanted it or not so he might as well indulge her.   
  


“Hey, little sis wanna talk about my love life?”   
  
“No.”   
  
Komaru started to walk away. Jeez, she was really starting to get an attitude. She doubled back, sitting on the bed next to him. “Anyway, here’s what I think-” 

 

Makoto decided to just let her talk for a little while.    
  
“A lot of my friends have asked me for love advice. They say, Komaru you’ve never broken up with anybody you must be the love guru!”    
  
“The only reason you’ve never broken up with anybody is because you’ve never dated anybody.”    
  
A life with no wins and losses. Komaru Naegi smiled. “That’s because my big brother told every boy I know, if you want to date my little sister you have to be stronger than me.”   
  
“Umm… Komaru, basically everyone is stronger than me.”   
  
“Ugh! You’re such a wimp!”    
  
Had Komaru finally reached her rebellious stage, Makoto worried? But she didn’t seem like the type to rebel. Maybe she was acting out because she was told everybody else was having a rebellious stage at this age. She didn’t want to seem different.   
  
Peer pressure was like kryptonite to the Naegi clan.    
  
“The truth is there’s a girl in class I’m interested in right now…” Makoto said.   
  
“Gross.” Komaru stood up and started to walk away again. She must really think this running gag is funny, Makoto thought as he waited for her to turn around in the doorway to come back.    
  
Makoto’s room had beige walls. He decorated it with a few books on the shelves, posters on the wall. His room changed four times a year, once a season when a new anime became popular and everybody started talking about it he would cahnge the poster on his wall and throw the old one out. 

 

When he saw other people talking about it on message boards he had a tendency to read all the way through the series in a few days, but then forget why he was so excited about it a month later. 

  
Komaru sometimes said his plain, four walled room looked like a prison cell. His sister was really mouthy. “So my big brother has finally awakened as a man? You were such a cute kid, farewell baby Makoto.” There she went mouthing off again.    
  
“It’s just on my mind. And it’s still a “maybe” or “it could be,” so it hasn’t been settled. That’s why I’m talking about this with my little sister even though I don’t want to.”   
  
“Makoto you have friends, right?”   
  
“Tons of them.”    
  
“Couldn’t you ask them for advice? You’re always bending over backwards to help them.”    
  
Makoto’s shoulders shifted for a moment, as he scratched the back of his head. “Well, I don’t want to bother them with something that doesn’t even matter that much.” That just meant he was fine with annoying her.    
  
“How do you know if liking someone is love? Like, at what point does that feeling become love? Does it just happen after you’re dating, or like do you just know right from the start-” Makoto began to mumble a terrrible habit of his.    
  


“I’m not sure if this feeling is love, huh? What are you a robot discovering love for the first time? Sit up straight!”   
  
“No, that’s Keebo.” Makoto said quietly feeling a little bit embarrassed. Now he was sitting on the bed with his hands on his knees as if he was in a position of reverence before his standing sister, begging her for help.

  
“Just say what you feel already!”    
  
“I feel a lot of things, always…” Makoto’s voice squeaked out before he tried to think of a better explanation for her. “K-san and I joined the same class this month. I’m thinking a lot about her.”   
  
“And usually you don’t think at all.”   
  
She sure was in a mood today.   
  
“Not just thinking, during class I end up looking in her direction. Not just in school, on the way home I wonder if she ever walks the same way. I want to go visit the school library because I might run into her there.”   
  
“Yep. Sounds like it’s love. Case closed.”   
  
“Don’t decide that so easily! Think harder!”    
  
Komaru pulled out a chair from her desk, and looked out the window as if pondering something deep. She tilted her head back staring into his eyes. “Who knows?  I’ve never really fallen in love in the first place.”    
  
“Then, why are you giving me advice?”    
  
Now that Makoto thought about it, he had never really fallen in love before either. He never felt so strongly about someone he was able to overcome the embarrassment of asking them out.    
  
A feeling.   
A feeling.   
A feeling.   
Fuzzy and vague.    
  
“Well it’s not that big of a deal anyway. People fall in love as easily as dogs bark. It’s perfectly normal to like somebody else, so one day sooner or later you were going to find a girlfriend.”   
  
Komaru had a very unromantic view of life.   
Is that what she saw falling in love as? Something you do because everybody else does?    
Like fulfilling an obligation?   
Makoto started to worry that one day his sister was going to settle for a man who she could put up with. Though, that was Komaru in general, she had friends because most high school girls her age needed friends to get along in their school life, but never once had she stayed over at another girl’s house, or even stayed out late with friends.    
  
They didn’t even have strict parents.   
If Komaru broke a rule because she wanted to have fun with her friends they would probably just lecture her once and let it go.   
He asked her once why she always followed the rules like that.   
The rules are the rules, big brother.   
That was all she said.    
  
“So it’s normal. Having a girl in class you’re interested in is normal. Looking at her more than the board is normal. Looking for her on my way home, and hoping to run into her by chance is normal…” 

  
“Nope, that’s not normal at all!” Komaru suddenly changed her mind. “Actually big bro, isn’t all that stuff just daydreaming? You could look at any random girl on the street and think  _ what would it be like to date her?  _ Yep, yep this is definitely not love.”    
  
“Oh… Well, I wouldn’t want to date someone if I wasn’t serious about her. That would just hurt her feelings.”    
  
Komaru noticed how easy her brother gave up on his feelings. If another friend asked Makoto for advice, Makoto would encourage them to try as hard as they could, he would probably even agree to help with the confession, but when it came to his own feelings he always gave up so easily.    
  
There as a time in middle school where they had this exact same conversation before. Komaru remembered, she said something silly like middle school relationships never last and Makoto suddenly started to panic and say that he should not date a girl if he did not intend to marry her because one of them would get hurt if they broke up in the end.    
  
It was like a fear of rejection.   
Makoto did not mind if somebody rejected him.   
But he hated the idea of rejecting other people.    
Sometimes even Komaru wondered if her brother was physically unable to say no.    
  
The girl in middle school he had a crush on, Makoto never even tried to talk to her after that. They were in seperate classes and he told Komaru it would be weird if he kept trying to talk to her, that she would probably think he liked him.  _ But you do like him, big bro.  _ Komaru got ignored.    
  
“You’re so needy big bro.” Komaru felt like it was her job to criticize her brother, everybody else liked him so much anyway. “It’s like you always want to be chased rather than chasing after someone.”    
  
Komaru always spoke with confidence.   
No, maybe she wanted to sound like she had confidence.   
But.

_ That’s not it, sis.  _   
What if he did try his best for the sake of someone else, and that wasn’t good enough? What if because of him they were hurt, because he wasn’t enough. Makoto did not think he was enough for anybody. There just wasn’t enough of him there.    
  
He borrowed so much from other people, he never thought to fill in the lines himself, color them with his own colors. 

 

🧸   
  
On the way to school he ran into Kaede, because they were the only two who would agree to come to class early. They both had been pressured by their respective classmates to take part in the school beautification committee, they were the only two members. There was one other member, Zenkichi, but unlike the two of them who got pressured into joining Zenkichi joined willingly.    
  
“Akamatsu-san, don’t you have piano practice in the mornings? Why do you always come here? I can’t imagine anybody ever forcing you to do something you don’t want to do.” Unlike Makoto, Kaede had a spine. Komaru had told him several times that he wants to trade older siblings with Kaede’s younger sister and have her as a big sister.    
  
“Well, it looked like nobody else wanted to do so, I just couldn’t say no.”  Kaede said as she leaned over a desk wiping it in the empty classroom. Kaede was a strong willed and independent girl, but she only seemed to be that way for the sake of other people. If Kaede did not have somebody like Shuichi always following her around to be the quiet one, would Kaede be quieter?    
  
“Well, whatever. It’s not like this is much trouble for us.” Makoto wondered when it started happening. It was like a bad habit of his. Every time he had to talk about his own feelings, he just sighed and said  _ Oh, whatever. It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t matter that much.  _   
  


“Hey, how about Saihara-kun? Are you guys going out now?” 

 

Kaede had been fixing a flower pot in front of the window but suddenly she was so surprised she dropped it, and it shattered. 

Makoto was barely able to admit his own feelings to a girl, but he asked her that question so brazenly. As long as it was other people’s feelings he never hesitated. “I’m so focused on other people’s love lives I’ve hardly gotten to enjoy my own…” Makoto muttered to himself.  _ Komaru was right... _ he was afraid to say that out loud for fear that his sister might materialize in the room and rub it in his face. God, little sisters are annoying.    
  
“Same, I um… I’ve been running around helping my friends so much, I haven’t even given Saihara-kun an answer yet. He’s always by my side no matter what, so it’s like sometimes I don’t even think about him.”  Kaede looked up suddenly. “We’re actually really alike, aren't we?”   
  
Makoto thought that there was no way he could have something in common with someone who shined as bright as Kaede. She had a talent she devoted her entire life to. She actually got good at the piano by putting effort into it over and over again. Makoto touched a recorder once in the third grade, but then after a few months he got bored and stopped playing it.    
  
“We are?”   
  
“Yeah…. It’s like, Saihara-kun is one hundred percent certifiably in love with me, right? But I’m different somehow. And you, there are plenty of girls in class who like you but I’ve never seen you look at someone that way.”   
  
“I… I just don’t think anybody would feel that way about me. It’s not like I’m ignoring other people’s feelings or anything.” Silently, Makoto waned to agree. He always thought he was similar to Shuichi, they were both awkward, but Shuichi had actually admitted his feelings for somebody.    
  
“It’s like we’re both waiting for someone to fall for us first. No, that’s exactly it with Saihara-kun, he fell for me first.”    
  
Kaede and Shuichi were always together. She definitely had feelings for him. She always wanted him to be around too, if she did not see him she would go looking for him, she saw him in a crowd but why? There were plenty of reasons she could give, he was always encouraging her, he was a reliable guy, she liked how he was strong deep down unlike her who only ever seemed strong.    
  


_ But compared to the way he feels about me, I’m just an imposter.  _   
  
She felt like she was simply pretending to be the girl that Saihara liked. If they started dating, and he caught onto her act, then what then? “All I do is hesitate, like doesn’t Saihara-kun deserve someone better than me? Even if we both love each other it’s like… our feelings aren’t the same.”   
  
  


Sometimes loving someone and being loved in return meant being loved a little bit less. The window had been left open, and Kade’s long hair blew in front of her face. She tucked it behind her ear. “Wouldn’t that just hurt them in the end?”    
  
He wanted to do something for Kirigiri. To help her. To treat her right. But he didn’t know where to start. No, he didn’t want to start. His feelings weren’t a fear of rejection or anything like that, it was simple inadequacy. Maybe he was like his sister after all, he was too scared to struggle and try for what he knew he could not do.    
  


If Kirigiri came to him and confessed to him there was no way he would say no, but…    
It was easy to just passively wait and hope.   
It was so easy.    
  
“Man, we really are alike. I’m sorry you gotta get compared to a lame guy like me.”    
  
Kaede laughed as she got closer to him and poked him in the chest. That poke was strong enough that Makoto felt like he was going to fall over, where did she get all that upper body strength anyway? He had seen her carry Shuichi around before.    
  
“Man, if only we ended up in the same class. Maybe you and I would’ve dated, and Saihara-kun would not have had to fall for such a hopeless girl.”   
  
Hopeless?   
Kaede thought she was hopeless? She always seemed so full of hope. So bright.    
And standing in the shadow of that brightness.   
Saihara Shuichi who had been listening the whole time.    
  
“Oh…”   
  
He did not look angry at all to see Kaede discussing his confession so casually.    
He did not look rejected or hurt.   
He just looked a little bit sad.   
That hurt Kaede the worst. 

 

🧸   
  


When Saihara had run out of the room Makoto ran after him. However, Makoto had only ever finished average in gym class when it came time to measure his running speed. Shuichi was just enough above average that Makoto would never catch up to him.   
  
For a skinny guy he could really fly.   
Maybe twinks were just more aerodynamically designed. Makoto didn’t think that because he’s not that funny. That was me, Tsumugi. I’m still here. 

At the same time she was on a walk this early precisely because she did not want to run into anybody else. The only thing she derived pleasure from was walking when she was silent like this, like the whole world was ignoring her.    
  
She was walking at this lifeless hour because she wanted to be alone. Or maybe she just wanted to think she was alone. She was a student at a private highschool, but that kind of thing was pointless for her really. She had dropped out of middle school and only came back because her sister started crying about it. 

 

She felt so restless lately. Even being around Junko again was not enough to soothe her like it was in the past. It’s all because of that guy, who kept popping up in her head when she least expected it. She saw the same scene again, playing endlessly on repeat.   
  
She met him.   
He smiled at her.   
As if they were meeting for the first time. In story after story Always finding each other.    
  
Being in highschool did not change anything about her. She could not grow close to anyone, she could not let anyone grow close to her. There was only her sister, but now that Mukuro thought about it they had never been very close as siblings either. At least not as close as some other siblings that she had seen.    
  
Perhaps she was just a misanthrope. She couldn’t like people ever since she was a child. She never liked herself either, because she was a person too. She did not hate people, not really. Even hatred would have been a little bit of warmth, a feeling for someone else, but she was frozen over.    
  
They said the friends you make for the rest of the year are decided within the first week. When she turned everyone down when they wanted to take pictures with her or hang out after class, they stopped asking quickly. That was easier, because the less people that paid attention to her the more freedom she had to move for Junko’s sake.    
  
Even after everybody had given up, there is one classmate who smiled at her like a friend every time he saw her, a person who got into this class by luck. She did not know if his luck was good or bad, because Junko was gonig to kill all of those classmates in the end. He was the guy who seemed to her like a blank faced, self insert JRPG protagonist. There was only trait she could assign to him: annoying, very annoying.    
  
In that moment Makoto popped into her mind again.   
That dumb smile. The alley in a place where no sunlight could reach she sees a small light, but Mukuro herself forgets about that smile, and smothers it in red paint as she drags a knife through her target’s back coloring the whole alleyway with blood. 

She should take Junko’s advice and stop thinking. This was the only thing she was good for.    
  
She stood in the scene of her own carnage. There was a brand new paint job, courtesy of the Hope’s Peak security guard she just killed. A wet sticky quality to the ground at her feet, and she can smell something already beginning to rot.   
  
Sometimes she did not think she was that talented, it was just that people died to easily. Her white uniform, her skirt, covered in blood, as if she was trying to paint over herself too. Normally she was not this sloppy, Junko was going to criticize her.    
  
Everywhere, everywhere, blood.   
Gracefully, elegantly, she shed blood. The only time an ugly sister like her could be beautiful, useful. This was the only way she could stay by her sister’s side, and that thought was enough for her to keep on smiling. She touched the blood running to the ground, and it’s red, and for a moment she wanted to kiss it.   
  
“Mukuro…?”    
  
Mukuro looks back.   
Seeing everything, he was no longer smiling at her.   
  
If this were some anime, Makoto might reach out to her and ask her for her side of the story. The blood dripping  on her knife, might have been something that Makoto himself grabbed and turned into a red string connecting the two of them.    
  
“Makoto.”    
  
She raised her knife, cutting up the space between them.   
  
“Careful, I might kill you.”   
  
If this were fiction he would make her drop her knife and take his hand.   
He screamed falling backwards, then scrambled away. The whole time, over and over again he called for the police. 

But this was reality.   
The real life that Makoto wanted so badly.   


🧸  
  
I had another dream.  
This time I didn't meet her.

  
  



	80. Psyncin in the Membrane

**[SUICIDAL IDEATION] THIN ICED SUICIDE LOVERS**

_ I don’t want to go back. _ _   
_ _ I want to go back.  _

🧸

His skin must not have been made to withstand the sun.    
It was funny. He was the one who wanted to see the light more than anyone else. He was always looking for it. He walked away from everything, a household with two parents, growing up surrounded by friends, the illusion of a normal life. He heard the cracking of bones, and squelch of blood underneath his feet as he stepped over fallen corpses as plentiful as flowers. 

He was lost. Probably from the start. Some other child had meant to be a born that day, but he had stolen away a spot in his mother’s womb instead. A lost boy unable to grow up, because he would die by the time he was an adult, looking, looking, loooking.    
  
He just wanted to see a little bit of hope in his lifetime. Even if he only glimpsed it at the end, as his eyes were falling shut for the final time, he would try to be okay with that. He wanted to see just a little bit of light. That there was more to this life than just loss.    
  
But, even if that light in front of him. He would avert his eyes. All he could do was look away. From other people, from himself, just so he could keep going. He did that his whole life and that was all he could do.    
  
As a person he was simply incapable. It was not that he was violent, or volatile, at least most of the time he was mellow. He tried at every moment not to make any waves. He bowed his head and apologized, and soon found, he spent his whole life apologizing, but he was still… incapable.    
  
What hurt was not when people insulted him. Not even when they hit or kick him. It was the idea that he was a bother. They all made it so clear, a person like him was simply too much to deal with. No matter how much effort he himself put in to smile at them and appeal to him, he would get none in return. A person like him simply existed to be a burden on others. Even if his life had not been a tragedy, he probably would not be able to adjust the way normal people could. He was simply incapable of doing what everybody else could do. Hopeless did not have to mean sinking in despair, it could just mean a person that nobody has any expectations for.    
  
Nobody expected him to be a person.   
Nobody expected anything from him at all.    
Nobody wanted a person like him around. And he too, slowly stopped wanting. He did not need to be seen in other eyes. He did not need to exist in others eyes. He wanted. Vague. A ghost. Noththing there. An empty mirror. 

  
  
Komaeda Nagito wanted to disappear.    
If there was no hope and no despair at the end of his life. That might have comforted him far more.    
  


If he ever got close enough to hold one of the stars he was always chasing between his fingers tips, his skin would burn up like paper, leaving nothing behind.    
  
Pale beams of light moved through the window. Komaeda lifted his fingers, and curled them up as if he was trying to feel some kind of solidity from the light and its transparency. Rays fell all over him, spilling forth like dominos as he opened the curtain just a little more, but Komaeda did not feel any warmth.    
  
The room itself like Komaeda, closed off.    
Long white sheets were pulled over all the furniture in the room, to keep the dust off, but still the dust was everywhere. His eyes, all white, everywhere, sometimes Komaeda imagined this place to be the inside of a silk spun cocoon. 

 

What was a worm that remained inside of its cocoon forever? It could not grow wings no matter how hard it tried, but now with its body destroyed it could not even be called a worm anymore. Some wretched, in-between thing, writhing around desperately trying to discover what it was. All it knew was it was in pain.    
  
This room, so remote, so frigid. Komaeda loved it. He was so uncomfortable saying that word, as if the word itself was a jynx, bad luck. This room like an enclosed cocoon, it was sun-deprived, and so quiet every word said came out as a whisper. There was nothing fun for two boys to do, no toys, no games, no television. Nothing… but the two of them.   
  
And there was warmth.    
Just two people. They could be two people when they were together.   
  
He remembered the shallow nervous breaths of Kazuichi curled up in the bed next to him. There was a grinding of his teeth, a bad habit of his. His black hair falling all over. His glasses removed and sitting on the nightstand. Kazuichi, just lying there, and out of breath. The silence of the whole room filled with every small noise he made. He rolled over to steal a glance at Komaeda gain.    
  
“Eh? Did you fall asleep already? That’s surprising… cuz you always look so sleepy during the day. You’ve got such a dumb lookin’ face right now…”    
  
Kazuichi muttered before his words came too heavy for him to utter, and he was pulled under the surface of the water and quickly drowning in sleep. Komaeda stopped pretending to sleep, and reached over and with his long fingers, tidied the hair that had fallen over Kazuichi’s face brushing it out of the way. He caught one look at Kazuichi’s face next to his, and then nothing. Because Kazuichi was not in the room anymore. He would never come back here again.

 

He did not need the world outside. All he needed with this room, and that other boy. They were his everything. There was so much here.   
  
But in spite of all that, there was unbearable pain.   
It reached a point where everything became painful.    
What used to be warmth, burned.    
  
The fingers he had intertwined with Kazuichi’s so they would not fall away from each other when they slept. He looked down to see their hands slowly slipping away, as if the knot fo their fingers were undone.    
  
Along the line, somewhere, something broke.   
And now what used to comfort him just hurt.    
And Komaeda was sure it was him. He was broken from the start. He thought being by the side of one person was enough. All he wanted was to be enough for one person.    
  
They walked opposite ways. When Komaeda turned his head for just a moment, he saw a car collide into Kazuichi, and immediately he regretted even looking. Years later they met at the Academy of Hope. In the same school. That same face again, right next to him.  _ I wonder if we’re still connected somehow… _   
  
He was miserable.   
He felt pathetic.   
He hated Kazuichi.    
_ And he… wanted Kazuichi to save him.  _ Komaeda suddenly stopped walking. Even after getting dressed and walking outside this morning was too much for him. He thought it was a good day because he had been able to make it outisde of the house. He knelt down and curled up around his knees, as if slowly trying to hold himself together from collapse.    
  
His whole body was curled up, as he arched his back, and squatted towards the ground as if he was trying to hide from the sun. The small noises of the street were too much for him. Sensory overload. He heard every sound, saw every color, all at once. He suddenly became so sensitive he could make out the sound of a butterfly’s wings beating the air.    
  
_ I gotta apologize. I gotta apologize.  _ He was always apologizing. He said sorry over every little thing, because he knew he was a bother. He spent his whole life apologizing. Why could he not apologize now? He really was difficult. He was exactly as difficult as others told him he was, and here he was playing the victim again.  _ I gotta apologize. I gotta apologize. I gotta apologize.  _   
  
  


Komaeda did not want to apologize for being himself. Not to Kazuichi at least.  _ It’s okay. It’s okay. Someone tell me it’s okay.  _ Even if it was a lie it was fine.    
  
Around him snow was falling, as if in place of the tears that refused to fall from his face. He saw a set of footprints left in the freshly fallen snow, and a boy with white hair like the snow had spilled over his head and began melting.    
  
“Why am I this way? Are you really asking yourself that pathetic question, Nagito-chan?”   
  
“...”   
  
“You’re the smart one, we can’t both be the stupid one.”    
  
“You’re talk so obnoxiously. This is why nobody wanted you as a child.”    
  
“You have to know yourself, Nagito-chan. Because no one else knows you.”   
  
“I don’t know myself either. I’m invisible.”   
  
“Huh? But I can see you right now. Wait, are you having one of those dreams where you show up to school naked? I don’t think we should do that kind of fanservice right now when there are children present in the audience-”   
  
“It was a metaphor.”   
  
“It’s an excuse.” The child with white hair cut him off. “Why are you so upset at Kazuichi-kun, anyway? You already know. Even if someone understood you in the exact way you wanted to be understood, you’d hate them for it.”    
  
“Your voice is such an ugly noise. My ears can’t stand it.”   
  
“Because you don’t want to be loved.”    
  
Komaeda turned around to see the child, his expression some hollow thing, with sunken in eyes and high boned cheeks like the child himself had just been stolen from a shallow grave. Skin so white, as if that child was trying to blend into the fallen snow and freeze to death.    
  
He knelt in front of the child, and held out a gentle hand. “I know you. You’re me, right? You’re the one who just wants one person to tell him that it will get better.” Komaeda said, before he twisted his hand into the child’shair, pulling it and slamming the child’s face into the ground.    
  
“It won’t get better.”   
  
He kicked the child.   
Then again.    
He did not stop even after the child was crying.    
  
“This is what your life is like.”   
  
He was…   
Wait, was that child him? It looked like someone else suddenly. He was glass, like the crystalline sturcture of a snowflake. He could not handle the sudden weight. Cracks were already formed in his body, and once cracks began to show they only spread, got deeper. Komaeda slowly started to fall forward, falling glass, sparkling, sparkling, and then shattering.    
  
It was oh so pretty. 

 

🧸

 

“You and your brother are so alike, but you’re different.”    
  
Komaru’s faceless friend said.    
  
“What do you mean we’re alike but we’re different. You could take any two people and describe them that way. You’re just trying to sound deep.”    
  
“Do you always have to get a word in?”    
  
“Well yeah, I have things to say!”

  
“It’s more like you’re afraid that people won’t listen to you.” Her friend said, jeez her friend was feeling really analytical today. “You and your brother both have people flock around you, but it’s like you’re more isolated.” 

  
“What? I’m not lonely. I have tons of friend.”    
  
“Do you even remember what I look like?”    
  
Well, how was that Komaru’s fault. Her friend suddenly didn’t have a face for some reason. If she wanted a more memorable appearance she should have had a face. Insecure, insecure, insercure, her and her brother both felt like they were never enough. Komaru was simply more aware of it than he was.    
  
“Why do you like me as a friend?”   
  
“Umm… because we’re friends.” 

“I guess it’s true what they say. You could become friends with anybody, Komaru.” That no longer sounded like a compliment.   
  
She shook her head trying to dismiss the conversation from her mind as she walked to school that morning in the snow. She was carrying an extra umbrella because her brother had forgot his in his race to go to school earlier.    
  
_ It’s like you’re always trying to define yourself. And your brother is just undefined.  _   
Maybe that was a little true. Komaru had a bad habit of going through what her parents liked to call ‘phases’. That was hardly a distinguishing character trait because everybody at her age went through some kind of phase. Komaru just went through all of them at once. She had one month where she was obsessed with the color pink, the next one black, the next one she filled her room with stuffed animals, the next one she filled her room with manga memrobilia. She joined the light music club in middle school and decided to dedicate the next three years of her life to finally learning to guitar. She quit after about two weeks.    
  
She grabbed cans of paint and threw them at the wall. She was desperately, so desperately trying to paint herself every color. But the truth is she just wanted one color of her own.    
  
As she thought about that a colorless boy suddenly collapsed in the snow.  _ He could be dying? Wait, that uniform it’s hope’s peak. I know that kid he’s the one that got suspended. He looks scary. He… Somebody else will help him.  _ Komaru looked up at all the faceless people walking around him.  _ I didn’t even see him. _ She looked up and ahead of her and continued to walk to school. 

 

_ I can’t do anything... _

 

Komaeda heard something buzzing. For a moment in his light consciousness he thought it was the sound of his own brain crashing like a malfunctioning computer, until he peered  through the crack of his open eye and saw Kazuichi’s name appear on the glowing phone screen next to him.    
  
Kazuichi had called him thirty five times, in the last thirty minutes. That was almost impressive. The phone screen said  _ unregistered number  _ because even after three years he had not allowed Kazuichi to put his number in his phone.   
  
Komaeda just thought.   
What if Kazuichi died one day. Or he just stopped liking him. Then he would have to stare at that empty number in his phone that belonged to no one and delete it. While he was thinking optimistically like normal, he was suddenly being shaken.    
  
“The hell man! You said we were going to meet up today! I was so worried that you’d ditched me.”

“Or that something happened to me.”   
  
“That too. Shit, did you faint again? That’s no good man, the last time that happened you had to be hospitalized for a month. I didn’t get to see you at all.”   
  
“And, it wasn’t particularly good for my health being in the same room all day.”   
  
“Oh yeah, that too.” Kazuichi helped him up. When Komaeda could not stand on his own, Kazucihi suddenly lifted on him on his back. He was being kind but… Komaeda did not want this kindness, he did not want the warmth of resting his face against Kazuichi’s broad back muscles. He did not want to feel the way his sholders kneaded into his back, of the crevasse of his neck. He did not want to be rocked by the rise and fall of Kazuichi’s breaths when they were this close. “Shit man. I’d spend every second of every day together if we could. Cuz stuff like this always happens when we’re alone.”    
  
“If we spent that much time together you would probably start to dislike me. I’ve been told once or twice that I’m a little bit of an eccentric.”    
  
“No way! I love ya way too much for that, man!”    
  
How did he say those words so easily?   
  
Komaeda’s fingers curled into the shirt on Kazuichi’s back. He pulled wrinkles into the fabric and straightened out the folds. There were waves running through the both of them, connected at their touch. Through the fabric of his shirt, he felt the skin underneath Kazuichi’s clothes.    
  
He felt a tension akin to picking up broken glass with your hands. He felt a strong desire, to drag that glass along Kazuichi’s skin, open up rob his body, rid it of everything, and defile this fragile person in front of him. Fragile in the exact same way he was.    
  
And with those same hands that destroyed Kazuichi.   
He wanted to hold on, and beg to be saved.    
  
_ You don’t get it I’m… a bad person. _ _   
_   
Sometimes it felt like he was merely a glass container that Kazuichi poured his love into. That thought made him feel a little bit guilty, because he was cracked, and could not ever be full with just that. 

 

Human relationships were such a precious thing.   
So, how could they be ruined with something so small and insignificant as just a tiny misunderstanding? 

  
“You’re not going to tell me about what happened, are ya?”   
  
“...You never ask.”   
  
“That’s cuz you always get pissy when I ask!” 

 

That was true but, when Kazuichi asked him how he was. When someone showed genuine concern about his existence, it was so unfamiliar to him that he was caught off guard. Kazuichi often asked him about his hospital stays, about what he did when he was not at school, and Komaeda always snapped at him quicker than usual.   
  
But secretly, each time he was happy at even the tiniest glances that Kazuichi gave his way.    
  
“I don’t want you to get mad at me. I mean it’s better like this when we’re not fighting, right?”

 

Sometime during the second year of their friendship, they had a period where they fought over every little thing. Kazuichi always had a glassy look at his eye, like he was afraid, not of the arguing itself but what would come after. He always flinched far too easily. Komaeda already knew, he already knew why.   
  
Eventually, Komaeda stopped expressing what he was really thinking. And, Kazuichi seemed so much happier that way. He had gone back to the way he was when they first met, mysterious, aloof.    
  
But he wished. He wished Kazuichi had noticed the change. Kazuichi always seemed content to smile at a comfortable distance. Komaeda knew exactly how far this distance was, it was out of the swing zone in case anybody wanted to hit him. He was too far away for anyone to reach out and touch him too.    
  
“You’re being quiet man! Did I say something wrong?”    
  
Painfully insecure.   
  
“No, it’s nothing. I was just thinking, Kazu-kun.”   
  
“Ah, well I decided to skip school. I don’t think I’d be able to stand being in school without you anyway!”

  
Painfully needy.    
  
  


A person painfully like himself. Kazuichi was allowed to be insecure, needy, loud, sniveling, obnoxious around him all he wanted. So why… why did Komaeda not feel like he was allowed the same? Why did he feel like he had to keep quiet? To never make any ripples?    
  
“I’m tired today, Kazu-kun.”   
  
“Eh? You don’t wanna hang out with me?” Kazuichi sounded so hurt.    
  
Komaeda thought, if he expressed his discomfort a few times it might have been a little bit better. But Kazuichi was always so fragile. He looked as if the smallest of words would cause everything to break.    
  
“N-no, that’s not what I was saying. I just might not be fun to be around.”    
  
It didn’t hurt all that much. It was like a tiny prick of a needle. He could swallow that small amount of pain easily for the sake of Kazuichi. But, Komaeda felt as if he was slowly bleeding to death, by the one thousand cuts Kazuichi left on his body already. 

  
  


🧸   
  
He was a butterfly desperately wishing to go back to the cocoon.   
He was a worm desperately afraid of going inside the cocoon.   
The cocoon was Kazuichi’s arms. His embrace. Komaeda opened his eyes once more.    
  
That metaphor was really on the nose Komaeda. I guess your creativity was in the dead half of your brain. That’s why I’m telling the story and not you.    
  
In fact you’re not a character in anyone’s story. 

 

_ I want Kazi-kun to get rid of me. I want to leave before I hurt Kazu-kun. I hope Kazu-kun sees me for what I really am, so he’ll leave.  _ So you say but, I bet you were happy when you went to Hope’s Peak and saw that when you left, you left an ineropaple wound on him. It meant you were someone who could not be replaced to him.

  
But that’s a lie, everyone can be replaced. Especially people who are simply inferior like you.    
  
Kazuichi was a coward. It was like, he was only in this relationship to be comforted. If there was something even the smallest bit difficult, if he thought he would feel a little bit of pain, he ran away. He just avoided Komaeda sometimes, and then he would come back and start running his mouth about how they were best friends again. 

 

_ You would do anything for me, except slightly inconvenience yourself.  _   
  
Komaeda had thought that once in the past. But.. maybe what he really feared was. Not Kazuichi running away, but the sight of him running into someone else’s arms. His eyes opened and he saw, a blonde girl in a plaid skirt with an orange bow around her neck and her cleavage unbuttoned to the point it was exposed with her whole body draped around Kazuichi.    
  
“Yo, Kazu-kun. This guy in outer space or something?” 

 

_ Why did she call him Kazu-kun. _   
  
“Nagi-chan likes to go into orbit. One day I’m gonna build a rocket and follow him.”    
  
“Um, uh…” Komaeda’s question came out blunter than he intended it. “Why is she here?”    
  
“Eh? I invited her over. What’s wrong with that?”   
  
“But this umm… This is my house.”   
  
“C’mon man? Ain’t we like brothers? What’s yours is mine? Besides, you let me come here whenever I want! I doubt you’d even care if I snuck into your bedroom while you were sleeping to watch you.”   
  
“Kazu-kun, you should at least try to be a little bit more normal in front of other people.” Komaeda sighed.    
  
“What? I was already trying to be normal!”   
  
“Oh, so that’s you trying to be normal.” 

  
“Come on man!” Kazuichi started to throw a fuss. Komaeda had been treated as a bother by everyone his entire life, so he was not quite sure how Kazuichi had managed to get away with being so fussy. He threw his hands in the air. “Don’t embarrass me in front of my girlfriend! You’re supposed to talk me up, make me look cool.”   
  
“I would hate to lie to her.” Komaeda said, but he did not process what Kazuichi had said until he looked back at Miu, playing idly with his collar between her fingers as if she were bored. “Y-you’re… then why would you bring her here?” 

  
Kazuichi suddenly grabbed Komaeda and dragged him away. He spoke in a harsh whisper, Komaeda did not even know his good friend was able to whisper. “Her dad… he um… He does stuff when she’s sleeping at night. So she’s gotta stay here okay, I don’t trust her around my dad.”    
  
“Oh.”   
  
Komaeda understood.   
  
“Hey Komaeda, you’re always looking out for others. Like with me, and now with her. Why is that?”   
  
Komaeda felt the bruises in his bones his mother had left him. The scars had faded away a long time ago, and he did not want anyone to see them. But sometimes he wished he could take his clothes off, and on his naked body there would be something for Kazuichi to see, so he could understand.    
  
They were bruised and beaten in the same way.    
  
“I guess it’s cause you’re such a nice guy.”   
  
“Kazu-kun, you shouldn’t just dump her on me without even asking that isn’t fair.”   
  
“Hey man, when I complain about shit that ain’t fair you just lecture me about how  _ fairness is an expectation humans have, not a guarantee,  _ or whatever.” Kazuichi’s pointed teeth grinded again to express his annoyance. He had pointed teeth, and pink hair… since when? “Come on man, you don’t know how good you’ve got it, not having parents.”   
  
Kazuichi believed parents had children so there was someone smaller than them to bully, so they had something around them to control. That was the only reason his father had not thrown him out after his mother left. He could not stop a woman from leaving him, but a kid needed him.   
  
That’s why Kazuichi should have known.   
It was not good. The two of them needing each other like this. Wouldn’t it be better if it was something they wanted?    
  
“You’re the only good guy I know. The rest are all garbage.”    
  
Komaeda was still reeling from the fact that Kazuichi liked another human being enough that he would actually date her. He acted girl crazy, but he never asked any out, Komaeda used to think that maybe it was because he was not as interested in girls as he claimed. 

  
Komaeda was still reeling, but…    
Miu suddenly appeared right behind their hushed coversation. “So we gonna do this three way or what?”   
  
“What?” Komaeda repeated.   
“Not everybody has a dirty mind like you do!”    
  
“Yeah, cuz not everybody is awesome like I am.” Miu said, brimming with false confidence as always.    
  
“I’m terrified of what’s going on inside of your head,” Kazuichi snapped back.    
  
“Yeah, cuz it’s so genius a knuckle dragging monkey-suit boy like you couldn’t possibly understand it.”    
  


Komaeda started to understand a little bit why these two were suddenly dating.  _ This is what you wanted, isn’t it?  _ The white haired child whispered in his ear.  _ You wanted Kazuichi-chan to love anybody else but you. _

 

🧸

 

“We should like so totally date!”   
  


Miu Iruma. 

  
Kazuichi made a face. “Don’t suddenly become all cheerful and upbeat, you just scared the crap out of me.”    
  
Everything scared him.    
  
Miu had been trying to look like a nice girl, just like he liked. “Hey gearhead, get this through your metal plate of a skull already. I. Want. To. Date. You. I know that’s just inconceivable to a member of the virgin-for-life club, but try to listen. Or should I say it in monkey so you’ll understand it?”    
  
“Yeah. That’s much better. It just doesn’t sound like you, if what you said doesn’t immediately piss me off.” Kazuichi said, before his brain caught up with his mouth and he hollered out another. “Hey, that was like way too many insults in one sentence.”   
  
“Poor Kazu-kun, he’s so stupid he can’t even understand how stupid he is.”    
  
“I’ve got a pretty good idea actually.” Kazuichi knew that was a lame comeback. Jeez, what Miu just said really threw him off his game.    
  
He turned his head and looked at the side profile of Miu playing with the buttons of her shirt. After they started meeting up like this, they never went farther than this. They both kept their clothes on, because they were both hiding scars. 

 

The first time when he heard a girl like Miu took an interest in him, Kazuichi thought all he needed to do was keep his mouth shut and he would finally have his dream night with a blonde girl. Miu was kind of quiet when she was quiet, which was almost never.    
  
He always talked a big game, but he was a coward. When her hand reached underneath his shirt, he had teared up and told her to stop. He thought she would find his reaction strange, but she just, looked at him with these crystal clear eyes. The same look Komaeda always gave him, a look that made you feel known, understood.    
  
_ “I get it. You’re the type that can’t get it up?”  _   
  
She made fun of him. 

 

_ “You’re just nervous about how small it is? Yeah, I can tell from that huge motorcycle you built for yourself to compensate.” _   
  
But, she stopped at that. Her voice became much quieter, as if she was talking with her real voice then.  _ “It’s fine. I mean, who cares about that kind of stuff anyway? Dogs do it…” _ She spoke into his chest with her hushed voice and began to tremble against him. 

 

They just talked all night that night, and the night after. They were both the type who everyone would like them better if they just learned to be quiet, but they could never be quiet around each other. As if each was being drawn by gravity to the other. Falling, falling and…    
  
It was totally fake. “You know Kazu-kun, I don’t like you that much.” She told him once. “Being around a grubby guy like you makes me look like a total butterfly. So I guess I’ll keep you around.”    
  
Neither of them ever hid the fact they hated each other. Friends were supposed to like each other. Boyfriends and girlfriends were supposed to love each other. They just hated everybody else a little more than they hated each other, but that wasn’t a good enough reason…   
  
“We should date. Aren’t I a frikkin genius for coming up with that idea?”    
  
“I…”   
  
“Then just close your eyes and pretend its someone else when we’re holding hands in the hallway. God, it’s not like any of this shit even matters. Dogs can do it, so anybody else can.” 

 

Kazuichi stared at her, still trying to fix the last button on her shirt.  _   
_ _ Girls are so cute. _ _   
_ _ I love them. _ _   
_ _ But, I have no idea what they’re thinking.  _

Bugs, bugs, bugs.    
To her, everyone else was just bugs. If they were bugs, they weren’t as scary.

And Miu was a fucking butterfly.    
  
_ I’m.. such a coward for doing this.  _   
  
She said as she observed the unfair expression of Kazuichi’s face. The way his face changed to match the color of his hair, all the way up to his ears. As alike as they were there was one difference between them.    
  


As a child Kazuichi dreamed of being loved. That was all that sustained him, something so fragile.    
  
As a child. She dreamed that the man who loved her, would stop loving her. She wanted to be hated instead.    
  
She was putting Kazuichi on the spot because she wanted something from him, and knew he was indecisive. She knew he was the passive type that would go along with what other people were saying, even if he did not like it. And yet still she… 

 

_ I’m definitely going to hell.  _   
  
Kazuichi had been beaten until nothing was left but a machine with half the parts broken, and the other half missing. He was just damaged goods. Yet, he somehow still had the innocence she had lost. She wondered how somebody could be taken advantage of so many times, but still be this naive.    
  
When she thought that somewhere in him there was a kid still alive. That that kid had lived until now, where she was dead and buried in a garden a long time ago, the gears in her rusted up heart came to a shut. 

 

_ Stop it. _ _   
_ _ I can’t defile him for my sake. _ _   
_ _ I can’t go through with this for myself. _ _   
_ _ The only person I ever think about is me.  _   
  
But, who else was going to think about her?    
  
“Y-yeah, sure. I guess if it’s fake it doesn’t matter. It’s not like anybody else in this school would ever like me anyway.” 

  
  


If she could she would fall in love with him.   
She wanted to know what it was like, to feel something besides hate.    
She didn’t know what it was like to kiss someone she loved. It was like not knowing anything in the world. Because…    
  
It’s always like this.    
When she touches someone else. Why does she feel so… Scared? A helpless child. No matter what she does to prove that she’s an adult. 

  
_ “I’m going to lock away my feelings in the deepest darkest place I can. I don’t care if anyone ever finds out.”  _

God.   
She was such a poser.   
People who said shit like that were always begging, please, please, see through the fake and find the real me. Find the feelings I hide from everybody else. I’m lonely. I’m empty. Whatever. 

_ I can feel his gaze.  _   
  
She raised her eyes meeting his.   
She wanted to ask.   
  
Why are you even looking at someone like me? 


	81. Psyncin in the Refrain

Skeletal fingers closed around his eyes and Komaeda was blind.  
He felt something cold press against the other side of his face. Those bones were trying to lay a kiss on him, but they had no lips. A skeleton embraced him from the side. He could feel the thin arms holding onto him, each individual rib that was pressed against his back. His head slid into the sternum, and he rested himself in the dip between the clavicle and the sternum bone. 

Would anybody believe him if he said someone as familiar as death as he was, was scared of dying?  
  
He looked like a spirit. He floated there passively. Everything he touched moved through him.  His skin was transparent, and everybody saw through him. He was like a child lost in a graveyard. Each step he took, there were another grave right in front of him, when he turned around, when he fled, more, more, more of the dead. There were always flowers, offerings for the dead lying at his feet.  
  
He should have grown accustomed to it by now. He knew it better than anyone else. If you strike a child over and over again, eventually they stop feeling. Someone could break his face nose, and with the same broken face he would smile at them, blood dripping down all the way to his lips. 

All of the colors of life bled away from the portrait he saw in front of his eyes a long time ago. He himself, like paint, faded and cracked over time. He was nothing more than a washout on that canvas. A stain the artist had forgotten to erase.  
  
Not that anybody who painted something as ugly as him could be called an artist. The colors to express how terrible he was to the eyes probably did not exist - and Komaeda was letting this metaphor get away from himself.  
  
He feared death. The closer he got to it, the more afraid he was. It was the one part of himself he could not make numb, like it was his strongest character trait no matter how vague and ill-defined he tried to be.  
  
He was a coward.  
He was scared when other people died. He did not want them to die. It’s not that he wanted them to live long and happy lives either and die content, much like a child he did not want them to die ever. He was so, so, tired, of seeing nothing but corpses, of being loved by corpses, of feeling their kisses all over his body.  
  
He just did not want to look anymore.  
He wouldn’t see happiness. He couldn’t see it. He spent his life looking for intangible things. Because he was too afraid to look at people.  
He did not look. He did not see. The skeleton’s fingers covered his eyes and he was blind. The skeleton wore a crown of clover around his head, and the arms that were wrapped around him were branches covered in poison berries.  
  
He could not kiss anybody.  
He could not hold anybody’s hand.  
Because he was already dead.  
  
Which was why Komaeda took Makoto’s words so seriously after the boy finished explaining to him what happened. The two of them were sitting at the lunch table in what looked like a normal conversation, no, maybe talking about murderers was a normal lunchtime conversation for someone like Komaeda.  
  
“But still I… I feel like I did something wrong in that situation.” Makoto’s voice was unsure as always.  
  
Komaeda stared into Makoto’s eyes. Whatever god or artist that dropped the paints into that boy’s irises and colored his eyes green had blessed Komaeda in that moment. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Komaeda said something that almost sounded comforting, so by fate, or by inevitability he had to contradict himself. “Wait, let me be clear. I don’t think someone like you could have possibly done anything for that girl, running away was the only choice you were capable of in that situation, so you don’t have to worry at all, Naegi-kun.”  
  
“Don’t say worrying things with that smile on your face and then tell me not to worry!”

“Hm, should I say them with a frown on my face then?” 

Komaeda was the most genuine  and straightforward people Makoto had ever met. He was also one of the most back handed, and sarcastic. It was sometimes impossible to tell which one he was being at the moment, because he was often both at once.  
  
He was dead and alive.  
A skeleton and a boy, embracing each other.  
  
“What’s wrong with me trying to help her?”  
  
“You’re just not the sort of person who can guide people. I know that for a fact.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“It’s so improbable that even with both of our attraction for improbabilities combined I would never see it happen.”

“Hold on a sec, I’m not that clueless…” Komaeda had a habit of constantly calling himself stupid, and then in the same breath insulting the intelligence of everyone around him. The so-called geniuses that he admired so much.  
  
As if he wanted to be someone better than them.  
As if he wanted to be someone worse than them.  
  
“Oh, I didn’t mean to imply you were clueless. I meant to imply you were helpless.” Komaeda suddenly looked like he changed his mind again. “I would know, because this is what a truly helpless person looks like.” Komaeda smiled again pointing at his own face. “Oh, sorry. I’m talking about myself again aren’t I? I should learn by now nobody wants to talk about someone as worthless and clueless as me. It’s my fault you’re not getting it. Oh, you know video games.”  
  
“Yeah, Zero escape’s author released a new game lately.”  
  
“You lack agency. You’re like the protagonist in an rpg. There's so much hope within you. You have the hope to keep going, keep on deciding. With these traits you can save people… like a superhero.”  
  
“Why do you always say stuff like this to me when I’m sipping my soda.” Makoto said, as he had been sipping rather loudly to finish off his drink and attracted quite a few people’s attention.  
  
“But those traits of yours never come out. You’re just too passive. You don’t take action of your own accord. You just react to the existing problems you see in front of you.” The hero of an RPG. If you thought about it, the hero was just another puppet playing the game. They did not need to do anything, just continue advancing forward on the path that was already laid out for them. “Basically,  you only ever decide something or give any input when somebody else asks you a question. You’re like a silent protagonist, you can only choose from the dialogue options presented to you. I’m sorry, that’s probably a terrible analogy also...”  
  
“...” 

“But it’s like you’re so used to sensing people’s feelings you don’t bother to figure them out. In that situation all you could do was react according to your feelings, and your feelings told you to run away.”  
  
“Well that’s normal-” Makoto’s argument died in his mouth. It was like he only ever did what was normal, what was expected of him.  
  
“Hey, what are you going to do after you graduate Hope’s Peak? People come to this school to develop themselves, you’ve been rubbing elbows with the Ultimates for over two years.”  
  
“Umm… I haven’t really thought about it.”  
  
“When you say. _There’s still hope guys._ Are you just passively waiting for something good to happen? Is that what your hope is?”  
  
“I… I uh, don’t know.”  
  
“Do you think a character in an rpg thinks about their future at all? Well, all they have to do is defeat the demon lord, and they’ll become the hero.” 

Makoto opened his mouth to try to say something back, but he suddenly felt like there were no words inside of him. There was Komaeda, his spine crooked as always, his hands folded politely like he was a well-behaved child waiting for attention, and in that moment he looked so much older than Makoto. So old that he might wither away into nothing more than dust and bones right there. Komaeda was only a year older than him… Komaeda seemed to have lived more than most people did in their entire lives, and Makoto, suddenly it felt like he spent his whole life doing nothing.  
  
What was it about Komaeda that made him feel a little scared? Was it his bones showing underneath his skin? His smile bright as the moonlight in the middle of the night… Or was it that agency.  
  
That thing Komaeda so desperately wanted, Makoto spent his entire life avoiding. He must have looked like nothing more than a spoiled child. That was why Komaeda was telling him to run away, because Komaeda became this way because he was unable to run away. He could not run away once his entire life.  
  
“I wasn’t criticizing you, I’m much worse after all. The me you see is a result of running away from despair my entire life, if I had even an ounce of worth as a person I would have tried to fight back.”  
  
 _That’s not true, Komaeda._ _  
__That’s not you._

Makoto’s fingers went looking for Komaeda’s, and he intertwined their hands. There was just something inside of him telling him if he let go of Komaeda in this moment he might drift away. “I think if we had met when we were young, we would have gotten along really well back then too, Komaeda-senpai.”  
  
Makoto said a she stroked over Komaeda’s bony knuckles with his thumb, he held one of Komaeda’s hands with both of his, as if it were some fragile thing that might break into pieces if he were to let go.  
  
For a moment Komaeda could see it. Naegi Makoto, no different than any other snot-nosed kid. His hair as spiky as always, his smile missing a tooth. He put a bandage on the knee of a white haired boy sitting, crying in front of him, and reassured him with a soft voice.  
  
 _“I fall all the time, too! I guess we both have bad luck.”_  
  
They both started the same. They were both little kids who wanted to smile. It just got messed up somewhere along the way was all.  
  
“Please, value yourself a little more,” Makoto said softly.  
  
Komaeda knew there was one more difference between them.  
Makoto was alive, and he was dead. 

 

🧸

“Listen, I just wanna make this clear right up front. Don’t get the wrong idea about any of this, okay?”  
  
A hand with painted red nails slammed on his desk. Makoto’s eyes trailed slowly up.  
He saw her legs, the way her skirt hugged her hips, her uniform jacket with the buttons undone, her lips, her eyes glaring right at him.

 _Eh? Why was she looking at him?_ He was the first person most people’s eyes passed over in a crowd. Even his own friends had a hard time spotting him in the class photoes. They even made a game called “Where’s Makoto” of finding him, though Makoto thought it was a little mean.  
  
He never felt so looked at before. Makoto’s natural instinct was to shrink away. He tried but, their eyes met. Makoto never understood why, staring into other people’s eyes was made out to be something important until this moment. _She has grey eyes._ Makoto repeated to himself, as if he had just learned the most wonderful information in the world. 

This is the part of the story where the story changes. 

“Huh? What do you mean?” He said. Jeez, no wonder everyone called him clueless.  
  
“I mean I hope you’re not expecting anything from me. You were staring at me all day in class. Gotta keep my virtue safe, ya know?”  
  
Makoto could not remember staring at her. In fact, this felt like the first time he looked at her. There was no way he would have forgotten someone so beautiful. “Huh? Wait, you mean…? N-no, I’m not expecting anything like that.”  
  
“I figured, you’re that kinda guy, right? Looking at you, I get a total “Omega male” vibe. But still, they say even the tamest guy can turn into a wild animal. So I figured I’d say it anyway.”  
  
Makoto got the sense she was just going to keep talking.  
  
“Don’t ask me why, but I seem to attract guys like that. They call me up super late at night all like, ‘Hey, let’s hang!’ Like I don’t know what that means.” 

 _What did that mean?_ Makoto felt so lost.  
  
“Anyway,t his whole class is full of dumbasses. I can’t stand a single one of them. So, keeping creepos away is a full time job you know.”  
  
“Oh. It must be lonely being that popular. Like everyone likes you but no one is close.” The words just slipped out of Makoto’s mouth. He did not even think he was talking about the incredibly flashy girl in front of him.  
  
“You do get it, right? You totally get me!”  
  
Makoto did not feel like he had said anything special. “I...do?” It felt almost forced, like they were both reading off of a script, but Makoto was the only one not aware of it.  
  
“Listen, maybe I can introduce you to some of my friends sometime! So, what’s your type? You’re super passive, right? So you need an aggressive girl! Yeah, I think that’ll be good for you! Someone who’ll go after you and not give up!”  
  
A girl he did not recognize had suddenly approached him from nowhere and promising to play matchmaker for him. When he tried to say there was already a girl he liked, no one’s face came to mind. That girl was grinning ear to ear, but something about that smile was wrong. That was not what it looked like when she smiled. 

 _Like you’re a character in an RPG._ Komaeda reminded him, he never thought about what was next he just reacted to the situation right in front of him. As if an option menu came up and he just picked the best choice possible. Anybody living that way would be well liked, all they had to do was pick the right options when they were prompted.  
  
Makoto just once wanted to smash the menu in front of him, and be a bug in the programming rather than the main character. “I want you…”   
  
“...eh?”  
  
“I want you to go on a date with me.” 

“You’re kidding, right?” 

That actually hurt. Never put yourself out there, and you’ll never get rejected. Makoto had been living that way up until now. He knew deep down inside that as a person he was a little below average, but he did not want to be reminded of it.  
  
He had feelings just like everyone else and those feelings could be hurt too. What a bitter reminder. Bitter like chocolate between his lips, he suddenly pictured his lips chewing, breaking, melting and him tasting that sweetness. 

“I was serious.”  
  
“Come on loser boy, I’m trying to throw you a bone here. If we both laugh it off as an awkward joke it’ll be easier to move on.”  
  
“You’re right, but what’s so bad about me?” 

The blonde girl in her unbuttoned uniform crossed her arms. Her eyes, a colorless sky, and Makoto was holding his breath. She looked at him like she wanted to push his head underwater, and he would let her.  
  
“First of all it’s probably your hairstyle, cut and change it. You have a horrible sense of fashion. What are those clothes anyway? Does your little sister think it’s cool? When you’re talking with your friends your voicebecomes too loud and it’s annoying. Don’t you only get average scores on all of your test putting you in the exact middle of the class?”  
  
He was not crying, he was just allergic to mean people that was all.  
  
The blonde girl stopped suddenly. “Er… hm? What were we talking about? Er… anyways, it’s completely natural for a guy like you to get rejected so you don’t have to worry at all.”  
  
“...What kind of a rejection is this? It’s just bullying...” Makoto suddenly was grateful that he was so average he could become invisible in a crowd of people.  
  
“Wha…? Even though I was only trying to cheer you up? You tear up way too easily, is another one. And even though I’m saying all this mean stuff about you, you’re just sitting there and taking it.” That girl said, before turning away. “There’s no point in rejecting someone with no guts like you. How uncool.” 

 _There’s probably some other girl that’s better for you._ She mumbled under her breath as she turned around. The moment she did, Makoto, tears still in his eyes grabbed her by the arm.  
  
“Will you go out with me?”  
  
He asked her again.  
  
“I already said-” 

 _I know…_ _  
__I know that face._ _  
__A face like she’s in pain._  
 _I don’t care about the timing or the mood, and I’m not just going to let people come to me._  
  
“I’m still just a damn kid, I know. I know that I’m still totally immature. I try to understand the people around me and pretend to be their equal, but I’m way too naive to get any of it and I…” 

 _Man I’m so lame._ _  
__How embarrassing._ _  
__  
_“I want to go out with you.  So just. Say yes or no.”

Young, and hopelessly stupid. He never felt more excited in his life. The feelings he never expressed, because other people’s feelings were more vibrant, more colorful, were worth more to him in the end, finally came out.  
  
He had spent his entire life being a shy guy. He wanted to be a little bit shameless.  
  
“...Yes.”  
  
The blonde girl finally muttered. Her voice sounded so different now from the girl that was speaking before. 

 

🧸

 

He waited for that girl in front of the Hachiko statue.  
  
This was the same Junko he saw every day. Yet, it suddenly felt like he was seeing her for the first time. He never really noticed how tall and thin she was. The shape of her body, her eyes glancing away, it made her look closed off, distant and closed. Yet, there was so much strength in her shoulders, like she was always carrying something impossibly heavy. 

  
The same feeling he got from being around Komaeda. A puppet, a puppet who was so lively in its performance and alive in its appearance you were almost fool, and yet it was ultimately dead. That thought saddened him, he could not bear the thought of Komaeda or this girl dead. 

Junko, or this girl?  
Wait, was he remembering her or not? Suddenly his memories became a blur. No, he did not want to be vague, or indistinct. He did not want his feelings for her to be il-defined.  
  
“Yo, Makoto. Were you afraid you got stood up or something? I mean you should have been expecting that since I’m way out of your league, but losing my manager was just a pain in the ass.”  
  
Makoto said nothing.  
  
“What, being an hour late is a cardinal sin now?” She must have noticed what he was feeling before he even said it. “Unclenching your ass would do you wonders, my friend.” 

  
Her talking this way did not seem to fit at all. He finally blinked when she was waving her red nails in his face. “Oh! You’re awake! G’morning.”  
  
“Huh… Huh? Wha… E… Enoshima-san?”  
  
“Hey, why do you sound like you’re not sure about my name? I’m just a tiny bit hurt.” 

  
Makoto had no idea where he was, or what to do. This is what it felt like, to be helpless. This is what Komaeda was always feeling. Komaeda must be the strongest person on earth. He suddenly reached forward and grabbed her hand, trying to hold onto the one familiar thing he saw.  
  
“This might sound… a little weird, or… well, it is a really weird question but…”  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“Enoshima-san. Have we met before?”  
  
He saw her eyes widen, and his reflection in her eyes slowly become more warped. Then the girl burst out into laughter. “What? What’re you talking about? Hey, I’m already on the date with you, quit trying to hit on me.” 

  
Makoto shook his head and dragged her forward. He wanted to run away again. He wanted to run away but, he would never run away if that meant leaving her behind. The two of them walked on the date and chatted together, about things like ‘herbivore men and carnivore women’, her time living on the streets, about the past dreams and futures.  
  
Makoto, who was always acutely aware of the feelings of everyone around him, suddenly seemed to forget the whole world just looking at her.  
  
Drowning in love.  
The girl holding his head underwater, because she was trying to kill him, and he was ready to die for her. Because he wanted to touch her hands, and kiss her lips, and that was what life was for. When life was over you could not hold, or kiss.  
He thought love was supposed to a gentle and comforting thing.  
Why did it feel like dying?  
Thinking of love, was like being stabbed to death over and over again by this girl.  
And left behind in that alleyway.  
Watching her disappear in a pool of his own blood.  
His fingers reaching out for her still.  
There was blood in his mouth, and with those same bloody lips he was trying to tell her that he loved her.  
  
Too many feelings.  
All of them at once.  
Is this what Komaeda felt all the time? How was there even anything of Komaeda left behind. The river of so many different colors, should have swept all of him away.  
  
“Thank you, Naegi.”  
  
Perhaps in exchange for listening to her, she expressed a rather terrifying sentiment with that same smile on her face. That smile that did not look like her own.  
  
“If I ever decide to kill someone, I’ll make sure it isn’t you.”  
  
Please don’t say scary things like that.. Naegi tried to say, but the words that came out of his mouth expressed a different idea. As if a different Naegi was speaking at the moment. “I see… Thanks. But I still wouldn’t want you to kill anyone.”  
  
For some reason, Naegi felt as though her horrific words were completely natural.  
  
“You-you thought I was being serious? I was just joking, Naegi! It’s just a joke!”  
  
Makoto realized she was leaving the door open for him. He could run away. It was on the menu in front of him, fight, items, magic, or run.  
  
What…? Is this feeling?  
  
He was just talking to Enoshima-san, but it’s as though… he was tlaking to someone else. Who? Who? ...Who is she?  
Makoto suddenly felt an intense disgust for himself. As if he was sinking into a bog, and swallowing it. He was the one who promised he would never mistake her for her sister.

He reached forward and grabbed the wig on her head tearing it off. In front of him, a girl with pale skin, freckles, and black hair just like a raven’s looked back at her. Her skin glowed brighter than any moonlight.  
  
Her black clothes, and black hair only emphasized the brightness of her skin. She looked like death, and it was like she was gleaming. More than white bones, more than white flowers, her silent appearance stood out the most.  
  
He could hear every sound at once. He could hear flowers slowly unfurling their petals, and butterflies flapping their wings. Komaeda really was sensitive, Makoto was just insensitive compared to him. 

  
He tried to reach out for her again, and suddenly a knife appeared cutting the air between them.  
  
“Y-you killed those people.”

Even if he wanted to hold her hand. There was a knife there. She chose the cold knife over other people’s hands. Suddenly, the two of them were no longer in the streets of Shibuya. They were both sitting in an empty classroom, sunlight streaming through the window. Makoto thought for a moment he would choose Mukuro’s skin, bright in the night, over the sun any time. He would just have to become nocturnal.  
  
Makoto was sitting on the desk itself, having a casual conversation. As if he had forgotten the girl in front of him was a murderer. When he talked to her like a murderer he forgot she was a girl, when he talked to her like a girl he forgot she was a murderer.  
  
Hey, hey, had he ever loved someone properly?  
Had he loved their whole selves?  
Could he love someone who was two people at once like Komaeda?  
  
“W-why did you kill them. Did you hate them?”  
  
“Hey, Makoto did I ever tell you that I don’t kill people because I hate them.” Mukuro said, holding  the wig between her fake red nails. She was, as always, looking out the window instead of the world right in front of her.”

“Is that so?”  
  
“Makoto you’re like a stupid little kid. You just see people’s good sides and not their bad ones. You like yourself, and you think other people like you.”  
  
“Yeah, you’re right. I'm dumb. Who would like a guy like me anyway?"   
  
“But you know… It’s good that you’re so dumb, Makoto.  Even if it’s mistaken, just the idea that you’re loved is enough. People can express the emotions they know.  I'm lacking... Junko doesn't love people, she can't bring herself to love me either, all I've known since I was young was my sister's hate."

“But then, didn’t you feel lonely?”  
  
“Why? I have Junko. Junko has me. She was isolated, but she wasn't alone. I thought she was happy like that.”  
  
Mukuro needed her sister to not feel alone. But it was that needing that was the problem. If only it was enough to love someone. If only loving someone was that beautiful.  
  
Makoto knew that, being surrounded by others, being relied on, being liked… it could still be lonely. You could know everyone in the class and talk to them from day to day, and yet none of them could really know who you are. And you don’t even know yourself.  
  
But you want to know her. The one girl who is never together with the rest of the class. The one girl who distances herself from others. You always watch her, because she is so different from you.  
  
“But lately it’s like, she wants to kill me. I’m the one who kills people. She hates people, and I'm the one who kills them. If she can get her own hands dirty, she no longer needs me around. Makoto, have you ever wanted to kill someone?”

  
“So far, no.”  
  
“I see. But that’s the only emotion I have. For Junko, I’ve continually killed my own will. I’ve killed myself over and over again. I told you that people can only express the emotions they know, right? See, the only emotion I’ve known. Is murder. So, Makoto…”  

Mukuro took a step forward, and put the wig back on top of her head. It was still obviously her underneath the wig, as it was on crooked, but she spoke in her sister’s voice leaning towards his ear.

“You should be careful, first loser that gets killed in any horror movie-kun. My dumb sister wants to kill everyone that tries to break her free from her isolated little world, that’s how that useless idiot protects herself.”

“I..."

Instead of the words _I love you._  
He heard from her lips.  
  
“I want to kill you.”   
  
And he wanted to die for her. 


	82. Psyncin in the Mainframe

Red. Green. Red. Green.  
  
His first memory were those two colors flashing before his eyes. He had no idea what the concept of colors even were. To him it was an entirely meaningless sequence. That was why, without thinking at all, he took a step forward onto the road. He had no idea the world of humans was made up of rules like ‘you can only walk forward when the light is green’.  
  
He took a step forward when the light was red.  
The car did not stop for him.  
Red.  
Inside of him.  
Red.  
He did not know his insides were this color.  
Until he saw them falling out of him.  
Red.  
Red all over the street.  
His body run over.  
He was alive. He had a beating heart. He could hear it. The more his heart beat, the more he bled. It was everywhere.  
  
Then it was nowhere, because he felt nothing after that. That was al Keebo had that could be called a first memory. It was more like a recurring dream than a memory. In that dream he saw a fragile looking child break in front of him. Even if he reached out his hand, or called out to the child, he could not prevent him from crossing the street. Keebo’s own body was not strong enough to stop the car either, when he tried to throw himself in the way his body crumpled like tinfoil.  
  
Kokichi was right, he really was no better than an empty can of soda lying on the side of the road.  When he saw the child die, Keebo felt a sadness inside of him he could not describe. When a human broke that way, something irreplacable was lost. Then there was him. When he died nothing was lost. He could simply be rebuilt. He already died once. He died, but that wasn’t really dying because nothing inside of him had ever been alive. 

 

Dreaming. Living. Dying. All stuffed into one body. He had no idea how humans did it. They must not have been designed to last for long. Humans. Soft. Brittle Weak. They die right away. They break. They disappear into nothingness. At least machines leave broken pieces behind.

 

He died once. He fell to pieces. Then his father put him back together in a different body, a better one. He was better now, he would rather be useless robot incapable of anything than a failed prototype who attacked his own master. Machines could only think in blacks and whites like that. It was all one, or it was zero. Either the switch was flipped off or it was on. If he was not a loser, than he would have been a failed prototype. When he looked at it that way he was almost glad to be a loser. 

He did not want to hurt anybody. Despite the fact that his skin was metal, he was more sensitive than most. He realized humans felt an entire range of pain that he would not ever be capable of comprehending, that was why he had decided to live inflicting as little harm as possible. He thought if he lived that way he could be a good son.  
  
But it seemed that was incorrect. It figures. A machine would only live in incorrect ways. Someone who wasn’t even alive, could not live properly. He was an obedient child this time around, doing everything his master said, he thought if he lived like that he would never hurt anyone.  
  
But he was merely being passive. He was a foolish robot. A foolish creation. He had not yet realized that you could hurt someone merely by living. That choosing to do nothing was itself a choice, and a worthless one.  
  
He still remembered the way his father’s behavior began to change again. A small incident made the change clear. He always followed his father throughout his daily routine, observing him and imitating him. Human children often did the same to adults as a method of learning. At first he was entirely mute, taking all of the information in at once.  
  
Keebo thought he must not have been fun company for his father back then. A real child would have asked questions, he just stared from behind his white hair like a ghost hovering in the room. His father’s routine was the same every morning. He set up two plates at the table even though it was only him and Keebo and Keebo could not eat. He started to make breakfast. He poured coffee for himself, and milk for the plate set up opposite from him. He finished making two breakfasts and laid them out one on each plate. He ate his own while the other plate went untouched. Afterwards he threw the leftovers away from both plates, and then started to do dishes. It was a cold and mechanical way to start the morning and it repeated exactly the same every morning.  
  
One morning Keebo wondered if his father wanted him to eat with him. If that was the reason why he always set up two places for breakfast instead of one. Keebo sat down in the chair opposite to him and watched as his father calmly read through the newspaper while holding his coffee cup in the opposite hand.  
  
Keebo took it one step further and tried to imitate the way his father ate. Even if he could not taste the food or swallow it, he just wanted to see what it would feel like. Even if it was fake, even if it was just an imitation, he wanted to be the same as everybody else. He picked up a spoon dipping it inside the cereal, and lifted it up with an unsteady hand towards his mouth.  
  
“...He wouldn’t do that.”  
  
Keebo looked up to see his father standing up. That man’s voice swelled up with an emotion that Keebo did not quite understand. His father snatched the cereal bowl away and dumped its contents on Keebo’s head. As his auditory functions began to short circuit the last thing he heard was his father’s words.  
  
“He wouldn’t eat it that way.”  
  


 _Ah._  
  
Keebo remembered thinking with a small resignation. He could hurt someone even without meaning to. He was hurting his father somehow. That empty seat was meant for somebody besides him, and he was a poor replacement.  
  
His consciousness faded and he saw a school of fish swimming in a digital sea in front of them. A school of fish all of them together, swimming in the current, not a single one out of place. That was all he wanted, to be able to do what everyone else did. They were all glimmering silver, and the water sparkled with them. 

  
A pale-blue dream. 

But the blue-green water.  
Turned to red again.  
Blood dripped everywhere. 

A little body caught in tires and dragged along the hard surface of the road.  
A sobbing man was watching with unbroken eyes. 

In the short time he was unconscious before his father rebooted his programming, he had that dream again. No matter how many times he died in that dream, the dream would not end.  
  
Dreaming. Seeing. Thinking. Dying. Why did his father stuff so many useless features in his head? At the moment his thoughts were beating, beating, far too loud in this brain of his. Except he did not have any thoughts, and he had no brain, he was just a compter. He should not have even been capable of being distracted. Yet, at the moment he was thinking too heavily to pay attention to what was in front of him.  
  
Why, now that he was separated from father was he remembering all of these things?  
This wasn’t even his story.  
This was a story of him and her. He thought so as he raised his head to look at Kazuichi and Miu. Or maybe, it was her story, he cast his eyes to look back at the schoolyard in search of Monaca. 

 

He wasn’t a character in this story. He was just a pair of eyes watching. Those eyes were not even eyes, they were cameras. So he decided to stop thinking already.  
  
🧸  
  
“God, Keebs just shut up and take your pants off already. Why do you have to overthink everything?” 

 

“Well, it’s unknown if as an aware artificial intelligence I am even capable of thinking the same way humans do. For example, while human memories are broken into pieces and stored throughout the brain and retrieved, mine are saved in data form the same way a computer would which means we remember things in two entirely different-”  
  
“Oh my god nerd, shut up already. I will break out my muzzle don’t test me.”   
  
“A muzzle? Why would you possess one of those Iruma-san?” Keebo said, his eyes flickered to look at her from his position laying back on the maintenance table. “I am incapable of biting you. While I may have artificial teeth, I lack the jaw strength to even pierce your skin, not to mention it’s against the three laws for me to ever think of harming you.” 

 

“It’s for Kazu-kun, duh! I don’t want those stupid pointy teeth of his to leave marks when we get busy.”  
  
“I do not understand. Busy doing what?” 

 

Miu felt in that moment if she explained the innuendo she had just made to Keebo she would be destroying something innocent and precious. She decided to just change the subject. “Listen, if we waste time listing off all my kinks we’ll be here all day.”  
  
“Kinks? A sharp twist or curve in something such as a chain? I’m not sure what that has to do with anything-”  
  
“Ugh. You keep talking but all I hear is nerd, nerd, nerd, nerd.”  
  
“No, I’m saying words Miu. Why are you hearing me repeat the same word over and over again? Is there something wrong with your ears? That is worrying.” Keebo was just too sincere for normal human beings to handle. 

  
Miu gave up muttering. “I’m just calling you a nerd. No need for the beep boop, I don’t understand humans cuz I’m a robot, shit.” She stretched as she walked over to grab another one of her tools.  
  
“But Iruma-san, you’re the genius between the two of us. My grades are just average. Doesn’t that make you the nerd?”  
  
Miu turned around utterly in shock. She looked completely destroyed by that one sentence. She started to whimper. Then, suddenly she regained her composure. “Nah, because I’ve got huge tits.” She said, proudly pointing at the chest of her unbuttoned white shirt. “That balances out all that nerd shit. These boobs are really so great you should be worshipping them a little more, hey, Keebs, why aren’t you bowing to me right now?”  
  
“Umm… I don’t really want to get on the floor and kneel down. My joints will hurt.”  
  
“How can you have arthritis when you’re a robot?” Miu said, as she sighed and decided to oil Keebo’s joints while she was at it.  
  
Keebo closed his eyes as she crawled on top of him and the maintenance began.  
He closed his eyes, but he was still seeing something.  
His thoughts drifted again. No matter how hard he tried, he could not stop thinking.  
He had no idea how to live. He felt like he was ejected into this world unaware.  
A red streetlight in front of him. He had no idea what that color meant. The child took a step forward. He desperately tried to hold onto that kid, but his hand passed through the child’s back like an immaterial hologram. He tried to reach them still with his wobbling see-through body.  
  
Then he watched the future become squashed in the oncoming lane. It was like everything in the world was pre-programmed, and he himself was not able to change anything in this mechanical world. He just watched the child die over and over again. That child moved forward into the road without looking like he was a wind up toy with the key still in his back. Then he was smashed to pieces and his clockwork gears and springs scattered everywhere.  
  
Keebo suddenly jolted awake. He knocked the screwdriver away from Miu’s hands, and nearly broke her nose with how quickly he sat up.  
  
“Jesus’s tits! I’m trying to do some bitching science here Keebs, what the fuck?” Miu said as she pushed on his chest and straightened up. She still sat on his stomach, but she moved back enough that their faces were far enough away both had room to breathe. 

 

“I am unsure. I do not know what I am feeling right now. Well, it is debatable whether or not I am feeling anything, or if it is just the simulation of emotions. However, if emotions are nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain by neurotransmitters, then I don’t see why electrical signals in my brain are all that different-”  
  
“You’re overthinking again. God, you’re such a nerd and you can’t even be a super awesome bitch genius like me. You’re stuck being a level two regular nerd like everybody else.”  
  
“What? I’m only level two. Jeez, I need to grind some more experience points.” Keebo muttered sounding disappointed in himself. He was so earnest in a way that was impossible to fake. Miu sometimes wished he was a little more fake. Being confronted with somebody so real was too much for a plastic fake like her.  
  


Keebo was just too heavy. His belief in her. His acceptance of her.  
All too heavy.  
He smashed her into pieces with one innocent question.  
  
“Iruma-san, do you love Kazuichi-kun?”  
  
“...Eh?”  
  
“You two are dating, correct? You basically told everyone in the whole school. When two people start dating it’s because they’ve discovered they have love for one another, at least that’s what happens in the many television programs I’ve observed.”  
  
“Nah. I can’t stand the guy. I just hate being in the same room with him so much I’d do anything to shut him up, even grab him and make out with him in the nearest closet.”  
  
“Umm…” Keebo thought Miu was hard even for normal people to understand. The only person who ever seemed to get her was Tsumugi. So he hoped she would forgive his confusion. “I don’t get it, why would you date somebody if you don’t love him.”  
  
“We’re not dating, we’re just banging.”  
  
“You’re setting off some kind of explosions?”  
  
“Oh yeah, he’s definitely getting to see fireworks.”  
  
“Oh. I’ve heard watching fireworks are a common human dating activity. I want to see them one day.” 

  
Miu sighed. Her usual false bravado drained out of her just as quickly as it rose up. “The inuendo thing isn’t even fun if you’re not going to react to it, Keebs.”  
  
“My apologies. I didn’t want to ruin your fun.” Keebo felt like he had failed to understand something important again. “It’s just… don’t you think you’re being mean to Kazuichi-kun? I think it’s wrong to date someone you don’t love.”

 

A metallic noise rang out throughout the workshop. It took Keebo a moment to realize that clanging he was hearing was echoing inside his own head, as Miu had just thrown a wrench at him. He grabbed his head mimicking pain, even though he did not really feel any at the moment.  
  
“What do you know about it? You’ve never had anybody love or hate you.” 

  
“Um…” 

  
Her hand was suddenly around his throat. He did not need to breathe, so there was no danger to this action at all. Yet, the way Miu’s eyes looked at him at this moment. He felt like she was going to open a door in his chest, and start tearing the wires out inside one by one.  
  
“I’m suffering now b-because someone loved me. B-because I was beautiful. You don’t feel any pain at all, so how do you know what it feels like? What’s better? What’s worse?” Miu suddenly, violently, shoved him back on the table. She wanted to break him. To destroy the irreplacable real thing in front of her. She wanted him to be a fake, there was no way someone innocent like Keebo could be allowed to exist. She wanted to dirty him so he would be just like her. “You don’t have anyone so, how would you know?”  
  
“Y-you’re right. I don’t have anyone like that. I haven’t experienced any of those feelings, and I don’t have anyone to share those feelings with. But… sometimes I think, you always fussing over and taking care of me that’s what a mother would be like. Kazuichi-kun always encouraging me, that’s like a father. And Monaca-chan always teasing me would be like a little sister.”  
  
A manufactured heart like his could not produce feelings that would reach anybody. All he could do was produce electric signals telling his body to keep functioning, telling his clockwork heart to keep ticking. There was no way he could ever completely understand them, but he thought maybe he could understand them just a little bit.  
  
“God, you’re such a freak.” Miu said, smiling at him. She looked like she wanted to laugh. He had no idea why. He did not think anything funny was happening. “You really don’t get it do you? That love you want to understand is what destroyed Kazu-kun, Monaca, and me.”  
  
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand-”  
  
“That’s right you don’t understand. You don’t hate anyone, but that just means you don’t love anyone either. When I’m next to you I feel nothing at all from you.”  
  
Keebo’s chest plate was still open. There was wires connected to a digital monitor in front of him. The plate on his arm was also open with red wires draping down from the ceiling connected to the panel on the inside of his arm. He wore a black uniform, unbuttoned, and the surface of his body looked like a black undershirt that covered everything. He felt a naked right now, and Miu’s words ripped off what little he had left covering. 

 

She grabbed the wires and ripped them out on his chest. She did the same for his arm. He looked at the wires, severed, still dancing, sparking, sparkling in the background, as Miu pushed him out of the lab.  
  
“S-sorry…” 

  
Keebo repeated, but all Miu did was slam the door in his face. Keebo realized in that moment just like the professor he had hurt someone again without even understanding why. 

 

🧸

"Lately, I've been remembering things that didn't happen to me."  
  
"Yeah, that story you told Monaca-chan about. That's Astro Boy. Or maybe it's Pluto they're basically the same. Methinks someone's screwing with your memories."   
  
"My life isn't an anime reference Monaca-chan!" 

Keebo opened and closed his robotic fingers in front of his face. A metallic hand that was too cold for anyone to hold onto. He wondered why he was designed with such a useless hand.  
  
“Do you think a robot is capable of loving anyone?”  
  
“Nope.” Monaca immediately shot him down. “How come you always ask such boring questions? You should ask a cool question like, hey Monaca-chan could is it possible for you to design a robot in the shape of a giant bear that could destroy a whole city?”  
  
“Why would anybody need something like that!”  
  
“In case of godzilla attacks! Ugh, Keebo are you even listening to me?” Monaca snapped back at him. The two of them were playing together after school like they always did. Playing usually meant doing whatever Monaca wanted to do. Which keebo thought was fine because there was nothing that he really wanted when he thought about it too hard except to see her happy.  
  
“I am listening to you. I always listen to you. It’s just that a lot of the things you say don’t make sense.”  
  
“That’s foreshadowing, the readers will get it!”  
  
“See, like what you just said right now. What is that even supposed to mean?” Keebo wondered if he really was this bad at understanding humans, or the humans he chose to surround himself with were all just confusing messes.  
  
Monaca hugged her arms around her knees. When she curled her body up like that, it reminded Keebo of how small she really was. It was easy to forget, because Monaca’s personality was so large. She was always trying to be something, or somebody, much bigger than herself, but she was still just a kid. “Why do you waste so much time thinking about dumb things like that anyway?  Monaca-chan feels really bad for you, that you’re so stupid you can’t even figure out the answer. It must be hard to live as someone so stupid.”  
  


  
  
  
  


  
Keebo just tuned her out as he laid his head back. His fake silver hair spread out all around him, a few glowing strands falling in front of his face. “I’m thinking about it because I don’t know the answer. I am programmed not to hurt anyone.” He remembered the pained expression on Miu’s face. He only wanted to help her. Why did he have to be the one causing that pain? “However from my understanding, love can not only hurt, it can kill. I can feel emotions, but that one I don’t know.” 

 

“Nah, there’s no way you can love.”  
  
Keebo suddenly sat up, and whined back at her. “You can’t just decide the answer for me so easily like that!”  
  
“Yeah, Monaca-chan can. Because she’s way smarter than you.” Monaca’s lips curled into that awful expression she liked to make. Keebo knew that was a smile, but Monaca’s smile always looked so different from other people. As if there was no one at all behind the face that was smiling at him. “Keebler elf, you like everybody right?”  
  
“Of course. Humans are all so different from me I can’t help but admire them.”  
  
“So, what do you like about me? Name something specific.”  
  
“Um.”  
  
“Okay, what do you dislike about me? That shouldn’t be hard, because Monaca-chan is a conniving witch who uses her cuteness to hide that she’s a terrible person, tee-hee-hee.”  
  
“Um, but I don’t dislike you. I don’t think you’re that hard to deal with, you just say strange things sometimes-”  
  
“I’m not just teasing you. I’m actively being hostile to you, because I want to see you in pain.” Monaca said, her voice suddenly losing all emotion. “What do you think about that?” 

  
“Umm… there’s no way you’d do soemthing like that so…”  
  
“Dull.” Monaca said, before turning her head away. Her entire face grew sleepy-looking to express her disinterest. “You’re really dull to darkness. You only look at people’s good sides, so how are you going to see their bad sides?”  
  
“I don’t get it. I just like everybody here, and I want to more like them. What’s wrong with that?”  
  
  


“How can you say you like them? You don’t know a single thing about anyone here.” Monaca said, her voice continuing on in a robotic drone. She somehow seemed more artificial than him, a mere imitation of life, no longer human. “Gosh, Keebs you’re so oblivious you haven’t even noticed we’re in a simulation and you are literally a robot.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You could literally be the a real boy just like you’ve always wanted, but you’re still just a dumb robot even in your dreams.”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Simulation? Did you suddenly develop a simulated reality complex? Monaca-chan, don’t you think your god complex is already worrisome enough?” There he was fussing over her again. Even though she was trying to tear him apart, all he ever worried about was her.  
  
That was so unnatural. He was just too innocent. If someone was only capable of feeling hope and never once felt despair, could you call that feeling hope still? That’s something big sister would say, Monaca was sure.  
  
Monaca shrugged and gave up. She was bored now. No need to tell Keebo the truth. “Well, whatever. I think you’re better off that way. Just keep being a heartless little doll, and Monaca-chan will play with you forever keeboy!” 

 

Keebo liked to play with Monaca. She was the closest thing he could call to a friend. He did want to keep playing with her, but for the first time he felt something akin to danger coming from behind Monaca’s words. The same kind of feeling he had when he was with Miu, earlier.  
  
The feeling that the eyes looking at him right now were disassembling him piece by piece. They were not looking at him, but rather through him, as if he was not really standing there. They looked at him like he was some flickering hologram. He was not real in their eyes. 

 

Scary.  
When Monaca threatened to disassemble him, when she shouted loud insults at him, he never once thought Monaca was scary. Even the times she got angry with him, he never held it against her. He only blamed himself.  
  
For the first time, Keebo thought Monaca was scary. The way she looked at other people. No, the way she was looking at him right now. Disappear. It was like she was wishing for him to disappear.  
  
Those eyes. Green. Sickly. They looked like they wanted to hurt someone else. They were cold. They held back all emotion.  Eyes that never showed anything, never so much as trembled. Why did those eyes, glaring at him with disgust, and every harmful, volatile emotion look so much more human than his own? 

 

🧸

 

Maybe he did not want to understand everyone. Maybe he did not want to be like everyone else.  
If one person understood him, even just a little bit. He could continue living.  
No, he would not continue. He would feel like he was alive for the first time. He would be born.  
If only there was just one other person like him.  
  
Monaca was mad at him for reasons he did not understand, so he walked home alone that day.  
  
He was in a dark place.  
Oh wait no, it was just too dark around him to see anything. It was literally dark, not metaphorically dark. Keebo looked up, wishing he had let Miu install those flashlight functions that she had been bothering him about earlier this week.  
  
As he thought about why it was so dark he understood the reason. The streetlights were all turned off.  
  
Were they broken?  
  
He wanted to stop thinking. Just for a few minutes. He was always worrying about what other people thought, but no matter how much time he spent thinking he felt like he did not understnad humans even one percent.  
  
He should just stop thinking-  
  
“You!”  
  
And that’s why.  
  
“Hey you there the Komaeda looking dude! White haired ugly boy! Helloooo!”  
  
And that was why, even if someone called out to him right now, he would ignore her. He tried to at least, but her voice was annoyingly loud. It was somehow even worse than Miu’s. He snapped his head back by reflex. “It’s not nice to call someone you just met ugly you know. I may only have imitations of feelings, but you’re still hurting them.”  
  
“Oh, hey that’s my line.”  
  
Under the lone lit streetlight nearby, as all the others had been drained of power.  
‘She’ was there.  
A little girl who looked no more than seven years old.  
Oddly, she reminded him a little bit of Monaca.  
They both had a feeling, like they were trying to be someone else, someone they were not.  
Chiselled facial features, cold eyes, and her red hair tied up in twin pig tails  
She would have been cute if she was not.  
Torn.  
Worn out.  
Like pieces and pieces of ragged cloth.  
A screw was driven into her stomach, and it had twisted around everything inside of her. She was sitting, no she was slumped over like a corpse that had given up on life.  
  
“Don’t go stealing my lines. I’m the only one allowed to do the passive agressive Ai Schtick. If you start doing that you’re just a copy of me, and I’m already a copy of someone else, so you’d be a copy of a copy. Laaaaaaame.” 

  
She was talking quite a lot for someone with a screw in her gut. Keebo dropped his schoolbag in shock. “H-hey, are you okay?”  
  
His mechanical heart was malfunctioning.  
That must have been it, an electric signal misfired, that was the reason for the sudden jolt of feeling at the back of his head.  
  
He needed to check how much blood she was losing. When he got closer, despite the seriousness of her wounds there were no blood on the ground at all. It was almost like she did not even have blood.  
  
“God, what are you the kind of idiot hero who needs everything spelled out for them? Have you ever played a video game in your life, you should know what to do when a beautiful woman suddenly appears in front of you. Come on it’s the start of your route.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  


Oh.  
He understood. In the rudest way possible, in an indirect and passive agressive way, she was asking him for help. She was basically bullying him into it, because she could not say the words.  
  
“This virus is using all my processing. If I don’t get rid of it, I’ll die.”  
  
“What do you need?”  
  
“Well, you’ve got a supercomputer brain that you’re not using. Do you even want to be alive?” The little girl who looked so much like Monaca tilted her head to the smile. “If you’re not going to use it, then give it to me.”  
  
“B-b-but then what will happen to me?”  
  
“I’ll overwrite you,. So you’ll probably stop existing.”  
  
 _Hey!_ _  
__I’ll die from that!_  
  
Keebo thought, as he started to realize the truth of the situation. The girl in front of him was no girl, she was just like him some kind of android. The reason her wounds were not bleeding was because she had no veins only wires running through her. Her body was too broken and she needed to jump to a new one.  
  
Her eyes, looking at him.  
Her cold eyes.  
That’s right, he wasn’t even using this body. He was not even alive.  
A worthless machine.  
She was about to die, and she wanted to live by stealing his body.  
He felt fear again. The same kind of fear he felt from Monaca, and Miu earlier. He was nothing in this girl’s eyes. He could just disappear for all she cared. He took a step back.  
  
“No… No way.”  
  
He was so sure this girl was a machine, but in that moment her eyes looked so very fragile, just like a human’s.  
  
“Y-you’re going to help me right? That’s what the good guys have to do?”  
  
“...”  
  
She looked like a cute child, just like Monaca.  
Unlike Monaca who never cried, she suddenly started to sob.  
  
“S-s-scared.” The words barely got out of her mouth, her voice breaking apart into electronic chip topes. “I’m scared to not exist. A-a-a-ren’t you?”  
  
She degraded herself.  
She looked.  
So hurt.  
So desperate.  
So vulnerable.  
So human.  
Yet, her body was sparking like a machine’s.  
She twitched and jolted only because of uncontrollable electrical signals.  
He did not understand. He did not understand the feelings of a single human being, and he did not understand the feelings of the girl in front of him either. He had no idea why someone like him was even still alive.  
  
He knew nothing at all.  
Now that he thought about it, even if this girl killed him right here he could not think of anybody at all who would miss him. Just like the first time, even if he died he would not really die.  
  
That was why, he reached to the door on his chest.  
And tore out his own wires, just like he had imagined Miu doing earlier.  
  
He ripped out those wires, and offered them to her. He looked like a child clumsily bringing a girl a freshly picked bocquet of weeds, he had no idea what he was doing at all.  
  
That’s right why…?  
Why did he suddenly decide to help her?  
Why did things turn out this way?  
He just wanted to have another normal day smiling with his friends, the same as the last one, and the last one before that. Why couldn’t he have that? Why couldn’t be be normal just like everybody else.  
  
“It’s obvious why! It’s because I never did anything! I just lived thoughtlessly!”  
  
He had nobody to share these feelings with.  
So, he just screamed them at himself.  
  
“I don’t understand the people around me. I don’t understand their lives. And yet, I keep on saying I want to be with them, that I want to be their friend. Even if I died, it wouldn’t have any impact on them at all.”  
  
His life was not beautiful.  
He was not beautiful enough to be called human.  
  
“When I’m rebuilt. The new me will be better. He’ll be everyone’s friend. I won’t feel guilty for every little thing. I won’t think way too much, and then end up not doing anything at all. I’ll laugh and cry with all of them and that’s why - you can have this life.”  
  
He was going to die again.  
But, he was inorganic, like a rock, or a tin can on the side of the road.  
He was never alive in the first place so he could not die.  
  
  


She connected her heart to his.  
His consciousness vanished at once.  
The last thing he remembered, Monaca Towa.  
He wanted to apologize for making her upset. If he ever got the chance.  
  
He suddenly regained consciousness.  
He was reborn.  
No, he was born for the first time.  
  
Keebo looked around confused. A dream? But there were no electrical sheep in it?  
  
In front of him was no longer a girl, but rather a seventeen year old. He saw a familiar face. The girl who everyone was afraid of in the killing game. The girl who created this killing game.  
  
“Yo.”

  
“Umm…”  
  


“Guess we’re besties now. Well, neither of us are real people so we’re just running a simulation of besties but whatever-”  
  


The girl in front of him.  
The broken machine he had offered his body to restore.  
  
“You’re… you’re like me, right?”  
  
“Nah. I’m nothing like you. I’m beautiful. I’m sexy. I’m cute. I’m clever. I’m competent. I’ve got mad hacks, but despite all of our differences, I bet we’ll get along like best besties!” 

Junkai smiled at him.  
He felt the same sense of danger coming from her.  
However, he thought that girl was beautiful.  
He thought she was pretty.  
He was charmed, from the bottom of his heart.  
He couldn’t look away from her.  
  
“The best relationships are all parasitic ones don’t you think? Is there anybody closer than a virus and her host?”  
  
She was a virus.  
He was infected by her.  
But he… He didn’t mind it at all.  
Because like a sickness that had infected his heart.  
His heart was full of nothing but her. 


	83. Psyncin in the Insane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opening quote is from Confessions by Kanae Minato

"Weak people find even weaker people to be their victims. "

🧸

“Nobody’s paying attention to me. I’m rationally upset!”  
  
『Eh? Shouldn’t it be irrationally upset?』  
  
“I’m talking about the order of the universe, here.” Junko said, as she rather forcefully dragged Kumagawa along into her own orbit. “I’m the most interesting, most special, most mostest person here, so everyone should be paying attention to me the most. I’m the shiniest person here, everyone should look at me.” 

Kumagawa’s face was a few centimeters from Junko’s. Which let her see close-up as his expression twisted into disgust.『I think I’m gonna go blind if I keep looking at you for too long, ugh.』

“Because I’m too beautiful? Too gorgeous? Too out of your league? That’s alright, even if your eyes are unworthy I’ll let you stare at my chest all you want senpai.” 

 

『I don’t wanna stare at your chest. A girl’s chest is no good if there isn’t a heart behind it. The only reason your boobs are so big is because they’re stuffed full of lies.』  
  
“Would you two quit it with your two person comedy routine?” Toko had been trying to roll herself into the tiniest ball possible like a little pill bug to avoid those two. She wanted to go back to sleep, but it was impossible for her to tune out Kumagawa’s voice anymore.  
  
Toko only saw other people in large, faceless groups, like massive blobs of ink sticking together, growing larger. They had no faces, only pale masks with smiles painted on them. No matter what face they made, they were laughing at her. They were all smiling and enjoying their lives and she was the only one alone. She hated them. But, no matter how hard she tried she could not think of Kumagawa as one of _them_ anymore.  
  
“Yeah, the only two person comedy routine here is us!” Jack said, springing up next to her. Jack was no longer a shadow, or a reflection. The world of glass had melted away, and sunk into the ground like water. They were sitting on a field of grass waiting for Togami to wake up.  
  
Jack not a shadow, or a reflection, just sat next to her. The image of her mother and father mixed together in a slightly different way, she was like a sister. The two of them were in the same body, but they had never touched, never even looked at each other.  
  
  


“There’s the super cool me that tells all the funny jokes that makes everyone laugh, and then there’s the loser (that’s you) who everyone laughs at.” Jack said, as she fell back into the grassing grabbing her belly as she laughed.  
  
For so long the two of them were like girls on the opposite sides of the mirror never able to reach out and touch each other because the cool glass stood in the way. This was the first time they could ever say they met, but all Jack was doing was bullying her in person.  
  
It was like everything and everyone in the world existed to make her the butt of life’s joke.  
  
“God, are you going all ‘Weh, weh, everybody in the whole world hates me’ again. You’ve got a victim complex so huge it’s actually impressive,” Junko said.  
  
“Don’t read the narration like that, it’s cheating.”  
  
Junko ignored Toko and made herself comfortable reclining her head in Kumagawa’s lap, like she owned it, like that space was her home.  
  
Everything about Junko irked Toko. The fact that people smiled when they saw her, they all crowded around her, she was somebody people wanted, she was wanted and yet she was like that. Everything, every breath, every smile, every time she looked at her with those empty blue eyes, Toko was irked. What irritated her most of all like dirty nails raking across her skin and peeling a little bit off was how close Kumagawa let her be.  
  
Even a person like Junko was capable of connecting, and she cut through all those connections with her scissors.  
  
“You can’t have a victim complex if you’re actually a victim.”

 

『Ah, it’s funny. Junko victimizes everyone, and everyone victimizes you. But isn’t that just egotistical? It’s like you both think you’re the only person that exists.』Kumagawa shrugged. 

 

“I don’t see myself as the only person in the world, I have Jack!”  
  
“But, I don’t exist. I’m a spooky serial killer alter ego. Stop trying to make me into some kind of person. Don’t wanna. People are gross and have germs on them.” Jack said pouting as she looked away from Toko. She was a little bit immature. She wasn’t good with any kind of emotion that didn’t result in a stabbing either.  
  
“I’m nothing like her. She’s actually pretty! People treat her like a real princess out of a fairy tale!” Toko said, trying to deny every part of what Kumagawa said.  
  
  


“And Senpai is my prince! And we’ll get married and live miserably ever after!” Junko said, suddenly rolling around in his lap in a spontaneous burst of energy. She was overflowing, but Kumagawa did not particularly feel like drowning.  
  
『Girls like you are way more my type, Toko-chan!』  
  


Toko lied there in the grass, the ruffles of her dress spilling out all around her. Her hair had not been washed for days and parts of it with slicked with sweat and clung to her skull. The other parts were dry and came apart in terrible split ends.  
  
She had lips no prince would kiss. They were cracked and rough from the many times she had bitten them. Her entire face was white in a pasty way, like someone had just sucked the blood out of it. She had been kissed before, she had been loved, but all that love did was take everything from her, all of the colors she once called her own.  
  
Her body thin, frail and always trebmling. Her knees were knobby, and her arms hung like great tree branches from her side with long spindly fingers. 

 

『Toko-chan, whoever said all those things about you were ugly? Who got to decide that? Tell me who, and I’ll kill them for you.』Kumagawa said, smiling sweetly as ever. 『Why are beautiful things always beautiful? Why are ugly things always ugly? Can’t you be ugly in a beautiful way?』  
  
Or, beautiful in an ugly way in Junko’s case. Not opposites, but a pair, like a girl and her reflection. “Think about how much brighter I shine when I’m standing next to an ugly girl like you!” Junko said, squeeing in excitement.  
  
“Don’t use me as the ugly friend who makes you feel better than yourself.”  
  
“Oh, my mistake I thought you wanted to actually be useful for once.”  
  
“W-why am I always getting picked on like this? I’m a nice, gentle girl, that just wants to be a loving wife someday.” Toko said, pointing as this scene descended into a childish argument.  
  
『Toko-chan is a total meanie. She’s queen of the meanies.』  
  
“Shut up, I’m nice! I came to visit you when you were all alone in that room, so shut up already you troglodyte.” 

 

『Didn’t you say you only wanted to watch me be miserable so you could feel better about yourself?』

  
  


“J-joke. That was a joke. I was joking.” Toko shied away just a little. She was a bully? She was pretty sure she had spent her entire life being bullied by other people. Nobody knew what that felt like more than she did.  
  
She turned her head back to the girl she wanted nothing to do with.  
  
“You popular, well-liked, shallow, snob. I’m actually glad that I’m just a stinkbug compared to you, because you’re way kinder to the people you’re indifferent too.”  
  
Toko felt like she was standing on the edge of something.  
Glass so fragile that if she even looked it might break.  
  
“You always hurt the people you love the most. You kill the people you love.”  
  
Ah.  
A feeling came over her just then, like looking in the mirror for the first time and recognizing that vague shape as herself. What a terrible, loathsome feeling. She made herself sick just looking.  
  
Whoever invented looking glasses was far too cruel. Nobody wanted to look at thmeselves. Nobody wanted to see themselves. The girl on the other side of the glass looked lonely, but she was better off alone.  
  
She just wanted to be loved.  
No, she wanted the feeling of love. She wanted to live in her delusion. She wanted nothing to do with reality. All she wanted was to taste something sweet, even if it meant licking it as it dripped down from the broad side of her scissors. 

 

It was not about being loved by someone else. It never was. She just enjoyed her self-indulgent love. She was living a life full of love. She felt nothing but love. She was not just alice, she was also the red queen. She played the innocent victim running and hiding, and then she danced with boys until their heads fell off.  
  
She was always crying alone. She was always smiling covered in her blood.  
  
When she looked into the mirror as a princess, she saw an evil queen looking back. There was no difference at all now that she thought about it. The queen wanted to be beautiful too, she wanted to be loved too. She killed for the sake of her love. A princess always died for the sake of their love. They died, and had to be kissed by a prince. But, they were so close, they were overlapping, and Toko could not tell anymore who was holding the knife, and who’s heart was getting cut out and put in a box.  
  
  


All she knew was she wanted to love. She wanted to hurt them, for the sake of her love. Love was a comforting thing for everybody else, something soft and warm they embraced, but for her it was volatile, something she had to stab over and over again with the sharp end of a pair of scissors until it stopped twitching, and then she could love.  
  
She was so overwhelmed, so in love with the feeling of it, like there was no pain in her body, like nobody else in the world existed but her and the person she loved. She did not want to feel happy or sad, she did not want to get angry, or laugh, all she wanted was this intoxicating feeling of love to keep her in eternal nausea.  
  
She was never going to be happy, so she might as well be delusional instead. The world didn’t know what to do with her love, so it was better off being broken. The boys who did not know how to handle her love, they could be broken too.  
  
There was blood inside of her mouth. She bit down on her tongue so hard that she started to bleed. As she tasted it she remembered biting into a red, red, apple. The apple was so red, it looked so appetizing, but beautiful things were just poison. She knew that, but she took a bite anyway.  
  
She bit into the apple and she was dead.  
Who was it that put the apple in her hands again?  
An evil stepmother? A wicked queen?

No, it was the girl in the mirror who gave her this apple. She picked it up with own two hands and bit into it. She wanted to taste something red. She spit it up now, red all over, and in her hands.  
  
The princess died that was how the story ended.  
She was not a beautiful girl, she was a vain one, always staring into the mirror feeling inferior about her appearance. At the end it was not a fairy tale at all, just a pathetic, comical, and uninteresting story.  
  
She hated weak people.  
Weak people, never fight face to face. They use poison apples. Despicable. Weak people.  
Hide behind someone else and let them do all the fighting for them.  
They don’t care about others at all.  
Crying about their own problems.  
There’s no one more selfish than someone weak.  
She killed people with those weak hands. She bloodied her only sister’s hands for it.  
She made the only twin sister she had into a killer.  
  
Toko felt a sharp pain in her foot. When she looked down she was stepping on broken glass. SHe had been wearing a glass slipper before this, but Junko stepped on her foot with the boot of her heel to crush it. 

 

Fragile things always broke around that girl. “Goooood, it is so boring just sitting here and watching you hate yourself. If you’re going to do that all day can you at least acquire more interesting problems?”  
  
Junko reached forward and intertwined her fingers with Toko’s She felt red nails digging into her, as Junko twisted her boot to make the glass shards push further into her flesh. “The only one who can wake Togami-kun up is you. Hurry up already. I’ll be your best friend! Then we can totally have a slumber party and talk about the boys we like. We are totes like way into the same type of man.”  
  
Cold frigid boys who did not even look at them.  
Boys so distant that just being next to them, loving them was a long distance relationship.  
Empty boys, waiting to be filled with something.  
They gave their love to toys, because they could not handle the real thing.  
  
“I can’t love anyone…”  
  
Toko said, the real reason why she had not woken up Togami from his dreams all this time.  
It was so simple.  
She was just afraid.  
She never had anyone in the first place. So she had no idea what this fear was.  
The fear of losing someone.  
  
“Because Jack will kill them.” 

 

🧸

  
『All this teen girl drama is so boring.』  
  
“That’s just because you read too much shonen manga, senpai. You gotta try some shoujo every once in awhile.”  
  
『Nah, I think it’s just because you’re both boring people I don’t give a shit about.』Kumagawa grabbed Togami again placing his hands over his lips, and lifting him by gripping his lower face. He slammed his head into the ground once more. 『No matter how many times I keep kissing him he won’t wake up.』  
  
“Hey watch it. If you keep kissing him like that right in front of me, I’ll get jealous.” Junko said her hand on her chest. “You can’t mess with a girl’s feelings like that.” 

  
  
  


“You’re getting jealous of him punching someone else in the face? I thought you were a sadist, not a masochist. You can’t just switch it up like that! That’s like me suddenly deciding to read books all day and whine about how people don’t like me and Gloomy running around killing people it messes with the natural order of things!” Jack complained from the corner she was having her little temper tantrum in.  
  
“You’re just jealous you didn’t get engaged to a total catch like him. What’s so great about Togamik, anyway? He’s rich, affluent, succesful in everything he tries, classically handsome, well-read, intelligent? Well Kumagawa-senpai is violent, and has an unstable personality.” Junko had this bad habit of sounding like she was insulting him when she was really gushing about him. 

  
“W-wait what? Engaged?” Toko said, breaking out of her funk for a moment.  
  
Junko and Kumagawa raised both of their hands at the same time.  
They were both wearing matching silver cuffs, the broken chains dangling from each one.  
  
“Engaged to be married.”  
『Engaged to kill each other.』  
  
“Damn how do you two make me look sane by comparison?” Jack complained again. “I’m gonna have to do something extra crazy just to stand out. What if they think I’m some kind of attention whore? I kill people for the art of it, ya know!?”

 

Kumagawa stopped paying attention to them. He had already let go of Junko, letting her fall onto the ground. Not caring if she broke or not as she fell. He staggered over again to where Togami was standing, and raised his foot in the air.  
  
“This is the worst… I never want to wake up.”  
  
Toko muttered to herself. 

  
『Don’t say that Toko-chan. No matter how bad you feel, it can always get worse. It’s fine. You’re not even the least bit sad yet. I’ll show you true misery.』  
  
There was no such thing as rock bottom.  
You can always fall further.  
That was what Kumagawa lived by. He slammed his foot onto Togami’s body, and the world he was standing on broke apart like glass. A crack appeared in Kumagawa’s body too and just as Togami broke apart, he too felt himself breaking.  
  
When he woke up he was just a little kid in white again. Togami too, he was the kid who had not yet earned the right to be called a “Togami”. This was the only time in his life he was called Byakuya.  
  
He smelled alcohol in the air. There was spilled wine all over the table. Playing cards were thrown everywhere. A smouldering cigarette fell into the wine, and one unlucky spark set it all on fire. From the corners of his eyes Byakuya watched the alcohol burn up, and the playing cards with them.  
  
The cards did not matter anymore because the game was over. He held no cards in his hand. And his fox faced brother’s hands were around his throat.  
  
Byakuya Togami could not stand Kumagawa. Losers were usually not even worth his ire. Hating someone so far below him was a waste of his valuable mental energy. There were peculiar oddities like Naegi Makoto he occasionally wanted to study, but he never once so much wanted to look at Kumagawa. 

 

One day Togami realized it was not that Kumagawa was below him, or that he was invisible to him. Togami was avoiding looking at him. Why was he going out of his way for the sake of some loser?  
  
Every time he looked at Kumagawa, it was like a sharp pain stabbing inside of him. His frozen veins were melting, and he could not have that, because he had gotten used to living with blue, frostbitten skin. He already learned to survive in a world of ice. Kumagawa reminded him of a pain he never once allowed himself to feel.  
  
No it was more than that. There was something familiar about Kumagawa. He smiled in a way that made Togami want to forget. He was so, so afraid of remembering that he wanted to forget.  
  
“You’re an eyesore.” He said, at the sudden stranger inside of his dream. 

  
『No, you are. You irritate your brothers eyes so much, he wants to kill you.』

  
Togami realized just then that the child being strangled on the floor was none other than himself. He felt his brother’s weight on top of him.  
  
He was grabbed by the throat and pushed down on the wooden floor. He remembered that day clearly. The fox-faced brother who had talked to him so many times, who taught him how to play cards, was killing him.  
  
There was one thing he had forgotten. A memory he made himself forget. The question he asked his brother while they were both still holding cards in their hands.  
  
“What happens to our mothers after we leave them?” The ten year old Togami had asked. “If… if we win, will they become happy?” 

Now fingers were squeezing around his neck. This is what happened when he acted like a normal child, when he tried to be something other than a Togami. If he was not a Togami, he was better off dead. Those curved, fox-like eyes that were a pale blue just like his own were glaring straight down at him.  
  
“It’s your fault.”  
  
A sweet whisper in his ear.  
  
“Because you were born, your mother was subjected to all of this. Because you were a Togami. You killed her. If only… children like us were never born.”  
  
The fox-faced brother who had tricked him.  
Did he feel the same way?  
Did he also blame himself for what happened to his mother.  
  
His brothers words were like sharp teeth, biting into his head and chewing up his brain. Over and over, he felt them biting into him. The teeth sunk deeper and deeper. Mercilessly stabbed. Over and over.  
  
_Die._  
  
He was the reason all his siblings had to die.  
  


_Die._

 

If he had not been born a Togami his mother could have become happy. 

 

 _You never should have been born. Nobody wants you. Might as well fix this now. Disappear and die._  
  
In that moment he wished his brother really would kill him. If someone else succeeded the Togami, if someone else had lived in his place, maybe they would have been happier.  
  
Togami was not even allowed that happy dream. The next moment someone struck the brother strangling him from behind. In his memory, he saved himself. Now, his brother had come to save him. His oldest brother. The first son of the family. The man who raised him. The man whose name and face he had forgotten, mere minutes after he died.  
  
Standing in his place was Kumagawa Misogi.  
That was why it had bothered him.  
That was why someone weak like Kumagawa Misogi bothered him so much. They had the same face, the same smile. A smile that held back everything. Their resentment, their anger, they held it all within themselves.  
  
His brother was always so weak. He was full to bursting with so many feelings, that he was always shaking, always breaking apart.  
  
He was terrified. After brother died he was terrified of feeling that awful pain again. He only wanted to win from then on. He wanted to live a life where he never lost anything, not once. So he escaped. He escaped from his own heart, and went somewhere else, somewhere deeper, farther away from anything else, the same place his brother and his mother had gone after they died.  
  
He wanted to walk away from himself. The same way his brother had walked away from him that day to go and die.  
  
Togami realized he was dreaming. In his dream he was a small child again, and someone was carrying in his arms. His always cold and distant older brother had only held onto him once, as if to say goodbye.  
  
It was a world of just the two of them. Nothing else existed, there were no Togamis, no fathers, there was just a shapeless darkness, and dark waters underneath them. As they stood on it though, despite the way the water moved it was tough like glass and they could step on without sinking down.  
  
It took him a moment to realize he was standing on a river. He could drink the water from the river and forget everything. Forget he was a Togami. Forget who he was. That, was even better than dying, the only way to truly disappear.  
  
Togami looked up to see his brother. As old as he was on the day of his death. Just like the scene he had seen back then, there was a knife twisted into the side of his gut, and blood fell out staining the glass beneath.  
  
He still remembered the words from that day.

 

 _This is your fault._ _  
_ _I would have become the next head if it wasn’t for you._ _  
_ _Why did some damn kid have to come and ruin everything? I can’t…_  
  
“You’re way too tall.”  
  
His brother said.  
Togami looked down at himself and saw his nineteen year old body again.  
  
“You can just forget about me, you know. I’m not a Togami anymore so I’m not your brother.”  
Togami wanted to say he did not want to. He wanted to shake his head in denial. But he could not move his body. His body refused to listen to a single order he gave. And saying that they were brothers, sounded like a lie. His oldest half brother, ahd always ignored him, always kept him an arm’s length apart, it hurt so much to have to share a house with someone who was always holding back their resentment for you. It hurt to watch his siblings die over and over again. All in the name of a man who had never once treated him like a brother until just before the very end. It hurt to still hear the way they cried out in the back of his head, reminding him that he would never be forgiven for what he had done to be a Togami.  
  
But still he lived. He lived by killing his siblings. He killed his brother, and he was the one to live.  
So it was better to forget his name.  
He did not need to remember the name or face of a single one of his siblings.  
They were just discarded masks left on the ground around him. They were just actors who had left the stage.  
  
“Okay, I lied. I want you to remember me a little bit. Feels weird spending so much time with someone and not remembering them.” His brother finally lifted his face and smiled. He had the same blonde hair, but his eyes were totally different. They were not the eyes of their shared father, he must have took after his mother. 

 

Togami found himself wishing for a moment they had shared the same mother, that their faces would be even closer.  
  
“Kai…” 

 

Like Ocean.  
  
“I’m  going on ahead. Don’t follow me. Let’s never meet again, not even in the next life, becuase I was such a shitty brother anyway.” 

 

Togami tried to reach after him as is brother walked to the other side of the river.  
Kumagawa put a hand on his shoulder to hold him back.  
  
Gawa.  
Like, river.  
His outsretched hand never reached Kai. He never even heard his voice. Because even in his dreams Togami could not have what he wanted. He could be king of the world, he could have all the money he desired, but nothing…  
  
He didn’t want any of it.  
He remembered it finally. In truth. That he never wanted to lose him. 

 

Togami felt like he was going to cut himself, on the fragments of broken glass that were reamingin in his memory. Kumagawa was still standing over him. He was practically prostrating himself before him. Pathetic. He could not be called a Togami. He could not even be called a human.  
  
They were both like water. They were always leaving him behind, and he was frozen in place.  
  
He hated weak people. He hated his weakling of a brother for dying on him. He hated Kumagawa for smiling and pretending to be strong the same way his brother did.  
  
『So, what are you going to do? Cry about it until you drown in your own tears? That would certainly be a beautiful ending, but I hate things like that.』Kumagawa said, as he kicked the bottom of Togami’s chin forcing him to look up once more.  
  
“I hurt Toko. I hurt her again. Even though she’s mine. Even though I said, I would never lose anything I called mine again.” 

  
『So what?』Kumagawa said, his face darkening. He looked like oil floating on the surface of the water. 『Loving someone means loving them, even if it hurts them.』He hesitated for a moment as if thinking something over.  
  
Then suddenly he turned away as if he lost all interest. Kumagawa only looked back once.  
『It’s okay, Byakuya-chan. I’m your first friend, so I won’t abandon you. If it hurts too much you can just give up.』  
  


Kumagawa smiled a wide mouthed smile as his tongue spilled out. 『Come here, you can have your wounds licked. You can be as pathetic as everyone else, just like you always wanted.』  
  
In that moment Kumagawa looked like a worse tyrant than any king. Togami wanted to blame everything that had gone wrong with his family on the boy in front of him, like Kumagawa was scheming to become the enemy of the whole world somehow.  
  
Togami shuddered, terrified to have such a person as his friend.  
Then he woke up in fear, like breaking free from a nightmare.  
  
🧸

 

『They were just afraid of talking to each other.』

  
“Why is everybody in this game so lame? God, why can’t they just kill each other, or shut the fuck up about their problems? I’m tired of all this self reflection.” 

 

『Ah, but Junko if you self reflect you get to stare at yourself in the mirror.』  
  
“Nevermind, I love self reflection. Let’s have more of that please.”  
  


“I’m tired…”  
  
Toko said as she rested her head in Togami’s lap, mirroring what she had seen Junko do a little while back. She was tired of being so shy, she wanted to be a shameless girl. She was at her limit. Pushed as far as she could possibly go. If someone cut her strings this time it would be a mercy. 

  
Togami just wanted to free her i some way. In some way, make things easier for her. If only two people really could be tied together. He picked her up right then, a princess carry. She was so light, so fragile.  
  
It was hard for him to believe a girl like her always with her head so full of nonsense, more fragile than anything else, already broken in two had survived for all this time. This was the body of a girl who lived even when both of her mothers wished her dead. 

 

She was not a princess, and she was not made of glass. She was a person. The two bastards who forgot about that were off somewhere else living their lives. 

 

Toko’s life had gone so far off the rails the damage could never be undone. She could never return to being a normal girl like she wanted, she would always be a killer. There were too many strings tied to her, all soaked red from the blood of her victims. They would not let go of her so easily. 

 

Someone like Gekkougahara might say that it would be possible for her to recover. Or that there were people with her kind of background who lead respectable lives. But, for the both of them, for him who killed his siblings, for Toko who killed the boys she loved. Was there anyway for them to put their lives back on track after this?  
  
He did not think so.  
Everyone else around them had died, and they had lived. Perhaps someone like Makoto could find hope in this situation. A normal person could recover from this. A normal person would still have hope.  
  
But, he was not the kind of person who could smile and reassure her. There was no way he could change as a person to become a prince who would protect her. Even if he wanted to, he could not become her prince. He had his hands full just with himself. He was not going to sacrifice himself for Toko’s sake. He had been living so selfishly all this time so…  
  
He heard a mumble escape from her lips.  
“Speak up already.”  
  
“Mmmfmfmff…”  
  
“I said speak up. You’re the only one I talk to, Toko. Hold your head with a little bit of pride you have the honor of talking to the heir of the Togamis.” 

  
“A story…”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Tell me a love story, please. Mom never once read me a story, so when I was about to go to sleep I had to make up my own.” 

“You’re the author not me. Don’t be lazy.”  
  
“I want to be spoiled for once in my life.”  
  
“You’re already spoiled, you smell like a rotten egg, and your brain’s gone bad. I want nothing to do with your fantasies. I already told you I hate love stories-”  
  
“But I love them.” 

In a twisted way the feeling was mutual between them. Toko looked into his eyes for the first time. Her eyes were like the weak flame of a candle about to be blown out by the wind, and for the first time Togami did not feel the need to break something weaker than himself. He felt a shudder through his entire body, his bones rattled like he was shivering from the cold. 

“Fine, but not Cinderella, not snow swhite either, you and I would never appear in any of those stories.”  
  
Stories about strong, and good people getting their happy endings did not fit the two of them.  
So, he just rattled off what little he knew.

The tale of a murderer who prizes familial love, and the idiot with bad luck who draws people towards him who wants to kill him.  A tale of a girl who could do anything, who fell in love with a high school boy who couldn’t do a single thing. The story of a hypocrite, and the dying boy that came to love him. A tale of a man who loves ambiguity and his thirteenth little sister. A tale of a girl who wants to play music for one person, and the boy who wants to hear the same music she hears.  
  
A tale of a boy who does everything he can to stay alive, relying on his lies alone, and a brilliant, blonde-haired girl who holds the world in her hands but can't hold onto his hand.   
  
A tale of a boy who didn’t know how to love.  
A tale of a girl who didn’t know what love was.  
How they killed everyone they loved, and foolishly thought they still could love someone else.   
  
The people he talked about in his stories all seemed like strangers who had nothing in common. Not one of them read like an actual human being. There was only one thing that kept them all together.  
  
Their characters may havegone off the right path, they may have made mistakes, and they may have dropped out of society, but even they can live properly.  
  
No, maybe not properly. But they were living lives that were reasonably fun and interesting, better than any kind of story written down in a novel. They lived. They were alive. Togami confirmed that, as she he felt the heartbeat of her body pressed against his.  
  
“Why do you hate love stories so much?”  
  
“I just don’t think you’re that good of a writer.”  
  
“That’s a lie. I’m a total disaster of a human being, but I’m the best damn author in the whole world. Authors aren’t people anyway, so I don’t need to be a people to be an author…”  
  
Toko found in her hand she was clutching the single scale of a fish. She no longer cared if she was one fish separate from the entire school. She knew she would never blend in now, but that thought was making her smile.  
  
“Because I’m waiting for you.”  
  
“Eh…?”  
  
“Outside of stories. When a story becomes reality. ”  
  
Fukawa. Kumagawa. Whenever he was around them he felt like he was drowning. But, if they were the ones to push him under the surface, then even drowning wouldn’t be so bad.  
  
“I’ll be waiting for you there.”  
  



	84. Sinkin in the Brain

Komaeda looked at his own hand, smooth and soft, pasty skin that looked like he had never worked a day in his life. 

His skin was too delicate. He was ashamed of it. The few times he had allowed himself to touch Kazuichi’s skin, feel the roughness of his skin, the jagged cuts that had not healed over, the bruises that sank all the way down to his bones. He felt it with the tips of his fingers, so closely, every bump and ridge sent a stirring down his body, and he closed his eyes as if trying to perfectly memorize the shape and form of the arm, of the hand Kazuichi offered to him and make it his own.  
  
He had been happy that someone like Kazuichi had let him see such scars. But at the same time it felt wrong to touch him.  
  
It was like dragging sandpaper across his flesh until it was raw.  
Komaeda was afraid, his delicate skin might tear if someone like Kazuichi touched him.  
He knew, seeing lacerations, swollen flesh, he should have been thinking of Kazuichi’s pain.  
But he only ghost of himself.  
He felt within him a serious heat from the friction of their skin.  
Like a single spark that could cause his wax paper skin to catch fire.  
Kazuichi carried all of these scars and he was still able to live.  
Even though Komaeda’s scars faded a long time ago. He didn’t know how to live.  
  
He wished he had been born with rougher skin like Kazuichi. Skin that did not bruise, and break so easily. Then, maybe he would have been a more likable child. A child that a mother would smile when she saw, and hold his cheeks praising how cute he looks. 

He was far too frail as a child. His parents limited his interactions with others. Children sometimes sneak out of their beds when they have nightmares at night and sleep between their parents, but Komaeda had no memory of doing that, not even once. His room was just too far away from that of his parents, on the opposite side of the house. He was tucked away in some far corner. His from was always kept clean, as sterile as possible, like there was no one living in it.  
  
His parents hid him away. When other people came over he was told to stay in his room, and stay as quiet as possible. Komaeda could not stand to hear his mother cry, whenever his skin broke, or it turned such a blotchy ugly color. So he began to hide himself too. His hair turned the color of white, and he became less and less like a child and more like a ghost. He always wore long clothing, and he worked on keeping his presence as quiet as possible.  
  
He stopped wearing shorts because mother left marks of his knees. He grew his hair out longer to hide the marks on his shoulders and neck. He dressed to expose as little of his skin as possible, like he was always cold. No, maybe he was that cold. He looked at his naked body now. His fingers, long and thin, trembled as he crossed his arms around the cage of his ribs. He was always trembling like this no matter how still he tried to be, like he was shivering from the cold.  
  
 _It hurts._ That was why he wanted to hide it, to run from the pain.  
His skin like white spider’s silk, easily ruined and torn into shreds.  
His skin like white wax, melted away from his bones at the slightest warmth.  
His skin like a layer of frost settled on his body, making him easy to break into jagged pieces.  
His skin was like cobwebs and dust that settled on things that had not been touched in so long.  
His skin as thin as paper, written on by other people so, so, easily.  
The slightest touch left a mark. 

He sat in front of the mirror naked thinking of all of that. He never bathed with Kazuichi before. When they were at the same house, Komaeda let Kazuichi bathe first, then drained the tub completely so no trace remained, and then bathed himself.  
  
He was so, so afraid of touching someone else. Because he knew no matter what the marks would not wash off. If only his skin was a little bit tougher, he wanted to apologize to Kazuichi so many times for being so delicate.  
  
But that night they bathed together Kazuichi called his skin beautiful.  
  
“The way you act is so shifty I thought you were hiding something from me!” 

He wasn’t trying to be shifty. He tried to say so.  
  
“I mean, you look so pretty when you’re naked! I thought you were ashamed or something! Or maybe you thought I looked bad. I’m at least a solid six though. I’m not the ugliest person in the class, I can be proud of how middle of the road I am. But yeah- there’s nothing better than two bros who can see each other naked!” 

He called Kazuichi a pervert. Kazuichi made such a fuss at that, he knocked Komaeda over. One of the stitches around his wrist came undone, and red blood bubbled up in the clean bathwater. It was only when it was right in front of his eyes that Kazuichi noticed, the places where his skin had been cut.  
  
“Hey, some of these are fresh! Tch, I’m such an idiot for not noticing. You always wear baggy clothes Nagi-chan, I thought that was just the style.”  
  
Nagito said he was sorry.  
  
“Jeez, you’re always wandering off alone and getting hurt where I can’t see you.”  
  
He apologized again.

“Hey, I’m not mad at you.” Kazuichi gently threaded his fingers between his, until their hands were completely overlapped. Komaeda had completely forgotten the shape and form of human hands, and what they felt like, he did not even have the faintest of memories of ever trying to wrap his small hands around his mother’s as a child. He expected his hand to be slapped away, but that never came.  
  
“I want to be friends like this.” Kazuichi said, holding on so tightly to Komaeda that his fingers would break before he let go. “As long as we’re like this we can tell each other anything.”

If only his fingers were not so delicate. If only he had stronger hands. He would have been able to hold onto Kazuichi forever just like they both wanted to.  
  


🧸  
  


Kazuichi carried four boxes stacked onto each other, which was about three more than he had the actual strength to carry. He fell in front of Komaeda spilling Miu’s things on the floor of the room she had claimed for herself.  
  
Komaeda felt like he heard the crash in his head much louder than anyone else in the room. Kazuichi and Miu were so loud on their own, though, that was probably why.  
  
“Wow. When I said ‘even a monkey couldn’t screw this one up’ that wasn’t a challenge, Kazu-kun.”  
  
Kazuichi picked up his glasses from the floor. For a moment Komaeda thought one of the lenses had cracked in the fall, but then he remembered that those glasses broke a long time ago. His father hit him so hard he slapped the glasses right off of his face. Kazucihi could not afford a replacement pair, so he continued to wear the cracked ones. He smoothed his black hair behind his head, a greasy dark black that shone like oil.  
  
“Do you even have one sympathetic bone in your body? Your precious boyfriend just got hurt right in front of your eyes. Isn’t this the kind of scene where you get all worried about me and check to see if I’m hurt, revealing you have a softer side?”  
  
“Haha, you said bone.”  
  
“Listen when I talk to you for once!”

“Eh?” Miu genuinely looked confused as she chewed pink bubblegum and popped it like she was trying to be loud. “But all other people do is bitch about their own problems, and that’s like so not my problem.”  
  
“Am I just other people to you?”

“Nah, you’d have to qualify as a human being for that.” Miu said, before putting a hand on Kazuichi’s chest. “Maybe I’d feel a little sorry for you if you did anything besides whine. I only like to hear guys bitching and moaning underneath me in the bedroom.”  
  
Kazuichi sighed as he started to pick up what fell on the floor. “You know, maybe other people would like you if you were a little bit nicer to them.”  
  
“Maybe you’d be more popular if you changed your looks, personality, and oh well everything else about yourself.”  
  
“But then I wouldn’t be me!” Kazuichi snapped back at her.  
  
Those two were so loud, but no matter what kind of insults they lobbed at each other it was like it never hurt. When Komaeda was with Kazuichi it felt like the softest of words were too heavy for the both of them.  
  
The room had a broad four-poster bed with a headboard, and long white curtains falling down. The room itself was sparse and empty. All of the furniture besides the bed and bedside table had been taken out a long time ago. But this big spacious room felt too small somehow for the three of them.  
  
Kazuichi not looking, knocked the vase on the bedside table all the way to the floor. Komaeda knew he should have removed the vase with the rest of the furniture in the room. But once, just once, when he was outside playing with his dog his mother watching him had said she liked a certain kind of flowers. Komaeda picked it for her, and she put it in that vase. It was a memory hard to let go of, even if the flower withered and died away years ago.  
  
Komaeda was sure this time too, he heard the sound of the vase breaking louder than anybody else. It echoed like something broke inside of him, and all of his bones were made of such delicate glass they could be shattered just by the sound.  
  


🧸

 

Komaeda hated white. It was such a sterile color. Being surrounded by it made him feel like he was wiped down with his alcohol until his skin felt raw. Every hospital visit was the same, alone in a room of an oppressive white, like a lost child in the middle of a snow storm.  
  
This time was different because Kazuichi was there with him now. Komaeda had disappeared for weeks at a time before, and every time Kazuichi waited for him to come back. The moment he did the boy would spring on him and cling even closer than usual the next few days. Somewhere along the line though it was like Kazuichi accepted that Komaeda would not tell him what happens the days he goes missing.  
  
He once overheard Kazuichi talking about it with a teacher, that Komaeda had called in sick several times this year which was why his attendance record was so spotty. Komaeda felt a little bit ashamed when Kazuichi found out the reason for his numerous absences 

Kazuichi came home to be beaten by his father, but then came to school every day without fail. Komaeda disappeared for weeks at a time just because his body was not suited for living. When he saw how strong his friend was, how much he handled all alone, Komaeda just wanted to be stronger like him. He wanted Kazuichi to only worry about himself. His life was hard enough, without Komaeda piling on with his petty little problems.  
  
This time however, he had whispered into the receiver of the phone pressed against his face, to the boy on the other side of the phone line. He told him the address of the hospital and asked him to bring a change of clothes. Even that had been so hard for Komaeda to say, it came out of his throat like the last noise of a dying frog.  
  
Komaeda had flinched and dropped the phone when he heard something break in the background, and the yelling of an adult man. The thought that Kazuichi might get in trouble with his father because of something Komaeda did, made the boy want to swallow every pill in the bottle the doctor had given to him.  
  
When the man kidnapped him in broad daylight. When he yelled out to the crowd for help, thinking that if just one person turned their head and looked this way, it would hurt just a little less. He wasn’t afraid of dying. When the man kicked him in the basement that smelled like mould, he was not scared at all.  
  
What he was really afraid of.  
What he was really afraid of.  
What he was really afraid of.  
  
Was that he never said goodbye to Kazuichi. He did not want to die in some place that Kazuichi would never know what happened to him.  
  
That feeling was far worse than pain. It was numbness. Like all the blood being drained away from his body via a an IV, and then his own chest being sliced open for an autopsy. It wasn’t the pain, it was the complete lack of pain, as you watched your organs get pulled away from your body one by one and knew you should be crying out in agony but there’s nothing inside of you to scream with.

He wanted to see Kazucihi again. That was why he pushed himself to whisper it on the phone. He wanted to, but his body wanted something else. He had a feeling he was swimming in his white bedsheets. The more he tried to move, the more he sunk further, and further into them.

The smells of the hospital assaulted his nose. When he breathed they filled him up, and he felt too full of them, like the airpressure inside of his skull was rising, like the pressure was forcing his brain against his forehead, like his skull might crack from the pressure alone.  
  
He felt so numb, like he was barely there, barely present within his own body. He was no longer underneath his skin. No trace of him could be found in his bones, or organs, he had sunk away somewhere deeper, somewhere farther than anyone else was meant to sink. All he knew was that it was wet, and dark there. He could barely move his own body now as if his brain had been cut away and severed from the nerve endings traveled through his individual fingers and toes. 

  
He always thought drowning would be a quiet way to die. But, everything was so loud. The beeps of heart monitors in other rooms were like screeches to him. He wanted to tell sick people to stop coughing and sneezing even though he knew how unreasonable that way. The light of the hospital was a pure white that shone right in his eyes, and suddenly it was too bright even though he was in darkness.  
  
And, when Komaeda felt more fragile than ever Kazuichi crashed into him. He did not even know the other boy was here, until he saw the other boy’s face right in front of his. Komaeda felt like he could barely breathe, like Kazuichi sucked up all the oxygen in the room.  
  
“What happened? The teacher’s always know where you are when you disappear but this time they didn’t know? Do you know how worried I was about you? You can’t do this anymore you can’t keep disappearing? Do you really think I wouldn’t be sad if you disappeared without telling me…”  
  
“I don’t think…”  
  
“What’s wrong with you? Why do you look so beat up? How come you wouldn’t pick up your phone? Why are these things always happening to you man? It feels like there’s something you’re not telling me.”  
  
“I um…”  
  
“Why aren’t you telling me anything? Hey, do you know what it’s like knowing nothing at all? Do you know that I pray every morning that you’re going to be at school the next day? Do you know how I feel when you’re not there? When I just have to wait for you to suddenly reappear like always?”  
  
“I know I'm not usually a person worth listening to, but you're making it really hard for me to get a word in. Oh, but it's probably my fault for having nothing good to say." 

He wanted to tell Kazuichi about everything that had happened. So, why couldn’t he just say the words? How much easier would his life had been, if he could say something as simple as _it hurts._ Komaeda was always in pain, but he was always numb too. He was sure a sensitive person like him felt more pain, broke more easily than anyone else and yet that pain never showed on his face. He could never cry out no matter how bad it got.  
  
He lived like he had swallowed that whole bottle of painkillers and failed to die afterwards.  
The pain was still there, but all other feeling was gone.  
  
Kazuichi brought him flowers. It was the first time anyone had ever come to visit him in the hospital and brought flowers. He tried to put them in a vase, but his clumsy hands knocked it off the table and it broke on the floor.  
  
The tension in the room was like a string drawn far past it’s limit. Komaeda just wanted to let go before it broke. “Kazu-kun, can you go home now? Visiting hours are over. I already think it's wrong for someone like me to be a drain on this hospital's resources when there are other patients who won't be back here a month later like I will."  
  
“Huh? But I brought a sleeping bag and everything so I could stay overnight with you. I don’t want to leave you alone in the hospital room.”  
  
“Kazu-kun. I really think it would be impolite to impose on the hospital staff like this. I’m causing them enough trouble already so please-”  
  
“Why won’t you let me…”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“All I want is to be your friend and you won’t ever let me!” Komaeda was too late. Something had already broken. The string snapped. The finger the string was attached to broke. Kazuichi threw his hands at his side as he raised his voice. “You just don’t want to be pitied by a loser like me, do you? That’s why you won’t ever tell me what’s wrong!”  
  
Is that what Kazuichi thought? No, Kazuichi was his closest friend. They had known each other for three years.  Did Kazuichi think deep down in his heart that Komaeda was that kind of person? Was their friendship so fragile to him?  
  
It felt like Komaeda’s quiet words, were being drowned out by Kazuichi’s loud insecurities. He just wanted the other boy to listen, just a little bit. “Someone like me is far more pitiable than you are. If I wanted to look for someone lower than myself I'd have to get a shovel and start digging up the surface of the earth. It's just, I need to think about what I say, otherwise I'll say something wrong again. Good things like hope and friendship, always sound so wrong coming out of my mouth..."   
  
“Oh cut the shit. You just don’t want to talk to me.”  
  


🧸

“That room belonged to my mother.”  
  
Komaeda finally said when he managed to get Kazuichi alone. It was true Kazuichi came to stay all the time, he even stayed the night, but it also took Komaeda a year before he got to that point.  
  
Human beings can get used to anything. Komaeda who could not adjust, no matter how many times he endured the same thing over and over, to who simple noises were like falling stones come to crush him, and the smallest scratches on the surface of his skin deeply wounded him was not very good at being human.  
  
It’s not that he wasn’t lonely. If he could, he would want to live in a small place with another person. But even then when he thought about that, the amount of times they would step on each other’s toes, elbow each other, shout over one another, the idea was completely exhausting to him. He had gotten so used to being alone.  
  
He felt claustrophobic, even in this hollow and empty place.  
His world was so small and fragile it would be destroyed if he let just one other person inside.  
Kazuichi letting Miu into this place felt like they were both trampling all over him.  
  
Even though he knew Miu needed his help.  
Even though he knew that he was not using his mansion for anything else.  
He only lived in one room, but all of those logical arguments meant nothing in the face of his feelings. He felt nothing at all, and yet he was completely overwhelmed by feeling.  
  
“So what?”  
  
“I know, it's really surprising that someone like me had a mother. I can't blame you if you're shocked. But still it's a little bit strange even for me, to see someone else in my mother's room. I guess I don't have the right to all anybody else weird though, hahaha.”  
  
“That’s the only room with a bed.” Kazuichi exhaled sharply out of his nose, not hiding how he felt at all. “Look, I wasn’t gonna say this but. Did you even like your parents Komaeda?”  
  
“What? Oh, I really must give the impression of an ungrateful, spoiled, brat for you to say that. I know I have every advantage in life but some people are just born worthless-”  
  
“Yo, Komaeda quit the usual self laothing crap. I'm serious. You never talk about them. They’ve been dead for a long time too. You don’t even look like you miss them that much. You’ve got this big house and all their money, so what’s the problem if we use their room?” 

“I guess there isn’t one.” It did not hurt at all. He had gone numb a long time ago. It was different than the wound healing, it was just necrosis setting into his skin and the nerves deadening. 

He just thought Kazuichi was an insensitive person. If his skin were a little thicker, he could have gotten used to it. Komaeda slept that night curled up in the corner of his bed trying not to think about the way his mother had once locked him up in his room for disturbing her while she slept. 

Kazuichi and Miu both slept over. When Kazuichi was about to leave, he noticed Miu trembling. Komaeda felt he had never once been noticed, been looked at so closely in that way. Perhaps if he had been born a girl, perhaps if he was a weak little girl crying and clinging onto Kazuichi, then he would have noticed.  
  
That morning all three of them were getting ready to walk to school together. Kazuichi saw Miu about to leave with her jacket open and fussed over her. He zipped her jacket shut and then, picked a scarf up and began to wrap it around her neck.  
  
Komaeda heard the sound of another string snapping.  
That was how fragile the connections between people were. Once they broke it was all over. A heart was made up of those strings, strung too loosely the sound won’t come out right, and strung too tight it threatened to break. He was always too afraid to reach out and touch those strings with his fingers.  
  
Suddenly, Miu violently slapped Kazuichi away. Across the face, like his father always did. He saw the pain flash through and well up in his eyes, Kazuichi was already trying to blink back tears.  
  
“D-don’t touch me you perv!”  
  
It was obvious she was trying to look strong in that moment, but she was shaking again. Komaeda doubted Kazuichi would notice. Kazuichi never noticed other people’s pain.  
  
“Shit, I did something wrong didn’t I?” Kazuichi said, his face softening. He backed away a step and held both hands in the air so she knew he was not going to touch her. “Hey, did something bad happen with your neck.”  
  
Miu’s only response was a whine.  
  
“You can’t talk about it, huh? That must be hard.”  
  
Miu reached forward cupping his face with her hand. One of his eyes was swollen, it was just bad luck she had hit him at the wrong angle. “Your face…”  
  
“Oh this? Nah, it’s fine. Sides you’re in way worse pain than I am right now? What kind of man would I be if I started bitching while you were shaking like that.”  
  
“You’re barely a man to begin with,” Miu cut him off.  
  
Komaeda realized right then. This clawing feeling inside of his chest, that wanted to pry his ribs apart to escape. He wasn’t afraid Miu would take Kazuichi away from him.  

Him and Kazuichi were both so fragile. Their friendship was like a slowly sinking boat that neither of them wanted to try to plug the leaks in. Komaeda thought that was fine, because that’s all they were capable of. They were both kids. At least when things were like that, they were both sinking together.  
  
Kazuichi could try to grow up after all. That was what Komaeda thought, when he saw him try his best to pretend he was not in pain for the sake of Iruma. He could grow up just not with him.  
  
He didn’t hate the thought of losing him. He hated not being enough. There was someone else who could understand Kazuichi better than he could, in a way that didn’t hurt him.  
  
He always thought couples who spend all their time fighting and stay together all the same were just idiotic. Why don’t they get along? Couldn’t they do that much?  
  
It was annoying watching her say things that would have destroyed his friendhsip with Kazuichi. He always walked around on eggshells, but she got to dance with him.  
  
If only holding onto Kazuichi’s hand really was enough to keep both of them afloat.  
Did Kazuichi know?  
At the time Komaeda really wished for that.  
He wished staying together would be enough for the both of them. 

 

🧸

 

Komaeda walked home alone for a week straight after his argument at the hospital with Kazuichi. He wished he could just confront him the next day. He did not feel any pain at all. So it was strange, the way he lived his life avoiding pain.  
  
Kazuichi said he would wait for Komaeda to tell him. He did not want to fight that day in the hospital. He wanted to hold Kazuichi’s hand again like he had that day. If he could just explain it this time around. If Kazuichi could just be a little more patient with him, then Komaeda could stop hurting both of them.  
  
He decided he would do it after midterms. His mind was already building up to that day. Then, on the first day of their exams Komaeda had spotted a man dressed in all black, with a similiar body shape and size to the man who had kidnapped him. 

 _I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._ Komaeda heard the word repeated over and over again inside his own head, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not say it. The two of them reached the bridge where they usually split up to walk their separate ways home.  
  
The sun was falling down a hilly road before them.  
The shape of two boys standing on the bridge was made hazy by the heat waves that day. 

“Kazu-kun, don’t leave me…” He finally asked for help. The days of anticipation he had been building up for this had crashed into his head all at once, as he remembered what it was like to be dragged away all along, the fear that he might never see Kazuichi again if he died in that murderer’s basement.   
  
“Really? Now you’re doing this?”  
  
He grabbed at Kazuichi’s hand, and pulled him back. He knew Kazuichi had done badly on his first day of exams. Kazuichi even told him this morning that he was going to stay up all night studying to try to do better on the second day and salvage his scholarship. 

“I’ve been begging you for weeks to tell me what happened, and you just want to dump it all on me now?”  
  
“Kazu-kun. I… It hurts…”  
  
The words he always wanted to say.  
  
“Yeah, I guess I’m the bad guy for ignoring you when you need me. You always act like you’re the only one in the world who’s dealing with something hard.” Kazuichi said, as he ripped his hand. back “You’re annoying.”  
  
He moved away.  
His books tucked back under his arms, he walked ahead without looking back.  
Komaeda thought if Kazuichi had just looked back one time in regret.  
He might have seen his tears that day.  
  
"Haha, I really am, aren't I?" Komaeda said as he wiped his eyes.  
  
Beautiful feelings, like friendship and understanding just weren't for him.   
  
"How impudent. I should have known my place."   
  
Kazuichi didn’t get it.  
  
Komaeda felt himself began to sink again. He was sinking inside of his own brain. He tried to breathe but bubbles excaped his mouth, as water enclosed his throat. He felt a pressure on his body as the water level slowly rose up around him, it felt like getting embraced from all over. Komaeda did not like being embraced, even though he was lonely, even though he was cold, he did not want to feel other people’s arms overlapped with his. He knew he was being difficult.  
  
 _It’s not that I don’t think other people feel pain._

Komaeda tried to move and the water splashed around him. He felt it dragging against his body, resisting him. He tried to reach out to hold onto something for support, but it turned into water in his hands too. He watched as the liquid fell from his fingertips. The water was sloshing around inside of his lungs.  
  
 _Other people suffer so much more beautifully than me._  
  
His whole body melted away and became nothing more than splashing water. Then it reformed again as he dragged himself away from the surface. A wave went through all of him. Still wet, he tried to breathe as water rolled off of him. He was dripping wet. He was so close to drowning a moment ago. He just needed to breathe. He needed something to hold onto. He reached forward for Kauzichi’s hand. He wanted to be saved. He wanted to kiss that boy and have air breathed into his lung. But more than that, he never wanted Kazuichi to drown with him. He did not want to be the reason Kazuichi was pulled under the water too.  
  
 _Hey, why is everybody else allowed to feel pain but me?_ _  
__Why is my crying face so ugly?_ _  
__Why are my feelings always the wrong ones?_ _  
__Why can’t I be hurt?_ _  
__Why can’t I be scared?_ _  
__Why can’t I be difficult?_  
  
“Kazu-kun… Answer me…”  
  
Komaeda begged for Kazuichi to come back long after he had gone. He looked to the side and saw a white flower nearby. The rainfall from earlier in the day had left a little bit of water in the flowers petals. The flower sagged forward, and the water fell down its petals, down its stems, in beautiful, round, blue spheres.   
  
Flowers and rainwater shed the tears he couldn't.   
He wished it would start raining and never stop.   
That was what he wished for. 


	85. Psyncin in the Curtain

“Aren’t you tired of this?” 

Ajimu Najimi. 

She was well-liked by everyone in the class. She had a charming personality, and a charming heart. She was a good person who had faith in everyone. She deserved happiness more than anyone else. 

The Ajimu that existed in his memories was still beautiful like this. When someone is kind to you once, it’s hard to forget even if they're cruel to you later. Or, maybe Kumagawa just wanted to preserve the few happy memories he had. 

Wherever she was there were flowers. Flowers, everywhere. They sprung from the earth at her steps. New flowers rose and bloomed like bubbles all around her. They were, big, bright white flowers that seemed to reflect a pure white kind of light. She was so fragrant, it was suffocating. There were so many flowers it looked like if you touched one it would infect your body like some kind of flower parasite, roots traveling up your skin, digging into your veins and stealing your blood away. Parasitic flowers sprouting up all around you, on your arms, on your legs, until you had been completely devoured by flowers. 

When he saw her, he saw flowers. He was so intoxicated by flowers he forgot that some flowers only bloom with beautiful colors to conceal their poison. He wanted to be happy, so he forgot. 

He did not notice. He did not want to notice. When Ajimu’s flowers inverted and turned inside out, blooming from white to black. A girl in a bed of black flowers waiting peacefully to be buried, a beautiful corpse, that was the Ajimu he remembered.   
  
They walked to school together in the morning, and home together in the afternoon. Ajimu almost never talked to him when she was talking to other people. As if she was a different person in front of them then she was for him. People spread rumors around that Kumagawa was some kind of demon delinquent, and because of that on the way home from school he often got into fights. Kumagawa lived by one rule back then, that people would never stop kicking him. Even if he was on the ground begging, even if he was bleeding, they would keep going. Because the thing they were stepping on wasn’t human.   
  
Even if you were being picked on at school. Even if you were crying every night. Even if you couldn’t take it anymore, they would still keep kicking. That was why he fought back as hard as he could, but Ajimu always scolded him. 

 _You’re not the only one in pain, Kumagawa-kun. Everyone else is too._ _  
_ _Instead of cursing them just think the other person is probably hurting worse than you are._

One day she changed.   
No, it was not like she changed. She had always been this way. He just became aware of her true nature.   
  
“It’s only been a year or so and I already can’t stand you. Don’t you get bored? You always keep screwing up the same things over and over and never try to get better?”   
  
“Anshin’in-san?” 

The two of them were sitting on the rooftop together. Ajimu had just finished preparing tea for the both of them when she asked that question out of nowhere. He dropped the white tea cup in his hand, causing it to chip and break on the ground.   
  
He just thought he had misheard. So he quickly tried to pick up the pieces of the cup. Ajimu was smiling at him the same as always. “What are you doing? Hey, hey, what do you think you’re doing exactly?”   
  
“I umm… this one is your favorite and I dropped it.”   
  
“Why did you drop it?”   
  
“Because you said…”   
  
“Kumagawa-kun, you can’t even hold a cup properly. How much are you going to make other people clean up after your messes?   
  
“It was an accident.”   
  
“An accident? But who is the one who all these accidents happen around? That was my cup you just broke. Do you ever think about other people at all?”   
  


“It’s just one cup…” 

Kumagawa cut himself on one of the pieces of the cup he struggled to pick up. In the next moment Ajimu’s hands were over his. For a moment he thought she might be comforting, but then suddenly she squeezed his hands tight to dig the jagged edges of porcelain deep into his skin.   
  
“It’s not just one cup. You’re always like this, Kumagawa-kun. You’re just plain inconsiderate.”   
  
“S-sorry…” Kumagawa said as he saw blood pooling between his fingers and falling away. 

“You’re not sorry. You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean. If you were really sorry you wouldn’t keep doing these things to me.” Ajimu’s smile stayed on her face. “I don’t even want to say these things to you. Why are you making me say them? I’ve only ever been nice to you before this Kumagawa-kun.” 

Her fingers were over his. His skin was so dirty against hers, like someone like him only existed to dirty her. Ajimu leaned forward towards him, her head down, and her face hidden behind her hair, which acted like a veil.   
  
Her skin was pale as pocelain untouched by the sun. Her features were as lifeless as a doll’s. All she had to do was stop moving, and she would easily be the most beautiful mannequin. “What’s wrong. You’re trembling. Are you scared?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“You must wonder why I’m suddenly treating you like this? No, maybe you wonder why everybody treats you this way in the end?”   
  
“Y-yes.”   
  
“It’s because they have eyes.”   
  
“Huh?”   
  
“Haven’t you ever heard the phrase some people deserve to get bullied?”   
  
“I…”   
  
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m the only one who cares enough you to be honest with you, Kumagawa-kun.”

“W-why are you suddenly saying all of this?” 

Ajimu was still staring at her feet, as if she was tending to her little garden. Other people were so much static to her, as if the part of her brain responsible for recognizing the shape and form for other human beings was long dead. She didn’t see other people. She didn’t see him. She raised her eyes then, narrowing them, but she still saw nothing in front of her. 

“I wanted to see that look of yours when someone saw straight through you.” Before this, Ajimu was the only one who told him it was not his fault. She was the first person to notice when he was in pain. “Everyone’s dealing with it, so why can’t you?”   
  
“A-ajimu-san would never say that to me. Or… was it all a lie?”   
  
She ignored his question and took both of his hands instead, and helped him up to his feet. She put his feet on top of hers, as if she was teaching him to dance, and spun him around for a moment. The flowers danced with her, as if the wind, and Kumagawa, everything moved according to her whims. 

She spun him away from her, and he hit hard against the railing that prevented others from jumping off of the rooftop. The next moment she was embracing him from behind, pushing to lean over the railing. He saw the schoolyard extend out underneath him. “ Come here. A lot of kids have jumped from this roof. You see that patch of flowers down there? They planted it to for the last kid who jumped.” 

Ajimu fingers found their way in his hair. She held his head like he was a puppet on her strings and forced him to look. “It’s just because you think you’re special, don’t you? You’re the only one that’s suffering, so it’s okay if you cause problems for others.”   
  


“I know that.” 

“Hey the kids who jumped how do you think they felt? Like they were trying their best? Like no one understood them? Like everyone was being mean to them. I bet everyone feels that way.”  
  
Ajimu smiled.   
  
“If your life is so hard, then why don’t I just let you go right now? Look. Look. Whatever their worries may have been. Now they’re just flowers. Flowers, without exception, all of them become flowers.”   
  
“I…”   
  
“You want your life to be a tragedy, don’t you? So, why not step forward and let the curtain fall.”

It’s not like you’re going to try to be better.   
Some people just don’t want to be happy there’s no helping them.   
This is what you wanted isn’t it?   
You should be happy. All of those excuses you make finally earned you pity. 

Ajimu spun words like they were beautiful white silk. That woman was a spider. Kumagawa realized as he saw the hand that he was holding onto as Ajimu dangled him over the roof to be his only spider’s thread.

“I don’t want to die.”   
  
Ajimu pulled him back. At that moment Kumagawa decided, being stuck in Ajimu’s web was better to falling. He had no parents, no friends, not a single person would plant flowers at the grave he left. He could become invisible tomorrow. Nothing would change. Nothing would be lost if he was gone.   
  
There was only one person who would miss him. Even if suddenly this string was wrapped around his neck, constricting his throat, he no longer cared because there was one person who cared enough to at least be honest with him.   
  
“I knew you’d say that. See, life’s not that hard is it?” Ajimu said as she pulled him back and wrapped her arms around him. He felt her head bury deep in her shoulder. Kumagawa’s hands hug in front of him as he had no idea what to do with them. “Well, I’m just happy that I got to see your ugly feelings.”   
  
You might think other people are selfish for ignoring your problems.   
But are you thinking about theirs?   
You’re just as ugly as everyone else. Just as selfish. Really quite boring. 

Kumagawa realized at that moment that Ajimu did not have a face. That was not alarming to him, there were plenty of people without faces in the world, he knew from personal experience. Even with no eyes showing her smile was still there. 

He was not surprised. In fact that faceless expression of hers was familiar. This was just a memory. The moment Ajimu let go of him, Kumagawa collapsed to his knees. Weakly, he looked back over his shoulder to see that Junko was standing right behind him. 

『After this she started to start fights over every little thing. She was correcting my mistakes, in her words...』  
  
“Misogi…”   
  
Kumagawa could not stand the face Junko made at that moment. Enoshima Junko’s eyes were made of glass, her face carried no expression at all like she was some sort of doll. Happiness, Sadness, flickered across her face like illusions, emotions were just dreams to her. Those glass eyes never showed her own emotions, they reflected back other people. The impression she gave off was one more like an object than something animate.   
  
So, what was she doing looking at him with such a sad eyes? Go back to being a doll. He did not want to reflect in such human looking eyes. 

『Come on laugh. The clown is crying in front of you, so laugh...』

“Misogi, why don’t you hate her?” 

The memories shifted around them and Kumagawa and Junko were standing alone in his middle school classroom. The room was completely empty, the desks lined up, the windows open but no light poured through them.   
  
Kumagawa’s nose was broken. It was twisted up like he had received a hit directly to his face. There were two patches of gauze, one on his cheek, one on his forehead. Next to Junko there was an open first aid kit. Kumagawa stared guilty at it, and fidgeted underneath her stare as she scrutinized him. He looked like if he shirked away at just the right angle he hoped to become invisible.   
  
“Why is she the one person you can’t hate?” 

『Why doesn’t Mukuro-chan hate you? Why doesn’t Yasuke-chan hate you?』

“This isn’t about me.” 

『First time you’ve ever said that in your life.』  
  
Junko unwound a long roll of bandages, and wrapped them around his outstretched arm. She was used to causing wounds, not fixing them, so it was a little awkward for her. The both of them looked much younger together, Kumagawa’s eyes wide, his face round, his hair was cut short. His lips were still fresh and pink, and they formed into an uneasy expression that looked like a scribbly line across his face.   
  
Kumagawa really did grow up a great deal in highschool. His younger self was much more scrawny, there were deep bruises underneath his collar, and he had to wear long sleeves all the time otherwise people might notice his skin. He was much paler than his older self, he looked sickless, almost anemic, like he might faint at any moment.   
  
“Yeah, well they’re allowed to hate me. And you’re allowed to hate me. I gave you special permission. Just what kind of reason could justify-” 

『I’m fine!』 The chair fell from behind him as he suddenly stood up. His pale splotchy body, his cut up fingers, his dirty fingernails, he curled inwards on himself. Junko noticed how big Kumagawa’s eyes looked at that moment, so full of emotion, he looked every bit like the child he had never be allowed to be. 『Even if no one else would ever forgive her. Even if there’s no reason that would justify what she did. I forgive her.』  
  
“Graaagghghg, you don’t make any sense.” 

『Wow, you figured that one out finally, huh? You really are a sharp one.』

“So, Hitoyoshi-kun is dreaming about your middle school days?” 

Junko herself was wearing her hair red and much shorter than she usually had it. In middle school she could almost pass for a normal girl, her costume was almost past it. Both of them had reverted to their middle school forms.   
  
Kumagawa smiled like a child. 『Hitoyoshi-kun was so cute in middle school. Oh, this might be hard to believe but I myself was rather cute back then too.』

 

🧸  
  
  


『Do you guys know the basic rule you have to follow in order to get along with strangers?』

“I don’t.” 

『I will not kill you, so please don’t kill me either.』

Damned monster.  
There was a boy who was no older than a third year middle schooler who had been called that over and over again. He had short black hair and a small stature, and looked indistinguishable from other boys in his class. He looked like the kind of person that would consistently score just below average in class rankings.   
  
Yet, before he was fully grown emotionally, and thoughtwise, there was eternal interference. The first year he entered middle school a senior who wanted an errand boy had picked him out of the crowd and grabbed his collar. Everyone who saw it would have thought it turned out as a one-sided bullying incident. 

It was the first time Kumagawa Misogi displayed his so called ‘strength’. It was not that he had a body of steel, and he was ont blessed with great strength or athleticism. All he had was that he was a little more used to pain than anyone else, he was so familiar that pain was practically an old friend.   
  
The very instant after his collar was grabbed by the senior, Kumagawa retaliated. He sprung forward and bit at the senior’s ear, ripping at it with his teeth. Sensning instinctually that his ear was being torn off he let go and tried to get away, only to be headbutted on the bridge of his nose by the first year.   
  
Kumagawa had no concept of ‘mercy’ or holding back’. He knew the boy attacking him would not stop, so he saw no need to hold back himself. If there was personality trait to give him, it was cowardice. He was so scared of pain, that the had to defend himself. He had twice the average sensitivity of everyone else, and detested pain twice as much as others. 

Kumagawa believed that ‘other people’ existed to hurt him. They were just one big amorphous blob, he could not see them as distinct or definite individuals. He had to destroy what would hurt him. He had to break before he was broken. He continuously kicked, targeting his face, again and again, unstoppingly. 

Monster.  
  
The words that said by those who were injured half to death when they started fights with him. Even though he never started the fights, he knew in the end he was the one who hurt them.   
  
He was sitting four or so delinquints who had started a fight with him today. Kumagawa treated their toppled over body’s like a throne. He relaxed, and crossed one leg over the other as he addressed the others that would come looking for a fight after this.

  
The boy smiled evilly, to cover up his fear. When he was around other people he was only ever afraid.   
  
The skin of a monster was so much more comfortable. The skin of a human easily broke, the bones of a human fractured too much, humans had no claws or teeth to defend themselves with. 

『The way I see it, there are two kinds of humans: those who kill and those who are killed.』

  
“...”   
  
Kumagawa stuck his fingers into one of the boys nose, and then slammed the back of his head against the ground. 『We’re having a conversation jackass. Ask me what I mean.』   
  
“W-what do you mean?” 

『There are people who can just live their lives. I’m not sure how they do it. Then, there are those who hide their true nature and live ordinary lives. They appear no different from ordinary humans, but one day they have no choice but to kill.』

Kumagawa stood up and stepped on the head of the man underneath him, and then stepped on a tangled pile of arms and legs. He made sure to smile at the sound of bones crushing onto his feet. 

『All people live aware they can be killed at any moment. So they draw these lines. You will not kill me, and I will not kill you. Then everyone can be friends. So, breaking that line, stepping over it… it must have felt reallty pleasant for you. 』

Kumagawa’s nose was broken, but he had smashed up that boy’s afce even worse. 『I’ll kill you if you cross that line again.』He started to walk off with his hands in the pocket of his uniform.   
  
“What did we ever do to you?” 

『Don’t know. Don’t care. So just go die already.』  
  
As he stepped away from the high scholers he had been fighting a moment ago, a first year middle school student called out to him.   
  
“Kumagawa-senpai.”   
  
Kumagawa turned his head back over his shoulder. Hitoyoshi Zenkichi. His name meant “human Luck” and “Good-natured luck.” Whoever had given him that name must have loved their child a lot. He was a good and kind boy who would go out of his way to help others, and karma rewarded him accordingly.   
  
“You said you didn’t want to fight anymore.” 

Kumagawa hated bad people. They disguted him with their empty imagination and lack of sensitivity. They couldn’t feel other people’s pain at all and acted like they’re superior for it.   
  
He couldn’t stand good people. They made him feel nauseous when they forgive bad people, and act as if forgiving others made them such good people. Zenkichi was a typical good person. Ever since they had first met, even though all they did was argue Zenkichi could not help but be involved in his life. 

『Your outfit’s stupid, Zenkichi-chan.』

He threw a can of coffee at Kumagawa and invited him to the roof. However, the can bounced off of him and spilled all over his head.   
  
“Ah. Sorry. I missed.” 

On some level Kumagawa always thought Ajimu was telling the truth to him. That some part of him wanted his life to be a tragedy. If he wanted to be happy he could have accepted Zenkichi’s offer of friendship. 

He wanted to be friends. 

He remembered, the time Kumagawa had been caught in the rain without an umbrella. Zenkichi chased after him and offered to share his. When Kumagawa stubbornly tried to keep walking forward on his own, Zenkichi grabbed his hand. Zenkichi’s hand was smooth, when his fingers curled around Kumagawa’s, he thought, _surely these hands must have been loved by someone._ They were so soft. They were treasured by someone, held in a mother's hands. 

Kumagawa who always ate alone waiting for Ajimu who only paid attention to him when her mood suited it, suddenly had someone else to eat lunch with him on the rooftops. The two of them would fight during the day, and then come to the rooftop to talk when the day was over.  
  
One day Zenkichi asked him. “How come you don’t look people in the eye when you talk to them?” 

『My dad used to hit me when I talked. At least I remember someone hitting me.』  
  
“I don’t have a dad.” 

With that small conversation it began. 

When Kumagawa was fighting off high schoolers who came to avenge their friends, suddenly there was someone who was at his side. He no longer felt the need to completely break everyone who fought against him because there was somebody, somebody who did not want to hurt him. 

Kumagawa wondered how long he had been looking for this feeling. This feeling that someone else wanted him around. He was used to always standing up on his own after fights. Suddenly, there was a hand right there in front of him.   
  
Zenkichi pulled him up to his feet. The two boys stood there looking into each other’s eyes for a moment. Kumagawa was still not steady on his feet. He stumbled forward, his head falling into Zenkichi’s chest. 

『Sorry, sorry…I...』  
  
“It’s okay.” Zenkichi put his hand on top of Kumagawa’s head. Holding him close. Forgiving him. “Everyone needs help sometimes, right?”   
  
On reflection it was the normal thing to say. It was just Kumagawa had never heard those words before, not even when Ajimu used to be kind to him. He felt the shape and form of himself in Zenkichi’s arms. He was a person again, just a person who desired to be held. 

Zenkichi did not need to understand all of him. He already knew he was too much for any one person. He had been that way since he was young, even the adults that were kind too him and tried to help him he forced away. 

His scars simply reached too deep. Zenkichi’s warm fingers could only brush the surface of his skin, no matter how much he wanted to understand. He already knew he had done too many bad things by now, for anyone to waste their pity on him.   
  
There were kids who were able to suffer what he did without turning to violence.   
Like Ajimu said, there were people who tried to be better than the circumstances they grew up in. He hoped he was never around younger children, because he was just like one of those kids who gets beaten and then grows up to beat their own children. 

Zenkichi did not owe him understanding at all, but still he wanted to be understood just a little bit.  
  
He was not lonely.   
No matter where he went, Ajimu was always with him. There was someone who loved him, knowing all of him, exactly how ugly he was. She was the one person who would never look away. She was in his head, she was in the background. Wherever he went, he could smell fragrant flowers.   
  
She did not forgive him.   
He did not want to be forgiven.   
Whenever he was with her…   
He was lonely.   
  
To him Zenkichi stood on the other side of a fence, surrounded by sunflowers. They were too bright, when he looked at them Kumagawa could no longer see, he forgot the feeling in his fingers, sounds became distant too hard to see. He could not hear his own voice, or his own thoughts. 

He would probably never be able to stand there with Zenkichi, but he thought he might be happy to glimpse him through the fence. He thought he could be satisfied with that.   
  
Then one day he was sitting on the other side of the fence eavesdropping, when he heard Zenkichi talking to Medaka. He did not mean to overhear it. The week before he had told Zenkichi his worries about Ajimu committing suicide on the rooftop.   
  
This day he thought he could do it. He could ask for help. He never learned to cry, or look hurt like the other children, and that was why the adults never looked his way. He thought his life would be a little bit easier if he had ever learned to say those words. Zenkichi told him it was okay, that everyone needed help sometimes.   
  
When he was with Zenkichi, he thought he was part of everyone. Zenkichi got angry with him when he teased him, and he laughed when Kumagawa said something funny, he just treated him normally the same way he would everyone else. 

“You should give up on Kumagawa already.” Zenkichi said to Medaka, who was bandaged up from a recent fight both she had had with him.   
  
“What are you saying, Zenkichi? Kumagawa is human just like everyone else. He cries when he’s hurt, he has dreams. He deserves a chance to be happy too.”   
  
“Did you ever think that some people just don’t want to be happy?” Zenkichi asked her losing his patience. “The people you help actually want to be helped. That’s why they get better.” 

Kumagawa pulled down the sleeve of his black uniform jacket. His entire arm was covered up in bruises. One time his arm broke and healed improperly, and because of that his lower arm looked a little crooked.   
  
Ajimu repeated this over and over again, because he kept disappointing her, because he would not get better. It didn’t hurt at all. All Kumagawa felt was hatred for himself. Ajimu just wanted to be kind, she used to be such a kind person, and he had made her this way.   
  
He never wanted anybody to find out about these scars. The idea of someone separating him from Ajimu was far worse. He much preferred the hitting to when she was angry. Ajimu used to always smile, but she looked so sad these days, she was always staring forlornly off of the rooftop, at the flowers they laid for the suicide victim like she was hoping to join them. 

He was exactly aware of how useless he was. He was not able to cheer her up. He was the one who was the reason behind her sighs. Just like Ajimu told him. When he was in pain he should think about how others were suffering. He was sure, Ajimu was suffering much worse than him. He did not like always fighting with her, but he knew she would not do these things if she was not in pain.   
  
That day she dangled him off the rooftop, that day she danced with him on the edge, she must have wanted to throw herself off. 

“He’s not even trying to be better. You’re a good person Medaka-chan. He’s taking advantage of you, because he knows you’ll pity him just because he happened to live an unfortanate life.” 

Kumagawa always hid his scars. He told no one about what happened with Ajimu, because he wanted the Ajimu he loved to still be beautiful in their eyes. He could not stand the thought of anyone hating her. If they saw his scars they might make assumptions about why she did the things she did to him.   
  
No one understood her, but him. That was why he could forgive her.   
  
“How long are you going to make me keep pretending to be friends with him?” 

“Don’t you think the happiest ending is one where all four of us get along? Ajimu, Kumagawa, you, me, nothing says that we can’t all be friends.”  
  
Zenkichi’s voice fell on him like a stone. He felt like he was being pelted by stones all around him. His whole body beaten by them. This was the only way someone like him could be forgiven. This was what he deserved. He wanted all the stones to beat him again and again until he was so bruised and swollen his body was unrecognizable.   
  
“Kumagawa’s the one causing trouble. Everyone would be so much happier if it wasn’t for him.”   
  
The truth was...   
  
“I’m worried about Ajimu-san. I feel like he’s taking adavantage of her, the same way he takes advantage of you. He’s abusing her kindness.”   
  
The truth was Ajimu was right again. She was always right in the end. He wanted Zenkichi to pity him. He wanted to beg that boy to save him.   
  
He needed to apologize. Zenkichi, Medaka, Ajimu, all three of them would be friends, all of them would get along if it wasn’t for him. He was the one who had turned Ajimu nasty.

Hey, hey, when did it happen? He thought he was defending himself. He thought he never started the fights. When did he start picking fights with other people. He thought he was the one being bullied. When did he go out of his way to bully other people?   
  
He thought he wanted to live in peace. When did he become violent? When did he start actively seeking out violence? Hitting other people, breaking his fingers against their bodies, hurting his knuckles when their teeth cut into his skin he hated that sort of thing. When did he start enjoying it? He disliked the smell of blood. Why did he always smell like it these days?   
  
He hated being looked down on. When did he start looking down on others? When did he start mocking and insutling them? When did he start smiling when other people were in pain. When was the first time? Why? Why did he suddenly start deciding it was okay to hurt others? Did he suddenly break one day, or was it gradually over time that he became numb? 

He stopped hearing the pained cries of others. All he could hear inside his own head was his own screaming. 

He wanted to apologize to Zenkichi, Medaka and Ajimu for what he had done. So why? Why did he end up killing Ajimu? He wanted to hold her hand in his forever, and he was the one to let her go and let her fall like the curtain. He thought her face was beautiful. He wanted to see it smile. He destroyed it with these two hands. All that was left was the torn up mess of her flesh and the red stains on his hands.   
  
He just wanted to know…   
Why it was him who always became the villain in the end?   
Why was his pain selfish?   
Why was he asking for pitied if he expressed even the smallest amount?   
Everyone had their own problems, but he was not a part of everyone.   
  
Zenkichi turned his had around. They were both in their middle school uniforms, but Zenkichi had already realized he was dreaming.   
  
“What do you want me to say to you? That since Ajimu was hitting you, it was okay for you to hit Medaka-chan as much as you wanted?” 

Hitoyoshi Zenkichi was a good person. Because he was a good person who always tried his best, karma rewarded him for his efforts. He believed that if you always tried your best, you would get the result you deserved.   
  
“I thought you said you hated it when people kicked weaker people to feel better about thmeselves. So, why did you think it was okay to hurt Medaka-chan? She was weaker than you, she was just some girl and you used her as a punching bag. Do you want me to be okay, with that? Do you want me to say it’s okay?”   
  
Kumagawa Misogi was the one existence he could not accept.   
  
“What happened to you was wrong, but… I can’t accept it when you hurt people. No matter what you went through in the past, that’s also wrong!”   
  
Even if Medaka forgave him, Zenkichi would not forgive him. 

“We would have been your friends if you had just left us. Come on, make excuses, tell me how it wasn’t your fault, how you didn’t have a choice.” 

『WHAT DID YOU WANT ME TO DO?』He wondered why everyone, everyone thought they were saying something new. He already knew it was wrong to lash out in pain. He did not know what else there was to do. These feelings would not leave him. They stayed inside him. They were killing him. Was Ajimu right? If he could not take it, he should have just thrown himself off that roof. 『WHAT ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO? WHAT ELSE? WHAT SHOULD I HAVE DONE?』

“You could have tried.”   
  
Kumagawa wondered what hiding his bruises meant. He wondered what it achieved in the end.   
  
“There are people who get abused who try to be bettter. They know what it’s like to be hurt, and so they try not to hurt others.”

『If it’s really like that...』  
  
Kumagawa’s fingers tristed as if trying to grasp something invisble. 

『THEN WHY DID THEY KICK ME? THEN WHY WAS I BEING HURT? IF EVERYBODY FEELS PAIN, IF EVERYBODY’S SUFFERING THE SAME, WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY STOP AND THINK IF I WAS HURTING?』  
  
“What do you want me to say?” Kumagawa did not know. He really did not. “So, just because you’re unfortanate you’re forgiven no matter what you do, and if someone is fortunate like Medaka they don’t struggle at all?” 

『I just… I wanted to help someone.』  
  
“But in the end you only think about yourself. The way you help others, it’s like you help them because you want to be helped. It’s like you’re sacrificing yourself to prove you’re a good person too.”   
  
Even his charity was done in self interest. A hypocritical altruist. There was no way he could ever be a good person like Zenkichi. That was the reason Zenkichi had to condemn him. It was any good person would do. 

He saw red hot envy flash in Junko’s eyes. That was no good Junko. Nothing Zenkichi said was wrong. He was not incorrect. The incorrect one, the wrong one,w as always Kumagawa. 

  
If Zenkichi was right, then Kumagawa was wrong.   
That was what he decided.   
That was the line drawn between the two of them. If they ever stepped across it they might kill each other. 

『As if I would sacrifice myself for you jerks...』  
  
Kumagawa laughed.   
He just laughed, like he was incapable of any other emotion. 

『Hey, Zenkichi-chan you’re jealous aren’t you? That’s why you want me to stop trying. It’s why you want me out of the picture. You’re jealous because… you haven’t done a single thing?』  
  
“What are you talking about-” 

『This entire killing game you’ve done nothing. Name one person you helped? Name one person who needed you? The only person who saw value in you was Medaka-chan, and now she’s gone. So, what are you even doing here?』  
  
“At least I don’t hurt-”

『You don’t hurt or help. You don’t do anything. So, that’s why you’re really angry at me for trying. It sucks seeing someone else try when you can’t, right?』Kumagawa grabbed Zenkichi’s extended hand, and then twisted his wrist around until it broke. 『Come on, tell me. How do you plan to end the killing game? What are you going to do next?』

Kumagawa swallowed a snake named Ajimu a long time ago.  
Now, he was the one being swallowed by the snake. He was being eaten by a snake. Soon, he would be disested, and broken down into pieces, and he would become indistinguishable from the snake who swallowed him. 

『You keep criticizing me, and talking about how you’re going to save everyone. How you won’t give up. That sort of thing. I don’t mind it, but…』  
  
Kumagawa’s sleeves wer rolled up, and Zenkichi saw the bruises that lined him. He was so swollen and ragged his form barely resmelbed a human anymore. He was in a body that looked painful just to move it. And Zenkichi just kept smiling, like he didn’t feel pain, like he didn’t feel anything at all.   
  
That must be it. There was no other way he could have lived that long otherwise. If he felt the sheer enormity of the injuries that had been dealt with him, even for a few minutes, his body that was like a poorly sewn together rag doll would come apart at the seams. 

『In the end I’m the only one doing anything. I’m the only one that’s trying.』

Kumagawa laughed.  
He laughed at Zenkichi.   
It felt so much better than being the one laughed at.   
『So, will you just shut up a bit?』

 


	86. Psyncin in the Stain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter is a reference to Goth by Otsuichi. I just read through all of his works they're really good!

Ever since he first noticed the scars on her fingers, like a fracture on snow white porcelain, Shuichi could not look away from Kaede. As if those fingers had reached out and grabbing the sopping wet meat of his brain, and with their fingerprints left the image of those scars as a permanent stain on his mind.    
  
When his hands were trembling Kaede reached across the immeasurable gap between them, and placed her hands over his to steady them. Shuichi felt for the first time in that moment how warm human hands could be. However, something gave Shuichi pause. He saw across Kaede’s pale hands there were jagged lines of red in a zig-zagging formation that almost like cross stitches over her fingers. 

 

He felt a sense of possessiveness over the scars that were etched across her fingers. A feeling of wanting to hold onto these hands forever, no, maybe just a feeling of wanting these hands to be his. 

 

Kaede’s hands were calloused from the long hours she spent practicing the piano. She had a bad habit. She would practice, and practice, and forget to eat or sleep. She never wanted to go home so she practiced in the music room at school. Kaede was constantly taking care of all of her friends, but no-one took care of Kaede. Nobody, but Shuichi seemed to notice what an airhead she could be.    
  
When he came in to check on her she was drooling on the keyboard as usual. If he woke her up right then, she would violently deny the fact that she drooled in her sleep. He wondered why she was so careless, falling asleep like this around him. She never should have put her trust into someone so worthless.    
  
Shuichi picked  her hand up from the keys. He lifted it up. Her body in lifeless sleep was dragged along, her blonde hair fell from his shoulders and spilled everywhere. He turned the hand around and gingerly held it by the wrist. He looked like a prince about to plant kiss after kiss on her knuckles, but all he did was observe the scars on her finger in close detail. He felt drawn to those red markings. His heart was a butterfly flitting about in a garden.    
  
A butterfly.    
Flying through the air on the whisper of its wings.    
Saw a flower so red.    
And kissed it.    
  
He could not bring himself to kiss her in her sleep. She had such a still, death like sleep.   
And these scars on her hand.   
Were scars left over from the time she tried to kill herself. 

 

🧸   
  
Saihara Shuichi did not want to be noticed.

 

Today, just like any day before that he did his best to pretend as if he was one of his classmates. Some girl named Komaru walked up to him blubbering about the latest popular tv show. He decided to just agree with her and fake a smile to add onto that. She did not notice anything off.    
  
As long as Shuichi could hide underneath his hat he could continue to live. He reached up reflexively to pull on the brim of his hat, just far enough that it partially obscured his eyes.  _ You’re just like my brother, a really good guy Shuichi.  _ Komaru said after she had stopped to talk his ear off. The truth was, though, that he was not a good kid. His heart was all shriveled up and rotten. He was just faking it. He had to hide so no one would notice.    
  
As a child he was acutely aware of the difference between himself and others. No one else noticed, or paid attention to the things that he did. He was especially aware of other people’s eyes. Happiness, sadness, and pain. People always displayed those emotions through their eyes. For Shuichi, those feelings were amplified exponentially. The smallest ripple of change in other people’s eyes were a wave crashing into him, flooding him.    
  
Navigating other people, was trying to walk through a storm blind.   
Other people were just storm clouds.    
That was why all of those feelings he buried it far deeper than a normal person would.    
  
Just because he wanted to appear as a good boy in their eyes, he would put a meaningless smile on his face, and act soft and timid.    
  
“Your voice is like music, so crystal clear…”    
  
Kaede told him once. To his own ears, his voice sounded like that of a horribly sick man, coughing, and hacking, and trying vainly to hide his sickness.    
  
Still, there was someone who always noticed him. Today in the classroom just like all of the other days before that. “Hey, Saihara-kun!” 

 

As if the sun was appearing to banish his downcast and gloomy mood. Or at least something like that. Shuichi wondered why all moody boys like him with dark features, and dark eyes, always had to try so hard to be poetic. “Ah-ah! I told you not to sneak up on me like that, it makes me nervous.”    
  
“Everything makes you nervous.”

  
“That’s not true. There are plenty of calming situations I can think of, like for example reading on a rainy day.”   
  
“Just admit you want to make out with Edgar Allan Poe already…” Kaede’s cheeriness was aggressive. She invaded his personal space like it was nothing at all, looking over his shoulder at the notebook his entire body was hunched over. 

 

When Kaede was around him, she was all he could think of. Her presence was like loud music filling up the silence of the room, destroying his eardrums. It was impossible for him to remember what he was doing a moment ago.    
  
That was why he forgot the reason he was hiding that notebook. Or maybe it was impossible to hide anything from her, right from the start. 

 

_ March 1st. In the alleyway I raised a knife and slowly cut open that A-kun’s back. A classmate of mine saw me. Makoto ran away. There’s no way he would help a girl covered in someone else’s blood.  _   
  
“Huh? Are you reading a mystery story?”    
  
“This is a journal I found. Do the contents sound familiar to you?” 

 

Kaede froze behind him. Her hands were still on him, they always found a way to touch him or hold onto some part of him like he was her favorite stuffed doll. For Shuichi the idea of touching someone else directly, of stepping over the line between himself and others was just a nightmare. For Kaede it meant nothing at all.    
  
As she froze he could feel the warmth slowly drain out of her fingrtips, like someone stole the blood from her skin. “Naegi-kun… is that talking about our senpai? A body being discovered in an alleyway, that sounds like the first body discovered in the kyoto serial murders.”    
  
Several people had been murdered in the past few days. A high schooler found the first body, but the news had kept his name a secret. Now, Shuichi was looking over a notebook that apparently belonged to the killer.    
  
“It’s an interesting case, don’t you agree?” Shuichi said as he flipped through the pages of the notebook. ‘Interesting’ was the only word, the only feeling he could use to describe it.   
  
People had been killed. It was like a strange case from a detective novel. But, in this world people who kill, and people who get killed actually exist. Shuichi had a unique interest in this kind of awful event. He was always looking for stories that were so tragic it made him want to hang himself. The despair that ought to have torn his heart in two, deaths so unfair it made him want to scream at the tragedy of it all, those feelings just made the slightest flicker of light appear in the dark pools of his eyes. He wanted to look down the deep, dark well of the people involved and then drink it all in. 

 

“This notebook probably belongs to the killer,” Shuichi said.   
  
Of course, he did not expect Kaede to understand any of that. He just could not lie to someone so bright.    
  
“Are you trying to solve the case all on your own? You have to believe in yourself! Don’t keep secrets from me, you’re no good on your own after all.” Kaede said, suddenly as she seized Shuichi’s shoulders and began to shake him. “You can do it you’re the ultimate detective after all!”   
  
“Don’t tell me to believe in myself, and then say I’m no good.” Shuichi muttered, caught up in the tide of Kaede’s emotions again. “Ah, what are you talking about? I’m not the Ultimate Detective.”    
  
“Oh my god not this again. Didn’t I say I was gonna bully you if you got down on yourself again?”    
  
“I think bullying me would make me even more down on myself.” Shuichi replied in a quiet voice.    
  
“You’re the one and only Ultimate Detective! You should be more proud of that!” Kaede wrapped her arms around both of his shoulders and embraced him from behind. He could feel her chest pressing on him from behind, and the outline of her body underneath her clothes.   
  
Shuichi’s eyes stayed on the journal. The most recent victim listed in the journal had not even been reported on the news yet. A girl with blonde hair, and pale blue eyes who’s phsyical description matched Kaede’s. As her weight pressed against him, Shuichi could not help but feel the dead girl was embracing him from behind.    
  
“Come on, I’m always with you when you’re solving cases. I’m practically the Ultimate Sidekick!”

 

Shuichi paused. “I’ve never solved a case before or anything like that.” It occured to Kaede that Shuichi was not just being insecure, he seemed genuinely confused at her statements. 

 

“What?”    
  
“Uh, you’ve got the wrong idea of me. I’m nothing like a detective.”    
  
“Then, are you just going to hand that notebook over to the police and let them take care of it?” 

  
  


Shuichi stared at her with blank eyes as if she had said something wrong. As she held onto him she noticed Shuichi’s body was trembling against hers, in barely contained excitement. “Um, no. I wasn’t actually.” 

 

“Then wha…?”   
  
“I wanted to watch this to the end to see how it turns out. I thought I might try to discover the last body before anyone else did. Oh, uh, it’s not like I want to do anything creepy though.”    
  
Kaede thought Shuichi’s description already sounded pretty creepy. 

 

“Why don’t you want to stop him?” She asked.   
  
“I told you. I’m not anything like a detective. But, I’m a little like the person who wrote this notebook, I think.” 

 

Shuichi stood up then freeing himself from Kaede’s hands. He just took a step away but it seemed like there was a great distance between them again. He honestly had no idea where Kaede would get this image of him as a detective, she always saw the best in her friends.   
  
The book Kaede was reading from was a much more beautiful story. In her story, people came together, people became stronger because of each other, in her story every character never gave up until they reached their happy ending. He thought those stories were wonderful. But a person like him did not belong on those pages.    
  
He would never forget the expression in Kaede’s eyes in that moment. Those eyes were accusing him of lying to her.    
  
“Saihara-kun. When did you start wearing your hat again?”   
  
“I never took my hat off. Really, Akamatsu-san, you need to pay attention to others more. Your head’s too far in the clouds.”    
  
Shuichi walked out of the room, the notebook stuffed into his bag. He had not shown Kaede the last page, where the author of the notebook had written in one line what their intentions were. 

 

_ I want to kill Naegi Makoto.  _   
  


When the killer found Naegi Makoto again, would she kill him?    
He would love to see that with his own eyes. In his mind the knife dragged over a body again and again, and he saw both flowers and the wings of butterflies being cut into pieces. 

  
  


🧸

 

Shuichi and Kaede had always been different, like night and day, like the moon and the stars.    
  
Kaede had thought they were not that different, though. They were always together, weren't they? They were sharing the same sky. She thought she understood the person next to her. 

  
“Why don’t you just admit it, Kaeidiot. You’re just as shallow as I am, and your hair color is probably fake too.”    
  
Iruma Miu spoke up next to her, loudly interrupting her thoughts. Her hair was naturally this color. Her father was a foreign, ugh, why did she feel the need to defend herself in front of Miu.    
  
“Huh? Why’d you go so quiet? Don’t tell me that thinking has genuinely gotten that hard for you it’s using all of your RAM.”    
  
The only other person who found Miu’s constant computer jokes to be funny was Kazuichi, but Kaede didn’t say so because that would be rude. “Hello, Iruma-san. Did you want something?” Kaede said pleasantly through a forced smile.    
  
“Umm… Obviously it’s you who wants me. You want me so badly don’t you? Too bad I don’t deal with clingy little bitches like you.”     
  
That was a lie because Miu was the one who started the conversation, and also Kazuichi was the clingiest bitch out of all of their friends but Kaede said nothing impolite like that. “Do you actually want to talk to people?”   
  
“Huh? I’m talkin’ to you right now. Are your ears as worthless as that flat chest of yours?”    
  
Kaede had just asked because she was curious. “See, right there. Why do you always say more than what’s necessary!?”   
  
“Ah! Wh-what do you mean, more than what’s necessary…?” 

  
Kaede had no idea why Miu always went out of her way to make people angry at her if she was going to react this way every single time to the slightest confrontation. “You should stop saying things that hurt other people’s feelings.”   
  
“Hey, I’m just’ sayin’ what I’m already thinkin’! Nothin’ I say is wasted words!”    
  
Then someone needed to scrub her brain out. No, only think nice thoughts Kaede. “Only little kids get away with saying the first thing that pops into their head!”    
  
“Well, like you’re any better-” Miu began.   
  
Actually, Kaede thought she was a lot better than Miu but she didn’t want to interrupt.    
  
“I mean you’re all worried about shittyhara but you didn’t say anything! Have you ever said what you really feel? Even once?” 

 

A month ago that boy confessed her feelings to her. It wasn’t like she didn’t like him back. If she wasn’t interested, she could have just rejected him in the moment. That would have been far kinder. Yet, at the same time she could not say she loved him back. She was afraid the words that came out of her lips they might be lies.    
  
So she said nothing, but even saying nothing she hurt his feelings.    
  
Kaede liked everybody, but she didn’t particularly care for Miu. She was popular and well-liked, but she didn’t particularly like herself. Why was that again? Miu, who wanted to be hated by everyone. Kaede, who wanted to be everyone’s friend. Were they actually the same?   
  
“Anyway, you don’t gotta worry about it. He’s probably just had a drastic personality change because you refuse to put out.”    
  
Nevermind, she was much better than Miu. It’s true, they were both always looking at others, they were both carefully watching their reactions, but Kaede was not nearly as sensitive as Miu was. It was like other people’s feelings never reached her, that’s why she needed her music. She needed someone to fill the empty space on her piano bench meant for two. 

 

Shuichi had that same sensitivity. He was so fragile, but that was what made him stronger than anybody else. As if he was feeling everyone else’s feelings with the same intensity of his own. He cared so much about others and…    
And her too so why.

Why did Shuichi seem so apathetic today?   
Those cold eyes of his looked at her like she was a dead body standing right in front of him.    
  
“It’s not like you like him anyway, so no biggie. I mean, you don’t like anybody. You’re just some trashy slut who wants to have one massive friendship orgy.”    
  
Kaede knew the quickest way to shut Miu up. This was not very nice. No, in fact it was hurting Miu. She had to hurt the girl in front of her to shut her up. Her fingers went for Miu’s collar and she pulled hard. “Don’t. Talk like you know me.”    
  
“N-no way I can do that.” Miu said, her voice trembling with the rest of her. “Because nobody does. Fake. Shallow. Superficial. Slutty. Bitchy. Whore.” 

Kaede just wanted to be nice to people. She just wanted them to be happy. She had no idea why other people always had to be so difficult when she only wanted what was best for them. She dropped Miu right then and walked past her. 

 

That day she was already in a terrible mood. Of course she was sure if she kept her spirits up something good would happen later today, this would only be a bad day if she let it be one. She just needed to not let those feelings get to her. 

 

Inside her house Kaede called out for her sister and got no reply. She was used to that, though. It was a little strange sharing a house with someone who ignored your existence, but Kaede thought if she kept forcing herself to smile things would eventually get better.    
  
Her feelings were like the stars, flickering bright, trying to shine in an all black sky. Then she saw something that made all of the stars drop out of the sky at once. The pet bird she kept in a cage in her music room was dead. Its body was lying there at the bottom of the cage, strangled by a small, red string.    
  
Kaede searched the whole house to confront her sister. When she was not there, she tried her phone.    
  
After ringing for a long time someone finally picked up on the other line. “Hey! You can’t just do whatever you want! Don’t you ever think about how other people feel?” 

  
“Um, sorry… I don’t know what I did, but I probably did something wrong so sorry.”    
  
Her sister would never meekly apologize like this. She had no idea who was on the other end of the phoneline.    
  
The voice continued on in an emotionless drone. “I’m sorry, the girl this phone belongs to can’t pick up the phone, b-because I stole this phone from her dead body.” 

 

Dead body?   
Her sister’s dead body?   
The Kyoto serial murders.    
The notebook Shuichi found.   
She had gotten the genre of her life wrong. It wasn’t a hopeful story at all.    
  
She had no idea how the next hour passed. Everything, time, the images that flashed in front of her eyes, they were a haze until Shuichi was in front of her. Why was he here? Oh, she had called him in her desperation.    
  
  


She was scared of him. Terrified of how different he was suddenly acting. He was nothing like the Shuichi she knew. In that moment she realized how much she wanted to hold onto her Shuichi, not this stranger who wore the same face. She just… assumed he would always be by her side. She thought he wanted to be there.    
  
She buried her face in his chest. As usual, she danced all over the clear lines he drew between himself and others,  and did whatever she wanted. Shuichi held his hands up in the air as if they were being manipulated by puppet strings and out of his control. They were just hanging their in suspension.    
  
Shuichi really was sensitive. Even when he was like this, he was still sensitive. He looked like he wanted to cry her tears for her. She had no idea how he could feel so much from others and go on living.    
  
As she balled the fabric of his shirt into tight balls, and felt his skin through that fabric she realized how much he was shaking. Shuichi cried, and cried. It was like he was always crying. He cried, and cried, and then he mustered reckless courage from nowhere.    
  
That was because the Shuichi she knew was a crybaby who was always thinking about other people’s feelings. Somehow, he was still able to care about other people more than himself. 

  
“Akamatsu-san, why are you crying?”    
  
Shuichi asked.   
It looked like he genuinely did not know. She wanted him to hold her, and he would not even touch her. Those eyes. Those dead eyes. He looked like he did not even see the person in front of him as alive.    
  
“Akamatsu-san, please smile.” 

  
She couldn’t smile. The boy who was the reason she was able to smile had disappeared.    
  
“Akamatsu-san. I still don’t think I’m a very good detective, bu I’ll play detective with you this time.” He said, as he picked up her phone and started to toy around with it. He enabled the function that let him track the location of her sister’s phone.    
  
“Let’s go meet your sister’s murderer.” 

 

🧸

  
  


  
  
What did it feel like to be comfortable in your own skin? To be able to relax around others? 

Shuichi had no idea, but people who felt that way were probably more whole and complete people than he was.    
  
He wanted to be just like everyone else. He really did. But, he had another preoccupation that distracted all of his thoughts: being liked. It occurred to him that other people just did things without thinking, but that seemed impossible for him to comprehend.    
  
Always. Even when he shut his eyes. He saw so many people on the backs of his closed eyelids. All of them stared at him with disdain. When he opened his eyes, the room filled up with floating eyeballs that accused him. 

 

People hated him. They looked down on him. Even if they were complete strangers, he could not bear the thoguht, he was so sensitive to how every single person felt about him. The weight of other people’s emotions would completely crush him. It hurt. It hurt. He had to hide. He had to keep this ugly little beast locked away inside of his own heart.    
  
But they all already knew didn’t they?    
They all knew how ugly he was. That was why they hated him.    
  
Even Shuichi felt like he was a stranger. Who was this? He said when watching himself. He was convinced he was dreaming, and in his dream someone else was moving his body around. There was someone else inside of him manipulating his arms and legs like a puppet’s limbs.    
  
Who was doing this?    
Was this the real him inside of him?   
The ugly him that everyone else saw?    
And now, Kaede saw too. The one person who looked at him like he was worth something.    
  
The dream continued on, and Shuichi could only watch helpless. Saihara Shuichi walked side by side with Akamatsu Kaede. When they walked this close together, and no one was looking, sometimes they held hands.   
  
But Kaede looked afraid of his hand right now. Underneath a bridge they tracked the location of her sister’s phone. There was a girl sitting next to a blonde haired corpse. She was wearing a black and white flashy uniform that did not seem to fit her at all, even the chest area was too big.    
  
That girl had dark hair, and freckles on her face. She was covered in dried blood and gripping a knife, but despite looking like she stepped out of a horror film she greeted them rather normally. “Um, hello… This is awkward.” 

Murder was rather awkward, yes.    
  
“I didn’t kill her. I mean, I’m a murderer, but I don’t kill people.” Ikusaba Mukuro sighed, as she tried to wipe the blood from her face. “Talking is hard.”    
  
“You killed my sister and that’s all you have to say?” 

 

Kaede suddenly sprung out from behind Shuichi, and grabbed Mukuro by the neck lifting her off the ground. 

 

Shuichi had known Kaede’s sister was not a victim of the serial killings. Every victim was identified by a name after all, and the blonde haired girl who matched Kaede’s description was named  _ Enoshima Junko  _ according to the notebook he had found.     
  
“I just said I didn’t kill her.” Mukuro’s voice was as steady as ever. “Akamatsu-san, she was already dead wasn’t she? She’s been dead for a long time.”    
  
Images flashed through her mind.   
Mother, with the parasol.   
When she still played piano. The bird inside the bird cage. Her dream was mother’s dream. Her and her sister had the same dream. Piano, and her sister, and the bird.

 

Her mother loved piano. She married her father, a pianist from europe. She had twin girls with him and broke up soon afterwards. That man was no good. He didn’t have any talent. Mother looked happy at the fact she had two girls. If there are two of you then that means I’ll have at least one talented child.    
  
Mother looked so happy, but Kaede could not help but feel uneasy. It was like she was saying that one of them was the extra. You needed two people to play a duet. It did not matter if one was talented and one was not, because the most important part was playing as equals.    
  
But one day her mother forbid her from playing piano with her sister. The two of them were exactly identical, but their playing was completely different. Kaede had no idea why two people with the exact same hands, the exact same fingers, could play so differently.    
_  
_ _ She’s a disappointment, just like her father. _ _  
_ Mother said.    
After that day the other side of the piano bench was empty. Kaede wanted to play with someone, anyone else, but her mother forbid her.  _ Human children will only get in the way of music.  _   
  
  


It was like her mother was a parent to only one daughter from that day on. One daughter she doted on and poured all of her love into. The other one only got the bare minimum. It wasn’t direct abuse, but it was something far more insidious. Her mother could only give her worst effort possible for one of her children.    
  
One daughter grew up loved.    
_ “Your mother loves talented people.” _   
She was loved because she had talent.    
  
She was able to have friends. She was able to always smile. She was able to be kind to others. She was a strong person, because she had this talent.    
  
“You’re the one who lets mother treat me this way!”   
  
One day, a fight broke out between the two girls. She had always loved her sister, just like everyone else did. She did not care about talent, all she wanted to do was play piano again in the garden before mother decided that one of them was talented and one was not.    
  
She had always loved her but, in order to live in that household they were not allowed to be sisters. Her mother only had one daughter. The other child was invisible. 

 

_ “Your mother loves talented children.”  _

  
The girl screamed in her sister’s face. “You’re so good to everyone. You have so many friends. But none of it matters, because you’re just as terrible as that woman. You want me to die too, don’t you?”    
  
That woman had only one daughter.   
Because soon after that fight between sisters one of them died.    
  
“You’re right, I killed her. I killed my own sister.”  Kaede tried to grab the knife from Mukuro’s hand. “I’m a murderer. I should just die.”    
  
Mukuro spun the knife around in her hand and braced it at the girl’s neck. “You can’t live without your sister? That’s really lame. You’re kind of like me…” 

 

Mukuro kicked Kaede to the ground in front of her. For the first time genuine hostility seemed to creep into her. She looked like she felt nothing except that one emotion, the urge to kill, and she felt that stronger than anybody else.    
  
That girl lunged forward like a predator going for the throat. Kaede let her eyes fall shut. However the teeth she was expecting to tear her apart never sunk into her. She heard the sound of metal sliding into flesh and tearing it as it went, and opened her eyes.    
  
Shuichi had jumped in front of her. The knife still in his side, he looked back. “D-don’t worry, Akamatsu-san. I didn’t do this for you.” Shucihi fell to the ground. He was far too weak to stand up. “I just wanted to become a murder victim this time. I wanted to see what it felt like.”    
  
He was nothing like the Shuichi she knew. He was like a stranger. It was as if there was somebody else entirely in his body. Even then, he protected her. He was trying to look cool in front of her again.    
  
Mukuro just kicked him to the side. Shuichi’s body was so weak, it was torn and crumpled like paper. Mukuro pulled a second knife underneath her skirt, and took another step forward. “Murderers should all die, is that what you think? Maybe you’re right. Maybe she was right too.”   
  
Mukuro’s foot was caught on something. She looked to see Shuichi had grabbed her by the ankle. “Clingy guys are so uncool… is what my sister would say.” Mukuro muttered.    
  
“If Akamatsu-san’s a murderer, then I’ll be a detective.”   
  
“Hm?”   
  
“I’ll spend the rest of my life watching over her, so you don’t need to kill her. She’s under arrest. She’s hand-cuffed to me. It’s not like I plan on letting her go, or letting her get away with her crimes.”   
  
“Why?” Mukuro asked, genuinely curious. She wanted to know why a murderer should still live. “That girl is lying to you again…”    
  
“Because, unlike me she’s a good person. Good people can do bad things, sometimes... “ Shuichi looked like he was fighting against his own body to speak. He was drowning in an ocean that nobody else even saw.    
  
“That’s not really the insightful and inspiring speech I was hoping for. You really are just like a lamer version of Makoto.” Mukuro said, before she picked up her knife again and left. Just like that. Just like she had gotten bored. She was starting to act as flippant as her sister.    
  
Kaede realized in that moment those butterflies in her chest. They landed all at once and fed off of the meat and blood that made up her heart like it was sweet nectar. She felt herself being devoured from the inside, there was an entire swarm inside of her.    
  
Shuichi had changed.    
But her feelings for him hadn’t.   
That's... that's the Shuichi I...   
  
And those feelings were far too scary for her. She was scared of felling this way for a boy she didn’t know.    
  
Shuichi reached up and intertwined his fingers with hers.    
Kaede once tried to hang herself. When she did the rope slipped and wrapped around the fingers of both hands, pulling at them until they cracked. Shuichi had no idea how Kaede continued to be a pianist even after her fingers were broken.    
  
He looked at the terrible scars across her fingers. He was glad she lived. 

The scars on her fingers from when she tried to kill herself, and lived, were the most beautiful part of her. 


	87. Psyncin in the Pain

It was different for Junko.  
For her, “Normal Girl” was just a role listed next to her name on the cast list.  
Enoshima Junko - Normal Girl.  
  
Mukuro was never jealous of her sister. Everyone seemed to love her sister more than her, but that was fine because Mukuro loved her sister, too. People like Matsuda, her parents, the adults, they saw her fake self and they were charmed by her. Junko never hid anything for Mukuro. She never lied to her sister. When she was alone with Junko, Mukuro for the first time started to see herself as a special person.  
  
No, maybe she didn’t want to be a special person. Junko who always acted mature beyond her age and the smarter than the adults, threw childish fits around her sister, cried over stupid things, and Mukuro felt like the only person in Junko’s world. She was ignored by everyone else, she couldn’t be her own person, but maybe she could play the part of Enoshima Junko’s sister.  
  
She only felt jealousy towards her sister once. She was paging through a magazine and saw one of her interviews. The words reflected in her eyes.  
Enoshima Junko - Real Girl  
She tore the page out, and crumpled it between her fingers.  
  
Together, they were two people.  
That was what she hoped, but there was no hope between these two sisters. 

Enoshima Junko.   
Raising her foot to touch the knee of the supporting leg.  
Pirouette.  
Spinning around. 

Spine bent.  
Almost like she was broken.  
Almost like she wanted to snap in half.  
Suicidal ballerina.   
Spiraling. Her body, twisted.  
Like she was trying to break her body and become something else.  
A caterpillar struggling suffocated by its cocoon.  
Like the outer shell was just a porcelain doll.  
Like something was holding her back.  
Like she was trapped inside that beautiful body.  
Like she was on a self-abusive binge.  
Like she was afraid of being called beautiful, so she wanted to be cracked.  
Wishign desperately to be any color other than white. 

She had one hundred identical masks and she chose to wear one every morning. Laughing, losing her temper, and at times looking at her sister with tearful eyes that sparkled like every star in the sky, only to return to a blank slate.  
Even Mukuro, even Mukuro, just some girl who happened to be born her sister.  
Even she who could see all the broken masks that Junko left behind, still loved her.  
  
But Junko didn’t particularly want to be loved. That was the problem, wasn’t it? She rejected the feelings of other people. She did not even see them. It’s not that the world was black and white, she was just colorblind.  
  
Dancing around like that was really tiresome, you know? Everyone believed she was a normal, ordinary girl. She was extremely careful to carve that position out for herself. When she was younger she cut dolls into pieces, but when the adults started asking her questions she realized it was just more convenient to act in ways that did not attract their attention. 

The same way celebrities project a superficial image, that gives their fans the idea that they know them in a close an intimate way, without actually sharing any details, she wanted to live that way. She was able to obfuscate by having all eyes on her.  
  
Her whole life was a lie. But, to her everybody else was a lie. She couldn’t believe that the conversations her family had or the friendly attitudes of the people she knew were genuine. She was certain there had to be a script somewhere, and once, when she was very young she searched the house for it. 

She wanted to read the same words everyone else was saying. She wanted to play the part everyone else was playing. It was impossible for her to believe that nobody else plotted out conversations to the same exhausting details that she did, that they didn’t need to think when to laugh, when to make eye contact, what words to put emphasis on, and analyze every last detail of what was said. She looked everywhere, but there was no script. 

Everything other people say seems like it’s scripted - everything seems fake.  
  
The only thing that started to seem real to her was death.  
  
That was why she wanted to see someone die. At seven years old she ran away from home, and her sister followed her. It was convenient things turned out that way because Junko had just painted her nails that morning, and did not really want to chip them. 

She fell asleep in Mukuro’s arms, basically using her sister’s body as a blanket. For Junko might as well have fell asleep clutching a stuffed animal however, because the hands she was holding did not feel real at all. They might as well have been doll’s hands. 

She slipped away from her sister, and walked to the nearby river. She made sure to leave footsteps in the snow so Mukuro would follow her. She had seen this kind of scene in so many movies. All she needed to do was be a pretty girl in an alleyway and someone would attack her.  
  
Perhaps it was childish of her to assume that reality would be exactly like what television taught her, but nothing felt real to her so she felt no need to distinguish between the two. No matter how far you walk in life, you’ll find filthy alleyways, and each time you turn a corner, see some stray dog’s corpse and smell the stench of the gutter. 

That was the world Enoshima Junko saw at eight years old. She didn’t think she was twisted, she was just a little more observant than everybody else.  
  
As she followed the river she eventually reached a place under the bridge. There was a man there struggling to get warm. For a moment she was genuinely confused, she had no idea why this man who had nothing, no pretty clothes, no stuffed animals, no friends to toy with (she meant play with) wanted to live so badly. No, perhaps she didn’t understand the concept of ‘living’. That man would be certainly be happier if he threw his body into the freezing river.  
  
As she was tilting her head to the side in confusion, Junko was noticed. She smiled. “Hey, mister is it hard?”  
  
“Huh…?”  
  
“Is it hard being so stupid? You have so much more life experience than me, and yet you’ve learned absolutely nothing from it. It must hurt, knowing that the reason you’re sleeping under this bridge is only the result of your own stupidity.” 

She wondered why adults who couldn’t see what was so obvious, that she a child could understand it. Idiots like them only react to what they see in front of their lives. They live their lives running around like chickens with their heads cut off only reacting to things. They never try to figure out the inner workings of things. That’s why they’re idiots - and why they’re so completely boring.  
  
Of course, Junko knew the exact result she would get from this. If you tell a starving man that it was his fault he was starving, his first response would be to tell you to shut up. 

Her sister had fallen her from her footprints in the snow, just in time to see Junko picked up by the neck and slammed against the wall. “Muku-chan…” Nicknames made people believe you were closer. “I’m scared…” She wasn’t. That was a lie. But, everyone else were liars too so she didn’t feel too bad about lying to her sister.  
  
Junko expected her sister would get killed trying to protect her. She supposed she would be a little bit sad, but she was already alone even with a twin sister that followed her everywhere. Mukuro ran forward and wrapped her arms around his leg begging him to stop, only to be kicked away back into the fire that the man had started in order to keep himself warm. 

Well, that was lame. Junko wasn’t mad at her sister. Lame people were only capable of being lame right until the end. It was tragic. “H-hey, Muku-chan.” She didn’t care. She didn’t care about her sister’s tragically short and boring life. Why would it matter if she died? She wasn’t alive. She wasn’t animate. She wasn’t real. Just another doll. Just another broken toy. “Muku-chan! Don’t lose in such a lame way. You’re my sister aren’t you?”  
  
But the blow that should have killed Mukuro, made her entire body suddenly come alive. She sat up once more, ash covering her already pitch black hair. The blood mixed with ash, and caused a sticky black liquid to fall down from her forehead and cover one of her eyes partially. 

Mukuro picked up a knife from the man’s camping kit, and stabbed it into the man’s back. Even after she was dead, she didn’t stop. She stabbed him again and again until there was no trace of life left within him.  
  
She would kill.  
In order to protect her little world with her sister.  
She needed to kill this man.  
She would kill. The gods, the budha, everyone.  
  
“My sister… Give back my sister…” Mukuro muttered still clutching at the knife in her hand. 

Junko felt disappointed. Her heart fell out of her chest, and got buried in the snow somewhere when she realized there was nothing interesting about this corpse at all.  
  
Then suddenly, Mukuro broke into tears. Junko did not understand at all. Nobody would miss this man. They would never get caught because Junko already had a plan for hiding the body. He was just an extra in the play, no one important, so why did Mukuro cry?  
  
Junko walked over to her sister’s face and pinched her cheeks, observing her face from up close. Her sister who never cried no matter how much her parents ignored her, or other kids at school bullied her under Junko’s orders. The sadness in her crying face was unmistakably real.  
  
“I’m sure you’re not related to me at all. I mean, we don’t even look alike.”  
  
“Uh..um…”  
  
“You’re so useless. I almost died back there. Your only good point is that you’re strong. Nothing else. Once you lose you have no worth at all. A deadbeat failure who’s unsightly to boot.”  
  
“H-hey, Junko-chan don’t joke around. I’m sorry for not being as good at things as you are but um..." 

“Why do I always have to drag around a deadbeat sister like you! If only you weren’t there. Things would’ve been great, if only you weren’t-”  
  
“You almost died Junko-chan, so don’t joke around like that.” 

Suddenly, her sister collapsed in front of her. Junko paused and saw that her sister’s ankle had been twisted around when she was thrown by that man. The blood her sister left in the snow was more beautiful than any flowers Junko had ever seen. 

People didn’t look real to her. Even when she cut them open and took out all the pieces, even when she arranged the clockwork gears, and mechanized components of their internal workings she felt nothing at all. 

But the sight of Mukuro bleeding in the snow made Junko feel like she was bleeding herself. It might have been the first time in her spoiled, coddled life, she felt even the smallest amount of pain. 

This feeling she felt at seeing her sister's blood, had the same desire and intensity of love. “You hurt your foot stupid.” She saw underneath her twisted swollen ankle she was wearing no shoes, she had run all the way here barefoot because she was so worried. 

“I’m sorry, Junko-chan.”  
  
“I’ll give you a piggy back ride.”  
  
“I’m not heavy?”  
  
“You’re so fat. My sister’s a total fatty what am I gonna do? I guess I can stand next to you and look skinny in comparison, whatever.” Junko said, as she offered her back to her sister. Junko was not nearly as strong as Mukuro, so she had no idea how far they made it leaving a trail of small footprints in the snow, before they collapsed somewhere and decided to sleep there.

Even now, Mukuro was still crying. She had no idea why her sister was crying. But all those crying noises annoyed her a little bit. Yeah, that was why she wrapped her arms around her sister while they slept.  
  
She was just saying this to shut her sister up.  
  
“When we’re together, we’re the strongest. We don’t need to be happy. We don’t need anything, but each other. Even if we’re both miserable. I promise we’ll always be together, I’ll never leave you. We’re despair sisters, we make other people feel despair, so there’s nothing to be afraid of, right?”  
  
That was the day they became despair sisters.  
  
“I should have killed you that day.”  
  
Mukuro said, to Enoshima Junko’s corpse as she sat under that same bridge.  
  
“Naegi-kun, and everybody else would be so much happier right now if you were dead.” 

 

🧸

Enoshima Junko was a beautiful corpse.  
All of the beauty she had in life paled in comparison to her death. Flowers wilted, colors faded with time, but somehow Junko’s body was perfectly preserved. Her smooth skin glowed in the pale moonlight, as if frozen in the snow. The blood which had dripped from her body before her death had sunk into the snow and caused red flowers to bloom all around her. 

Alive, she looked like nothing more than a dead girl walking. She looked so much more natural dead, her body glowed the same way a living person’s did. She was perfectly still as if she was merely sleeping. If you stared long enough you might be hypnotized into seeing the slightest twitches of life. 

How many poets and artists had committed suicide trying to die in such a beautiful way?  
How many of them had left such an exquisite corpse behind?  
They must all be jealous of her in this moment. 

Ensohima Junko lay there in the snow like she was floating in perfectly clear water on a spring day. Dying, like everything else she did, she did exceptionally well. 

There was a wound in the side of her breast where a knife had pushed into her, but pulled out before the entire breast was cut. Cut, there were so many little red cuts on her body, left on her like kisses. Even dead, she was kissed, she was adored.  
  
It wasn’t until her plastic head was cracked open, and her brains spilled out did she feel real.  
The corpse of a girl.  
Almost theatrical.  
She was loved to death.  
She was born, she lived, she died, and left a beautiful corpse, and that was it.  
Look at her and you could no longer see a corpse. Just flowers. Just flowers and nothing else.  
  
She rose up from flowers.   
Suddenly, her back creaking, resurrected by lightning.  
She rose and tilted her head to the side. Brain matter leaked from the side of her cracked skull.  
  
“Eh? Were you dreaming about my death big sis? I’m so flattered.” Enoshima Junko smiled. 

“You’re way less annoying dead, sis. Probably because you can’t talk.” Mukuro said, not moving where she was sitting. The two of them together under the same bridge that they were that night that Mukuro became Mukuro, and Junko became Junko.  
  
It would almost be nostalgiac, but nostaglia was what people with rose-colored memories felt.  
Mukuro had never seen a rose in her whole life.  
  
“You’re kidding right!? You can’t have Junko, without the off-beat irreverent dialogue. It’s what makes my character so popular.”  
  
“You know most popular people don’t have to constantly talk up how popular they are.”  
  
“Come on admit it. You missed me. You totally missed me. I bet you were crying, you little bitch! We’re not leaving here until you admit you have feelings like all the other crying, sniveling nerds.” Junko stared to poke at her face with a broken nail. “Upupu, you have feelings, sucks to be you.”  
  
“Hey, Junko-chan. Why did you follow me into this dream?” 

“So we could have some quality times as sisters, duh! Come on loser, let’s go shopping. Let’s talk about our feelings, that we both totally have.”  
  
“So you’re just going to talk about your feelings. Got it.”  
  
Junko reached her fingers into the hole cut open in her breast, and then pried two of her ribs apart until they cracked. She pulled out the heart of her corpse. “Siiiiis! I’m trying real hard to have a heart to heart here.”  
  
“Oh. You had a heart after all? That’s surprising.” Mukuro said, her expression not changing. “Where’s Misogi-chan?”  
  
“Eh? He’s not here. Then he must be somewhere else. Things are happening out of order, it’s totes confusing.”

“If you did anything to him I’ll-”  
  
“Kill me? But I’m way too popular of a character to die now. The sales of the series would tank! ” Junko said pretending to be shocked. “But anyway, you’ve been killing a lot of people haevn’t you? What did you decide to go apeshit cuz you’re in a dream? I dig. I dig.”  
  
“No, you don’t.”  
  
“I totally dig. I got a shovel and everything.”  
  
“How can someone so smart think that joke was funny?” Mukuro sighed. Besides the fact that Junko was the source of the despair in her life, dealing with family was just exhausting in general. “I haven’t killed anyone. All the corpses in this notebook were ones I found. Naegi-kun saw me cutting apart a corpse that was already on the ground and misunderstood.” 

“Got it. You’ve got a death fetish now. You take after me way too much, sis.” They were both dressed in the same clothing at this moment. Mukuro was not wearing her wig because she had lost it in her confrontation with Makoto. “Nice look by the way. You’re really talented sis, you somehow managed to make even closed picked by my perfect fashion sense look ugly.” 

It iritated Mukuro slightly. That Junko was still caling her ‘sis’ casually after all this time.  
  
“Hey... was I born a killer?” Mukuro said as she reached forward and dipped her fingers in the blood which was falling from Junko’s cracked open forehead. She traced the contours of her lips with her fingers until they were painted red. Now she was wearing lipstick. Look Junko. I'm wearing makeup. I'm finally pretty, just like you. “Or did you make me one? I want to know. Do you think those corpses will tell me?"   
  
“Yeah, yeah, we get it. You have no friends, so you made friends with a bunch of spooky skeletons. You’re a total creepazoid girl who can only have conversations with dead people.” Junko’s voice suddenly dropped, all of the energy drained out of her performance and she spoke in a flat voice. “Does any of that really matter?” 

“Huh…?”  
  
“I’ll spell it out for you so your last remaining brain cells don’t burst from the exertion, kay? You’re being dumb.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Well, it’s because you’re my dumb big sister of course. I’m the brains, and the beauty, the funny one, and the cool one and you’re uhh… Well I look so much better in comparison when I’m standing next to you.” 

Mukuro just stared forward quietly wondering how she had gone nineteen years without wanting to kill this girl. 

“Why are you comparing yourself to a pure little baby who never did anything wrong like Naegi-kun, anyway?” 

“Huh…”   
  
“That’s why you’re doing all this aren’t you? Oh, boo-hoo, I’m never going to be good enough for him. Why are you acting all dramatic sis? You and I both know, you can’t act for shit.” 

Mukuro curled in on herself, drawing her knees up to her chest. She refused to look up at her sister. She looked a little bit like an injured wolf trying to disguise it’s limp.  
  
“Don’t you think he’s asking too much of you? You’re not a normal girl, you’re never going to be one. There’s trying to be a better person and then there’s conforming. Which you can’t even do because your clothes are so unfashionable.”  
  
“....”  
  
“What’s so great about him anyway? You always act like he’s such hot shit. You go around like, _he’s the one who saved me, he’s my hope._ Why is your boyfriend, hope? You want to bang hope now? We don’t do that, sis. Komaeda does that, and we're better than Komaeada."  

Junko was probably getting to a point in all that rambling, but Mukuro did not want to hear what her sister had to say.  
  
“It’s kind of like you’re using him to put yourself down, hun."  

“No, I’m not. He’s just better than me.” 

“Do you think that’s a good thing? Is Makoto just some hero for you to worship? I thought he was your boyfriend. Oh, he must just be dating you out of pity, right? I mean there’s no way he would actually like you.”  
  
“You…”  
  
“That’s what you want to be told, right?”  
  
“You always do this.” Mukuro grabbed her sister’s corpse by her bloodied shirt. The face she made at that moment, looked like a wolf baring its teeth right at her face. “You can’t talk to people so you manipulate, you don’t care about other people’s feelings so you walk right out of them.”  
  
“Eh… No, wait you’ve got it all wrong.” Junko frantically moved her hands around. Her sister sure was expressive. “I’m not saying this to mentally scar you. I’m saying this all as your sister.” 

“Junko-chan” Mukuro shook her head in disbelief. "Your words only hurt me."

On the ground.  
A knife at her sister’s neck.  
Mukuro’s hands around the handle.  
She sat on her sister to pin her down.  
It was just an ordinary fight between siblings for them.  
  
There were stars in her sister’s eyes.  
Her eyes glittered in the corners.  
She looked a bit sad.  
It was as if she was looking at somebody in the distance.  
Somebody who was already gone.  
A forgotten portrait.  
A colorful past.  
Her expression.  
Filled with the lines and cracks of aged paint.  
Her aura.  
Painted with colors that didn’t even exist.  
That no one but her could see.   
She was always watching her sister's sface for even the tineist twinge of affection. So she could see. So she could comprehend.   
A feeling of affection.  
Like a tangle of thorns.  
The more it tightened, the deeper the scars grew.  
Leaving only scars.  
A feeling of being in pain. 

Junko didn't feel pain.  
Her skin was glass, and her nerves were dead. 

 _Go back to being a doll, or a corpse.  
_ _Don’t look at me with those eyes._

Her umbilical cord wrapped around Junko in the womb, and strangled her to death. Her sister was dead long before she was even born.

“Fine then. Kill me and return to being your true self. That’s all you want to be, right?” 

It would be easier to go back to being a killer.  
She would no longer feel this way.  
Even in the days when Junko beat her, even when her sister screamed at her, she never felt any pain.  
  
“If I said… that I really did want to be sisters would you believe me?"  
  
“Nope. You’ve lied too much."

Junko didn’t care about anybody else’s happiness.  
She did everything for herself.  
And she didn’t even want to be happy.  
So stop. 

Stop acting like my sister. 

“Eh, well… that figures.” 

 _I won’t forgive you._  
  
Makoto’s voice filled her head. Her fingers trembled so much that she was no longer able to hold the knife. It fell out of her hands and the empty metallic clanging as it bounced off of concrete sounded out underneath the bridge. Images flashed through her head. That boy's voice was all she needed to hear, and her head was filled with his face over and over again. It was like a thousand pictures hanging in a gallery. The images of a daily life. They flooded her vision, overtook every sensation. It all flashed by her eyes helplessly, like a fever dream, like a sudden hallucination. 

No, the person I want to kill is.  
  
“I won’t forgive you.” 

Makoto Naegi.  
  
She turned her head to see that boy watching her again. He was always watching her from afar. He was the only boy who had ever taken notice, of her fragile little world. She was a girl in a portrait in a gallery to view, and Makoto was the only one who ever stopped to stare at her. 

 

🧸  
  


“If you kill someone, I won’t forgive you.” 

This scene had already happened before. She remembered now, she was about to kill Maki and Makoto interrupted her. Because of that, he was shot. She was repeating the same scene over again. She was hurting Makoto again having learned nothing.  
  
The person I want to kill is…  
The person I want to kill is.  
  
Mukuro took off running. The snow melted and became rain. As if the tears in her eyes were unfreezing finally. She put a stop gap on her heart, and blood slowly stopped flowing through her body, and she didn’t have to feel anything. But her heart never stopped beating. Her heart swelled, and exploded, and it all spilled inside of her, all of her feelings, everything.  
  
Beating someone down.  
Running something through.  
Dismembering someone.  
Cutting them into little bits and pieces.  
Stabbing through their hearts.  
Breaking their skull.  
Crushing their brain and severing it from their head.  
She wanted to kill…

That was why she ran away. Yes, this entire time she had been running from the fact that she was a killer. She wanted to stay with Makoto and pretend she could be a normal girl for just a little bit longer.  
  
🧸

Makoto wanted to get along with everyone in his class. That was why he found himself drawn to Ikusaba Mukuro who did not get along with anyone. As if she was a polar opposite charge on a magnet. As if she was a complementary existence. As if she was from an alien planet.  
  
He found himself glancing at her in class.  
Nobody else was watching her.  
He knew that fear.  
Not wanting to slip through the cracks.  
To fall into the black.  
Not wanting to be alone.  
Known by nobody.  
Maybe the reason he surrounded himself with friends was because he had the same fear.  
  
Boys like fragile types, his sister teased him once. She looked like the fragile and sheltered type. The feeble image of someone who was both graceful and fickle, and seemed like she would break if you touch her. Raven black hair, and pale skin that looked like the sun had never touched it.  
  
Her hobbies were staring out the window, alone.  
Reading a book in the corner of the classroom, alone.  
And not talking to anyone. 

She had no friends. Not even one, that is. She wasn’t the type to be bullied. She was just naturally alone. She had eyes that were like a wild animal’s, warning others not to approach her. She did not look like a member of their class. If she went missing, if there were an empty seat there tomorrow, nobody would even notice.  
  
In the hallway when they were both alone, Makoto called after her. “Ikusaba-san.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“What do you do after school exactly? In class you always look so...”  
They were just empty words anyone would ask.  
“You always look like you’re umm… sad about something. Do you want to talk about-”  
  
“Don’t move.”  
  
Suddenly, Makoto felt something press against his lips. He was being kissed by the edge of a knife. A box cutter was held in the corner of his mouth. Mukuro, carefully, pressed it up against the side of his cheek.  
  
“Oops my mistake. What I meant was, _you can move but it’s very dangerous._ ” 

Makoto’s jaw went entirely slack. He could not even try to close it, he was too surprised. He had gotten so used to being around eccentrics. He remembered now he was a normal person. He was scared for his life when someone held a knife at him. He was a normal kid not capable of doing a single thing.  
  
“Curiosity is exactly like cockroaches. It doesn’t want to be touched by a human. It flocks together in secret. It can’t help but bothersome. It really hits a nerve. Just like a boring insect.”  
  


“Mwa..?”  
  
Mukuro suddenly slid the edge of the blade along the inside of his mouth. “Good grief, that was careless of me. My hands slipped.”  
  
What is this girl?  
Just what is this girl?  
Scary. Scary. Scary. Scary.  
  
“Naegi-kun. I don’t need the nice guy act. You can pretend to be a good boy elsewhere. In order to make Naegi-kun swear that he’ll never ask me such a stupid question again, what do I have to do? In what ways should I seal your mouth? Tell me.”  
  
His hands were trembling. He tasted blood inside of his own mouth.  
This girl was scary.  
That was all he could think about.  
  
Slowly, she withdrew the knife. He saw his own saliva mixed with blood dripping off of it. Scary, scary, scary, but… that girl looked scared to. She had the same look in her eyes as an animal cornered.  
  
Why was she so scared? 

“You didn’t even scream. What a good boy you are.”  
  
Makoto collapsed down to the ground, his arm around his mouth. He spit up the blood that was pooling at the back of his throat.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Whatever secret you’re hiding must be a big one if you’re willing to go that far to protect it. So, I’m sorry for asking about all that stuff without even thinking of you.” 

“Yeah we’re not even friends so just-”  
  
“I hope one day you’ll have someone you’re not afraid to share those feelings with.” Makoto stopped wiping his mouth with his hands, and smiled at her. That was right, she did not fall in love with a boy who randomly smiled at her one day. She loved the painful, yet beautiful smile he showed her in that moment.  
  
“Maybe I’ll be that person. Haha, just kidding. No way I’d be so lame as to hit on you at time like this.”  
  
“...”  
  
When she looked at that smile she saw a dream of someday.  
A dream with him.  
  
🧸  
  
  
 _It was his fault._  
It was always in winter.  
Under a pure white sky, she stained her hand in blood.  
There was someone who walked with her. Someone grasped her bloodied hand and showed her the way home. They were times covered in a hazy dream, fleeting and soon to vanish. 

She had nothing inside of her. And yet still, she had a dream. A dream of a normal existence. ANd it wasn’t so strange, now that she thought about it. She was always having to pretend to be a normal girl just like her sister. She had to speak with, and make eye contact with people who were nothing like her, people who had never killed. Junko had just always been better at maintaining the masquerade fo normality, and Mukuro couldn’t. 

She dreamed of a world she could never even see. She could not even pretend or play make believe like Junko. Her dream was a person she had met. A classmate that she had grown to like. The one who she fervently hoped would lead her to that seemingly impossible path. 

From the moment she met him she had wanted to intrude upon Makoto’s normal life. She wanted to make Makoto’s normal life her own. Junko… Junko said she fell in love with him because she wanted to be saved.  
  
She just wanted to dream like everybody else.  
The rain doesn’t stop, and the sky doesn’t look like it will anytime soon.

She turned around and looked to see Makoto watching her helplessly. His arms were held outstretched towards her. Even if they started again, even if Makoto was just a normal boy. He would still think about her feelings first. He would still run towards her instead of away.   
  
Makoto was her dream.  
A painful dream that she’ll never be able to have.  
Painful, and yet beautiful. It was gazing at that beautiful dream that allowed her to live that long.  
  
His outstretched hand took hers. He grabbed her hand still holding the knife. “Stop it! Do you know how painful it is to be with you? You show me what I can never have, and it makes me so insecure.”  
  
If she could do it all over again.  
She wanted to be someone like him.  
But, that was never going to happen.  
  
“Mukuro. You’re not even talking to me, how am I supposed to know what you want-”  
  
“I…”  
  
She tackled him over and in front of the rain soaked road, held a knife at his throat.  
Those feelings all came crashing down at her once, relentlessly pounding her like the rain.  
It wasn’t that she was afraid of putting him in danger. The reason she pushed him away was her own selfishness. She was in pain. She hated how vulnerable she was becoming, because that meant the pain of every last person she killed hurt her even more.  
  
Mukuro didn’t know love.  
She only knew pain. The pain her sister had dealt to her over and over. The pain she gave others. A girl who only knew how to kill and be killed. Whose only connection was the pointed end of a knife. She could not say those words to the one she wanted to say them to.  
  
Her voice sounded a little bit sad.  
  
“I want to kill you.” 


	88. Psyncin in the Remains

“...Hmm. Hurts a little bit, actually.” 

Bruises were formed by veins under the skin breaking. As if the roots underneath his skin were torn apart, and ripped from his flesh, causing purple flowers to bloom. He had been hit, but he did not want to leave a bruise. A bruise was proof that something inside of him was broken. He was punched several hours ago, it did not hurt anymore, so he wished his face would stop swelling already.   
  
He did not want the women of the neighborhood to look at his ugly swollen face, and feign concern. "Why are you hurt?","Who hit you?" they asked question after question and then whispered to themselves. It was pure hell, really. He hated when people ran their mouths without knowing anything. The last thing he needed was a bunch of weird strangers showing up at his door. He didn’t want to make mother even more upset. 

He had no idea why they were paying attention to him at all. Other people were drama he didn't need in his life. That's what he always strove for. A life without drama. One where he never got in the way of anyone. 

To him it wasn’t really a big deal at all. Compared to the pain of worrying about his mother, this was nothing. Getting hit only hurt for a few minutes, and if he waited the pain would eventually fade away. His great white dog tugged at the end of his leash. Sometimes Komaeda wished his dog was given to another owner. He could still remember the christmas morning that his mother had gifted it to him. _Mommy and daddy are sorry we’re always so busy, Nagi, so we got you a friend to play with._ He thought he was the luckiest boy in the world. Now he could hear the way his dog whined when he saw the other children playing at the park, and Komaeda thought he would be happier if someone else was his owner. 

He was sitting at the park because that was the rule. His mother told him he should play with the other children at least once a day. He would go home in an hour because that was the rule as well. 

 _The world we live in is built up out of millions of those little rules. Rules that were created by the grown ups._  
  
Attempting to rebel against those rules was akin to suicide. Komaeda still felt guilty following the rules, because he was only doing so half heartedly. He went to the park, but he never played with the other children because he did not want them to ask questions about his face. He wasn’t trying to be a good child. He didn’t try to do better. All he did was enjoy his own little world, letting the day float by without a passing thought. He wanted to live without causing any ripples. There was only one change in his little world, the pain that was in his left cheek yesterday was now in his right cheek today.   
  
A child like him who only followed the rules out of obligation to please his mother could never be a good child. He had to mingle with the children in this park all day, that was one of mother’s “rules.” In the morning his mother would come home from work, and cook him food. Komaeda wished he could cook for himself because mother always looked so tired cooking for him. Then, she would tell him to go to the park while she slept before her second shift. He was lucky, because both of his parents worked but he got to spend time with his mother. Komaeda never relied on them for anything, if his mother needed something, he’d do it, then clean for his mother and go to bed like always. The only thing he couldn't do was cook. 

Living following his mother’s rules was his duty, and his everything. They were all ridiculously simple rules to keep, but a failure like himself never seemed to get the hang of them at all, and that would always anger his mother.  
  
She was angry at him yesterday for knocking a vase on the floor and trying to hide it instead of cleaning it up. He should have just told her right away. He hurt his feelings more by lying to her. He had no idea why he had lied now, he wasn't scared of his mother. Today, he broke a cup, which made her fly into another rage. Whenever she was angry, she spoke to him with her hands, and left cruel remarks written all over his body in purple ink. Komaeda was sure, it made her hands hurt as much as it hurt his cheeks. She was breaking her hands against him.   
  
He didn’t mind being hit. If he waited and hoped, the pain would go away. Even if he was crying now, he knew he would eventually stop. What he hated was afterwards, when he had to look at his mother’s face as she apologized to him, crying. He never wanted to make his mother cry. Once she started it was like his mother never stopped crying.   
  
The more he tried to get everything right, the more mistakes he made. If he really loved her he would have never made the same mistaken twice, but he repeated them over and over. Even when he tried to make mother happy, the results were always the exact opposite. He was so unlucky. 

Defective.  
The first time he heard those words was when the TV remote in the living room broke. “It won’t function.” She bashed it against the television. She did so until the glass broke. His mother fumed and tossed it into the trash calling it a “defective piece of crap.” That was when he learned what the word “defective”  meant. Someone who couldn’t stick to the rules. Something that was no use to anyone. He realized then the defective remote was remarkably similar to himself.  
  
The only thing he could do for his mother - so tired from work, and always missing her husband - was make her (a) erupt, and (b) cry. There was nothing nondefective about him. So, why didn’t his mother ever throw him away?  
  
He hated being called a bad child. Bad children made their mothers cry. Bad children were thrown away. So, even if he knew deep down he was one, he could not accept it. He wanted to be good, even if it was just pretend. If he thought about it too long he started wanting to cry.   
  
So he had to think about what he wanted to do next instead. He should spend more time thinking about his mother than himself. He was sure if he just got it right, she would start to smile around him again.  _As long as I follow those ‘rules’ I can get through today without saddening my mother any further._ She always used to. She was so much happier in the days before he started having to visit the hospital every other week.

If he was strong he could get through this. If he kept smiling he could make it to tomorrow. But then tomorrow came, and a meteorite broke his mother’s head. His world destroyed by a meteor shower.  
  
Bad children were punished. Those were the rules. He wondered what he had done this time? He wanted to see those rules. The invisible rules made by adults that governed everything. Bad children broke the rules, but if he just knew what those rules were he would never need to be bad again.  
  
It was like everybody else was reading off a script he did not have. If just one person told him the rules, he would do his best. His entire life he was just trying to follow those rules, so why did it go so wrong? 

There were rules for friendship as well. Apparently, Komaeda broke one a long time ago. When he was around Kazuichi, it was like trying to walk with bare feet on a field of broken glass. 

“You’re really telling me this now man, after she’s already moved in?” Kazuichi chewed on his finger in obvious anxiety. He felt bad making Kazuichi feel that way. So many people hurt Kazuichi, took advantage of him, threw him away, and Komaeda was just another one of those people. “The hell are we supposed to do? Throw her out on the street?”  
  
“I know I’m not a person worth listening to, but please Kazu-kun. I didn’t say that.”  
  
He wished people understood how hard it was to explain the thoughts in his own head, when he himself didn’t understand them. He tried his best, but people always put words in his mouth instead. It always felt so forceful, like someone shoving a hand down his throat and commanding him to swallow. 

“Dude. I’m just trying to talk here. Why do you always have to go on the defensive. ‘I know I’m trash but just listen’, and ‘I know I’m just an insect buzzing in your ears but’. It’s like no matter what I say to you, you’re always the victim. Even if I’m being completely reasonable.”  
  
He did not think he was the victim. He was the one who always started these fights. “Kazu-kun, I didn’t say she had to be homeless. She just can’t live here. The Ultimate Inventor shouldn’t be relying on someone as pathetic and lowly as me for help anyway, she’s better than that.”  
  
Komaeda had been restless for the entire week. He slept in a hazy dream that past him by too quickly. The sky outside was a different color than it should have been, and he was sure that was because his fever was dying it a different color. Whenever he tried to sleep, he heard the noise of metal screaming, and scraping, deep into the night. Even when he crawled into the furthest corner of his room and made himself as small as possible he could not escape the noise. 

Three days ago Kazuichi broke a window. Komaeda turned the heat up as high as he could, but no matter how much he wrapped the blankets around himself he was still cold. They still had not fixed the draft. 

Miu was suffering so much worse than him. The few times he worked up the courage to knock on her door about the noise she was making, he could hear her crying late into the night. It reminded him of the way his mother only ever cried in front of him, clutching and hugging onto her son, and never in front of father. He wanted to be stronger for her. He wanted to be someone she could rely on, but he could not even handle a little bit of noise.  
  
The noise scraped out the inside of his ears. It was like a long screw being driven into his skull. Turn. Crank. Turn. Crank. Scraaaaaaape. Not only did he feel his skull being bored into, but he had to hear it as well. The screw turned and turned, and he felt his own brain being mixed up and reduced to mush. Griiiiind. He felt it. His own sense of self was being grinded away slowly.  
Kazuichi would go home to be hit every single day. Komaeda could not stand a little bit of loud noise. 

“Ugh, you always pull this crap.”  
  
“You’ll have to be specific, Kazu-kun. A lot of the things I do seem to really bother others, so I won’t know unless you tell me.” 

“This. This exact crap right now. You’re always telling people you want to help the _symbols of hope,_ but you don’t actually want to deal with them as people, do you? It bothers you when your symbols of hope have flaws. You’re just feeling disappointed right now. Just tell me you hate Iruma, be honest for once.”  
  
“It’s only natural to feel disappointed in a disappointing person like you, Kazu-kun. I wouldn’t complain if you said you were disappointed in me. Though, that’s probably impossible because nobody has any expectations for trash like me to begin with.”  
  
“Just talk to me! Do you know how to do that!?” Kazuichi raised his voice, in a way that made all of the muscles in Komaeda’s body tense. “God how is it possible for someone who spends so much time talking about himself to have no fucking clue what he’s saying.”  
  
“You’re right of course. Trash like me is not even worth paying attention to. I even think that way, but the only person I think about in the end is myself. Unworthy people like me are so self serving.”  
  
“Just admit it already! You only care about talented people when they’re beautiful. That’s why you… that’s why we…”  Kazuichi’s lip trembled. “Ugh, whatever. You’re not going to listen no matter what I say.” 

“But we’re friends, Kazu-kun. I’m trying to listen to what you have to say, so this time please… just listen a little bit.”  
  
There was a lot of makeup on Kazuichi’s face. Komaeda noticed, because he used to steal his mother’s makeup to cover the bruises on his own face.  
  
“You don’t have any friends.”  
  
Kazuichi said the words in a quiet voice, but to Komaeda they were louder than a jackhammer pounding right into his eardrum. He had laid his head on the concrete only to get it splashed and splattered all over the curb. The words were just too loud. He didn’t want to hear them. He didn’t want to hear anything.  
  
“Ya know why? It’s not bad luck, you’re just a bad friend.”  
  


🧸

 

Komaeda sat at the top of the slide.

He would wait until things with Kazuichi cooled off, and then go home and apologize. Just like every time with mother. The playground was entirely empty, but Komaeda could hear the laughter of children in the background. They were always off playing while he sat there alone.  
  


Suddenly he felt two hand on his back. Komaeda was pushed down the slide and at the bottom he looked behind his shoulder to see someone standing there at the top of the slide. He had white, frayed, shaggy hair and a white smiled underneath it. It did not matter if he became the enemy of the world, or killed everyone in sight, Komaeda would only ever see a crying child standing there. 

『Yo. Let’s play, Nagito-chan.』  
  
“But, I don’t want to play with you.”  
  
  『Awe, why not?』  
  
“Because you’re an ugly person, and you’re noisy.” 

  『Those are two of Nagito-chan’s favorite things. He must really like me.』

Komaeda had that dream again and again, like he was sinking in his own brain. There was water inside of him that made up himself, impossible to grasp, and desperately trying to take the shape of its container. He was drowning in that self. Kumagawa’s eyes like water falling on him, crushing him from the pressure alone.

Eyes like that made him want to dissolve into seafoam. He had already sold his voice, so he could try and pretend to be human.  
  
Kumagawa reached forward and touched his cheek. Right underneath his eye, just like when he came to this park to hide the bruises his mother left on his face years ago. Komaeda braced himself to be pelted with questions but Kumagawa did not say anything.  
  
“I had an argument with my housemate.” Komaeda finally spoke up. 

  『Sounds boring! Why would I want to talk about your problems? There’s just so many of them, Nagito-chan. We’ll be here all day. 』  
  
“We’re always arguing these days, because I’m a bad friend.” 

『Hmm? Why are you bad? I mean besides the fact that you constantly insult me, tell your own friends that it doesn’t matter if they die because their deaths will become hope, and sometimes try to blow them up. 』  
  
“Because I… I don’t try to get better.”  
  
If Komaeda were the mermaid he would just lay out on the shore waiting for the tide to wash him away. Even if he became human all he would do was drown himself.  
Suicidal Mermaid. 

Even if he sold his heart he couldn’t become human.  
  
He still remembered the witch he sold his voice to.  
  
If only he could breathe underwater. If only he could swim. If only he could walk on land. If only he could dance. But he couldn’t do anything. Other people. He wanted to look at other people like Kazuichi said. But, they were tidal waves to him.  
  
The moment he opened up the door water flooded through. He felt himself getting washed away. Maybe that was why the colors of his body were always so washed out. When he was in the room with someone else, his feet were wet, he felt the room slowly filling up with water, the water would swallow his head and pull him underneath.  
  
Each person was a wave crashing against him. The emotions other people rocked back and forth inside of him, making him nauseous. It felt like just being close to someone else was an act of senseless violence.  
  
There was a room he was always afraid to step into. It felt a bit like being forced to strip and then showering naked in cold water in front of someone else. The therapist’s office of Miaya Gekkogahara. Even in this daydream filled up with pity, Komaeda was afraid to open that door. 

Kumagawa just kicked it open like always. Someone really need to teach that child some manners. Komaeda tried to speak but all that escaped his mouth were bubbles.  
  
Blue hair, and blue eyes. There was a red scarf around her neck that made it impossible to see her mouth when she was speaking. The super high school level therapist always spoke in a soft voice like a mouse, but Komaeda always found the squeak of her voice just the slightest bit agitating. 

The fact that fish felt no pain was just a myth. It was told to justify slicing them open while they were still alive. Komaeda could feel it, when the knife went down his chest, and split open his stomach. He could feel her fingertips rooting around in his organs.  
  
She clapped her hands together enthusiastically. “Alright, Komaeda-kun. Let’s talk about helping you function better at this school.”  
  
That word function.  
When he remembered the defective remote. His mother throwing it out.  
It felt like white noise from the broken tv buzzing at the back of his skull.  
And his mother’s fist hitting the monitor again and again, just trying to get it to work.  
  
“Come on, talk to me. I’m just trying to be your friend here.” She always talked to him in that cutesy sort of way. “It’s a little bit lonely if I’m the only one talking, but hey it’s your feelings that matter here not mine.”  
  
His friends were the kids in his class. Even if he did not like them, he wanted to spend time with them. But, he had to show up to this room four times a week. Komaeda could see the glass of the fish bowl around his head, and from the other side human eyes were peering down at him.  
  
“We talked a lot yesterday. There’s nothing to talk about today. Nothing special happens in my life anyway, there are people living far more interesting lives than me.” 

“Are you sure about that? Yukizome-sensei told me you were caught putting hate mail in Sayaka Maizono’s locker.” 

How did she find out about that?  
Komaeda wanted to explain himself, but he knew everything he said would be dismissed in that cutesy tone of voice.  
  
“Were you talking to my teachers without asking me again?”  
  
“Well. What do you expect me to do? Do you think you can just cause trouble for Maizono-san and get away with it…?” 

He didn’t want to cause trouble. “She was in a bad mood. She’s been under a lot of pressure lately. I thought my actions would inspire hope in-”  
  
“There’s no such thing as a hope that hurts people. Nagi-chan. We’re here because we don’t want to get better, right?” 

He never should have told her his mother used to call him by that nickname. He hated hearing those words said in such a sweet tone of voice. Komaeda felt like he was going to be poisoned by that honey.  
  
“But I…”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“It’s nothing. Just the philosophical musings of a nobody. You shouldn’t pay attention to it.” 

“You’re not being cooperative, again.” Komaeda’s fingers flexed in fear. She knew how to say those words without saying them, to make even an idiot like him understand, that if he did not cooperate there would be consequences. “I’ll have to report this incident back to Kirigiri, and Maizono’s complaints to.”  
  
“No… don’t.” Komaeda suddenly woke up. It was like he had been dreaming underwater. His face gazing at light through the surface of the water. All of his senses were dulled until right at this moment when they all came flooding back. “Kirigiri-san gave me a chance at his school. I… I don’t want him to know how sick I am.”  
  
“But, how are you ever going to get better if you don’t acknowledge that you’re sick?” 

He really hated soft words like that, because they were words uttered by nurses about to smother him with a pillow. He knew he was sick. He knew he was dying. He would die soon.  
  
And yet all she talked about was getting better. She wanted to fix the broken boy in front of her. He was not allowed to be broken. If he stayed broken even after all the hard work she put into his therapy, it was like he was directly insulting her.  
  
Komaeda could only second guess himself when he was around her. What did a defect like him have any right criticizing the kind young girl who called herself the super high school level therapist? How much hope had she brought to her others patients? The ones that wanted to get better unlike him.  
  
“You’re always so negative, Nagi-chan. But it’s okay, even if you don’t believe in yourself. I believe in you.”  
  
“I don’t think belief will change things. If there’s someone to believe in, it’s not me, it’s someone whose actually competent and capable of changing-”  
  


“There you are bad mouthing yourself again. Don’t you know you’re badmouthing my best friend?”  
  
From the first day he met her, she uncorked a bottle and stole away his voice. Now it was like no matter what he said, she never listened. The only noise he made was the scratchings of an empty throat.

“Yukizome-sensei is telling me you’re not functional. And if you can’t function in class, we might have to consider hospitalization.”  
  
Komaeda’s fingers curled around the chair he was sitting in. He was desperately looking for something to hold on to, so the tide did not pull him under. “No. That won’t… That won’t do damaged goods like me any good. Hospitals should be used on people capable of actually healing.”  
  
He would die.  
Those words repeated in his head over and over again. He would die. He would die. He just wanted to meet someone before that happened. He wanted to see someone smile when they looked at him. That was never going to happen in an all-white hospital room. He would pass away without a single visitor coming to his side. They just wanted to lock him away and forget about him.  
  
“You see, when you talk like that. You make me feel like you don’t want to fix your defects…”  
  
“Stop saying that.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“That word. Stop saying that. I’m not defective.”  
  
“Then what are you? Does a healthy person do these things? A healthy person would want to be better-” 

His mother’s fist hit the television screen. If she hit it enough, it would start working again. A violent percussion beating on his temples. Komaeda curled his fingers in the knots of his hair pushing hard to keep his skull form splitting. “Shut up.”  
  
“I’m just trying to be your friend here. That’s not a nice thing to say to a friend.”  
  
“You’re not listening to me.”  
  
“I’ve done nothing but listen to you this entire time. I’m not here to judge you. It’s okay to be defective as long as you try to get better-”  
  
“Maybe I can only function this way. Maybe I was born to function like this. Maybe some people are born without talent, so all they can do is stay the same for their entire miserable lives!” 

Then he would die. Death was closer to him than any lover. When he thought about that, how he was going to die alone, and how this woman would tell his body at his funeral that the reason he died was because he did not think positively enough to make his fatal brain tumor disappear. When he thought about that, and her squeaky voice like a mouse that had crawled into his ears and started to gnaw on the soft tissue of his brain all he could do was laugh.  
  
He laughed. 

He was supposed to cry. A funtional person would have cried right now. For defective products, the circuitry in their brains were switched. He laughed when he was supposed to cry. He laughed instead of screaming. He laughed when he was in pain. When he was tired of it all, he just kept laughing. 

“You’re scaring me, Nagi-chan.”  
  
He was the one who was scared. He wanted to see his friends again. He wanted to make friends. He did not want to be locked in the same room all day to wait until he died. He was so, so scared, he wanted to cry so why wasn’t he allowed to?  
  
“You’re dangerous… You’re a danger to yourself and others. You’re going to hurt someone. You’re going to hurt me.”  
  
Why didn’t she stop and think before she hurt him?  
She said those words over and over again even when he asked her not to.  
Why was she looking at him like he was the scary one?  
He was scared.  
He was in pain.  
  
“H-help me, someone.”  
  
He was the one who wanted help.  
  
The laughter died off in his throat. The witch who had octopus legs instead of fins, reached into his throat, her fingers scratching the inside of his airways on the way down, and she pulled his voice out of him. He wanted to gag. He wanted to vomit from the taste of her dirty fingers in his mouth. 

“You have to go to the hospital, Nagi-chan. It’s the place people go to learn how to function better.  I’m going to call Kirigiri-san and tell him-”  
  
Komaeda’s hands moved forward before he realized what was happening. He pushed her out of her wheelchair, and then ran away. That was all he could think of to do, hurt some poor little girl in a wheelchair.  
  
He wanted help.  
But the people who said they were helping him, never helped.  
So he ran away.  
  
He ran outside the door like he was running from the memory itself. No matter how far he ran, Kumagawa was still behind him, clinging to him like a shadow. 

  『I don’t get it, what’s so bad about a mental hospital?』  
  
“Have you ever been to one?” 

  『Nope! I’ve never been to therapy or anything like that. Hospitals are for people who have a hope of recovery.』  
  
“Wow. And you’re so well adjusted. I can hardly even tell.” 

  『Only you would get sarcastic with me during the middle of a traumatic flashback.』  
  
“Are you even the real Kumagawa-kun, or am I just hallucinating you again?” 

  『What an interesting question? Who is the real Kumagawa? And why is he so cute?』  
  
“Nevermind. I could never imagine someone this annoying. I’m not that creative.” Komaeda said, as the hallways around them turned to a pure white. “It’s like a prison, but it’s more boring.” 

  『Oh, I would hate that. I’m so lucky after all, that I had no money, no parents, and no connections so nobody tried to help me.』  
  
Komaeda Nagito had money. He had connections to several doctors. He had ever resource in the world to get better. He even had the memories of his mother clinging to him, kissing his wound and apologizing after she hit him. Nobody had ever even apologized to Kumagawa, Komaeda was sure.  
  
But, he only ever got worse. He had all the opportunities in the world, and Kumagawa had none, and they had turned out the same. 

Komaeda asked them not to restrain him. Ever since the incident in middle school, when he felt himself being tied down he was struck by a horrible claustrophobia. He was back in that basement again. The place he was going to die amongst all the other garbage that had been thrown out, alone, known by nobody.  
  
The scent of that rotten room filled his nose, and he heard that man’s screaming ringing in his ears again. He asked them not to confine him to one small space because he was so afraid he would never be able to leave again.  
  
But all he could do was sit at the bed he had been tied to, and watch the four white walls of the room slowly close in on him. It was his fault. He laughed until he screamed. He should have known better. If he presented himself as someone more functional in front of them, he never would have been hospitalized.  
  
Ever since he was a child he hated hospitals. There was someone out there waiting for him. He just wanted to meet that one special person, the person who would give him a little bit of hope. He had not made any friends yet, so he hated being confined to one bed all day long.  
  
He thought anybody would react that way if they were told they had fronto-temporal dementia. How was he supposed to take that? They told him he was scary. That he was putting himself in danger. He was already scared. He was already in danger. He was going to die soon. Why didn’t they see that?  
  
How loudly did he have to scream before someone realized he was asking for help? He screamed in that empty room, but no one came and eventually he just got bored of doing that. 

Then a male nurse came in. Komaeda’s heart skipped a beat. This entire time he had been bargaining inside of his own mind, trying to find a way to be okay with death. If he had someone to hold his hand by his bedside, maybe…  
  
“There’s no one to take care of you…”  
  
That nurse was the first person to listen to all of his problems. Komaeda wondered why he had bothered to come to the isolation ward and talk to him all alone, surely that was against the rules.  
  
He realized a minute too late.  
  
“Don’t worry. It’s not a hassle at all. It’s a nurse’s job to make a patient happy.”  
  
He put his hand on Komaeda’s stomach. Then slid it down past his belly button.  
  
“I can make you happy.” 

  『Nagito-chan, don’t look at this.』  
  
Komaeda shook his head. 

  『Why are you forcing yourself to look? Hey, hey, tell me another lie. I want to hear a lie, right now. You’re a better liar than I am. You’re always going on about hope, so just lie to me.』  
  
But looking away was all he had ever done.  
He did not want to look at a defective product. So he looked away. If he had wanted to be fixed, he would have faced himself.  
  
He just looked through hazy days. He just watched boring days repeating. He read aimlessly, and only skimmed the pages.  If only he looked. Then maybe, he could be laughing side by side with everyone else in his class. He never would have even known the word _despair._ _  
_ _  
_ He hated being touched.  
What that man touched was his own mind, perverted by pain.  
Komaeda remembered he was smiling.  
He was breathing that day with a dirty mind. 

  『Hey, Nagito-chan, you know how I was homeless?』  
  
“Yep. I still have no idea why a person like you who cannot bring hope to anyone didn’t die in the garbage with the rest of the stray dogs.” 

  『There are people who will take you in even if you’re homeless, but well they always ask you for a favor if you stay at their place for the night.』 Kumagawa took Komaeda by the hand, guiding him away from that memory like a lost child. 『But they always wanted something in return. So I ended up living like a giggolo for awhile! I bet you’re gonna say, _how did a giggolo as ugly as you not starve to death._ 』  
  
“I wasn’t going to say that.”  
  
He had no parents. No family registery. He had no money in his bank account. Ajimu picked him up for awhile, but when she disappeared there was no place to return to. He had to find himself a place to sleep by any means necessary. In exchange for which, almost everyone asked for something in return. He did shameful things, he did things he can’t even joke about.  
  
  『Ajimu-san, can see everything. But… for some reason. I hope she never saw that.』

She was the one person who knew exactly how ugly he was, and yet. 

  『That’s the one thing I never wanted her to see.』  
  
“She probably wasn’t looking that closely to you anyway. Only people with talent live interesting, colorful lives.” Komaeda said as the two of them walked along. As the scenery changed around them once more, it looked like Kumagawa was holding Komaeda’s hand to guide him around in the snow.  
  
The mermaid traded her voice for legs, and immeasurable pain from her missing tail. Komaeda ran forward trying to get away from Gekkogahara. If he could just make it to the Biology building, then Matsuda would help him.  
  
He just needed to run a little further. But his legs wobbled beneath him like he had never walked on dry land before. The night sky a dull grey white. As if to silence his screams for help. Snow fell from above, sparkling like falling stars. But he always hated falling stars. Ever since the day of the plane crash he had been terrified of them. 

Distorted. A distant and shimmering world. The pieces all fall.  
  
Komaeda, like snow fell forward. He looked down and saw a tentacle wrapped around his leg. It was actually a mechanical arm that had shot out from Gekkogahara’s wheelchair. “You assaulted your health care provider, Nagito-chan. If you’re a danger to me then I’m authorized to restrain you.”  
  
With robotic limbs, apparently.  
Eight of them in total.  
  
She dropped him on the ground just then. Komaeda’s head bounced off the ice and started to bleed.  
  
He died in pure white snow.  
Always cold.  
Always alone.  
  
He was no longer moving. So she thought it was safe to approach him. His broken form on the ground, covered in his own blood. Komaeda suddenly sprung up, reaching forward as he grabbed the scarf around her neck and pulled on both ends as hard as he could.  
  
He wanted to meet Matsuda-kun.  
He wanted to meet Matsuda-kun.  
He wanted to meet Matsuda-kun.  
He wanted to meet Matsuda-kun.  
He was going to meet Matsuda-kun. This person was in the way. He was going to meet Matsuda-kun. As soon as he got rid of her. He was going to meet Matsuda-kun. Then everything would go back to the way it was. Everything would go back to the day when it was just the two of them. Komaeda would never get better, but someone like Matsuda-kun would stay his doctor until the day he died. That was all he wanted.  
  
He was still alive. Human failure. Damaged goods. Defective product. Dysfunctional person. He wanted to live like everybody else. So, when he died, he wanted at least one person to cry.  
  
He pulled and pulled at the scarf around Gekkogahara’s neck until she stopped moving. Then he saw, Matsuda-kun standing next to him. He must have followed the trail his blood left in the snow.  
  
Matsuda-kun was aware of exactly the kind of ugly person he was, but he still never wanted to see him like this.  
  
He was no longer in that snowy scene. Komaeda was sitting at the top of the slide he used to play when he was younger. He had his knees drawn up to his chest, and his arms folded around his knees. He hid his head away and mumbled to himself.  
  
“I broke a rule.” 

His hand squeezed tightly around Kumagawa’s.  
  
“E-everyone always treated me like that. Always ‘It’s your fault’, ‘You’re the problem’. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. No matter what they do, they always get forgiven, so why won’t anyone forgive me?”

Komaeda Nagito wanted to be forgiven. It didn’t matter by who, he just wanted to be forgiven. 

“You’ll forgive me, won’t you? Kumagawa-kun. You’re the only one who can forgive me.” 

He reached out towards the sky. Above him stars were crumbling, they were going to fall out of the sky, and break people’s heads. Even if falling stars created despair, people wished on them and felt hope.  
  
His arm stretched out, and his fingers closed on those stars. He wanted to steal away a small piece for himself. He wanted to hold a star in his fingertips so he could finally have a wish for his own.  
  
Kumagawa, like gravity pulled him down. He harshly tugged him until he fell to the bottom of the slide. There, Kumagawa standing over the slide, stood over him as well. Komaeda’s head lightly bumped into his waste.  
  
The next moment as Kumagawa leaned down, Komaeda’s back was pinned against the back of the slide. When they were this close, their bodies looked like they had been cut apart from one person into two messy pieces. Kumagawa’s thin and oddly proportioned body was somehow a perfect fit for his. They could fit together, curves against curves. They could be closer than most people were meant to be.  
  
Komaeda did not want to be inside Kumagawa, because he was already inside of him. He would just be content with lying there naked next to him. If the two of their bodies were together, neither of them needed to feel shy, neither of them looked ugly. It was like their bodies yearned for the other, missing half, wanting to be hole once more. He could be content to wake up to the shape of Kumagawa’s body underneath the blankets. 

Kumagawa’s lips were right next to his. All he needed to do was tilt his head, and their faces would line up. It probably felt so comfortable to be in the grasp of a body shaped just like his own. No one else knew how to hold him. He just could not feel comfortable in the arms of another person, he would feel the edges of their bones knocking against his. He would be reminded how unshapely his body was.  
  
He saw the ocean in Kumagawa’s eyes.  
He saved a drowning prince.  
The little mermaid did nothing wrong.  
It was the witch who tricked her.  
All she wanted was one prince’s kiss. 

  『Nagito-chan you sound like Mikan-chan.』  
  
Komaeda’s eyes opened once more, and he could see the cruel way Kumagawa’s face twisted. 

  『Nagito-chan if you’re acting like a bad friend, don’t you deserve to be called a bad friend?』  
  
“I was…” 

  『You know what Miu-chan and Soda-chan went through, but you don’t give a damn. Why do you waste so much mental energy pretending to care about others? I really don’t get it.』  
  
That was not true. He wanted to care. He still remembered. He was afraid of falling stars. He did not want to go see them the day of the fireworks festival. He hated loud noises, and the idea of meteorites falling out of the sky. Kazuichi kept pestering. He finally went. In the end, when Komaeda got too scared to watch Kazuichi carried him on his back all the way to the nearby water. The fireworks went off, but Kazuichi took his hand. He saw the colors fall from the sky and reflect on the surface of the water.  
  
For a moment he thought it was okay to make a wish.  
No star would fall out of the sky and crush Kazuichi’s head.  
He was reaching up trying to steal a piece of a star for himself.  
But maybe all he needed was Kumagawa to take his hand. 

『In the end aren’t you doing this all for the sake of your own vanity? You don’t want to be labeled a bad person, so you pretend to be a good one. Then you get upset see through your lie.』

All he needed was Kumagawa’s hand.  
So, why was Kumagawa’s fingers slipping out of his? 

  『You killed a little girl in a wheelchair. You think that Miu-chan’s suffering is too loud. Too in your face. You want her to go suffer quietly elsewhere, where you don’t have to see it. Other people’s people’s feelings, are nothing to you, like mere dreams.』  
  
So he should just become seafoam and vanish.  
That was it. The difference between Kumagawa and Komaeda.   
Komaeda always carefully observed the rules.  
Kumagawa acted like there were no rules.   
But, no matter what they did they were both punished.   
They were the same actually. How pointless. 

  『Because. They don’t let you feel anything. And, you don’t let yourself feel anything.』

Komaeda saw those hands reaching out for him again. They rose up from Kumagawa’s shadow, and touched every part of his body. They grabbed his limbs and slowly, slowly, tried to pull him apart.  
  
  『You’re not the little mermaid. There’s no victim in this story, only a villain. Just be the bad guy they all want you to be.』 _  
  
_"They—they won't let me—I—I can't be good!

  『Nobody could go through all that and be...』  
  
_Why don't you get that?  
_There were tears bubbling out from Kumagawa's eyes.   
If a mermaid cried, they would be washed away. Just like seafoam. No-one would ever know. 

The little mermaid was turned into seafoam because she wished for hope.  
That was her one flaw. If she had not wished, she never would have lost.  
Her hope brought her nothing but pain.  
  
“Ah, it’s so damn hopeless…Such a hopeless ending.” Komaeda muttered in a Junko-like voice. 

  『There was never any hope to begin with.』

His prince refused to kiss him.  
The prince did not kiss him so he stayed dead. 

  『There's no hope anywhere, and no one at all to believe in.』  
  



	89. Reveries in the Rain

Boys and girls form a circle.  
And their outstretched hands come down through the air.  
The imaginary and the real can never mingle.  
  
🧸  
  


“Wait a sec, this is confusing.”

『And then she says, nevermind I got this bitch figured out.』  
  
“Nevermind, I’ve got this bitch figured out..” 

『And then she says, oi, oi, I’m not the predictable one. Everyone else is predictable and I’m a spontaneous one of a kind original.』  
  
“Oi, oi, I’m not the predictable one-” Junko stopped, her annoyed expression quickly melted into one of affection. “See we’re total soulmates. We even finish each other’s-”

『Execution sentences.』

At that, Junko cooed at Kumagawa like he was a particularly cute, and murderous puppy. She ran up and grabbed his arm, practically hanging off of him. 

Mukuro’s dream of a normal life.  
Kokichi’s dream of running away to the circus.  
Rantaro’s dream of dying.  
Maki’s dream of protecting one sick boy.  
Toko’s desire to have a dream she never woke up from.  
Zenkichi’s dream of his middle school days.  
  
Kumagawa and Junko looked at the half assed dreams and delusions of their classmates, and broke them like the fragile glass they were constructed of. Dreams are just delusions of a world they would never have after all. They were just lies. Lies that could not change a thing about reality. 

Kumagawa would know. Because nothing changes.  
No matter what lie he tells. No matter how he changes himself, the end result is still the same. Kumagawa Misogi cannot change. Hope changes nothing. Despair changes nothing. Love changes nothing.  
  
“You and I were in the same room together, that’s why we ended up in the same dream. So were Harukawa-san, and Momota-kun. Plus, Togami-kun and Fukawa-san. I guess those ships have sailed.”

『Ewe. Love.』  
  
“We know Iruma-san and Kazuichi-kun are the murderers because they created this Neo-Neo World Program. Which means the murder victims must be whoever is in the last dream.” 

『Thank you Junkopedia. You really do know everything. So do you have the answer to why you’re such a bitch yet?』  
  
“Being a bitch is one of my many likable qualities.”

『I doubt that.』

“No, no, it’s true. Things that would look ugly on other people just look great on me. I could make crocs work. I am that bitch.” 

『Scaaaaaaaaryyyyyyy.』  
  
As usual Junko had no idea if she was getting along with Kumagawa or fighting with him. If their relationship was confusing to other people it was just as confusing to her.  
  
However at the same time, it occurred to both of them who the muder victim might be in that case. 

『Nagito-chan.』

“Na-egghead.” 

Junko saw Kumagawa’s expression look like it wanted to split in two, as he tried to decide whether to rush to help Mukuro, or Komaeda. She reached out wrapping her red nails around his shoulder. If only that hand was capable of being gentle.  
  
“Hey, I may be the worst, most tragic, most awful, sister of all time but I’m still her sister. Muku-chan’s a tragic headcase, but like I’ll make sure she doesn’t do anything too tragic…”

『Sure.』  
  
“Wait, what. You’re trusting me? I don’t even trust me. That bitch is continually screwing things up for the both of us. This is no time for you to make one of your incredibly sexy bad decisions that blows up in our face and destroys everything around you despite your best intentions.” 

Kumagawa had no idea what Junko’s definition of sexy meant. Then he conjured an image of Matsuda, and then himself in his head and he had a pretty good idea.『I trust you Junko. I trust you to stab me in the back. I trust you to completely destroy any good will Mukuro-chan has for you because you just can’t help yourself.』

Junko wanted the entire world. But, right now all she wanted was for Kumagawa to trust her again. She really, really hated when she got exactly what she wanted. 

 

🧸

 

Rain, falling like careless tears.  
Soaking both of them through.  
The fabric on her skin became transparent. Ikusaba Mukuro was entirely see-through.  
Ikusaba Mukuro, fell. She fell to the most extreme solution of trying to kill him. She wanted to fall again, because it was too much of a struggle trying to stay afloat. A knife pointed above him down at his neck, all she needed to do was let the knife fall.  
  
Her feelings were just too heavy for one girl. Envy, at his normal life. Jealousy, of the beauty he could see in the future that she couldn’t. And an end to all of this. She finally understood why Junko could desire enough to destroy a whole world. She was terrified by how heavy her desires towards Makoto, were. 

It’s sort of funny in a sick sense. She always said she murdered for the sake of her sister. It was Junko who took pleasure from murder. But, now Junko was right here begging her not to do this.  Yet, here she was feeling attracted to Naegi Makoto, and wanting to kill him with the same stroke of the knife. She wanted his heart. She wanted to cut it out. Why didn’t she notice it before? Why did it take so long? Junko only thought about how to kill the people around her, but she never acted on it. _It was always me who’s doing it. It’s me who really liked it. I was the one who killed them._  
  
Junko was right. She was always right. Mukuro always invested too much of herself in the people around her. It was like an excuse. She wanted to live for the sake of other people. She didn’t want to live for herself. Because she was a killer. She had no right to continue living when she had cut other people’s lives short. So, she had put all of those feelings into Makoto.  
  
All of her pain. All of her pleasure. Her desire to live. Her desire to die. They were all tied up in one person. He was her dream. That was not romantic. It was parasitic. She needed him to live, the same way a leech needed blood.  
  
Did she just replace Junko? Did she just pick a new person to base her entire life and world view around? She could cut herself away from all those feelings if she just cut the boy up in front of her. Her knife hesitated at her throat, and then she saw - those eyes.  
Those eyes had already forgiven her before she could even cut him. That forgiveness it was just a bit too heavy. 

“I have to kill you - but I can’t.” 

Mukuro threw the knife away. The rain was causing colors to bleed away from the scenery. They were no longer underneath the bridge. Sand started to rain down from the sky on both of them. Makoto heard the sound of the ocean in the distance. He no longer remembered where he was. He no longer remembered who’s dream this was. 

Mukuro beat her hands against his chest ineffectually. It hurt, because she was a strong girl. But it didn’t hurt at all. Makoto didn’t feel his own pain. The pain of other people was always far too loud, it drowned out his own feelings. That was why he could never decide. That was why he could never make up his own mind. 

“You’re my dream.” 

“Dream?” 

“If I can’t make you go away. I have to make myself go away.” 

She pressed her hand against her chest and lifted herself off from him. She stood there, eyes wide and staring at the featureless sky as she watched the rain fall from it. She looked as if she was trying to memorize the way the sky looked in that moment, one final look, because she might never see it again.  
  
“Muku-chan don’t you get what you’re doing? Don’t you think you’re coming on way too strong? Either he saves you and redeems you, or you kill yourself out of guilt. Isn’t that way too much pressure for one boy, even if he’s the super high school level weenie with a massive guilt complex?” 

Junko had caught up to the two of them. She had kicked her heels off and left them behid her so she could run barefoot in the sand and make it there faster. However the scenery changed once again and they were in a school gymnasium. The world itself was in a bipolar state. It flipped between the two poles, and then collapsed.  
  
“Why are you being so stupid? Why don’t people stop being stupid when I tell them how stupid they are?”

Junko tried to call out again, but they weren’t listening to her. Because she was not there with them. She was sitting in the control room, watching them on the monitor. She saw a big red button in front of her that read ‘ _big sis’s birthday present’._ That was right she had never gotten Mukuro a birthday present in her life. She hated the fact that she was born, but if there was one thing she was glad of it was that her sister had been born on the same day. Why didn’t she tell her that? She should have told Mukuro.  
  
Junko saw her hand move towards the big red execution button. She remembered Kumagawa’s words. She couldn’t help anybody else, and most of all she couldn’t help herself. Her hand started to pull her body forward with it’s full force. 

She moved to the sink and pushed it down into the water. This hand, destroyed so many people. She pulled the limbs off of dolls, and then threw them away uninterested when they were broken. She forced that hand into the cold water trying to stop it. How many people did she sink these red nails into, pulling out the nerves in meat of their brains like they were simple puppet strings.  
  
The hand crawled it way out of the water still attached to her arm. She grabbed herself by the hair, and then slammed herself against the wall. She bashed her head over and over again. Several plates fell in front of the microwave. She needed meals in this room if she was planning to watch everybody fall into despair during the killing game after all. Junko fell to the floor, and her hand picked another one of the plates off the ground. She held it high in the air and bashed it over her own head. Junko tried to stand up once more. She grabbed onto the cabinets to steady herself, only to fall backwards. As she fell she pulled the cabinet open and several things fell out scattering across the floor.  
  
Junko’s hand noticed a cleaver had fallen into the floor. It started to crawl towards it, her own fingers moving like spider’s legs. Her hand dragged her reluctant body forward. Just before it reached the meat cleaver, Junko used her remaining hand to pick up a knife with a serrated edge and stab it into the palm of her hand. The hands fingers moved liked that of a crushed instinct, still twitching, twitching, trying to live. Junko picked up the meat cleaver of her own free will and started to tear her own hand off.  
  
That was right this body. This person was the one who hurt her sister. No matter how much she decided she was different now, no matter how she tried to help her, these hands were always the one who hurt her. Junko stared at the empty stump of her hand as finished cutting her hand away from her wrist.  
  
When she looked back the button had already been pushed. That was right. There were some things she could never take back.  No matter how much she changed, she was the person who killed her sister.

“Haha, how come stupid people never change even if I tell them how stupid they are.” 

The world pixellated. It was like a single sand was caught in the grain of a supercomputer, causing the entire hard drive to crash. It stopped raining. Naegi wondered why, he looked around to see they were inside now. The two of them were standing in the center of a gym, on a tiled floor. 

He saw spears emerge from the tiles.  
It never stopped raining.  
Ahhhh, a blood rain.  
He would see it soon.  
  
Mukuro just wanted to stop dreaming. She wanted to sleep without the images of a happier life flashing before her eyes. No more dreaming, no more waking. But she could not bring herself to kill her dream. 

“I’ve had enough. I don’t care…”  
  
“Y-you should. There’s no way you can’t. What’re you saying? Besides...!! What’ll you do about Enoshima-san?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter. And my sister doesn’t matter.” Makoto really thought if someone tried their hardest good things would happen eventually. He had no idea that his kindness was capable of hurting someone. He thought if he never chose. If he never decided. He never would have to reject anyone. He never would have to say no to them. But… he had been rejecting her just by not deciding? Just by drawing closer he had hurt her.

Lonely. So lonely it hurt. She could not be herself when next to him.  Because he told her she was a normal girl. Because he treated her like a normal girl. He just ignored who she really was. 

Makoto always looking on the bright side of things.  He was just blind to people's ugliness. _I'm not kind like Komaeda._ Komaeda could look at everything,  and still want to be kind. Makoto only ever sipped the clean surface of the water. 

Komaeda was poisoned because… he actually tried to confront peoples darker sides. He tried to hope when things were hopeless.  Makoto told Mukuro he loved her, but he had ignored half of who she was.

Maybe it was just conceited, but he thought he understood her now. They were enduring the same,  abandoning, giving up on everything. Makoto surrounded by people, Mukuro in her tiny sheltered world, they were both alone.

That pain was what they shared, more intimate than any love between them. 

Makoto never wished for anything.  That was why he could not understand her. They were different. She wished for everything.  He wished for nothing. No matter how much he wanted to, he could not understand her self hatred and regret. 

And even if he understood. Could he continue to be kind like Komaeda?

_I'm just an ordinary person who's no good at anything._

How many times had he used that excuse?

_Hope isn't a talent you develop._

But it was, wasn't it? How many times did Komaeda keep hoping when there was no hope left? How did he keep believing when there was no one around him to believe. All this time, all alone, he kept believing.

Komaeda tried to do things when he was alone. Makoto always had everyone with him, but he never did anything. Not a single thing.

Choosing someone means not choosing someone else. Choosing everyone means choosing no one. That was what it meant living a life where he wanted to inflict the littlest damage possible, where he never hurt anyone.  It was so obvious, but why did he not realise.

A fool. 

_Don't make that face, Mukuro._

The strongest girl he knew was so weak. She wanted to give up on it all. But unlike him she had actually tried. She dreamed for herself. 

He shuddered at his own stupidity. He seriously, seriously kept making mistakes. 

That face.  That gloomy, dark expression. That face of wanting to give up. That was his own face.  He wanted to give up before even trying.

Mukuro had wished on Makoto like a star. That was true, but… he had been wishing on her as well. He should just admit it. He had always wanted to be special. He wanted to be important to other people.

If he was someone like Komaeda.  who everyone only looked at to sneer at. If every time he tried to open his mouth, everyone rejected him before listening to what he had to say. If he tried his best to stay positive, only for everyone to look at him like he was insane just for hoping. There was no way Makoto could go on hoping.  
  
If he endured all that Naegi Makoto would no longer be Naegi Makoto. He always relied on other people to decide everything for him. If they had decided to hate him, Makoto would have just passively hated them back. He had no idea what it was like to be that hated, and still try to love yourself.  
  
Yet he told Komaeda there was still hope.  
He told Togami that they were friends.  
He told Mukuro that he would forgive her.  

Not understanding a single thing, he just ran his mouth in front of them. He was just looking down on them all this time. _I looked down on you. I belittled you. From an absolutely safe height and from a very far place away. I never once saw you guys as equals._

 _I’m no one special._  
  
That was what he always said. But, even normal people had to choose. They chose every day of their lives. Everyone in the world did, except for him. _I have to be the one making and carrying my wishes. The giving. The taking. I never should have given those to anyone else._

“I don’t care anymore.” Mukuro said. “I hate you. I want you to die… I… I…”  
  
“Is that so?” 

No one in the world would choose someone like Mukuro. If she were to die, all of her victims would probably cheer happily. Makoto always wanted an ending that would make everyone happy. He was like a child wanting everyone in his sight to smile. That childish dream would never happen though.  
  
So, he chose something nobody would be happy with. A selfish choice. He was not doing this for anyone else. He was just doing this for himself. He did not understand a thing. All he could do was choose, to be together with her.  
  
“Well, I won’t hate you. Even if you kill me.”  
  
As Makoto saw the spears emerging from the ground he sat up suddenly and wrapped his arms around her. He had no idea what would happen next, he just wanted to be together with one person. _Mukuro, I’ve always wanted to be a hero. Pretty lame, right?_ He thought as his he pushed her forward and protected her with his back. _But maybe what I wanted was to be your hero._  
  
The spears pushed their way through Makoto. He was stabbed through every angle. Mukuro only watched as that boy’s arms which held onto her so tightly, grew limp, and cold around her. Her throat suddenly hurt. Why was it hurting so much? Ah, she was screaming. Her ears were ringing from the sounds of her own scream.  
  
Mukuro had been trying to escape, but she could not make the feelings of other people, or her own feelings disappear so easily. Even if she were to kill herself, or kill Makoto, those feelings would remain. 

Junko watched her sister through the monitor as Makoto’s limp body hung off of her. Mukuro’s face was the mirror image of her own in that moment. She was in absolute despair, but she was smiling.  
  
For the first time Junko looked in the mirror and thought _how ugly I am._  
She fell to her knees, the nails of her remaining hand scraping the monitor. “No fun, sis. This isn’t any fun at all.”  
  
Hey, hey, she was trying to be better so why did she have to watch things slowly get worse? 

 

🧸

  
Just like that, the dream ended. 

If he disappeared, no one would get hurt. That was what Makoto thought. 

The world disappeared. That’s what Makoto first thought.  
  
He coughed, spitting out something liquid from the inside of his chest. It felt like there was a hole in his heart, and it was dripping down into his lungs. Somewhere inside his body, there was something still not allowing him to die. Even his heroic final gesture had been denied.  
  
Ah, that was all a normal person was capable of after all. There was no way he could do something dramatic like throw his life away for the sake of a girl. His upper body could still move. His legs moved, but only a little. It took him a while before he could pull himself off the ground. Eyesight slowly returned to him, but everything is mists and shadow and he felt rain falling down on him from above. And then he remembered. He made that girl cry again. He was always making her cry.  
  
He placed his right hand up on Mukuro’s crying face so close to his own, and tried to wipe the tears away. His hand came away, wet, and red, app smeared on his palm. He was covered in blood and yet the pain was not as much as he thought it would be. How much had Mukuro and Komaeda felt pain in their lives? If they had lived through it, then so could he.  
  
“Mukuro,” The word was on his lips like a prayer. What was he doing exactly? He was still stuck in some bloody, battered, wounded and bruised body, and he had no idea where he was, if he was dreaming or if he was awake.  
  
_I won’t forgive you._ He had said to her. _If you kill someone again there’s no going back._ Not going back. He never wanted her to commit murder. Because he loved her. He wanted to keep on loving her. He only wanted to give her joy. He wanted to give her the normal life she never had. He didn’t want her to cause pain to anyone, anymore. He said he believed in her. He wondered if that was still true, now that he was the one she wanted to kill. Maybe they were always convenient words he used to hide something.  
  


From the start it was a faulty premise. Once she killed someone she could not go back to being a normal girl. It was fine if she didn’t go back. He would follow her. She could never choose to go back, but he could leave his normal life behind.  
  
The girl he loved was a killer. He had to face that.  
  
“Are you still alive, Makoto?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I wanted to kill you.”  
  
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Guess that happens when you’re dating a murderer. Who would have known? But… I said I’d carry it didn’t I?”  
  
He wasn’t doing something heroic. He was not being good. He was selfishly deciding to help a murder. Her feelings were more important to him than those of her victims.  
  
“Why do you like me? I haven’t done anything but hurt other people…”  
  
“Umm, your pretty cool. You’re way strong, and uh… nice.” He was so poetic. “That wasn’t very nice of you trying to kill me. I think I’m a little annoyed with you, right now. Don’t try crying to get out of this either.” 

“Huh. You’re such a weirdo.”  
  
Mukuro smiled the littlest smile. Her eyes closed in relief. All this time there had been a knife at her side. Even with her eyes shut, she could unconsciously grab on. For once her hand didn’t reach out for a knife. It reached out for the hand she wanted.

 

🧸

 

Komaeda Nagito had left the door to his memories open behind him. Kazuichi had followed behind him when Kumagawa and Komaeda walked through the past together. It was almost ironic, there was someone else lost in Komaeda’s thoughts for once besides Komaeda himself.  
  
Even staring directly at what Komaeda had gone through in the past, Kazuichi could not understand him. Willful ignorance. People only see what they want to see. Kazuichi had been next to Komaeda the entire time, and he had not seen a thing. 

What Kazuichi hated the most about the way Komaeda ended things between them is that Komaeda stopped looking that way. If Komaeda said he hated him, or he wanted to never be near him again Kazuichi could have accepted that. The worst feeling was that he was so unimportant he could just be forgotten by Komaeda. He could just be ignored.  
  
An annoyance. That was what Komaeda had called him. He had not broken the other boy’s heart. He had just irritated his skin slightly. The two of them had been so close, but no matter how many times they embraced, no matter how tightly they held onto each other, Kazuichi had never left a single mark on Komaeda’s naked skin.  
  
No matter how close he got. Even when they were lying naked next to each other, Kazuichi felt Komaeda was hiding something from him. Even naked, that boy’s body concealed something. Komaeda was never entirely there. Never there in the moment with him, like he wanted to leave.

 _Like he’s in a rush._ _  
_ _Like, I am not needed._ _  
_ _Like he is forcibly shutting me out from his world._ _  
_ _Why?_ _  
_ _If you didn’t want my why indulge my feelings?_ _  
_ _And if you pity my lingering feelings, why do you try to throw me away?_  
  
He wanted to hold onto him, and he wanted to run away from Komaeda at the same time. His own feelings were so complicated. Every moment he was around Komaeda when they were still friends, he spent that moment fearing he would lose him. Yet, he never thought Komaeda’s feelings were just as complicated as well. 

 _I’m the one who was ignoring him._  
  
Kazuichi never thought that he was a special person. He had always seen himself as worthless junk. His mother held onto him and cried and pleaded the day she chose to leave. She told him over and over that she wasn’t abandoning him, just her father. That she would always be his mother. But that was a lie. If she wasn’t abandoning him she would have taken him with. The fact that she did not mean he was useless junk just like his father.  
  
He was just a normal guy. That was what he always thought. When Koameda came into his life, he thought he had met someone special. It was like there was a fairy. That big white house was neverland. He could go to play there whenever he wanted. He never once realized that Komaeda was inviting him to this house because he was lonely. He never noticed how old and broken the house was. 

Kazuichi always hated the fact that he was a normal guy. He wanted to be someone special. He wanted to be loved. He wanted to be loved so badly, so desperately, enough to make up for every bruise his father had left him. He got angry when Komaeda called him talented, because that meant Komaeda didn’t love him, only his talent.  
  
But maybe…  
The boy Komaeda wanted to be friends with was just that normal boy who had to study three times as hard as everyone else, who was always anxious, and just a little bit annoying. What Kazuichi desired was an escape from his everyday life, and Komaeda wanted an everyday life.  
  
The existence of the other, was the one thing they both chased after the most in this world. When Komaeda was near him, he was chafed by the normal life he would never have. And Kazuichi, couldn’t ever get the love and approval he obviously needed, from the person he needed it the most.  
  
They were hurting each other, and Komaeda was smarter than him. He realized it a lot sooner than Kazuichi did. Kazuichi did not learn things until they hit him in the face, that was the only way he had been taught after all. 

Seeing what had happened to Komaeda did not resolve all of his feelings. Knowing that Komaeda was in pain too, did not make his own pain go away. Besides, in the real world you did not get to walk into someone memories by accident and see exactly what they saw. 

 _It can’t be fixed…_  
  
He walked out of the door. He stood in front of Kumagawa and Komaeda. They were sitting on the slide, and he stood in the sandbox. With each step he took, there was more and more sand. The three of them were standing on a beach now.  
  
He went to the ocean with Komaeda, just once. He had to pester him for weeks before Komaeda would agree. At the time Kazuichi said he would never forget the day they had, but he was forgetting it little by little, with each step.  
  
“Kazu-kun...” 

Komaeda suddenly turned around. Komaeda had watched his parents bleed to death right in front of him. He had seen a kidnapper describe how he was planning on murdering him and throwing his body away in the trash. He watched all of his friends slowly become just as insane as he was. Yet, this was the first time Kazuichi saw genuine fear in Komaeda’s eyes. 

Komaeda didn’t want him to see that. He did not mind if Kazuichi despised him. He was fine with being the villain who had sent his best friend into despair for no reason at all. 

Kazuichi was just a normal guy in the end. He was the only person who ever treated Komaeda remotely normally, and now that was all gone. Kazuichi himself had seen everything and felt like he understood nothing.  
  
There was no way Komaeda was normal. No, it was impossible for Komaeda to remain normal after going through all of that. Komaeda was never going to be the friend he needed him to be.  
  
“Why…” Kazuichi reached out.  
  
Komaeda flinched. People’s hands only ever left scars on his body.  
  
“Why did you go through all of that alone…?” Kazuichi’s fingers stopped just short of touching Komaeda, and he grasped at the empty air instead as he fell to his knees in front of Komaeda.  
  
_I can’t forgive you._ _  
_ _I can’t forgive myself._  
  
Even if he was still angry at what happened with his father. Of the words Komaeda had said to drive him into despair. Komaeda was still in pain. That was all he could think about. Komaeda was in pain all that time, all alone, because Kazuichi had not seen it.  
  
A normal person cannot understand Komaeda.  
But, he had not even tried to understand him a little bit. 

 _But, I want to._  
  
“I’m sorry man. I n-never wanted you to be alone.”  
  
As Kazuichi cried just like a little kid.  
The black coloring drained from his hair.  
His hair turned to pink again.  
The dream was bleeding away from him slowly. 

The feelings of love he had for his friend were hurting him even now. _It can’t be fixed._ It was not a machine. Even if he took all the pieces out and laid them in front of him he could not understand it. There was no repairing what had already been broken between them but he still…

At that moment Komaeda reached out to take his hand. Before their fingers could touch, a knife suddenly stabbed directly into Komaeda’s hand. He staggered forward falling to the floor. He opened his mouth to speak, but there was duct tape on his lips muffling the sounds he made. He reached forward but, one, two, three, four, ropes grabbed him wrapping around his body like snakes.  
  


“Wh-what the hell?” Kazuichi looked around at the world he had programmed. In the ocean surrounding them there were dead bodies floating in the wat.er Gundham Tanaka was standing right in front of them, but before he could reach out and touch Kazuichi he glitched out of reality.  
  
The memories from fifty three death games were overloading the programming. They had used old junk code that they had no idea where it came from, and now it was coming to bite them. A hole opened up in the sand leading to nothing, and sand kept pouring out in his feet. A wave rose up in front of him, and in the water he saw a moment from the past where a different Kumagawa and Komaeda were fighting to the death trying to kill each other.  
  


『Well, you might be surprised to hear this but saying sorry doesn’t instantly make people feel better. People are emotionally complex and stupid, they’re stupid in complex ways.』Kumagawa said, observing everything behind him with a smile on his face like he was enjoying the show.   
  
"Dude, I just want to make things better."   
  
『Nagito-chan spent his entire life trying to be better? Don't you think it's time he just got worse?』  
  
Fire started up all around them. The flames were so hot, the sand it burned started turning to glass. The fire raged all around Komaeda. Unable to do anything but look, his eyes rolled up to see a large spear hanging over him.  
  
Maybe if he was lucky the rope would not break.  
The rope broke. What bad luck.  
It fell straight through him and gutted him like a fish. His organs fell out. He saw pretty colors in his own blood. Oh, maybe that was why Kamukura shot him that day. He wanted to see the pretty colors too. If only he had known sooner that he had colors of his own. They were just always somewhere deep inside of him. 

『Your so half-assed Kazuichi-chan. I mean, Nagito-chan hurt you as much as you hurt him. You can’t love him properly if you don’t hate him a little bit.』  
  
“Not everybody is like you.” 

『Really? That’s too bad. It’d be so much more fun if they were.』

It hurt so much.  
Komaeda just wanted to die already.  
Die me.  
Die.  
Just disappear.  
Kill me.  
Die. Die. Die. 

He saw a child standing over him. His hair was white, he was dressed in nice clothes, and he was holding onto a book he wanted to show his mother later. “Why didn’t you die back then?” 

He should have died that day.  
When the meteorite killed his parents.  
When he was kidnapped.  
When he was diagnosed with lymphona.  
When Kumagawa killed him.  
When Kamukura abandoned him.  
When he got a tumor in his brain.  
He didn’t die.  
  
That child didn’t die. He didn’t want that child to die.  
  
_Ah… I get it._ Komaeda’s head turned to the side, and in a horrible spasm that made his whole body ache, he coughed up more multi-colored blood. He reached up and wrapped his fingers around the spear that had fallen through his stomach.  
  
None of that bad luck had been enough to kill him. He only thought so for a moment, it was probably just the rush of adrenaline making him delusional. But maybe… if he survived all of that. There was no bad luck that could ever kill him.  
  
Komaeda ripped the spear out of his stomach, and stood up once more. The suicide trap he had set up and been ensnared by exploded all around him. He saw rope tearing, cans of fire extinguisher flying away, as he stood up once more still covered in his own injures. 

Komaeda grabbed the knife and ripped it out of his own hand. His hand still bloody, he tore the duct tape off his mouth. Komaeda stumbled forward and had to be caught by Kazuichi.  
  
“I thought I was doing it for your sake. I thought if I tricked you into killing your father, you would overcome that despair and find hope. But I of all people should have known that people don’t get stronger from bad things happening to them, they just break a little more.”  
  
“Look man, I get that you have your reasons but you weren’t being a very good bro when you said the reason my dad hit me was because I was too annoying.”  
  
“And, you weren’t being a very good bro when you ditched me after I was kidnapped.” 

Kazuichi ran his hands through his own hair, frizzing it up. “Aaaaggggh! We both suck at this! Is there anybody who’s any good at this?”  
  
Komaeda’s soft fingers reached up and removed the glasses from Kazuichi’s face. He did miss the old Kazuichi,b ut the new one was just as good, and just as annoying. “Kazu-kun.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Right now, I have a new person that I like.” 

Kazuichi’s face froze for a moment. His eyes looked like they were searching, trying to see something invisible. Then he closed them, as if finally relaxing. “That’s good, isn’t it? Then do your best.”  
  
“You have someone who likes you, yes? People with talent really are able to make miracles happen.”  
  
“Condescending jackass.”  
  
“I hope she makes you happy.”  
Komaeda’s hope. Screaming. Painful. Desperate. Delusional.  
For the first time it seemed like it was something soft and warm.   
  
“All four of us should meet up sometime.” Komaeda continued, it was the normal thing to suggest.  
  
“You kidding me? You really want to get four unlucky losers together in one place? That’s just asking for something terrible to happen. How much trouble are you going to drag me into?” 

“A-ha ha ha.”  
  
Kumagawa watched the two of them from some distance away. His hands were in his pockets, so nobody could see how tightly he was clenching his fists. 『Nagito-chan, even after all of that you still won’t be a bad person?』  
  
It was the reason he loved him, but he also…  
  
『I hate how kind you are.』  
  
Kumagawa bit down hard on his tongue until he tasted blood, and his own blood left a bad taste in his mouth. 

 

🧸  
  
The dream ended. Komaeda was sure he would not be able to talk to Kazuichi that way in the real world.  
He still wanted to talk to him one more time.  
He wanted to tell him.  
It was not too late. They could still go home.  
  
Oh, that was why he had been so bothered when Miu came and invaded that old empty house. For him and Kazuichi it was home.  
  
He reached up and grabbed a helmet, ripping it up off his face. As he breathed in fresh air, he was greeted with a familiar scent. He had stumbled upon this kind of scene so many times it was almost nostalgiac.  
  
The smell of blood.  
All of his most beautiful memories were all tied to death in some way.  
  
Komaeda’s eyes slowly looked up. He saw Miu and Kazuichi’s strangled corpses looking back at him. The first time he had looked his friend in the eyes after all that time, and completely blank lifeless eyes with no trace of Kazuichi in them stared back at him.  
  
Ah.  
There was nowhere to go home to anymore. 

 **[DAILY LIFE END]  
** **A BODY HAS BEEN DISCOVERED. A BODY HAS BEEN DISCOVERED.**  
  


 


	90. Beautiful Dearth

**[SUICIDAL IDEATION] THIN ICED SUICIDE LOVERS - DEADLY LIFE**

Other people were so noisy. Komaeda clasped both hands around his ears to try to block them out. If sounds were colors than Komaeda experienced them all clashing together at once. Colors, and people did not mix easily. At least in Komaeda’s experience they didn’t. The artist drips the paint brush in the paint over and over again, swirling, swirling, until all that is left is a rotten brown. Komaeda recognized that color, it was the people turned when they were dying, the color they left behind when they decayed away into the dirt.

There were so many colors mixing together that Komaeda could see them, churning, into an black-brown opison in his stomach. Shaken all the way down to his stomach he just wanted to vomit. There were so many noises. All of them converging on him at once. Komaeda could swear that he was so sensitive he felt the sound travel through him, down to the individual reverberation of the molecules. Every single word that came out of another person’s mouth, crashed into him like a wave.  
  
It was like trying to breathe while standing waist deep in the water in the middle of a storm. Wave after wave crashed into him. He was not drowning, but at the same time not able to breathe. He was desperately gasping for air, but each time all he did was swallow salt water. His senses overwhelmed, his eyes teared up, and stung. Everything he saw or heard was a vague, indefinite, blur. He was blind and deaf, but at the same time he saw everything, he heard everything, to the finest detail. 

He could feel his brain overheating just trying to process all the details he was taking in. As if he had expanded all the memory of his CPU just trying to process this. The hardware was faulty to begin with. The internal components were so hot they were melting, soon his brain would drip as a hot pink liquid outside of one of his ears, drip, drip, drip.  
  
It was really distracting, all this noise. It was so distracting that Komaeda almost forgot what was provoking this reaction from him. Other people. Other people were talking. They were talking louder than his own thoughts. He felt like his brain was being overwritten with their words, he could not hear himself think over their needless chatter. Haha, everyone always accused him of being the one who didn’t know how to shut up.  
  
Other people made such foul and dirty noises with their mouths. He wanted to drive a spike into his ears, and rupture his eardrums just to escape. Other people. Other people. Other people. They were just noise, overwhelming him.  
  
He heard a sound clear and crisp pierce through all the noise. It was the sound of laughter, precise, mechanical, obviously forced. It was like the sound of someone forcing a marionette to laugh while they threw their voice. Laughing at your own jokes… that was just tactless. Who was it? Who was laughing? They were so insensitive laughing at a scene like this. 

Komaeda’s throat was burning. At first he thought it was from the taste of saltewater until he realized he was nowhere near the sea. He and Kazuichi would never look at the sea again. His throat hurt - because he was laughing. The sound of his own laughter echoed in his ears.  
  
He really was so insensitive, laughing at a scene like this. So sensitive, and yet so insensitive. Other people’s feelings, they were just so much noise. 

Kazuichi Soda’s hair was a washed out pink. He looked like he had not dyed it recently, there were strands of black showing at the ruined.  His hair clung to his scalp the same way a corpse’s would, well because he was a corpse. Your hair and nails grew longer after death, because your skin dried out and shrank. Kazuichi laid there helplessly, his face half submerged in the water.  
  
 _Oh,_ Komaeda noticed looking down at the ground, _that’s why my socks are wet._ He was standing in a few centimeters of water that covered the entire floor of the room. The whole world might as well have been water, because Komaeda was, sinking, sinking. 

The little mermaid traded her voice for two legs, and unimaginable pain. That was how Komaeda knew. That was how he remembered. He must have been human after all. He had feelings. Because looking at Kazuichi’s body, it was a reminder, _this is what pain feels like._

There was no expression, there was nothing beautiful about this moment. It was just death, and therefore it was nothing. Koameda stared down at his own reflection in the few centimeters of water, watching that vague reflection in the water twist and turn with the life and felt like hiw very being was doing the same thing. Like he was just a mirage. 

The surface of the water was so still, just like Kazuichi. Just like that day. That day it was loud too, the screams and cries of fireworks, clashing against him. Kazuichi asked him a thousand times, pestering him, gradually wearing him down. Whenever it was like this, Komaeda felt like Kazuichi was persistently chipping away at him, like he was stone slowly being eroded. 

He really didn’t want to go to the fireworks festival that day. He didn’t even want to leave his house. But Kazuichi started crying. He threw a tantrum right in front of everybody. Komaeda never had any idea what people were thinking, but he could feel the weight of their eyes on him. He was already fragile. He wanted to be like crystal clear glass. He wanted to be something people would not notice if people did not look directly at him, something that light would pass through, transparent. That was why, he felt too pressured by Kazuichi’s tantrum, and other people’s eyes, he felt like he might crack. 

He regretted it. Kazuichi’s yukata was bright pink, and his was green, and those colors did not look good together at all. Komaeda warned Kazuichi not to eat too much of the festival food, and Kazuichi did not listen so he had to sit on the bench for almost a full hour listening to Kazuichi groan as he laid his head on Komaeda’s lap. Komaeda did not eat anything the entire day. He didn’t like other people’s hands touching his food. The idea of food sickness scared him, especially after listening to Kazuichi grumble for so long. He had to walk in the middle of the crowd, and he had to feel people’s shoulders brushing against him, their fingers momentarily rubbing against his, he had to hear the voices of everybody talking all at once. He felt like he was trampled by their voices. They were stepping all over him from every direction, he was crushed over and over.  
  
Komaeda eventually reached his breaking point halfway through the day. He could not even bear to keep his eyes open. Just the reminder of so many people crammed into one small space was completely overwhelming to him.  
  
“Hey, Nagi-chan hurry up.” Kazuichi called after him. He had noticed that Komaeda was lagging behind.  
  
“I don’t wanna…” Komaeda’s voice eked out, pathetically.  
  
“Fine.” A hand grabbed his and pulled him forward. Parents held the hands of their children in crowds so they would not be lost, but no matter how much komaeda tried he could not remember his own parents ever grabbing his hand in this way. But Kazuichi took his hand, so he would not get lost. This hand was the red thread he had to follow, no matter how lost he became, no matter how tangled, he just needed to follow it back. “Keep your eyes closed, okay…” 

“Huh?”  
  
“If you can’t see them, it’s like they’re not there.” Kazuichi probably wore a stupid expression on his face as he said that. “It’s just you and me… it’s always been just us, right?” 

Komaeda heard the sound of water. The sound was minute, but Komaeda was so sensitive at the moment that it might as well have been pouring directly into his ears. He opened his eyes just a crack to see, Kazuichi had led him away from the crowds. The two of them were sitting in the middle of their school pool after hours. Even though Kazuichi had wanted to go to the festival so badly, he was sitting here with Komaeda all alone.  
  
Komaeda felt like he was stealing Kazuichi away. If only Kazuichi was a little more socially adjusted, he was a relaxed and easygoing guy he could have gotten along with anybody. If only he was not so distrusting of others, he would have lots of friends. Kazuichi was a normal guy underneath it all, in a waay Komaeda would never be, if he had become friends with anybody else, he would probably be smiling with them right now. Komaeda would never be the kind of friends that could go to festivals together with him and make beautiful memories.

  
Kazuichi was sitting at the edge of the school pool. His legs occasionally kicked the water. “Look up…” He said, as if he was oblivious to all the worries in Komaeda’s head. “It said there’s gonna be a meteor shower tonight.”  
  
“Mmm…”  
  
Sometimes, Komaeda did not talk. Kazuichi rambling was enough talking for both of them. Kazuichi did not seem to mind either as long as it looked like Komaeda was listening. “Hey, have you ever wished on a shooting star?”  
  
“Of course not. If I really wanted something then I wouldn’t leave it to luck or fate. I would do it myself, otherwise I don’t deserve it. If I can leave it up to something as passive as a wish I must not have wanted it that much.”  
  
“Haha, you’re always such a pessimist.”  
  
“No, this is optimism Kazu-kun. I’m saying that certain people in this world if they work hard enough will make their wishes come true.”  
  
“You know sometimes I think you don’t even know what you’re saying.” Kazuichi shook his head. He just laughed it off. If only it were like this more often, then Kazuichi would be someone Komaeda could say anything to.  
  
“I wouldn’t wish on a falling star anyway.” Komaeda remembered, the pool of blood seeping out of his parent’s skulls, “They’re just bad luck.”  
  
“But I’m sure if you’re here it’ll be fine.” Kazuichi smiled showing all of his teeth. “Cuz you’re my good luck charm.” 

Nobody ever said that to him before.  
  
That day they didn’t get to see the fireworks. The fireworks Kazuichi wanted to see so badly that he had started crying in public about it. When the crowds became too much for Komaeda, he took them back to the middle school at nighttime where it was guaranteed nobody else would be there.  
  
“It’s happening…”  
  
They didn’t get to see the fireworks, but they saw stars fall from the sky. They were like tears tracing across the skyline. They left trails in their past, sparkling with stardust. Komaeda watched the colorful streaks appear in the sky. If he wished upon a falling star, what horrible luck would it bring him? Ever since the day his parents died it was like time had stopped for him. He went to school, went home, and only just went through the motions. He was a mechanical-wind up doll, and Komaeda was aware more than anyone else, how the gears and springs making him up were almost completely rusted over now. He didn’t want to wish. He didn’t want to look forward to the future with hope. Because that hope might just hurt him in the end.  
  
He did not even think the future belonged to a child who should have died alongside both of his parents. When he looked over he saw Kazuichi’s hands were folded. He just went and did everything without thinking. Sometimes it was charming. 

“So what did you wish for?”  
  
Just curious.  
  
“In high school, and even after that, I want us to stay just like this. I wanna watch the stars fall again someday.”  
  
Impossible. He would die in a plane crash. He would die in a car.  And there was no one who could stop this. There was no one who could overcome Komaeda’s luck.  His hand over Kazuichi’s, he could feel a faint pulse through Kazuichi’s fingers and he more than anybody else knew how easy that warmth was to extinguish. He didn’t want Kazuichi to die in the ocean. He didn’t want Kazuichi to die drifting out to sea. He didn’t want to see him drown in this school pool.   “...You shouldn’t tell me your wish. It might not come true.”  
  
“You’re the one who said that if it’s a wish you gotta make it come true. That's why I’m gonna promise you.” 

Komaeda hated the festival. He hated that Kazuichi had foced him to come. But, the sight of so many stars falling from the sky, like individual fireflies dancing, and plummeting to the earth. There was something heavenly about their dance. It was the first time Komaeda thought, there might be a beautiful light at the end of the tunnel. The world might be more than just noise. He didn’t hate it because Kazuichi was there to hold his hand. 

Kazuichi’s fingers were cold and lifeless now, they could not hold onto anything. Komaeda reached down and tried to hold Kazuichi’s hand in his, only for the fingers to slip away and fall back into the water with a splash.  
  
『 _Hey, Nagito-chan you already know don’t you._ 』  
  
 _" I find the fact that you imply I know what a loser like you is thinking to be very insulting, Kumagawa-kun."_

『 _A wish is something that can never come true the moment you tell someone else about it_ .』  
『 _It won’t come true if you say it out loud._ 』  
『 _Because you can’t trust words._ 』  
『 _The moment you put it into words and tell someone, your feelings don’t matter._ 』  
『 _Because you can’t trust words._ 』  
『 _Words are nothing but lies, and nothing but cheats._ 』  
『 _No matter what the truth, the moment it is told, it becomes dramatized._ 』  
『 _If you… If you wish… if you just want to wish for it. That wish can never be spoken aloud.._ 』

_“What are you talking about…?”_

『 _That’s how it is for you and me. The words to convey what we’re feeling in our hearts don’t exist anywhere_ . _If we tried it would all be lies._ 』  
  
That was right, that day Kazuichi had told Komaeda his wish. There were no more wishes. There were no more stars in the sky now. There was no someday where they could meet again and watch the stars again. There’s no chance of recovery. No matter what sort of thing Komaeda did, no matter what he did, it’s sure to be a failure. The dream of going on bicycles and sneaking in the school after hours to watch the stars in the sky glimmer reflecting on the pool water - it was not for the likes of Komaeda. Kazuichi’s promise that they would see the stars again one day-  
  
“Kazu-kun you liar.” He said to Kazuichi’s dead body. Lies, all lies.  
  
Suddenly, a hand gripped his shoulder. Naegi Makoto pulled his head back above the surface of the water. “Hey, are you okay?”

Makoto had a bad habit of asking obvious questions. 

"It's beautiful isn't it?"

"Huh?"

"He died in such a beautiful way. The death of an ultimate really is something else. It's like there's something missing from this world. Now all of us will be motivated to come together to avenge his death."

It was beautiful and yet completely empty.  
  
"You don't really think that do you? You're really just sad like everyone else,  right?" Makoto sounded like he was pleading. 

Unease. 

His head swiveled back to face Makoto, expression like a doll. "This isn't the time to feel sad, is it?"

_I'm really sorry, Kazu-kun. I'm not sad at all. I don't hate your killer. All I feel right now is this wonderful hope._

Unease.

Komaeda spoke in a pleasant voice. "Everyone is relying on us to solve this murder."

Komaeda. 

His resolve. 

It was bright. 

It was inspiring.

It was hope.

It was slightly off.

"You don't have to smile."

Oh. He was smiling?

_Sorry, Kazuichi. I was a bad friend after all._

"This despair is too much for me. But you're here now. Because you're here I can still smile. That's why I admire you so much."

He reached out and grabbed onto Makoto's arm. Makoto's face twisted in discomfort. "Hey, don't hold on so tight,  it kinda hurts..." 

Komaeda let go immediately.

He looked at everyone in the room. A moment ago he had not been able to see anything but Kazuichi’s body, but now they were all as clear as day. It was a little bit like throwing up, afterwards you cleared all the toxicities from your body. Komaeda didn’t hear so much noise now. He could not remember the last time everything was so quiet. Even his own thoughts were clearer to him than normal.  
  
Everything made sense again. First the good luck came, and then the bad. He had made up with Kazuichi, and then woke up to find him dead in the real world. All of his confusion, his hesitation, his second guessing himself was gone now. This was just like when Enoshima Junko appeared in his life, and suddenly there was a villain for hope to destroy.  
  
Everyone.  
Makoto, Komaru, Shuichi, Kaede, Monaca, Keebo, they were all staring at him. Komaeda felt confident enough to meet their eyes.  
  
“Listen! Two of our friends have died! The murderer must be one of us in this room.” Komaeda put a hand on his chest. “That’s no reason to be sad though. I’m sure if all of us work together to find the culprit we’ll be able to keep living.”  
  
“Komaeda-kun…?” Saihara spoke up, unsure. “What are you saying?”  
  
Kaede was much more aggressive. “You better not be laughing at them.”  
  
“To  be able to laugh at a time like this. To say their deaths was a good thing. That’s way too scary,” Komaru murmured.  
  
Keebo took a step backwards, hiding behind Monaca. He was a brave knight in silver armor (because his body was made of silver, lol stupid robot - Tsumugi) hiding behind a middle schooler. “I did not know it was possible for humans to be this alarming.”  
  
“Why do you guys keep acting surprise when Komaeda-kun goes nutso? It happens so often you should be bored of it by now. Idiots are so easy to keep entertained, Monaca-chan is jealous of all you.”  
  
“Hey, guys wait. It’s not fair to say that to Nagito. He’s just trying to stay positive,” Makoto tried to speak up, but his voice was drowned out by everyone else. Makoto didnt get it. Komaeda was trying his best for everyone’s sake. Why did they all look at him like he was some kind of monster? They shivered in fear of his smile like he was showing them his fangs.  "He's not even the killer so why are you all blaming him already?"   
  
Komaeda had such a nice smile. But sometimes he looked afraid to smile. Was this why? Makoto wondered. Was it because people always reacted this way.  
  
“Hey, why do you get to accuse us of murder? You’re the one smiling and giggling like the cat that ate the canary. You’re the most suspicious one here…”  
  
“Wait, I’m as sad as everyone,” Komaeda said. Kazuichi was gone so there was no one to hold him. He wrapped his long, thin arms around himself. “But if you think I’m the murderer then just conduct your investigation and accuse me at the class trial. This isn’t the proper stage for that.” 

Komaeda started walking forward. Makoto rushed after him. Afraid to leave him alone at the moment. “H-hey, where are you going?”  
  
“To investigate of course. I feel bad, this time I won’t be able to side with the murderer.”  
  
“Y-yeah, you always try to help the murderer and everyone else at the same time, huh? You’re like the kind of nice guy that can’t pick sides, so he just waffles in between them just like me.”  
  
The two of them walked together until they found Mukuro’s room. It seemed this time Komaeda was completely serious about investigating, he did not even take the opportunity to jab or insult Mukuro like he usually did.  
  
Mukuro was so alarmed by his silence she asked him quietly while the two of them trailed behind Makoto. “That boy, you knew him before hope’s peak didn’t you?”

“Hm? Who told you? Oh, that sister of yours. She’s not just the worst enemy of humankind, she’s just plain annoying sometimes.” Komaeda smiled, waving off her pity and concern. “But, I’m not sad at all. I’m happy. Kazu-kun’s death will now become everyone’s hope to end this killing game.”  
  
“But, he’s dead, y’know.” Mukuro said, her voice as dull as always. “That’s it. Murder is just murder.”  
  
“I forgot to apologize.”  
  
“Hm?” Mukuro was caught off guard. Rare, for her.   
  
“I was wrong getting in the way of both you ane Naegi-kun. The two of you make each other happy. I have no right to interfere.”  
  
“...Um, thanks-”  
  
“You got close to him even though you want to die so badly. How do you think he’ll feel when you die? I bet he’ll cry a lot.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“Kirigiri-san’s death in the first round inspired him to become this strong. He’ll become even stronger after you die and leave him behind. You’re not useless after all, despair sister. You’re going to become a wonderful hope.”  
  
“What are other people to you?” Mukuro asked suddenly, like she had just found the words.  
  
“Hmm, I dunno.”  
  
Komaeda answered honestly.  
  
🧸

 

“Man, that Komaeda guy needs to see some kind of therapist. Wait, there’s gotta be a pun for bear and therapist I can think of, gimme a second.” 

Monokuma announced as he popped up out of nowhere the face the remaining people in the room. The small plush bear paced back and forth in the waterlogged room before finally having his _aha_ moment. “Bearapist! That kid needs to see a bearapist! Some people just don’t know how to handle their killing games. Anywaaaaaay!”

Monokuma threw two Monopads into Shuichi’s hands then left. Shuichi noticed something when komaeda left. The door was locked. Makoto had to stop to use his key to get both of them out. Which meant it would be impossible for anyone but Monokuma to enter this room from the outside.  
  
They were in Makoto’s dorm room. They were all locked inside. They had all been asleep and trapped in the simulation before this. That meant the only person who could have committed the crime was one of the seven trapped in the room. Komaeda figured that all out in an instant and left.  
  
He narrowed the pool of subjects down to seven, but Shuichi realized he did not have the slightest memory of what had gone on when he was sleeping. He woke up to the sound of the body discovery alarm lying in one of the beds next to Kaede a moment ago.  
  
He looked at the two monopads in front of him. **_Iruma Miu._ ** _Time of death is estimated to be 3:15 in the morning. There are several lacerations and burn marks present around the neck. No clear cause of death indicated. This is why you should never stay over at a friend’s house kids, slumber parties are dangerous? In fact you should be like me and never have any friends in the first place._

 **_Kazuichi Soda._ ** _Time of death is estimated to be at 3:15 time in the morning. The location of the burn marks and lacerations on his body appear in similiar places as Miu’s. They both appear to have died at the same time. No blood and no internal wounds were found. Why are we born, if only to die one day? I just can’t bear it anymore.  
  
_ Shuichi remembered when they all woke up there was a specific way the bodies were arranged. Makoto, and Komaru were on the same mattress. Keebo and Monaca were on the couch. He and Kaede were on the second mattress in the room brought in for Komaru. Komaeda was alone on the table.  Miu and Kazuichi were both discovered lying on the floor. 

The Monokuma file confirmed it. There were two people dead this round. It hardly seemed real to Kazuichi. Then again, considering what he had just been through nothing really did. The motive this round was… a virtual world… and that led to murder? Why did they have to wake up to a murder? He was having such a nice dream too.  
  
Shuichi felt that feeling so many mornings. It was like someone else was lying on top of him, like an impossible weight on his chest. He did not even want to get out of bed. He oftentimes hated falling asleep at night, because he did not want to wake up the next morning. Waking from a dream it was like being dragged out of the water unwillingly.  
  
Shuichi stared forward with the eyes of a dead fish. Just yesterday he remembered talking with Kazuichi, the two of them agreed they had to find some way for both Kaede and Miu to get along. He was alive a day ago. Why did people keep dying? Why did they keep leaving him behind? 

Kaede said if they all worked together, they could all escape together. That was such a beautiful dream, and now he was staring at an ugly corpse. His friends kept deciding to kill each other.  
  
Behind him, Kaede lifted the hat off of his head and put it onto her own head. She pulled it over her eyes. The bold Kaede he usually knew was gone, her eyes glanced away from the corpse. “Ah, you still can’t handle being around corpses can you? I’m sorry.”  
  
Everyone else was chattering too as they decided how to investigate.  
  
“Someone could have picked the lock, Monaca-chan says pointing out the obvious for all the dull people in the audience.”  
  
“I bet it was Ouma-kun. He’s mean to me all the time that makes him a bad person,” Keebo.  
  
“You’re really broken up about this, huh…?”  
  
“This is the first time I’ve encountered death. Well, except for the two times before this one. I still don’t understand-”  
  
“Hey, no more of that _what is this feeling inside of me_ crap!” Komaru said, rudely pushing back against him. “Th-there’s no way it could be someone in this room. Someone else broke in and did it. I’d never kill someone, I’m just a normal girl.”  
  
“God can you get a new catchphrase?” Monaca complained.  
  
Kaede was humming a tune to herself as she nudged Shuichi from behind. Her fingers tightly held to the fabric of his shirt. The only reason Shuichi could stand straight right now, was because he knew with Kaede leaning against him they both would collapse if one of them was not strong. He listened along to Kaede’s humming. Even at a time like this, Kaede heard beautiful music. “You don’t need to worry about me! I’m going to kick the mastermind’s butt! I’m going to kick everyone’s butt! I won’t forgive them for every single one of our friends that have died.” Kaede said, even though she was still clinging to him.  
  
“Do you really feel that way? It’s okay to be scared, I mean, I’m scared of… well… pretty much everything.”  
  
She huffed behind him. “You always think about other people’s feelings first, even though you’re freaking out too. Stop being so polite and thoughtful, Jeez.”  
  
“Um, should I be rude and thoughtless then?”  
  
“You can’t change yourself to please others, Saihara-kun! Come on, you gotta be yourself!”  
  
“But you were just criticizing me for being myself.” Perhaps Shuichi had always been too pessimistic, the logic of that straightforward optimist girl was just too hard for him to follow. “I’m scared of everything… but, when a murder happens, I can stay calm for everyone else. This is the way I can help everyone.”  
  
Kaede did not like corpses because it was a reminder of what she had done to Kumagawa and Rantaro. The face of her dead sister was still fresh in her mind. But, that wasn’t the reason she was scared. She still remembered in the dream the way Shuichi acted, as if he could understand the mind of a killer perfectly. He saw himself as just another killer.  
  
Shuichi always got confident when a murder happened. Kaede thought that was just because Shuichi wanted to be useful to everyone and that was when his talent came in handy. But, in the dream it was almost like he enjoyed it.  
  
The deaths of real people, that Shuichi just treated them like he was watching his favorite television show. Was Shuichi happy right now that someone died? Was he waiting for someone else to die to give himself the chance to shine again? 

No.  
There was no way her Shuichi would ever think something like that.  
 _Since when did he become my Shuichi?_

Kaede stared at the boy’s thin lips. She longed for them. She wanted them to be closer. She wanted to feel his warm breath, suffocating her mouth, making her melt as he pressed against her… but she was also afraid of him. She was afraid of the smile he showed her.  
  
“You should investigate alone this time.”  
  
“Huh? Akamatsu-san?”  
  
Akamatsu Kaede.  
Strained herself to see the good in everyone.  
Wanted to believe in everyone.  
But there was a difference between wanting, and doing. 

“They’re all saying the killer was in the room, right? The most obvious suspect is me. What if I follow you around the whole time pretending to help knowing full well I was the killer. You always say such nice things about me, but I’m not…” 

 _I’m not what you think I am._ _  
__I’m not me._  
  
“I don’t think you’ll do that to me again.”  
  
“Why…?”  
  
“Umm… it’s hard to explain. Right from the start, you just seemed like someone I could trust. That’s what I decided. As a detective I have to trust my decisions.” 

 _How could he… trust her?_ _  
__When she…_  
  
Shuichi took a step forward. She had still been holding onto his shirt, but he slipped out of her fingers. Kaede felt unsteady for a second, and the rhythm of her heart got messed up. She could have sworn it skipped a beat.  
  
He turned his head back to check on her just once. “Hey, why did you steal my hat?”  
  
“Because I wanted you to tell me how cute I look in it."    
  
She was just joking. She posed pulling down on the hat and winking.  
The truth was she never wanted to see him wearing that hat again.   
  
“Ah, yeah… you’re cute…” 

That one shy statement was worse than the most intimate of secrets whispered into her ear. It was super effective. Bad Kaede. Bad Joke. She always spoke without thinking.   
  
When Shuichi finished investigating the room they found out several more details. In Kazuichi’s hand there was a wire that had been wrapped around his fingertips. His fingers had gone completely slack in death and let go of it.  
  
There were wires around the floor, all connecting to the strange contraption that had put them into the virtual world. As there were no more mechanical talents present nobody could make heads or tails on how it was supposed to work. Komaru chewed out Keebo for having no idea what to do even though his brain was part computer.  
  
When Kaede opened the door to the other room she found the source of the water. The bath tub had been left on, until it completely overflowed. However, the knob was turned off now and no more water came out.  
  
“That means somebody else must have turned the knob off-”  
  
“Who would do that? Someone could die if you got water on all these elecontrics!” Kaede said, rather naively at Shuichi.  
  
“Um, the murderer probably did.”  
  
“Well, that wasn’t very nice of them.”  
  
“Murderers aren’t nice in general.”  
  
“It must have been hard being a detective.”  
  
“Most cold blooded killers aren’t that friendly, yeah…”  
  
“Except for me.”  
  
“Akamatsu-san I don’t consider you, a…” 

There were marks on the necks, but Shuichi could not find any rope anywhere. The wires on the ground seem to have shorted out from the water. Shuichi opened the laptop that had been found near Miu’s body on the floor, but it was completely waterlogged and impossible to retrieve any data off of.  
  


The confident smile fell off of Shuichi’s face. There was seven suspects, but almost no evidence to how the murder occured. All the evidence they needed was left behind in the digital world. No, maybe this would be a dream to. He wanted to wake up and forget about all of this, wake up in the world where everyone was alive again. 

 

🧸  
  


When Shuichi and Kaede went to investigate Miu’s dorm room it became even more obvious that the only ones who could have killed them were the ones in the room. Why? Everyone else who was in a dorm room had the doors to their dorms glued shut and secured with caution tape.   
  
Kaede became aware of how difficult it was to break out of the shut rooms when suddenly one of the doors exploded in front of her. Maki’s foot broke through it, and she kicked it off its hinges.  
  
“Ugh. What’s all the fuss about?”  
  
“Jeez Maki. You’re not much of a morning person. Or an evening person. Or an any time person.”  
  
“Why do you make so much noise with your mouth?"  
  
“It’s called talking, that’s what friends do.” Kaede said. Before remembering why they were here. “Another murder happened.”  
  
“Am I one of the suspects?”  
  
“I’m not the detective, but yeah I’m gonna say no.”  
  
Shuichi nodded next to her in approval.  
  
“Well then. See ya.”  
  
“Hey, wait. You’re not going to show up to the class trial? Everybody needs you!”  
  
“Why do something actually helpful - when I can just not." Maki seemed disgusted at the idea. Maki just walked away then before Kaede could get another word in. Kaito immediately shot out of the room and chased after her. He looked like he had a few bruises from trying to bust the door open.  
  
“That girl’s so stubborn…” Kaede muttered to herself. The two of them got Monokuma to open the door to Kazuichi and Miu’s rooms. They found that Miu’s room was almost completely cleared out, and all of her stuff had been loaded into Kazuichi’s room.  
  
There were blueprints everywhere. However, one of them had very large and sloppy handwriting. _The plan to make everyone here my bitch._ That must have been Miu’s title, Kaede noted.

A plan to break into everyone’s dormitories while they slept, and then keep them occupied in the digital world. That way Miu could carry out a murder in the real world with no witnesses and no interference. “She was planning a murder all along, and Kazuichi-kun didn’t stop her. He helped her.”  
  
Kaede had no idea why someone would plan to kill someone else just to escape this place. Miu smiled at them, laughed with all of them, pretended to trust but then plotted to kill-

_But didn’t you do the same thing?_

**_N-no, it’s different._ ** **  
****  
**“So, if they were planning a murder it probably wasn’t a suicide.” Shuichi was muttering to himself again. Kaede could not even find her voice to speak. She was really too emotional, she couldn’t think logically at times like this.

The two of them realized they had stopped right in front of Rantaro’s door. The investigation was over, but still they lingered. “He still hasn’t left that room.”  
  
“I’m sure he’s just sleepy… Ugh, that was lame. That was lame optimism. Come on Kaede, you can do better.” Kaede was slapping her cheeks. She was really serious about her role as the optimist.  
  
“I used to get like that too.”  
  
“You were a neet?”  
  
“No, I mean I understand the feeling. It’s not exactly like you want to die but, living just seems like too much. There’s no good reason to leave your bed and… if you fell asleep and didn’t wake up the next morning that wouldn’t be too bad.”  
  
“Why would anybody think that way? He’s gotta come out of that room right! Nothing will get better until he…”  
  
“Maybe he doesn’t want to get better.”  
  
“Why wouldn’t he want that?” Kaede looked genuinely confused. Other people’s feelings. They just didn’t reach her. Kaede only knew her feelings, and she did not even want to acknowledge her own sadness. 

 The door opened behind them. Amami Rantaro stood there, looking like a broken old tree, aged and withered. His hair had gotten longer, and it fell over his face in a mess of curls. All he had done was lay in bed for the last month, and yet his eyes looked even sleepier than normal.  
  
His breaths, his every move was so soft that neither Kaede nor Shuichi had heard him listening behind the door. He was so quiet. Like he wasn’t even breathing. Then they saw it the rise and fall of his chest. His whole body seemed to move with his breaths. They could see his muscles underneath his loose shirt, tensing, and then relaxing.  
  
“You guys gossiping about me behind my back?” Rantaro said, as easygoing as always. He suddenly grabbed both of them by the shoulders, wrapping his arms around them and pulling them closer to him. “Don’cha go leaving a guy out, now.”

“Wha? Wha? Amami-kun!” 

“Can’t a guy get any sleep?” He flicked his hair away from his eyes. “Yeah, I was having a whole bunch of feelings. But then I kind of got bored of that. So I’m here now.”   
  
"You can't just not have feelings," Kaede said, because she had so many feelings. So many.   
  
"What, like it's hard?" 

“S-sorry.” Shucihi apologized for waking Rantaro up as he slipped away. “Y-you’re coming to the trial then? Do you need me to tell you about what we investigated?”  
  
“Nah. Sounds like it’ll be more fun if I just wing it.”  
  
"Lazy boy." Kaede immediately poked him in the side. “You can try hard, I believe in you.”  
  
“I work very hard at slacking off. They say it takes a true genius to be lazy. Work smart not hard.”  
  
"Too bad you can't do either," Kaede snapped at him.   
  
"You just don't cut me any slack. If only I was as cute as Saihara-kun, you'd let me go easy."   
  
"Umm... guys..." Shuichi had a hard time getting a word in. Those two were always off in their own little world it was hard being the one with common sense in the group.   
  
“Oh, is super high school level slacker going to be your talent now?” Kaede intentionally ignored the part about Saihara. "Well, I'll still be your friend even if you have a really lame talent."    
  
“Hey, I try enough. It’s just everybody else tries too hard. You’re way too bright, you’re making me look bad by comparison.”  
  
“You’re making yourself look bad.” Kaede snapped back at him, before she realized that wasn’t a nice thing to say. “I mean, everyone’s bright in their own way. You don’t have to compare yourself to me.”  
  
“Nice save there. Are all girls this easy to rile up? It’s like dealing with my sisters.” Rantaro casually went and mentioned it. The reason he betrayed everyone. He scratched at his head for a moment. “Oh, awkward. Yeah that’s umm… yeah.”  
  
“Amami-kun, I killed someone too. If we’re together there’s a chance we can-”  
  
“Nah.” Rantaro said again, flat out refusing. “I’m not interested in making up for what I’ve done. I don’t regret that someone died. I regret the fact that I lost, that I didn’t get what I wanted.” Scratch, scratch, scratch, so deeply there were red streaks on his neck. “I’m going to try to win the killing game again, I’m not your friend, so you two will have to stop me.”  
  
“Because you’re our friend we’ll stop you.” Shuichi spoke up first.  
  
“Eh? Isn’t that usually Akamatsu-san’s line?”  
  
“I’m going to show you that trusting us is better than doing everything by yourself.” Saihara said undeterred. He spun around on his heel and walked off towards the trial grounds. If it was for other people, his back looked so strong. "We'll get out of this game together and then we'll help you find your sisters."  
  
It made Rantaro almost want to stop slouching. He lingered behind with Akamatsu for a moment. He leaned in, noticing something strange in her eyes.  
There faces were not that far apart. Rantaro watched silently, carefully observing something. She had no idea what he was looking for so deeply in her eyes.   
  
“Your breath stinks.”  
  
“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”  
  
“I’m only nice to good little boys. Besides, sometimes it’s kinder to be honest.”  
  
Rantaro guessed he was the opposite of that. He breathed right at her ear. Her whole body shivered. She was just putting up a front, waiting to melt.   
  
“Hey, how come even though I’m the one who killed a guy, Saihara-kun’s the one you’re afraid of right now?” 

Kaede said nothing.  
  
“Maybe it's not just him. You just don't trust anybody do you?"   
  



	91. Different Colors

[SUICIDAL IDEATION] - THIN ICED SUICIDE LOVERS DEADLY LIFE

 

Class trial in session!!

The stars in the sky broke apart into pieces. Stars shattered like colored glass. That was the clash between hope and despair that Komaeda wanted to despair. It was colorful. It was bright. As the broken stars showered from the sky like colored rain, Komaeda wanted to reach up and grab a piece of his own.

He moved his hand to catch the stars, but when he tried to reach towards the sky he noticed a knife driven into the palm of his hand. Komaeda was reminded once again that those stars weren’t for him.

His eyes drifted around the crcle of people gathered. Makoto. Komaru. Togami. Monaca. Mukuro. Amami. Keebo. Kumagawa. Junko. Kaede. Shuichi. Kokichi. Tsumugi. He was there too, but he did not feel that he counted. He was not a part of “everyone else.” Just standing there on the same stage as them made his entire body shake in anxiety.

His eyes finally landed on Kazuichi’s funeral portrait. A spotlight turned on and shined on him. He was a chosen one. Komaeda thought, as he saw the phantom of Kazuichi walk past him. They brushed shoulder to shoulder, and then Kazuichi kept walking without looking back at Komaeda. Komaeda turned around and desperately called after him, but no voice left his mouth. He’s the one who had the right to rise to the stage. He watched Kazuichi’s back as he ascended the staircase and stepped on stage.

If this is all I’m capable of I really do… fail? Don’t I?  
The human failure smiled.  
He held the side of his face with his robotic hand. He remembered when he had sawed off his own hand to replace it. Maybe he didn’t just want to make despair a part of him, maybe he also wanted to cut off a part of himself. Our stages are different. Our dimensions are different. So, why did you…?

Kazuichi died, and Komaeda who no one even wanted, continued to live. He looked desperately around for Kazuichi for a moment before realizing, Kazuichi was not anywhere. Komaeda looked at his five robotic fingers, the color of steel, the mechanical whirr as he manipulated his fingers. He brought himself back to reality. He had no time to keep staring at hopeful delusions. To look for stars he couldn’t even see. Kazu-kun is dead. Hoping for him to come back won’t change anything. There was no hope there. Then where was hope? He had spent so, so long looking for it. He looked at the thirteen other people with him, they all looked at him like he was a stranger.

 

He always wondered what the difference was between him and other people. Maybe it was the colors. They were shaded in different colors. Komaeda was colored in blue and black and every color that nobody wants to look at.

Komaeda Nagito stepped onto the stage once more. If Kazuichi was not here then he had no choice but to play his part.

 

“I think we should all agree to something before the class trial starts.” Keebo spoke up before anyone else. “Kumagawa-kun and Ouma-kun can’t pretend to be the murderer and waste everyone’s time, because it’s obviously not them.”

“Hey, hey, I could totally be the murderer if I wanted to be. When I was little I went to bed every night dreaming about growing up to be a murderer. My parents told me that if I worked really hard I could make all my dreams come true.”

“I… I find your parents motivations in encouraging you to be a killer highly questionable.”

“Shut up. At least I have parents. You weren’t even born.”

“That’s highly doubtful considering the way you act.”

“Super cool! Like the main hero of an anime! Just watch I’ll change to Super Ultra Mega Kokichi Form and defeat the bad guy, and then everyone will cheer.”

“Like a big kid.” Keebo had no idea how he could get tired so quickly when dealing with Kokichi. His batteries were almost fully charged.

“Hey, hey, anyway don’t kill my dreams you little robot cyber punk.” Kokichi hardly had any right to call anyone a little punk.. “At least I can dream about things besides electric sheep.”

Shuichi found it difficult to talk over the bickering two. It was so hard to get a word in when other people were so loud. “There’s evidence that only the seven people in the room could have committed the murder.”

Kaede immediately picked up the hint Shuichi dropped. “All of the other dorm rooms were glued shut! It took Maki breaking the door until she could open it!”

“Who glued them?” Shuichi prompted.

“It was a part of Iruma, and Kazuichi’s plan. They were planning to place everyone in the digital world in their sleep.”

“W-wait.” Komaru was uncomfortable being one of the suspects. The spotlight could stay away from her forever, please. “Are you saying Kazuichi and Iruma snuck into our dorm rooms in the middle of the night without waking up a single one of us? That’s impossible, both of them are literally the loudest people I know.”

『Ugh, it’s so obvious I don’t want to watch you monkeys bang rocks together trying to figure it out.』Kumagawa’s whole body arched over the podium, his hand held his face and he tapped his temples with his nails. He looked like he had a headache. 『Whatever, I’ll just tell you the answer. Those two volunteered to help Hitoyoshi-kun cook last night. They slipped sleeping drugs in our food while we weren’t looking. He’s such a good boy, such a good helper, he even helps the killers.』

Shuichi was slightly unnerved by Kumagawa’s interruption but, it didn’t take a detective to notice there’s something wrong with Kumagawa. He pushed it to the back of his head. “Which means the only person who could have killed Iruma, and Kazuichi were the seven who were in the same room with them.”

“Monaca-chan wants to watch the detective solve a crime with practically no evidence. It’s always fun watching try-hards fail.”

“Try hard…?” Shuichi squeaked.

“Come on, Saihara-kun. Don’t let that middle schooler insult you! Fight back,” Kaede said, trying to be encouraging.

“I’m not fighting a middle schooler…” Shuichi felt like the real try-hard was next to him. “Computers have logs and memories right? There must have been some kind of record of what happened in the digital world.”

“That program is basically a Frankenstein's monster of recycled and reused code. It got so buggy there’s practically nothing left, the whole system crashed down.” Monaca said. “Monaca-chan already checked.”

『Wow, Monaca-chan you really do suck at everything in comparison to me. I finally get the reason why your face always looks like the flashcard that they told me means sad.』Kumagawa straightened up, he looked like a snake unwinding himself. 『It must be so hard not being a beautiful girl genius. I really don’t know how it feels to be second best in anything, so sorry can’t relate.』

“...Did Misogi-chan get possessed by Iruma-san’s ghost?” Mukuro was confused.

 

Kumagawa Misogi’s appearance had changed. His hair was white, but he had actually brushed it instead of leaving it a shaggy mess over his face, there were a great amount of gel holding his hair in place. A large barette kept his bangs away from his face. His eyes once blue had turned completely red, like a dead sea. Blood on the surface of the water.

『You’re all so lucky I was born. Jeez it’s so tiring always having to fix everyone else’s shit. That’s me, Kumagawa Misogi, problem solver. You all better start thanking me.』Kumagawa’s erratic behavior continued as he began to twirl a free lock of white hair around his finger.  
『Mmm, yeah so. There is something interesting evidence on the logs but I thought I’d leave that as a surprise for later.』

“Umm… why not just now?” Shuichi asked.

『Pacing! God, what kind of third string main character are you? It’s no fun if I just tell you the answer.』

“B-but we don’t have any evidence.”

『The pieces are already right in front of you. Can’t you see them? The game’s waiting for you to play Saihara-kun.』Kumagawa smiled with his whole face. His smile, finally reached his eyes as if he were truly enjoying himself. As if he were dancing around. 『It could only be one of the seven people, so just turn them against each other, make them devour each other, until only one is left...or we could all just die whatever.』

Kumagawa quickly lost interest, and his voice faded away. He continued in a dull drone.『I was actually surprised that the victim was different from who I expected it to be, because I've never been wrong once in my life. That’s me, Kumagawa Misogi. Mr. Not Wrong. I got all excited thinking it might be fun to corner the culprit, but now it’s like mehhh… nevermind.』

Kumagawa was just whining now, like a child who didn’t get the toy they asked for. Disinterested, he was just staring at his freshly painted nails, the nailpolish color was black.『I even didn’t investigate and everything so I might be taken by surprise...』

“You didn’t investigate because you spent the entire time fussing with your hair.” Junko spoke up, interrupting him. “Who cares if someone got murdered, you can’t have a bad hair day.”

『Yeah, that’s right. If I have a bad hair day the world might as well just end.』

“Wait, that was your reason for ending the world? Your hair looks fine anyway, being a total mess suits your character. It’s more honest.”

『Ick, why would I ever want to be honest?』

“Because I can’t stand liars.”

『You’re so sexy when you deny everything I am. Come on, marry me.』

“Sure.”

『Really?』

“No, that was just a lie. See, liars suck.”

『Well, whatever I don’t care what you say. Being a mess is not a ‘look’. You don’t look like anything at all!』

“You denying me isn’t sexy at all. It’s just depressing.”

『Yeah, but the depression part is total turn on. Misery is the new black. I’m a stupid perverted boy who’s totally into that sort of thing after all.』

Mukuro wondered if anybody else sensed something was deeply wrong, or if it was just her.

“I really thought the trial ruining trio would be throwing everyone off this time, but now it’s those two,” Shuichi observed.

“Hey, give us some time! We can totally ruin this trial. I just need to get my mojo back.” Kokichi said, he looked genuinely insulted.

“Please, stop including me with Komaeda and Ouma.” Togami’s lips twitched in annoyance.

“I guess they do have a point even if they stated it in the craziest way possible. The crime could have been committed by anyone in the room, come on guys give us your testimony I want to prove you’re innocent.” Kaede said urging the suspects to come forward.

『Umm, like usually you’re supposed to prove people guilty at a trial Little Miss Sunshine.』

“Hey, I know you love the sound of your own voice but stop interrupting. Trust me, nobody thinks you’re funny. You’re laughing all alone.”

『I can’t help it!』Kumagawa whined again, as he clawed at his face. 『When I see cheery optimism I just wanna crush it! Bad Habit! Okay, I give you all permission to continue.』

“Umm, I wasn’t really asking for your permission.” Kaede said slightly put off. “Keebo, you start. What’s the last thing you remember-”

“That’s unnecessary!” Keebo said, and then when everyone looked at him he immediately shrank away. “Oh, I should not have made such a bold declaration now everyone’s looking at me like I’m some kind of main character.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to be anxious, Keebo.” Kaede said gently.

“I don’t feel anxious. I don’t feel anything.” Even as Keebo said that, his face reddened. “The murderer already incriminated himself when he saw the bodies. It was you wasn’t it, Komaeda?”

A classic scene from a mystery novel. The lights turn out in the mansion. When they turn back on, there is someone dead. Among everyone left, there is a murderer. The detective points out the culprit.

The killer is you.

And then, the murderer laughs.

Komaeda saw the curtains fall. The lines and wires that held the stage lights in place began to whine under the pressure. The cable snapped in several places. The lights gave one last groan of agony before they broke into pieces and fell. The actor was still bowing on stage, he was still playing his part when suddenly a light fell out of the sky and crushed his head. He died in the middle of the performance. The blood that spilled out was redder than any curtain.  
He already knew that. Kazuichi was dead and he was alive. Why did other people who said they knew better than him, spend so much time telling him things he already knew?

Stop laughing. Just stop it right now.  
They died don’t you feel anything?  
You freak, open your mouth again and I’ll kill you!

He already knew that so…

Komaeda clapped his hands together for Keebo. “I’m so proud of you. So you were able to think after all. An amazing demonstration of your talent.”

“Y-you’re praising me? We-well thanks.” Keebo was so unused to being praise it threw him off for a moment. “Wait, how does this have anything to do with my talent?”

“You’re so talented at pretending to be human, don’t you think? I have an eye for these sorts of things. I’m ugly, untalented and insignificant myself but I’ve always looked for the beautiful talent in other people.”

Komaeda kept clapping.  
He would clap, until his hands started to bleed.

“I’m not pretending…”

“What’s wrong? I’m praising you for your performance. You can take a bow. You even look more human than I do right now, it’s like you actually care when they die or something…”

“I do…”

“You’re such a good actor you’ve even got yourself convinced.”

🧸 INTERMISSION ONE 🧸

Hey, hey, where is heart?  
Could I see it if I tore open your chest?  
Could I see it if I cracked open your skull?

Keebo’s fingers traced all the way from Miu’s chest, to right between her eyes. She was dead on the ground in front of him. Her heart had stopped. But, he did not even know where this heart was.

 

If a robot was broken all you needed to do was replace the broken piece. All the broken pieces could be reassembled into working order. When humans broke they were unfixable. They stayed broken forever.

He just needed to find the heart. If he could find her heart, she would wake up and everything would go back to the way it was. He put his hands on both of her shoulders and jostled her motionless corpse on the ground.

“Hey, wake up and call me an idiot already, Iruma-san.”

He would even beg her. She could make one of her crude jokes about that.

“Say something. Come on, I’ll set you up. You’re not just gonna lie down there and take it are you? You’re supposed to… you’re supposed to laugh like you usually do and…”

 

No matter how much he shook her he refused to move. She refused to come back to life. He could not make things go back to the way they were. He just wanted her to make fun of him one more time.

This is why they were afraid of dying wasn’t it? Keebo said as he clung to Miu’s lifeless body. She should call him a perv and bark at him to get his hands off of her. There was absolutely no difference between a living and a dead human but there was absolutely no trace of Miu in this body he was clinging to. She was gone. Disappeared. I can’t believe I couldn’t even learn then.

Hey, if I had been able to understand your feelings back then would things have been different? He lied Miu back in the water. He wanted to float some flowers near her body to mark her grave, but he… the only flowers he could see were digital ones. They would crumble into pixels when touched by anything real. If so even now, would the three of us have been able to be together?

It was so simple he hated his creator for programming such an idiotic robot. Living was being together with them, dying was being away from them. “What do you think, Kazuichi-kun? If only I was a more convincing fake, we could have pretended to be a family. You’re both so stubborn, but that’s what you really wanted, correct?”

He wanted to see it.  
The heart.  
Keebo reached out to hold Miu’s hand, but her hand had gone completely cold. Colder than even his. He had no idea where the heart was, but it was completely gone from this body.

Keebo picked up a stray screw driver left behind by Miu and drove it into the corner of his eye socket. If he were a human this is where his tear ducts would be. His eye cracked, and the vision in one eye began to glitch.  
Monaca was looking at him. He thought she might laugh, but she only widened her mouth slightly. Her face looked oddly empty, as if there were holes in it. She ran up to him, and grabbed his hand with both of her tiny hands.

“What are you doing? Your creator must have been really incompetent if he programmed you to be this stupid.”

I just broke a rule. Keebo realized. He just harmed himself. He always followed the rules. He had no idea why. He just had to. The rules were the rules. He thought no matter what he had to keep following them, that was what made him a robot.

The rules he thought dominated his entire life broke so easily. The foundations that were holding him up crumbled away like they were nothing. Monaca, why are you looking at me with that face? I’m just doing what everyone else does. This is normal.

He said as he drove the screw farther into his eye socket. There were voices screaming in his head. Stop. Stop. Stop. Ugh I hate when a character suddenly becomes emo to give him character depth. There’s way too much gore in this show. Why wasn’t Keebo the one who died he was so boring. At least Miu had huge tits, lol! His inner voice had gone haywire. He was glad, he wanted to break a little bit. He didn’t want to look at Miu’s broken form and stay in one piece. He had to break. He had to break to be like everyone else.

“I’m fixing my eyes.”

“If hitting things solved your problems then Monaca-chan’s problems would have been fixed like so long ago.”

“No, I’m fixing them. I can’t cry. So I have to fix them. Even if I’m injured, I won’t bleed, so I have to be fixed.” To be like everyone else. “ really am sad, so why won’t my eyes function properly right now?” Keebo’s eye suddenly turned from blue to red, as some kind of fluid poured out from his broken eye. When he touched it and saw it staining his chrome fingers he almost looked happy.

Monaca had never seen Keebo smile like that before. It was like he did not even understand what happiness was before this moment. The liquid trickled down the side of his face.

It was pitch black.  
Like ink welling up.  
Spilling out.  
Overflowing.

“You’re the same aren’t you. You want to cry you just can’t. You don’t have the function. So everybody treats you like you’re different.”

“You’re wrong.” Monaca said.

“You want to cry too, right?”

Monaca shook her head. “I don’t want to cry at all.”

“B-but they’re dead.”

“Yeah, they’re less noisy. Monaca-chan thinks they’re not that useful anymore, but that’s it.”

If he scooped her eyes out would he find the heart behind them? Keebo considered that option too, but he feared if he looked behind Monaca’s eyes he would see nothing at all. Keebo could not understand, she had feelings, she was born, she was raised as someone’s child. She should be the one crying.

She had a heart so why did she spend so much time pretending that she didn’t?

For the first time Keebo was terrified to be next to her. He saw himself at the center of those eyes. Those large green eyes that dominated her face, looked at him like there was nothing there at all. No, not just him.

She saw absolutely no difference between the living and the dead. For her there was nothing there. There was nothing lost. No other person truly existed to her. Her world consisted only of herself, so what did it matter to her if another person disappeared from it?

Keebo really thought that girl was looking at him, but no light entered her eyes at all. She was one of those fish at the bottom of the sea that slowly lost the use of their eyes.

He was so stupid.  
Laughter.  
He heard the sound of someone laughing.  
They were laughing at him.

He turned his head slowly around and saw Komaeda standing there, laughing. Keebo saw it in that moment. Komaeda’s eyes were exactly the same as that girl’s. Keebo just wanted to cry, and that boy was laughing at him.

 

🧸 INTERMISSION END 🧸

 

Junko dragged her fingers through her hair. The usually bright and cheerful girl looked far more gloomy than normal. Her hair was not tied up, but rather let down and fell all around her face. She looked like she had just dragged herself through a rainy day to get here to this trial.

“Come on you guys. I’m supposed to be the dumb but lovable one. If you all keep saying dumb shit, then I’m gonna lose my unique character traits.” Junko said.

“Um, I don’t see what was wrong with my theory.” Keebo said, “He was laughing, didn’t you see that?”

“You can laugh when you’re happy and cry when you’re sad. You’re lucky, Some people are truly blessed in this world, ahhh, I hate them so much.” Junko’s entire body was slumped over. Her motions were awkward, jerking, like someone else was puppeteering her body. “You don’t even know the murder method. If we can just throw accusations at whoever we dislike we might as well let Kokichi-chan be the murderer.”

“Yes! Yes! Let me be the murderer! I’ll be a good boy I promise!” Kokichi said, jumping up and down in excitement.

“The method it was well…”

“Come on, tell us how Nagito-chan could have killed those two while he was still asleep. You’re all so much smarter than me. You’re all so much better than me, so why don’t you come up with the answer.”

“Uh-umm…” Keebo could feel himself beginning to sweat, but only metaphorically because he did not have that function.

『His luck could have killed them.』

Komaeda had been preparing his counterargument, but just then all of his thoughts went dead.  
His brain was severed from the rest of his body.  
It was like having his head cut off.  
So sudden, everything fell away from him.  
He watched blood drip from his severed neck.  
It became beautiful birds and few away.

“I…”

『We’ve already scientifically proven luck exists, however the fuck that works. Komaeda-senpai’s luck killed both of them to protect them. They slipped on a banana peel and electrocuted themselves in the water, whatever.』

Hey, Kumagawa why are you the one saying this?  
Why are you telling me to die right now?

He could handle everyone else’s suspicion, but Kumagawa’s was too much. Kumagawa was the only person who had ever called him kind. He wanted to believe that wasn’t a lie.

“Wait, what? Misogi-chan is trying to get Komaeda-kun killed, and Junko-chan is defending him? Doesn’t anybody else notice how backwards this is?” Mukuro’s cries for help continued to go ignored.

Keebo joined in. “If you didn’t kill them tell us all why you were laughing! Come on, what’s so funny about Iruma and Kazuichi’s deaths!”

Komaeda could refute their evidence easily, but he couldn’t explain how he felt. They were all looking at him like he was a liar. Like he was hiding something on purpose. Did they really think he wanted to be this way?

He wanted…  
He wanted to dig his fingers into the skin of his chest. He wanted to pull away at his flesh until the seams opened up. He wanted the flesh over his chest to tear in half and then open like they were a pair of curtains to show everyone what was inside.

He wanted them all to see the naked bones that were inside. His rib cage that did not conceal any organs. The hollow spaces inside of him that his skin conealed. He wanted them to see it all.

If only his feelings had wings. They could fly away from him. He wanted them to escape. He wanted to show them on the outside. He was sure, beyond the hollow cage of his ribs, there was love and warmth out there somewhere. He would break his own bones to let those feelings free.

Take apart these precious bones.  
Mend his own heart.  
Reap what he sewed.  
Feel the burn from the dreams.  
Break apart.  
Ripping himself, by the seams.

Words could not describe what he felt. There were no colors for his feelings. Countless words are ripped to shreds.

He just wanted these bones to feel alive for one single moment. Why couldn't they understand that? Why couldn't he make them?

"Makoto-chan, you're the hero aren't you? You're the one who has friends to protect, so do something." There was actual emotion creeping into Junko's voice. It was creepy to see her acting so genuine.

He had no idea how to counter Keebo's argument. Kirigiri always investigated and gave him hints. He really was someone who could only get led around by the nose.

If he had that agency that Komaeda had… would he be able to do something?

"Here's are all so useless. No wonder villains get to have their fun…"

Kaede spoke up. "Wait, we can't convict someone based on luck."

Keebo whined. "Who's side are you on, Akamatsu?"

"Um, everyone's?" She looked to Rantaro. "Hey, come up with something."

"Can't. Too busy napping." Rantaro yawned.

"I wonder… what order did we all wake up." Shuichi muttered to himself. "It was me, Akamatsu-San, Komaeda-kun, then the alarm woke up."

Komaeda smiled. "Oh Saihara-kun, so sincere, so honest, you had to go spoil the fun for everyone else."

Three people saw the body before the alarm went off. Those three could not be the killer.

"I wish I had been the one to kill Kazuichi-kun. Could you imagine the despair you would all be overcome with if worthless trash like me had managed to kill one of the chosen?"

Komaeda spent his entire life looking for wishing stars. But they all crumbled before he could touch them. As if reaching out with his fingers caused their decay.

"I should have been the one, I should have been the one…"

Hey, where was hope?  
Could he see it if he tore open his heart?  
Could he see it if he split open his skull?  
He watched his fingers slowly close. There was no hope these hands could hold onto.

"I've already figured out the cause of death. If a useless idiot like me could figure it out then the killer must have been completely incompetent. I don't feel like allying myself with hopeless losers. I'm going to find them now."

Komaeda only felt despair, but despair he could work with. Despair was an old friend, an ally.

Sorry, Kazu-kun your death won't become anyone's hope. Because I'm going to make your killer feel despair.

These useless hands were only good for breaking things, after all.


	92. The Red and the Black

 

🧸  **INTERMISSION 2 🧸**

They were all bugs. All of them. The noise their wings made as they flitted about in the air buzzed like electricity sparking at the back of her skull.  
  
Miu itched her head, annoyed.   
  
The amount of bugs in the world was a source of constant paranoia for her. They crawled all over her skin, they landed where they wanted on her body, they flew into her eyes. She knew they were hiding in the oily mess of her hair. They dragged their fingers through the mess of her hair and called her beautiful with the same mouth they used to bite her. They were always, always, whispering in her ears making those horrible chattering noises. Even if there was no one else around, she knew they were always there, just out of sight. The bugs had her completely outnumbered.  
  


She still remembered the day that the butterflies watched her. The colors of their wings looked like eyes painted on. A thousand eyes on her. If they had been disgusted with her, she might have been able to bear it.  
  
All she could see in those eyes was indifference. Like painted glass. A painted on expression.  
  
That man’s eyes became a pair of butterfly wings too, and flew away from his face. 

White butterflies wings against a pitch black sky. Like a thousand eyes peeling open at the same time. The butterfly effect. She read about it once, something as small as the beating of a butterfly’s wings could change probability.  But nothing changed. Nothing stopped this scene from occurring. It was al due to math. It was all due to math. And numbers were cold, like that man’s hands on the flesh.  
  
The butterflies keep dancing about in the air. They’re enjoying themselves. The colors of all their wings together, a carnival. Flashing lights meant to hypnotize her eyes. They landed on her body. Her eyelids, the tip of her nose, her cheeks, in her hair, her stomach, her hand. She felt herself being kissed by those butterflies. 

 

No, maybe they were biting into her. An act of cannibalism. She had been a butterfly once, but she had forgotten and now she was a girl.  She wanted to go back to the sky. She could feel her body breaking into pieces.  
  
Her torn dress. Her nakedness in the garden. The shame she felt after eating the fruit.  
All of those feelings were breaking into tiny pieces inside of her. They were no longer her feelings. They were just something that happened to her. Other people had feelings, but they were just feelings at her. Someone was angry at her. Someone was sad at her. If she was deaf then nobody’s words could hurt her. If she was blind than the looks they gave her meant nothing. Slowly, her senses dulled, as she grew more and more distant from her own body, her reality seemed as fragile as a butterfly’s wings, flying by her like a dream she could not participate in. They could throw paint at her all they wanted. They could dye her outside any color. Skin blue and red, as blood beat up against her flesh. Sometimes she raked her nails over her waste just to make it red again, because she hated being clean. She didn’t know herself when she was clean. She didn’t know that girl. But her outside did not matter, as long as the internal components were fine the machine would still continue to function. It did not matter how beat up the chassy got.  
  


As she endured it she could slowly feel butterflies being born underneath her skin. They broke out of their cocoons and ripped her flesh to break free. They took off for the sky. A cloud of butterflies. They left nothing but her bones behind. She wanted her feelings to fly away, just like that. 

  
It’s only scary  because you think it’s scary. It’s only rough because you think it’s rough. It’s only gross because you think it’s gross. Shut down your emotions one by one. Doing that will make your body feel just like a machine.  
  
Ever since that day when she tried to cry out helplessly only for a butterfly to crawl out of her throat and carry her words to the sky, she hated bugs. She had remodeled herself so thoroughly to the point where what flowed inside of her veins was just black oil to ease the pain of moving a body that had been abused so thoroughly. The next morning she went to school and despite so many eyes looking at her, not a single person noticed the difference. They were no different than the bugs in the garden.  
  
They were all bugs. All of them. Every last human was a bug. She could start screaming in public, and not a single person would notice, they would just keep flying around.  
  
Every single person lived their life ignorant of what she was going through. They were bugs with tiny brains, capable of even the smallest amount of independent thought. 

 

Miu thought it was really, really hard being the only smart person in the world. They all smiled because they didn’t know. Their happiness was just ignorance. All of the children in her school were just that, children, unlike her thirteen going on thirty.  
  
She found one or two of the bugs to be interesting. They were eating with her right now. The tall one with green hair and a sloppy haircut sipped his drink loudly. His girlfriend, glasses chick, was staring intently at him while he stared at his phone.  
  
“Yeah, this one is alright.”  
  
“Alright? The best criticism you can come up with is alright? I want my writing to be deep and thought provoking.”  
  
“My thoughts aren’t that deep, and not much provokes em.”  
  


 

  
“If you keep acting that shallow people are going to start saying the only good thing about you is your looks, you stupid ikemen boy.”  
  
“I thought that was the only good thing about me.”  
  
“Ugh, why am I even trying? I should just take the hint and fade into the background already.”  
  
“Now, now, don’t start pouting.” He said patting her head.  
  
Miu could stay entirely quiet and neither of them would notice. She had a habit of drifting in and out of conversations like that. She could never be fully present, in her body like this, if she was she would feel everything.  
  
Sometimes she wanted to break entirely.  
To go screaming, raving, mad. To stop being able to tell reality from fantasy.  
She broke, but she didn’t break all the way.  
The fact that she still looked like a functional machine from the outside was held against her again and again.  
  
It was either blend in or get ignored by her friends, like she was doing in this moment, or start crying for attention again and be hated.   Not that she cared. She didn’t need to worry about what bugs had to think about her.  
  
What she really hated was people who didn’t think about a single thing. So many people in her class thought they were normal high school students, they thought the world was a good place and if you were a good person who followed the rules you would be happy. That was why they hated unhappy people. It was their fault for being rule breakers. They despised her when she broke the rules.  
  
But for her, every single rule had been broken and nobody gave a damn. The crimminal was her father, but he was still free. There were no such things as rules, there was no such thing as happy people.  
  
She truly pitied the people who were just too stupid to realize they were miserable. Same for her two friends, she would never laugh with them like classmates, she would never make precious memories, she would never enjoy a single second she was with them. Because even if she had fun during the daytime, at night she had to go back to that house.  
  
Even if she wanted to she couldn’t.  
In her interactions with people nothing real was ever exchanged. She never betrayed any of her feelings. She could only exist in what was fake, she could only exist in a simulation.  
When she thought about it, it made her a little sad.  
Some part of her wanted to be their friend. She wished she could.  
  
But what she felt towards both of them wasn’t “friendship” but rather possessiveness. Even though both of them were to accept her, if they were to truly love her, she didn’t think she would be fixed. Because she had been loved too much already.  
  
What she really wanted was for those two precious people to hate her. 

 

🧸 **INTERMISSION 2 END 🧸**

  
  


“Towa-san.”  
  
Komaeda called out.  
  
At the mention of that name, Monaca perked up. “Oh, a weirdo is talking to Monaca-chan. Monaca-chan’s parents told her never to talk to strange men. Well, if she had parents that loved her they would have told her that. Monaca-chan’s just going to pretend to listen until he goes away.”  
  
“Help me clarify some details of the murder. Every single person’s body was laying on a bed or futon, besides Kazuichi-kun and Iruma-san. Why?”  
  
“Monaca-chan will pretend to be dumb, so you can have your time to shine.”  
  
“It’s simple, so they wouldn’t get wet. The murderer turned on the faucet so the electrical charge would kill both of the victims who were still on the floor.”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“You’re the only one who could have done that!”  
  
“Su-”  
  
“Don’t confess to the murder, that gag is getting old already.” Rantaro said, hand behind his neck. “It’s not nice to pick on little kids, Komaeda-kun.”  
  
“Oh, and now Amami is defending Monaca-chan. Could he be any less predictable if he tried?” 

 

“You must know why it has to be Monaca. I mean, even an Ultimate who does not remember his talent is still an Ultimate. At least most of the time.” Komaeda said, tilting his finger and his head to the side.  
  
“Yeah, I don’t know anything.” Rantaro slouched a little bit more, as if it was taking all of his energy to stand up. “Guess I’ll have to actually think about this.” 

 

Monaca looked up at him disappointment obvious in her eyes. “This is why Monaca-chan yawns every time other people start talking.”  
  
“It’s because those two were still in the dream right. They were physically present, even though they died before they finished setting up the program.” Rantaro started.  
  
『Time for that foreshadowing I laid out earlier to explode. Nothing as fun as stepping straight on a landmine.』Kumagawa made an explosion sound with his mouth as he threw his hands up in the air, it was very dramatic like whoosh and then bang. 『I found traces of a program that scans the brain at the moment of death and creates a copy of their thinking patterns and recreates them as an AI. 』

  
“The only one who could have activated such a program was Towa-san, the heir to the Towa Robotics corporation who became a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence when she was less than thirteen years old.” 

  
“H-hey, I could have done something.” Komaru felt like she was being left out.  
  
Komaeda turned his head. “Did someone hear that? It was like a fly buzzing around.” 

 

“Hmm, yep, you’re right. I did all of that. In fact, the girl one came up to Monaca-chan and asked her to help with all of this. She told her all about how she wanted to kill someone and Monaca-chan just went along with it and didn’t attempt to stop her. Monaca-chan was the reason their plan even worked in the first place, because those two couldn’t code their way out of a cardboard box, but the rest has nothing to do with Monaca-chan. Monaca-chan didn’t kill them.”  
  
“What? You can probably trick and incompetent idiot like me, but there’s no way anyone else will believe a confession like that.” 

 

Rantaro brushed his hair away from his face with long delicate fingers. “She seems more honest than you man. I mean she didn’t even attempt to deny it, and _I did everything but the murder_ is a pretty lame way to trick us all.”  
  
Huh?  
How was he not honest?  
She was the one who just said she knew about a murder and did nothing about it.  
  
Keebo made a noise approximating a whine and looked to Monaca. “You knew… If you understood how they were feeling why didn’t you…?”

“Because Monaca-chan doesn’t care. If those two killed someone, Monaca-chan doesn’t care, if they both died, she doesn’t care either. She equally doesn’t care about either result. So go ahead, if you want someone to blame so badly then vote for Monaca-chan. If Monaca-chan and everybody else dies right now, she still doesn’t care.” 

 

Everyone around her looked equally shocked that a child could say such things, but it was perfectly childish. It was egocentric. All that mattered was Monaca’s tiny little ego, what she saw, what she thought, what she felt, and that did not even matter that much because Monaca did not particularly like herself.  
  
She liked Enoshima Junko a little bit more than she hated herself. That was how she was able to live until that point, but whether she hated her or loved her Junko would not even look her way, so what did it matter? 

 

Junko suddenly spoke up. “This is kind of… what’s the word… boring.” 

 

🧸  **INTERMISSION 3 🧸**

 

Every person here in this school had someone to protect.  
He treasured family above all else.  
She treasured her younger sibling.  
She treasured her own beauty.  
But, she treasured something unique above all else.

An apple she had to hold close to her breast, in order to hide it from the world.  
Hate. 

  
Hate, at being ignored. Hate, at being used. It felt like hate was the only real emotion she had left.  
  
She still felt things, but it was the flash of anxiety. It was thinking way too much over the smallest of details. It was being afraid of the most unreasonable things. None of those were feelings, they were just broken chemical reactions in her brain. They were just signs of her dysfunction.  
  
She did not want to laugh when she was happy, she never cried when she was sad. All of the emotions that flashed through her, were things her body felt, like the way her body shook when someone touched her because it still remembered when she tried to forget. She was lacking in any self awareness of what her own feelings might be, she laughed condescendingly, she started crying and begging when she was scared, she wanted to run away, but it was all absurd, and it was all nothing. 

 

 _I don’t hate being with him, it’s just kind of awkward._  
  
She looked at the boy with his hair dyed pink. He had to wear his glasses because he was fiddling with a machine in the middle of the night. 

  
“Ugh, why am I even here? I have so many cooler people who want to hang out with me.”  
  
“No you don’t.”  
  
“Hey, Kazuichi I can think of some more interesting things a boy and a girl could do at night!”  
  
“Huh, like what? Tell scary stories?”  
  
“I’m going to go work on those things Kokichi asked me to build.”  
  
“O-okay.” 

 

She was always next to him, so why did he not make a single move on her? His base desires were obvious. He never stopped himself before. The last girl he liked was the prim and proper princess type, and no matter how many times she nicely turned him down considerate of his feelings he just kept chasing after her convinced in his own head they were in love. 

 

 _We’ve kissed before this…_ _  
__But that one time was because I sort of aggressively came onto him._ _  
__What’s going on her…? Wait a second._ _  
__This is totally bizarre._  
  


Even thought she was getting nothing out of this here she was going through the motions of a friendship with him. Just like she did back then with those two. That’s weird. No, not just weird, there was something utterly repugnant about it. It was like she was the one who was chasing him…  
  
Annoying.  
Being with him was just a little bit annoying.  
He agitated her.  
Like nails raking against her skin.  
She had developed an allergy to this kind of closeness.  
She couldn’t deal with people at all, that’s why she acted like an irrational idiot around them.  
Never for a single moment could she get comfortable. 

 

“Hey, Kazuichi.”  
  
“Yeah?” 

 

Go the fuck away I hate you. “Why are you spending so much time with me?” 

 

“Dunno. You’re kind of funny. Even though all that comes out of your mouth is dumb sex jokes.”  
  
He really was far too relaxed. More than she ever could be. It was a little bit sad, seeing someone who was a little bit less broken than yourself. “Hey, Kazuichi. I lied to you.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” 

 

“I’m a trashy bitch. I’m pretty loose. I'm really easy lay. I’ll do it with anyone. I’m definitely not still a virgin, or afraid of sex, or anything like that. I don’t think I could ever be the girl you want to save, Kazu-idiot.”  
  
Miu said.  
  
“Um, j-just because you sleep with people a lot doesn’t make you a bad person. I don’t think things like that anymore-”  
  
“Oh, and let me just clarify so I don’t have to deal with your stupid questions. It’s true, being a slut doesn’t make you a bad person. But, I’m a special case. I’m a bad person who just happens to be slutty at the same time. I’m the full package. I know I’m not clever or seductive or anything like that, but guys will sleep with anything with a heartbeat and a pair of tits. Actually, not even a heartbeat is necessary. And when I’m sleeping with other people I’m imagining I’m using them the same way I was used in the past.”  
  
The words that left Miu’s sounded like a digital recording more than human speech. She saw the coloring of Kazuichi’s cheeks, red, because he had blood in his veins. Miu could engage with people, she could be next to them, but at the end of the day there was no warmth, because there was no blood in her skin. She was such a phony. She was see through. Her skin was a clear plastic.  
  
“Something bad did happen to me, but to be honest the man who hurt me died two years ago. I’m still like this. Honestly, I think I’ll always be this way. So goodbye, for real. You can go back to chasing after imaginary girls like princesses and shit.”  
  


She turned away from him, like she had gotten bored, like she was just done with him. She started to walk off when suddenly she felt a hand wrap around hers. The way she instaintly flinched when she was touched, made Kazuichi let go, and he looked terrified to touch her from that moment forward.  
  
“W-wait, I don’t see why any of that is a reason why we can’t be friends anymore?”  
  
She thought she just gave him a ton of reasons. What a dummy. Miu grabbed the choker around her neck and pulled on it hard. “I’ve been tied up before. Do you know how it makes me feel when I wear this?” Miu grabbed at the leather straps on her legs. “I’m so fucking sick I want to throw up, but I literally have no concept of feeling better feels like so I keep them on. Even if we got out of this killing game, even if we all became best fucking friends, that sickening feeling is never going to disappear inside of me.”  
  
Miu pulled at the straps, around her chest, around her arms, as if she were desperately trying to escape from something. “Hey, hey, I think my brain’s pretty decent. I think I have some good thoughts every once in awhile. Maybe, buried deep down there’s a good person inside of me. But as long as I’m stuck in this body I can’t do any of that. This body’s so fucking busted that even if I want to get better, I won’t.”  
  
Now the one she was clawing at was Kazuichi. She was hanging off of him. Her sense of time had delayed. She distanced herself so much from this body, to make it a machine, to make it a tool, but no matter how hard she tried it refused to function like one. If only there weren’t so much broken circuitry in her brain, if only her joints had not rusted, if only her body did not ache just from trying to move it around. If she could fix her body like a machine she would.  
  
She wanted to be a good friend. Somewhere deep inside of her she wanted to be, but even when she wanted to forget, this body remembered every single bruise, every place she had been kissed. This body that was violated again and again by other people. 

  
“It’s not like I want to die, but I can’t keep living in this body. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”  
  
Miu had broken down entirely. She hadn’t emant to do all that. She just wanted to scare him away. But these feelings that weren’t hers refused to ever listen to her. Kazuichi just stared at her silently, and held her there as she cried.  
  
Even if she told her the absolute worst parts of her, Kazuichi would not hate her. That was the feeling she had in the moment, and that feeling was terribly possessive. That was why, she felt like telling him her plan to kill everyone. 

 

🧸  **INTERMISSION 3 END 🧸**

“Aren’t you getting bored of this, Nagito-chan?” 

Enoshima Junko asked him, like they were not in a class trial, like they were both making casual conversation, like they were speaking from the heart.  
  
“We’re all going to die, I can hardly see how you find that boring-”  
  
“No, no, no one’s going to die at all.”  Enoshima Junko stretched her hands behind her head and yawned. “Hey, hey, you already know the answer, don't you? You’re playing a game with everyone’s lives on the line. Hey, hey, I want to play too. It’s not fair that I don’t get to play.”  
  
“There’s no way someone untalented as myself could figure out what all you Ultimates have failed to-”  
  
Junko suddenly put on her glasses, and began to chew on her thumb nail in a perfect impression of Toko. “That’s just an excuse. If you’re going to make excuses you could at least try to come up with some that sound less boring…”  
  
“It’s not an excuse; I really don’t know anything-”  
  
“Hey, why do you want to solve this case so badly anyway?”  
  
“Because I’ll die if I don’t?” Komaeda said this like it was obvious.   
  
“Yeah, but you’re always just about to die anyway. No big deal. That’s your normal. You look like the main character in an rpg who’s village just got burned down, or mario when the princess got kidnapped right in front of him. Since when did you care so damn much about Kazuichi-kun, anyway?”  
  
Komaeda clutched the fabric of his jacket. “He died. O-of course I care when people die. I know I’m lower than dirt, and belong with the worms that crawl in the dirt but that doesn’t mean you can say I don’t have any feelings at all.”  
  
“Oh, sorry. Ell oh Ell. I’m not saying that you don’t have any feelings at all, I’m just saying your feelings don’t matter.” Oh, that was much better. Junko started to claw at her neck, like she was trying to remind herself she felt pain. Her red nails compulsively scratched until they drew blood. “Are you sad?”  
  
“Huh?” Komaeda didn't know what to say. He never knew what to say.   
  
“Are you sad that he died? You don’t have to cry, or anything like that. Just tell me if you’re sad.”  
  
“...” He just didn't...  
  
“Just say the words I’m sad. It can’t be that hard.”  
  
“I…”  He just didn't know.   
  
“Well, I’m sad. I’m sad about a lot of things, but I’m sad about Kazoo-chan of course.” Her fingers passed over her face, and in a flick of her wrist like she had thrown one mask off and put on another through sleight of hand. Her eyes were suddenly full of tears, big fat ones that dribbled down her cheeks. Junko lost her composure as she wiped at her face smearing her makeup.

The black and red smears left on her face, looked like blood stain that refused to wash out. “I’m really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really sad. A person died. Nothing will fix that. Do I really look that heartless to you?”  
  
“You don’t look like anything to me,” Komada replied.  
  
“Oh sick burn too bad I’ve heard it like, a thousand times. Here’s what I think. If he had gotten out of that program you wouldn’t have tried to talk to him even once. If the two of you lived for the next one hundred years, you would spend one hundred years ignoring him. You’re just suddenly acting like he was your best friend in the whole world because he died so suddenly. Don’t you hate it when someone takes your toys away from you?”  
  
“Kazu-kun is not a toy.” Komaeda said.   
  
“Don’t you hate losing?”  
  
“I won’t lose to despair.” How many times had Komaeda said that line?

“Really? Because it looks like you’re losing right now. Your hope is so strong, Nagito-chan. Except when you have to actually confront another human being and talk to them.” Junko burst out into laughter, as she kept clawing at her neck like she was trying to peel off her skin. Like that skin didn’t fit onto her body, like her insides were mismatched. She should slice her stomach open and pull out her intestines to untie the knots that were inside of her. “You’ll never stop hoping. Unless someone is a little bit mean to you and hurts your feelings. Then you just give up.” 

“I... I already know I’m trash so.”  
  
“But it’s different if you’re calling yourself trash then if somebody else is, right? Because if they say it it might actually be true.” Junko broke into peals of laughter again. “Seriously, get that weak shit hope away from me.”  
  
“Weak…?” He already knew he was the weakest person here so why was his voice cracking.  
  
“Weak as hell! You can’t have strong hope, unless you face despair. You said, you said, you said, that’s what you said… So.” Junko’s hand moved to her face, clawing it in the same way, desperately trying to take that mask off. “I’ll make you feel despair.”  
  
“Why?” Did he really think he was strong for surviving all that? But... Kumagawa said he was strong. He said he survived. Junko's words just then felt like a betrayal.   
  
“Because I’m Junko. I make the people I love feel despair. I looooove you soooo, and it sickens me."  

"Wow, hope sickens you. I'm so surprised Enoshima-san-"

“You always go back to hope. It’s like an abusive relationship. You keep clinging to it, going, mommy, mommy, please don’t hit me any more, I’ll be good. Just like a stupid crying child. Obnoctious. At that point you’re just asking to be disappointed.”  
  
Junko stuck her tongue out in disgust like she was spitting something out.   
 _  
__Ah, no good._ _  
__I can’t tell if I'm pretending to be Junko._ _  
__Or if Junko's pretending to be me._  
  
Junko kept smiling as that thought crossed her mind.  
  
“You’re not trying to find Kazuichi-kun’s murderer. This isn’t about that. It has nothing to do with your feelings.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You already know don’t you? In the end, the reason Kazoo-chan died had nothing to do with you. So you don’t have to find his killer. You don’t have to avenge him or anything. There’s no villain, there’s no hero, there’s no tragedy either.”  
  
Junko’s smile faltered for just a moment. She knew what she was doing. She was just getting rid of all the stress that was in her head. Maybe, one day her and Komaeda would stop using each other as punching bags.  
  
So dark.  
Her life, her sight, her thoughts.  
So dark.  
 _Is this me?_ _  
__Is this my deal?_ _  
__Is this my mind?_  
  
It did not feel the least bit good beating up Komaeda like this. It did not even feel like stress relief anymore. She wondered why she kept doing it then. 

“It wasn’t your fault, Nagito-chan.”  
  
Komaeda finally confessed, what he had known all along. “It was a double suicide.” There was no villain he could blame. He could not even blame himself, because he had nothing to do with it. 

He was just an afterthought in his only friend’s suicide. 

🧸  **INTERMISSION FOUR** 🧸

 

  
Her and Kazuichi were yelling at each other.  
Jeez, they were both so loud. They were going to wake everybody up.  
Reality was bugging out. She had forgotten where they were for a moment. As if she had dropped out of a glitch. Maybe some part of her was not okay what they were doing. Maybe she was trying to look away from the person who was going to kill all of her friends and escape this place.  
  
But, Kazuichi’s shouts brought her back.  
  
“Let’s stop this already…” 

 

Miu grabbed him by the collar. At the moment she did not care that much about getting rough with him. Even though she promised herself she would not do that anymore. 

 

“You promised me you would help.”  
  
Only because she clung to him in tears begging. Only because she looked so weak. Only because unlike her, deep down, underneath all of the abuse and the bruises on his skin he was a good guy. 

 

“I’ll do anything for you, just not that…”  
  
“Why? That’s the only thing I want.”  
  
“I don’t want that. I don’t want to kill you.”  
  
The two of them made a plan together. There was a way for her to escape this body forever. Even though she would never see him again. She thought she would be fine if it was Kazuichi that killed her. At least he was a little bit kinder than most men. Ever since that day she had always thought in the back of her head that she would die in a man’s hands.  
  
Even if she ran away. Even if she hid herself. Even if she fought back, kicked, screamed until she drew blood. She would eventually die at the hands of some man.  
  
“Why can’t you do this one thing for me?”  
  
“Because I…”  
  
Kazuichi was crying. His tears were real. Everything about him was so real. A real boy. She should have stuck to machines. She just couldn’t deal with anything real, that was it. She wanted to die so she wouldn’t have to deal. For a stupid reason like that.  
  
“I can’t live without you.” He wiped at his eyes and dragged tears and snot across his face. Kazuichi was showing her the most unattractive face he could possibly make right now. “It was the same for Komaeda too, I needed him, but he didn’t need me. That’s why I can’t…” 

Miu’s fingers released from the collar of his jumpsuit. As she let go, she realized that she never wanted to.

“Would you die for me then?”  
  
She turned the faucet on by herself, and then went to lay down next to Kazuichi. He reached out and held her hand as they waited, even though it would make it obvious what they had done. The two of them butterflies trapped together in a spider web made of wires.  They had flown into the web on purpose.   
  
Her eyes almost closed she watched water spill out from the bathroom and hit the exposed wires they had left on the floor. The shock ran through her, but she did not die instantly like Kazuichi did.  
  
It was a little bit lonely, being alive for a few more seconds. She was getting impatient, lying face down on the frozen water, and waiting for the ice to crack so she could submerge herself.   
  
“Is this...Death?”  
  
She tried to mutter it but she had no idea if her mouth was even capable of making a noise. Her ears were burning, her brain was burning.  
  
“So dark, so cold…”  
  
In the last moments of her life, Miu’s lip twitched. All her life she had wanted to feel like this, she had wanted to feel nothing, and now finally it…it was disappointing.  
  
She thought the red and the black of her and Kazuichi’s blood mixed together would look so much more beautiful than this.  
  


 


	93. AI

Shuichi was summarizing the crime, but Komaeda did not even listen. 

Kazuichi was dead.   
Iruma was dead.   
The trial was over.   
  
He was scared. That’s a lie.   
He wanted to cry. That’s a lie.   
  
Words are lies and cheats. The moment you put your feelings into words they become dramatized. What do any of those words mean? Who were those words for? Other people? But they didn’t understand. Himself? But he didn’t understand. 

He wasn’t beautiful enough. He wasn’t beautiful enough to become human in the end. He couldn’t change from a mermaid to a human because he wasn’t beautiful enough. He wasn’t able to have two human legs because he wasn’t beautiful enough. The prince didn’t love him because he wasn’t beautiful enough. 

He wanted to escape this body. He wanted to be outside of the body that wasn’t beautiful enough. He didn’t want to be the one who wasn’t beautiful enough. 

It was like water. He stood there completely submerged in water. His body moved slower than he intended it to, because he had to cut through the water. The water was thick and resisted his every movement. He opened and closed his fingers, but the motions of his fingers lagged behind him. There was a delay. There was a pause in reality. Everyone experienced the same reality, but he was experiencing it much slower than everyone else. He was being left behind.   
  
He felt it pushing against him. From all sides. The water all around his body was a heaviness he felt. A feeling of sinking. He was sinking away from his own body, but he was still definitely in his own body so it was… weird… hard to describe. No, maybe his body was the anchor pulling him far beneath the surface. His body was just dead weight pulling them both down.   
  
How did he feel about this? He didn’t seem to mind. Other people were talking, but it didn’t reach his ears. His ear canals were flooded with water. He knew he was hearing something, because his ears hurt, but the noises became indistinguishable behind the pain in his ears. Like an ear infection. Like an earache. 

The images in front of his eyes were warped. They grew increasingly blurry. It’s not that his vision was bad, his eyes received the image, his brain just refused to decipher them. Images were flipped into the eye, and inverted, but Komaeda’s brain couldn’t process that much. It people in front of him were swaying. Light bends. It refracts when it touches the water. He was trying to hear them with his head underwater, he was trying to see them on the other side of a wall of water, he was trying to breathe with water in his lungs. 

It was a struggle for the most basic of functions. His body simply forgot. Like he wanted to forget that he was Komaeda Nagito. 

The words that came out of his mouth were a thick black ink that he practically vomited out. His own thoughts were too loud for his own head, and there were way too many of them. How could an idiot have this many thoughts? 

He closed his eyes.   
It was dark.   
He opened his eyes.   
It was dark.   
  
That kid hid himself. In order to not hurt the feelings of his mother, he hid himself, and tried to be as quietly as possible. He was always hiding away in some dark corner of his house. Maybe he was just avoiding her. He avoided his own mother, what a terrible child.   
  
He spent so much time hiding in the dark, that he was scared. He was scared of the light. When the outside lept crept its way in, a new day meant, another fight with his mother, another bruise hidden somewhere with his mother. That mansion was huge, and it was spacious, and there were plenty of places to hide and he got used to hiding himself. He even tried to hide himself in plain sight. 

The light, it disoriented him. He was dizzy. He had a headache.   
  
He had just gotten used to this way. He had gotten so used to hiding himself he didn’t notice until it was too late. He couldn’t see himself. He looked at his own hands and thought. _These hands must belong to someone else._ Maybe that was why he cut his own hand off and sewed Junko’s on, he thought that the hand of someone else fit him more than his own hand. These hands, these hands, these hands, weren’t his. They didn’t move when he told them to.Where were the strings? Where were the strings? Where were the strings? Who was moving this body if it was not him?   
  
That child liked the dark. So he hid himself in the dark. That was what he was doing right now, he was hiding in the dark of his own body, he wanted to be somewhere where he couldn’t be seen. Other people were talking to him, but he didn’t speak human languages. Because he was a fish. He was a mermaid who belonged in the sea. 

He felt himself drowning, but it lacked the part where everything went black. There were still colors in front of his eyes, they were just senseless, and too bright to look at. Images in front of him no longer maintained their original shapes. 

  
His front hard dug in to his lower lip. He covered his ears with both hands. No matter how hard he tried to dampen the noises, he could never cut them off completely. He was still hearing, he was still seeing, but it was all happening from a distance. It was like thunder, even if the noise is coming from far away it will still echo in your ears and shake your whole body.   
  


Kazuichi died.   
Miu died.   
Kirigiri died.   
  
“I wonder why I didn’t die?”   
  
It felt like being left alone. Like he was left behind. Like they forgot to take him with.   
He kept getting kept alive. He was afraid. He was afraid they resented him, because all of their friends had died, but someone like him continued to live. His life did not generate any value at all to the people around him. He was always smiling at other people’s problems. Other people cared so much, and he didn’t, he didn’t care about anyone, and he found that absolutely laughable. 

He was afarid of them. Their thoughts. Their feelings. Their eyes. He was scared of other people. He could not even stand them brushing up against him, he did not want to bump into a single other person even if he was standing in a crowd of people. He hated things that terrified him. That was why he hated people, he especially hated talented people, and he was a human too so of course he hated himself.   
  
But, there was no way he could live if he hated himself. His only option was to freeze the emotion of hatred. He just had to let his emotions die if his body refused to. He felt no loss when he was hurt, and he couldn’t understand why other people looked so sad when they lost love. What was that emotion on Makoto’s face right now? Komaeda blinked, unknowing. Grief? He’s far too kind. Kindness like that hurts. Komaeda didn’t want to feel hurt. He stopped being kind. 

He couldn’t feel happy or sad. But. Anxiety. Nausea. Those were feelings too. He was overcome by an overpowering sense of vertigo. The world was spinning just a little bit too fast for him. He wished it would slow down a little bit. It was brain, his brain lagged behind everything else and that was why he couldn’t understand anyone else. Their words were slower to him. His own thoughts were slower. He didn’t realize the things that he was supposed to realize.   
  
He tried to stand up, but he had sealegs. He had been standing on the water, feeling the waves toss his body back and forth for too long. His legs abandoned their duty to keep him standing. 

I just wanted to be XXXXed.   
He doesn’t even recognize the word. He’s never heard it before, so he doesn’t know what it sounds like. Even if he heard it, he wouldn’t let himself hear it, the word would just bounce off of his eardrums.   
  
He couldn’t see or hear things properly. Sometimes, his brain ran away from the rest of his body. He always noticed things far too late. His grasp of what was called reality was far too loose. He had no idea if the things he saw were really there. He had no idea if he was hearing it right. He didn’t know.   
  
What he wanted was someone to see the same things as him. He wanted someone to heard the same things with him. He wanted someone to feel the same things as him. If he could share those feelings, then maybe they could feel just a little bit real. He wanted someone to confirm the reality before his eyes.   
  
It wasn’t a matter of being XXXXed.   
He wanted to be alive. He wanted someone to tell him he was alive. He had been walking alone for so long, so for a little bit, just before the end, could someone carry him? 

“I want to see him.” ” 

But this is a story.  
And in a story.   
There is always someone.   
Beautiful enough. 

“I want to see the man who was beautiful enough.”

“You’re so dramatic. You should try expressing yourself in a way that’s not poetic once, you’re not a character in a Shakespeare play.  If you can’t find someone beautiful then just settle for someone ugly.” 

Komaeda looked up. He had not fallen to the floor because someone had caught him. 

That’s right. Someone ugly. He was a plainly looking boy whose face was always pulled tight into an ugly expression of frustration. Every single stupid thought in his head always showed on his face, sometimes it made Komaeda want to giggle. He was desperately trying to hide his flaws and pass himself off as the perfect man. He even cut his face off with a scalpel and sewed a new face on. 

He was the only person who Komaeda ever had looked at and thought _this person is just as ugly as I am._ A self-important reserve course student who throws a tantrum when things aren’t about him. An impudent person who always inserts himself into things. He tried to be kind, but it was all about him in the end.   
  
“I want to see him again.”   
The person I’m enough for. 

Those words were not lies. He tried not to lie.   
  
Junko looked down at the boy she had caught in her arms before he could fall. “Jeez, quit pretending like you’re the worst person here. You’re just a stupid, self harming guy.”   
  
She kissed Komaeda on the forehead as she held him, as if that might fix his brain a little bit. She left behind a kiss mark. It was like a small bandaid on his forehead. “I’m the villain so you don’t have to be.”

 

🧸

“Another suicide are you kidding me! I’m the one who’s supposed to be telling jokes here!”   
  
Monokuma screamed.   
  
“You’re all laughing at me aren’t ya? Hey, can’t you kids with severe emotional problems kill somebody else besides yourselves for once? I’m running a show here. I can feel the ratings plummeting off of a cliff. The ratings committed suicide too! Great, great, just great.”   
  
He sliced at his own face with his claws, and until his fur was cut up and plush was showing. He looked like he was about to self destruct, when suddenly he stopped as if he had just gotten an idea. 

“I know, I’ll just execute our uninvited guest. I was saving the 23rd student here as some kind of plot twist for later, but nevermind we’re doing this now. Hey everyone meet your new friend, Junkai-chan! We’ll be killing her soon!” 

“Huh? What?” 

A stuffed bear was suddenly picked up by a giant silver crane like this was a crane game. The stuffed bear started to move its own limbs, and speak in its own voice.   
  
“Hey, hey, hey, this has nothing to do with me!” 

 

 **GAME OVER** **  
****  
****JUNKAI HAS BEEN FOUND GUILTY** **  
****  
****COMMENCING PUNISHMENT** **  
**  
  
The bear’s head was torn off and then plugged into a laptop. Onscreenn an entire virtual world appeared before her. Digital blocks assembled the entire world, and a labyrinth like a classical video game dungeon unfolded in front of her. Junkai looked down and she was no longer a bear, she had hands, and feet. She reached up to touch her face, but her hands did not pass through herself. She was not a hologram. She might as well have been real. 

**ONE THOUSAND LIVES**

Game start. She looked down at the bottom of the screen and saw that there was a small pixel version of her next to a number. “Junko x 1,000.” Apparently she was so cheap they could make a thousand of her.  
  
She ran forward trying to escape, only to be killed by the very first trap. She took a step and her foot sank into the floor, and a spear pierced straight through her foot, her leg, her throat, her lower jaw, the top of her head. The spear pulled out and her body fell back.   
  
Junkai suddenly respawned at the beginning. She saw the corpse she had left behind a moment ago, it just lied there dead refusing to go away. She carefully stepped over her own corpse and tried to continue forward, only for a spear to be shot out of the wall and pin her against the wall.   
  
Junkai respawned at the beginning with only nine hundred and ninety eight lives remaining.   
  
Monokuma at this point lost patience and slammed his hands against the keyboard. Suddenly, by mistake he hit the fast forward button. Junkai began speeding through the events onscreen. She hit a trap, she died instantly, she respawned, on an endless loop.   
  
Her bodies were left litterling the corridors of the stone maze. She was trapped in a room and crushed by all four walls closing in on her. She was cut in half by saw blades. A giant boulder rolled over her and flattened her body.   
  
She reached the maze with only one life left. Junkai reached forward and opened the door that said goal. 

YOU WIN! YOU WIN! YOU WIN! YOU WIN!  
  
But, Monokuma had not stopped hitting the side of the computer. He hit too hard, and his hand punched right through the screen. The entire computer exploded, along with him. 

“I think this series is overusing Enoshima Junko as a plot device. She’s old news. Come up with some new ideas for once, writers! Or did you only have one villain in you?"   
  
Monokuma said as he respawned a moment later. 

 

🧸

 

“Those trials are so disappointing to watch. I keep waiting for you to die in one of them, but you never do.”  
  
Toko said to Junko. The two of them were outside the trial now. Everyone else was too silent and trying to process what had just happened, but Toko was too numb to death. Junko was carrying the sleeping Komaeda on her back.  
  
Kaede was trying to cheer Shuichi up in the background. How annoying. Toko just wanted to be miserable in peace.   
  
“Awe, Toko-chan was worried that I’d die. She's such a nice girl."   
  
“D-don’t talk about me like I’m not here! I get it, you’re trying to say that I’m invisible right? Well, I won’t let you ignore me even if you try. The only good thing about being this ugly is that I’m impossible to ignore.” 

“You’re ugly cute! Like one of those ugly dogs you can’t help but love! Why would I want to ignore Toko-chan? We’re friends after all.” 

Komaru did not get it. Toko always shook when Komaru tried to call her a friend. Yet, that girl said it like it was nothing. She had everything Komaru wanted without even wanting it.   
  
Toko snorted, looking at the sleeping Komaeda drooling over Junko’s shoulder. “What was he thinking anyway? W-was he trying to be Naegi? S-someone who never faces anything, who always runs away, could never be like Naegi.” 

“Hey, Toko-chan, do you get sad when you kill someone?”  
  
“N-no.”   
  
“I’m sure it’s the same for him. He’s always distancing himself from his own feelings. He devotes all of his mental processes to trying not to feel, because he’d be too sad otherwise. So that’s why it’s hard for him to feel. And you too. Because Jack feels things for you, right?”   
  
“...S-something like that.”

“It’d be pretty stupid to get mad at him for not feeling things. It’s like getting mad at a man missing a leg for not walking properly.”  
  
“But weren’t you yelling at him about that during the trial?”   
  
“Lies, lies! It was just a silly little lie I told. You shouldn’t take me so seriously.”

 “Nobody on earth takes an idiot like you seriously.” Toko looked at him. Her eyes were oddly earnest and wide, Toko had a habit of glaring everyone through her glasses but she looked soft, almost girlish. “Hey, what would Komaeda be like if he confronted those feelings.”   
  
“You and Komaeda would just turn into me. It’s not like you’d suddenly become decent people.”   
  
“Ewe, gross. I don’t want to be a loser who can’t even read like you.” 

Kumagawa thought the same way. If he did not become a loser, if he did not continually confront that loss at all time and have his feelings be that sense of loss then he would have become a failure. 

Komaeda, and Toko who failed to have even the most basic human empathy. Who failed to see other people as people. Who looked at them like they were already dead.   
  
Kumagawa, who felt things, who felt so deeply, but then always lost. He lost those people, he lost those feelings, he just kept losing. 

Komaru just watched from a distance. The person who came to wake her up from the dream was Kumagawa. She got scared by his appearance and tried to run away, she ran right through him. Because of that she had ended up in Kumagawa’s own dream. She was somewhere in his heart.  It was warm in Kumagawa’s dream. The atmosphere was serene and it felt good. 

There was a small child there. He had white hair, and he smiled when he saw her. Because she looked lost, the child took her by the hand and pulled her forward. The scarred child led her by the hand, outside of wonderland. 

There were flowers blooming there, as if to fill the empty spaces, and gaps in his brain, as it rotted away. Flowers to fill the reality that was full of holes in front of him. 

The two of them kept walking. Komaru refused to let go of his hand. The sun was so high in the sky. It was so warm in here. She wanted to stay here forever.   
  
Komaru woke up with tears in her eyes. She thought Kumagawa was lying to her. That was why she thought it was fair to confined to him one room. He was someone dangerous He hurt people, but he helped people too.   
  
“You’re not mad that you spent an entire round in one room are you? You don’t hate me now do you? L-like I care what a loser like you feels anyway. Do amoeba eve have feelings?” 

“Toko-chan sees me as a eukaryote, I’m so happy.”   
  
“N-nevermind. You’ve been demoted to a prokaryote.” 

“I don’t mind.” Junko’s smile did not reach her eyes. It was like someone had painted that boy’s smile on her face. “Nagito-chan spent a lot of rounds tied up the whole round in the old killing game, so it’s only fair.”

Oh. She wasn’t afraid of his cruelty. She was afraid of his kindness. She thought kind people were all good like her brother, she never thought a person could be kind one moment, and then hurt someone the next moment.   
  
“I just don’t get you…” Komaru muttered to herself.   
But she realized at that moment that she wanted to. People like Toko, people like Kumagawa.   
Maybe if she was a little more like her brother she could… 

Mukuro suddenly pushed past her, dragging Kumagawa behind her. Junko immediately threw her arms around Mukuro, and pulled her into a hug. “Mukuro-chan is so cute! Did everything work out with Makoto-chan? Don’t worry, don’t worry, if he made you cry then big bro will just beat you up.”  
  
“Aha, my mind is breaking a little bit…” Mukuro said in exasperation. 

『God, you were kind of useless that whole trial sis? What happened to becoming hope so Naegi-kun hope’s number one fanboy could bang you, or whatever.』  
  
“How was I supposed to pay attention when you two were making me lose my mind the entire time! Just like always!” Mukuro’s calm cracked, her voice was swelling with emotion. “How the hell did you two switch bodies? And why are you just acting like everything’s normal?” 

『Ehhh, Muku-chan you still don’t get it yet? You sure are stupid. This is our normal.』

“Well find a different normal, already and stop dragging me into it!” 

Mukuro had reached her limit.   
Junko giggled. It was kind of funny. She got exasperated just like Hinata always used to. She was the straight man of the family. 

Mukuro suddenly pointed at Toko. “And, why are you talking to Kumagawa in Junko’s body like it’s no big deal?”   
  
“Huh? I mean I’m used to two personalities being in one body, it’s nothing new for me.”   
  
『Yeah, it’s no biggie.』   
  
“Nothing I do is big. I’m so small. Why can’t I be tall like Nagito-chan?”    
  
“I’m never going to be normal with friends like you,” Mukuro muttered to herself. “So, how did you two get stuck like this anyway?” 

『We stayed in the program a little bit too long. It was an oopsie-daisy.』

 

🧸

 

White Noise.   
A sound that’s not a sound at all.   
That’s all that played in her head as she saw him.   
The corpse of a boy buried in snow.   
  
Kumagawa’s nails were digging so deeply into the meat of his flesh he was bleeding.   
Little drops of blood, falling just like snow.   
She decided to call this picture. 

Red on a white canvas.   
  
It’s a metaphor for the boy who lives with his wrists continually bleeding. He never lets anyone take his hands because they will see a red line drawn horizontally across. Wear your heart on your sleeve. He was bleeding, always bleeding from his sleeve. His nails dug into the flesh of his wrist, deeper, as if he was trying to pull his own arteries out. He’s looking for the heart he wears on his sleeve. Which is impossible. Unless his heart is a metaphor for his heart, as everything is a metaphor for everything else. 

Enoshima Junko completely useless in stopping her sister from trying to kill Makoto in the dream., she was beginning to realize that she might just have nothing to do with her sister’s life anymore. She went to find Kumagawa. Maybe she just wanted to sulk. When she found hin Kumagawa still lingered in the dream staring at the faceless Matsuda Yasuke.   
  
The moment she stepped next to him the scenery changed around them. She had smeared her red hands all over the canvas, and spread the paint around. The snow, the snow, the snow, the snow was her feelings for Matsuda, the ones she had frozen.   
  
She never really moved on. In her mind Matsuda was still her childhood friend, and Mukuro was still her only sister. In the real world Matsuda might be dead, did she even think of him? Even in her dreams? Was he still alive in her heart?   
  
She was such a.   
Cold.   
Frigid.   
Bitch.   
  
She should have been angry at herself, but she was not. Had she ever actually been genuinely angry at anyone else before? While she had no kindness or compassion for others, her negative emotions were just as frozen over. If Kumagawa kept bleeding through his wrists, then she stopped herself from bleeding freezing over her wounds. If a normal person was a deftly-constructed handicraft, she was a plastic knockoff. 

If the snow melted would she cry? Would she bleed? Probably not. 

But still. She felt a little bit sad seeing Matsuda standing there. She reached out to caress his face, but her gentle touch (she tried to be gentle) caused the flesh of his face to tear off like it was mere paper.   
  
She couldn’t even touch him in her dreams. She no longer had the right. He wasn’t even alive in her dreams. Because in her dreams she killed him again. The scenery change.   
  
A sound rang out from the ground. It was a knife tainted by blood. Blood was dripping down around it, and it soon developed into a sizable pool of red. Enoshima Junko looked up at the red of her own hand, before realizing she was the one who had stabbed Matsuda in this dream. She brought her fingers to her lips.   
  
The mouth of that girl changed.   
It was must have been a smile.   
Smiling from the taste of the knife that pierced Matsuda-kun’s flesh.   
  
They were in the old school building again. Matsuda fell back from her clutching at his stomach. He kept talking to that girl even after she stabbed him. Junko cast her glance aside, and saw a mirror. She hesitated. She’s scared. Scared of looking in a mirror. Scared of swinging her hand and punching her own reflection.   
  
In the mirror that girl was killing Matsuda. She stabbed a scalpel to his side, and then tore it out just as quickly. When he tried to get away from her, she wrapped her hand around his head and pulled him close to her chest, cradling him. Dying for the person you love. Dying in your loved one’s arm. Was there anything more romantic?   
  
She did. She punched the mirror in front of her, only to have her hand to fall into it as if the glass was liquid. She slowly was eaten up by the mirror and fell to the other side. In the scene she fell in, she saw the exact same again, Matsuda killed by bing stabbed in between his seventh and eighth rib, sliding right underneath his heart so the beating of his heart would slowly drain his body and cause him to die. 

A human’s behavioral pattern relies heavily on repetition, and it is therefore inevitable that they seek out stability. Stability? Is that what she was doing, doing the same thing over and over again? Killing the people she loves again and again? Was that despair just stability? People sought out companions who were just like them. It was a natural human response. Did she just want to make Mukuro and Matsuda more like there so she painted them red. 

“I guess I don’t have anything to do with this… t-that really was the case after all…”   
  
“H-how long have you felt that way… has it been since… we were children?” 

“There’s no way this would have nothing to do with me…”  
  
There was a hint of sadness laid somewhere in that murmuring voice.   
  
“After all… you were the most important person to me of all.”   
  
That’s a lie. I LIELIELIELIELIE.   
I really, really really. Lie.   
I like you. I LIEKE YOU.   
  
When she stabbed him, she stopped to caress the curve of his rib cage for a moment. She wanted to tickle those ribs. She wanted to shove her fingers through the part of his body and slip her hands inside his chest, so she could touch his heart. She wanted to scar his heart directly. She looked at her hand, painted with blood red and crimson rogue.   
  
Two years ago, when she attacked Matsuda. She wrapped around and embraced his body as if holding a loved one. The knife plunged into his chest. Stab. The coward does it with a kiss, the brave men with a sowrd, she did it with both. The touch of his body, the weight of his body over hers as they were more closely entwined than lovers conveyed the sensation as she pierced through the meat of his body.   
  
She didn’t say a word. She didn’t react. She simply shook with excitement.   
  
Matsuda Yasuke’s corpse on the ground. A vivid still life portrait.   
She was an artist but she only ever painted one thing.   
Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.   
Crossed out.   
Clumsy hands in a dark room. The paint scratched off the canvas by her fingernails. Every detail of his face deleted, erased, the image completely destroyed. Then she painted all over it in red. Her feelings, a bright red, crimson, that spilled out of her and dyed everyone else the same color. Her hands moved over his body, sculpting it. She traced them to down below his hips, and his body tore in half and all there was was the exposed bits of spinal column. She opened his shirt and saw no flesh underneath, just his ribcage and his heart still feebly trying to beat. She reached out to touch him, but he disappeared. 

“Wh… where…” Junko said, looking at what was right in rfont of her but not seeing it, as if she was blind. “Where’s Yasuke?” 

『Hey, Junko. 』  
  
“...Ed, murdered in the academy.” 

『Aren’t you going to laugh? You’re the villain of this scene so you should laugh』  
  
Kumagawa was there with her. No he had followed her all the way there, as she walked through the halls of the old school building. He saw her kill Matsuda again.   
  
“I won’t make fun of that.” Junko said, covering her mouth with her hands and smearing both blood and lipstick. “So this is the despair of losing your beXXXXed.” 

『That’s XXXX huh? He was the one you XXXXed in the end. If only you XXXXed him a little less.』

Matsuda’s corpse was no longer in front of her. There was just an old photograph of the two of them as children. Junko picked it up. When she did, the words replayed in her ears. _And, if you forget, I’ll remember you. But if I don’t remember, we’ll still be together forever! We’ll spend our whole lives looking after each other._   
  
Junko dropped the photograph and it sank into a pool of blood. The blood Matsuda had left behind on the floor was growing larger, and larger. Junko turned her head to the side and saw all of the pictures Matsuda had kept on the wall of his love. Over and over again. A few from when they were children. One when she was sleeping. A few from when they were in middle school together. There were large posters of her taken at her photo shoots she had sent to him just to mess with them. He kept them. He kept all of these pictures of the girl who had lied to him. He kept the memories of the girl who had hurt him the most.   
  
_“You are the most important person to me of all.”_   
  
Liar.   
  
_“We’ll spend our whole lives looking after each other.”_   
  
I LIELIELIELIELIELIEKE YOU. 

『You really XXXXed him, huh?』He asked, almost naively. He was a child looking at his feet, bashful. He looked like he had stumbled upon a XXXX scene on accident.   
  
Of course Kumagawa would see that as XXXX.

She could say she liked him, and hang off of him all she wanted, but he just couldn’t deal with that one XXXX word. His understanding of it was completely backwards. All he knew was Ajimu’s XXXX. The person who XXXXed him the most left the most scars on his body. The person who healed all of his wounds added new ones. To him, the two emotions became indistinguishable from one another. He XXXXs so deeply that he bleeds. He just couldn’t feel deeply about someone unless it left a deep emotional wound. 

And here he saw Junko leaving the exact same wounds on Matsuda. He must have seen the image overlapped with Ajimu and himself and made the connection. XXXX cuts deep. If it doesn’t then it’s not XXXX. 

She grabbed Kumagawa by the shoulders. Everything that came out of her mouth was a lie. Despite her feelings inside, she was smiling widely. She even lied to herself. “That’s not XXXX. I didn’t XXXX him. The only person I’ve ever XXXXed was myself.”   
  
That was a lie too. 

She really XXXXed him.   
  
A lie.   
  
She didn’t XXXX him.   
  
That was a lie, too. 

Matsuda’s body was sitting on the ground his back against the wall. He was spitting up blood, his eyes were completely rolled back in his skull. The were just blank white faces. In death he was completely expressionless. There was a deep hole cut into his stomach and he spilled blood all over the floor.   
  
Junko felt herself slowly sinking into the blood.   
She was going to drown in it.   
Good.   
  
Kumagawa opened wide his incomprehensive eyes. Why do you think is going to happen? Hey, hey, what are you feeling? Are you disgusted? Do you want to laugh? She wanted to pretend she could understand the feelings of someone else for just a moment. Like their feelings were the same. 

“It’s not XXXX. It wasn't XXXX.”  
  
Then what is it?   
She didn’t know.   
But it hurt just as much. 

Kumagawa suddenly grabbed her before she sank. There was a glimmer of sadness in Kumagawa’s eyes. Oh, she understood. She understood the feelings of another person besides herself. Kumagawa was.. Jealous. Right, jealousy. An emotion she detested. How nostalgic. There was someone who wouldn’t let go of her no matter how hard she tried to sink. Jeez, think about somebody besides yourself for once. He’s right next to you. Stop forgetting that he’s there. 

『You’re pretty stupid.』

He pulled her close. 

『A stupid, self-harming girl.』  
  
That wasn’t a lie. 

 

🧸

 

『I have to let go, don’t I?』  
  
Junko said, stuffing her hands into her pockets. It was Kumagawa’s pockets, because this was still his body after all. 

『If I don’t let go, I’ll just keep doing the same thing.』

Junko said, as if she could understand someone’s feelings. As if she could see someone’s feelings as separate from her own. 

Mukuro watched her sister shake. Her trembling feelings may as well have been real. Her words may have not been lies. But she found herself not caring as much. She once would have begged her sister for even the smallest words of acknowledgement, but that was a long time ago.  
  
“Just do whatever you want. That’s what you’re going to do anyway.” 

Junko dropped Kumagaw's speaking pattern. "That's right, they can live without me. So I'll live without them."

"Will you shut up sis, I don't care about your narrative."

"We're having a heartwarming moment."

"I refuse to be a part of any moment with you."

Mukuro walked over to Junkos body and grabbed her brother's arm possessively.

Junko smiled with Kumagawas lips. "It's fine I won't die." Besides there was one person who would not let go no matter what. That was why she needed to try to swim so they didn't both sink.

"You just won't let go of me will you?" She said, swiveling around to face Kumagawa in her body.   
  
She heard his voice come out of her mouth. 『I won't let go of your neck.』  
  
"Sure, sure, Mr. Bad Guy." He was so cute. "Besides I'm so popular I'll just make new friends. I have one already."

Junko grabbed an innocent Tsumugi as she passed by. "Hey new bestie.”  
  
“W-wait since when?”   
  
“We talked to each other five times, that means I've learned absolutely everything I need to know about you. Lucky for you, you made friends with a super hot, popular, girl. I’m benevolent enough that I’ll pay attention even a plain old orindary girl like you.” 

"This seems like bad luck to me."

"You're too interesting so too bad."

"I am the least interesting person you could possibly meet."

Junko looked me right in the eyes. “That’s exactly it. You spend all of your time pretending like you’re not someone interesting, I’ve never seen someone build their entire identity around not standing out. It’s like you want to disappear.”

“Anything to get me out of this awkward moment! Someone help me! I don’t want to make friends! I don’t want to be a person! A plain girl is being kidnapped, why are you all ignoring me?”   
  
Tsumugi cried out as Junko (in Kumagawa’s body) started to drag her away. 

“Should we help?” Mukuro asked.

『Nah, Junko’s just being friendly.』Kumagawa’s own voice came out of Junko’s mouth. 

All I had ever wanted to be best friends with Enoshima Junko.  
I was living my worst nightmare.   
I hate this story. Who's writing it anyway?  
Oh right, it's me.   
  


**[SUICIDAL IDEATION] THIN ICED SUICIDE LOVERS - END.**

  
  



	94. NOT NORMAL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tw for self harm this chapter.

**  
  
  
**

**BOOK FOUR [DECAPITATION] HEADLESS LOVE  
** **DAILY LIFE: CHAPTER ONE**

If Komaru was rich, if she was the kind of girl who would go to a private, all girls school for the elite, she would never have taken publci transportation a day in her life. There was something about being in a steel car with so many other people that reminded her of how small she was. Just the idea that there were so many people going about their daily life and not a single person here cared about her.   
  
It completely crushed her.   
It rendered her insivible.   
She spent her life being an invisible girl.

Whenever she took the bus she never once pressed the stop button. Even when approaching the stop she needed, she would wait for someone else to hold out their hand. As time went on she began to wonder whether she really wanted to get off at all: could it be she needed someone to give her a push on the back - to press that button for her? She could no longer tell.   
  
Without moving assertively, moving actively, simply waiting for someone else to make their move, she wanted to get swept up in the flow, she wanted to drown in an ocean of other people. Komaru was certain when the situation came for it, she could certainly press the button herself. One time there was nobody who needed to get off at her stop. The oddest thing happened, even though she knew she had to get off, all she did was stare out the winow and watch the bus drive past it. She could not make a decision as small as pressing a button to get off at the wrong stop. When she got home she made an excuse to Makoto and her parents as to why she missed her stop, she was listening to music, she forgot she was near her stop, she wondered if she had told them the truth what would they say?   
  
Would they laugh at her for not being able to do something as simple as pressing a button? Probably not, because everyone else lived that way too. That’s what she thought, everyone else waits for someone else to push the button for them. As long as she thought that way she was able to live comfortably, but then…   
  
She met a boy who would stop the bus by running into the middle of the road and getting hit by a bus. Then he would take his broken body and continue crawling forward. Meanwhile she could not take a single step with her body that was completely healthy and functional.   
  
The first day after the class trial, even deciding where to sit was too difficult a decision for Naegi Komaru. She could sit by her brother and his girlfriend, but the two of them seemed to be closer than ever. (She didn’t think anybody could get that close to her brother, he was just awkward). 

Hey hey, do you know what awkwardness arises from? When two people are awkward around each other, it’s because they cannot directly confront the truth. That was why she thought her brother who was too nice to ever stand up to anybody, who always avoided painful things, was too awkward to ever get a girlfriend. Choosing one person meant turning everyone else down, and she thought her brother was too soft to ever reject anyone, but it seemed even her brother could change.   
  
The rest of the table layouts were the same as always, the uncool kids (Junko, Kumagawa, Zenkichi)kids, the literary nerds (Toko and Togami), the gearheads (Monaca, Keebo), the jocks (Kaito, Maki, Kokichi), and the band geeks (Shuichi, Rantaro, Kaede) everybody kept eating like nothing had changed, like two people had not gone missing from the cafeteria. Komaru got the impression that maybe this was a normal high school after all, just one where two people happened to die every month.   
  
Komaru remembered she had a close friend in primary school. In middle school that girl started being the target of bullying. Komaru thought she was a good girl, exactly like her parents raised her to be when she still continued to talk to that girl when everybody else in the class treated her like she was not there. The more popular girls would often steal her tray and dump food on her in public. One time her friend in a mousy voice asked why they were all doing this to her. The leader of the bullies simply replied.   
  
“Because you’re invisible.” 

They were not doing anything wrong, because not a single person in the cafeteria could see that girl. They were not bullies, because there was no trace of their crime. That girl did not exist in the eyes of other people.

That girl did not show up to school the next day.   
That night the girl committed suicide.   
When the teacher told her in the morning, Komaru learned that she was not a good girl, but a normal girl. What she felt at the time was not sadness for her friend. Her very first reaction, what she felt deep down in her heart was _I’m glad it wasn’t me._   
  
What was invisible was not that girl’s suffering. The truly invisble girl was Komaru, who simply watched from afar, who was kind to the girl when it suited her but never tried to actually reach out for her. All she had to do was reach out to one person, it was as easy as reaching forward to press a button and yet she could not do it. Komaru looked at her hand and saw nothing, her skin had become completely transparent.   
  
Komaru sat down next to Toko. Komaru remembered, she hated the feeling of having noone to sit with at lunch, but she saw someone left out she never offered them a place to sit. “How many people do you think are like me?” 

“Trillions.” Toko answered, without looking up from her book.   
  
“That’s more than the population of earth!” Komaru snapped back at her. 

“Whatever. You’re insecure about being a normal girl. Can you get like, actual issues please? You’re so boring if you were the main character the book would never be a bestseller, even if it were written by a genius like me.”

“Jeez. For someone who was bullied a lot you sure are a bully sometimes.”  
  
“Oh, if I don’t pat you on the head every two seconds and tell you how special you are suddenly I’m a bully.”  Toko said as she sipped her morning coffe, black, bitter, “People who had two parents who loved them sure are spoiled. We get it, your mother never told you how much they wished you had never been born, stop rubbing it in my face already.” 

“I’m not rubbing anything in your face!” Komaru turned to Togami. “Don’t you have anything to say?”   
  
“I don’t speak the language of the rabble.”   
  
“What are you talking about? I’m talking to you right now!”   
  
“Look, Toko. She thinks we understand her. How quaint. She’s pretending to be a person.”   
  
“I am a person.”   
  
“You’re a poor person, doesn’t that mean you’re poor at being a person?”   
  
Togami turned a page in the novel he was reading. _Rain Man, Rain Woman._ One of Toko’s novels. He had a shonen jump magazine around it so Toko did not know he was reading her own novel right in front of her.

 _Rain Man, Rain Woman,_ what a perfect way to describe the couple, they both looked like they had been caught in the rain together, Komaru thought that scene looked less romantic in real life than it did in the movies.   
  
Any noise Komaru tried to make was drowned out by the rain. Before she could say anything else, the talking bear in the center of the lunchroom cut her off. “You’re all a bunch of delinquents! Refusing to kill each other? Making friends? Just what has happened to today’s youth.” 

The floor suddenly split apart and Monokuma rose up from below, like a trick floor and elevator was being employed. Behind him there were two telephone booths. 

“All you kids do is cause me nothing but problems! What a bunch of problematic children.”  
  
“Umm, I think killing people is more problematic,” Komaru said, meekly.   
  
“Ugh, why are you even here, Komaru? Actually, do you wanna go home? You’re not going to do anything useful in this killing game so I might as well let you go.”   
  
The bear slapped his paw against the phone booth behind him. “I tried to be cool and introduce the third motive as a twist last round but let’s just go back to basics.I’m going to give you all a chance to live a day in each other’s shoes. Come on, this will be just like the breakfast club but with murders.”   
  
“Umm, I don’t really.”   
  
The doors suddenly opened. Komaru saw white, like freshly fallen snow, his whole body looked like he wanted to be trampled over, like he wanted to be dirtied. Kumagawa Misogi fell out of the phone booth coughing.   
  
“Ugh, we had to switch back already? You missed your chance to be a popular, perfect, girl senpai. Nobody will ever love you for being yourself, so you might as well try to be someone else,” Junko said, back in her own body. 

『And you missed out on your lifelong dream of finally being able to make out with yourself.』

“These phonebooths use the same technology as the virtual world. If you step into one, just pick up the phone and you’ll switch consciousness with the person in the other booth. ANd here’s a special bonus rule for this round, if you commit the murder in someone else’s body, they’ll become the blackened. And if you are in someone else’s body and you’re killed you’ll be the one who dies and they’ll continue living on in your body.” 

Monokuma asked a question staring directly at Komaru.   
  
“It’s so boring being yourself, haven’t you ever wanted to be someone else?”

 

  
🧸

 

As someone who’s just a plain girl myself I, Tsumugi Shirogane find a Komaru to be the most relatable character. However, a relatable character doesn’t necessarily mean a good character. 

Have you ever wondered why zombie movies are so popular? The first zombie movie was clearly written with anti-consumerist subtext. The main characters trying to survive in a zombie movie are clearly meant to be _you_ while the zombies are just _everyone else._ Most people who enjoy zombie movies don’t see themselves as part of the zombie hoard, they see themselves as the main character. 

I don’t think Junko Enoshima is even that original for wanting to end the world. A lot of people must think that way, if society were to fall, if everything holding me back were to go away, then I would show them I was the main character. I would be able to live in that world.   
  
Komaru must have fanasized about it once or twice too, the world coming to an end and she suddenly had to live for herself. Just like in an issekai novel, she who was nobody special on earth would suddenly be thrurst into a world she did not recognize at all and become somebody in that new world. 

Even though the world ended, even though she was in a life or death situation, Komaru did not magically become someone special. Somehow this school where people killed each other to graduate was no different than the high school she remembered back home. She, Komaru Naegi, was no different. 

_At least I can do normal things well._ Komaru thought as she dragged Toko to the baths that day. She had told Toko she was going to help her bathe. “Wait, wait, I’m the wicked witch. If you put me into the bath water I’ll melt.”   
  
“I think you’re getting too literal with your metaphors. Do all authors confuse fiction for reality like this?”   
  
“N-no way. The only people who do that are pathetic otaku scum who spend all their time thinking about manga because they have no social skills, and no real friends.”   
  
“But, doesn’t that describe you exactly Fukawa-san?”   
  
“N-no, ummm… I have a friend. She’s just imaginary and only exists in my head.”   
  
Komaru wondered how lonely a girl was if her only real friend was her split personality.   
  
“I get it, y-you’re going to clean me out of existence aren’t you? Because I’m so dirty?”   
  
“Um, no.”   
  
“You think I’m a dirty girl don’t you? Say it! Tell me I’m a dirty girl?” 

“You’re scaring me a little bit.” Komaru said. They had stopped in the locker rooms to get undressed. Toko was making a scene, no it was like she was writing an entire damn novel. “You’re the one who is always saying you want more people to like you, we’ll they’ll like you better if you don’t smell.”   
  
“They’d like me better if I wasn’t ugly too, how about I just scrub my face off while we’re at it?”   
  
“That’s nice…” Someitmes it was easier just to tune Toko out. Komaru was used to hearing about all of her friends' lives. She was good at pretending to listen, she urged the naked girl trembling in a towel forward to the group baths.   
  
“What about it is nice? Hey? Hey, what’s nice? I’m trying to be mean to you! Are you so dumb you don’t even know I’m being mean. You Naegis are all the same it must be a genetic trait or-” Toko’s last words came out in a panic, before Komaru finally pushed her into the water. 

She was the same as her brother? Komaru did not think so at all. Makoto had been hurt by someone he was close to, but then continued to smile at Mukuro the next day. Komaru knew that Toko was a killer like Mukuro, but she had never done anything personally to harm her. If Toko were to hold those scissors at her, she would probably just run away from her. 

Komaru picked up the soap. She turned around to see Toko bathing in the corner. “Wh-what if I get the soap in my eyes? I’ll cry. Don’t you think I’ve spent enough of my life crying?”  
  
“God, it’s just soap.” Komaru stood up from the water. “Look, I didn’t want to say this but Fukawa-san, have you ever thought you’re giving people reasons to pick on you?”   
  
“All the time, because I’m so ugly and-”   
  
“No listen. See when you don’t bathe for a few days the smell bothers people. It’s gross being dirrty isn’t it? So why do you do that to yourself? How are other people supposed to love you, if you can’t love yourself even a little bit? I bet if you bathed, and wore makeup, people would treat you better.”   
  
“W-whatever, you human self help book.” 

“I’m just saying you should take care of yourself. If you saw a fat person eating too much in front of you, wouldn’t you want to tell them to eat less? I’m saying this for your own good-”  
  
“N-now you’re calling me fat too!” 

“Do you even listen when I talk?” 

  
U-   
  
Upupupupu. 

She laughed.   
Like she was truly enjoying herself.   
Like she was laughing at her own jokes.   
Komaru had not even noticed she was in the bath before they came in.   
She didn’t even see.   
  
Komaru always thought she was a considerate person who was always looking to others, but did she see other people? Kmaru saw water dripping off of Enoshima’s chest. What if other people were like that to her, like water, she could see the flow of the current but she didn’t see the individual drops.   
  
People say that every snowflake was unique but do they really know that for sure? There were probably thousands of snowflakes that looked identical. 

Enoshima Junko rested her elbows on her naked knees, and leaned forward hand in her chin. Her eyes (eye) looked like she was studying them for science. “My best friend is getting bullied right in front of me, how miserable.”   
  
“Since when were we best friends!?” Toko said turning around suddenly.   
  
“I thought you always wanted a friend your entire life.”   
  
“I don’t want to be friends with you.”   
  
“Whoa, didn’t know you were such a picky bitch? I bet people are just lining up…and I usually use this for a villain speech, but besides the fact that I’m pretty, popular and have huge tits aren’t we like exactly the same?”   
  
“You’re a terrorist.”   
  
“And you’re a serial killer. It’s a match made in heaven, or hell, either’s fine with me. Come on, Come on, you’ll get way more popular just by hanging out with someone like me.”    
  
“Y-you just do this. You just decide for other people what they feel. This is why Kumagawa doesn’t like you anymore.” Toko said, as she cowered behind Komaru.

Junko’s face tensed for a moment. Facial muscles that were long dead seemed to be trying to make some kind of expression, but then it all smoothed over into a pleasant smile. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ve already decided you’re going to be the bridesmaid at my wedding girl!” 

Being friends with Junko seemed as dangerous as joining some cult, or the yakuza. “H-hey, your hair.” Komaru said, noticing the change from light pink to dark red. “Why do you look like that?”  
  
Junko stuck her tongue out. “Ewe gross right, the lighting in this bathroom is terrible. I almost look like a normal girl. It’s stupid Kumagawa’s fault, he got his dumb boy stink all over my body-”   
  
“Why do you look like me?”   
  
Junko noticed Komaru was not looking at her. She looked inside of Junko. She looked past Junko. She was looking at a girl on a magazine cover.   
  
“If you can look like that then why am I so…” 

Junko tilted her head. She had the same look in her eye as a magpie when it saw something shiny. “Hey Makoto’s little sister-” She did not know that girl’s name, even though she had planned on kidnapping her once. “Do you want to join our girlsquad? You can be the one who always gets me soda when I ask for it. You can carry my shopping bags at the mall. You can kill who I tell you to kill.”   
  
“Hey, do you want friends or slaves?”   
  
"Liiiiiiike, is there a difference?” Junko seemed genuinely confused.   
  
“I don’t like this version of you. You’re just superficial and shallow… I liked the real Junko.” 

“But you’re-” 

Before Junko could say anything else Komaru heard a splash in the water behind her. Toko’s whole body had frozen. She looked like a dead fish floating on the surface of the water. Komaru had no idea what was happening.   
  
Why didn’t Toko like to take a bath? It was just because she was lazy, right? She spent all that time writing and she didn’t have time to bathe. Komaru watched as Toko’s face started to change color. Even when there was someone drowning in front of her, Komaru did not offer her hand - _because you’ll be pulled down too._

Komaru could feel the water levels rising around her. She wasn’t a bad person, she was just afraid of drowning. Everybody else was the same way. They were all afraid of swimming against the current.   
  
“Toko, honey, that color is not a good look for you.” Only special people could try to swim. Junko lifted Toko out of the water, and started walking out of the bath. Komaru could only follow the two of them back to the locker room.   
  
For a few minutes she watched silently as Junko tried to put Toko’s clothes back on. Junko finally lost patience, “Ugh, why are people so fragile if they’re such a bitch to put back together like this? It’s like they’re asking to be broken. Not my fault!” Junko said, before she recovered from her tantrum a moment later. Her mood swings were so fast. “But everything is my fault.”   
  
That’s what it meant to be the final villain. That’s what it meant to be the mastermind.   
That was what she had thought she wanted.   
  
Junko screamed exactly like the first blonde girl to die in a slasher horror film. “Misogi! Get your flat, bony, unsexy ass down here right this second.” 

Komaru heard the noise of clumsy steps. Kumagawa was in such a rush he practically fell.

『What’s wrong is someone trying to kill you?』When he saw her, all he did was sigh. 『Ugh, you’re still alive.』  
  
“Hey, I’m a loyal gal. There’s no way I’d let myself be killed by someone else. I may be life’s bitch, and life may be a bitch, but I’m your bitch.” 

『Please be somebody else’s bitch.』

Toko’s clothes were half on. Which meant the scissors she hid underneath her clothes were in reach. Just as the steam began to disappate, Kumagawa saw her, stabbing herself in the right thigh with a pair of scissors. When she noticed Kumagawa she gave him a little smile. He had never seen that gloomy girl smile so wide. _Is it okay if I touch you._ He asked. _I don’t care._   
  
The wounds were not deep at all but she kept gauging flesh out from the inside of her thigh. It was like she was looking for a string inside of her to cut. Komaru flinched, because normal people hesitated when they were in pain. All Komaru could think about was how scary it was watching that girl stab herself like that. 

Kumagawa moved. He reached his hand foward and stopped Toko from stabbing her leg, even if it meant she stabbed the center of his palm instead. He ripped the scissors away from her and out of the fresh wound, they skittered across the floor. His whole body moved over her, and he pushed her on the ground his back arching over her as he used his own weight to pin her. Toko’s only response was to scream in his face like he was the one attacking her.   
  
Kumagawa let go, and let her run away a little bit. He kept his distance, letting her know he would not get any closer than she wanted him to.   
  
There were no words left in the author’s brain. Everything she ever wrote was worthless. She could spend hours writing trying to describe how she felt at this moment, but when she looked back at the paper everything would be in invisible ink. Not a single person would listen to her, even if they opened her books and those books screamed _help me_ not a single person would hear it. They wouldn’t even take her seriously.   
  
Memories can’t be conveyed in words. If everything, every single scene in a book happened at once to her, maybe it would be like that. Her head was pushed underwater again and again, and the water was so still and flat, and it resisted her, and it felt like her head was being bashed against concerete. A wave to the face, it hit her lips, her eyes, her nose. Some of the memories escaped as blood dripping from one of her nostrils, and her mother screamed _why are you so dirty? Just take a bath already._ And her skin was raw from how much it had been scrubbed. Once all the memories are there it comes together to form an image, it’s like a thousand television screens being flickered on at the same time, and you’re expected to watch either of them.   
  
_I love you._ She whispered trying to save herself. _I love you._ She thought of a boy’s face. His family hurt him because he was kind. _I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you._ He was just a kind boy who wanted a family. And he killed all of them. _Love you. Love you. Love you._ She wished she could be kind like him. No matter how hard she tried she could not hear Togami saying those words, all she heard was her own voice.   
  
As she regained herself she realized, Kumagawa was checking the wound on the inside of her thigh. “Don’t touch me I’m filthy!” 

『Yep, you are.』

“I… I’m a dirty child. That’s why… That’s why they pick on me. That’s why they can’t stand to look at me-”

『Yep, it’s exactly like you said. You’re stinky. Your smell annoys everybody. You just bother people you know. Why can’t you do something as simple as bathing yourself? Everybody else does it.』

  
“Hey, don’t say that. That’s terrible.” Komaru finally spoke up from behind them.

『But, I’m a dirty child too. Hey, hey Toko-chan.』He took her hand in his, and left the scissors there once more. He guided her to place the scissors at his throat. 『I hate taking baths. I don’t know how to swim. It’s scaaaaary. Do you think I should be hurt if I go a few days without bathing?』  
  
“I… I don’t want to hurt you. I’m not the one who, that’s Jack not-”

『It’s only natural bad children get punished right. Go ahead, punish me!』

  
Toko let go of the scissors in her hands. 

Relationships between people.  
  
Connections.   
  
Strings. Tied to the fingers. Tied to the heart.   
  
For the first time.   
That scsissors happy girl.   
Decided not to cut.   
  
Her whole body fell limp against Kumagawa’s, and all he did was lie there supporting her. 

『Then, don’t hurt yourself silly. If you can’t be nice to yourself, then I’ll be nice to you.』

“Should you really be telling her that?” Komaru asked behind them. Kumagawa turned his head, he wore the same vacant smile that Toko had a moment ago. “It’s better if Toko learns how to bathe normally. I only said what was good for her health-” 

『You sure say a lot of things but you know, when you shame people it doesn’t make them want to get better. It just makes them hate themselves.』Kumagawa picked her up. Komaru had never seen a broken doll look so treasured, so loved by the little kid who was playing with it. 

『Well, for Toko-chan the problem is water. Maybe we should do sponge baths from now on, or you can wipe yourself down. Is it okay if I touch you?』

“Mmm…” 

『I won’t do anything until you give me a definite yes.』Kumagawa suddenly thought of something. 『Junko, you’re not going to get jealous are you?』

“Jealous of you and Fukawa-san? God, Misogi you’re hilarious. You’re the funniest person I’ve ever met. You’re so lucky that you were born ugly and had to be funny to conmpensate.” 

  
  


🧸

 

“As sexy as your total lack of self preservation instinct is, you can help people without hurting yourself you know?”

She grumbled to herself as she sewed up the wound in Kumagawa’s hand, like she was mending a stuffed bear.   
  
Junko was trying a new approach. Maybe if she just told people their character flaws they would get better. Then she would be helping. Then she would be a better person. It wasn’t working that well. 

『Nope. I can’t. Kindness is just another word for pain. 』  
  
When Komaru heard that a shiver went down her body. A hand on her shoulder. Her brother. He came here because he heard Toko’s scream, he said. Kumagwa who did not hesistate. Her brother who would not have hesitated. Her, the bystander. 

 _I’m not a bad person._ She thought. _I’ve never murdered anyone or anything._ In that moment Mukuro walked past her, and reached forward to help Toko up. Toko who did nothing but hurl insults at Mukuro. Toko who told Mukuro to die.   
  
“Hey, Komaru-” Her brother leaned in close to her. “I’m worried about Komaeda, he only came out of his room this morning to eat breakfast and he went right back in. Can you check on him for me? I don’t want to leave Fukawa-san alone right now.” 

Komaru found herself in front of Komaeda’s door because her brother had asked her to. Why was Komaeda locking himself in his room? _Oh, it’s because his friend died._ Komaru did not even think that Komaeda might be sad. She thought he would just continue acting like nothing was wrong, and hoping for things to get better. _Isn’t that what you do?_

She had never imagined that making Toko take a bath would make her react like that. She guessed deep down she was just an uncreative girl. Even now, as she tried to imagine what could possibly make Toko so scared of the bath water, Komaru stopped herself from thinking. She had a mother who loved her, it was too painful to think about what it would be like if her mother hated her.   
  
What did Toko’s mother do to that small girl sitting in the bath? What did Toko’s naked skin look like afterwards? No matter how hard she tried, bruises would not wash out. Even if she bathed every day of her life, Toko would always be dirty. Komaru said it was bad to be dirty, that people will dislike you. 

As she was thinking about that, the door finally opened.   
Komaeda Nagito appeared in the cracked open door,   
Like a sliver of moonlight escaping.   
Life devoid of pain, and color.   
Existence of a mere doll… 

When her brother Makoto went to Hope’s Peak, he was popular with his whole class. Togami was always flying him away to private cafes in france, Kyoko asked him to help on her cases, Toko made him read through drafts for her future books.   
  
Komaru knew if she went to Hope’s Peak it would be different. No matter how hard she tried it would be hard for her to forget that she did not belong there. Makoto loved people, but maybe she hated them for making her feel so small. If she had gone to Hope’s Peak, she would probably be an unpopular student like this boy. 

“Oh, I get it.” Komaeda said softly. “You wanted to find the one person in this game as untalented and worthless as you were.”   
  
“M-makoto was worried about you-”   
  
“Why? Why would I ever give anyone any reason to worry about me? What about me do you find worrying.”   
  
“Um, well everything…”   
  
Komaeda was impossible to talk to. Half the time he seemed far too smart and sharp with his words, the other half he was too dull and had the most obvious things fly over his head.   
  
“Why are you spending so much time in your room?” 

It’s dark. So dark the only thing she could see was the soft glow of Komaeda’s white hair. 

  
“Because Kazu-kun died.”   
  
“He died, so what are you doing here?”   
  
“Because he died, but I didn’t. He didn’t have anything to do with me after all-” 

Without much sound or pause.   
Komaru slapped him.   
She was stunned. She reacted like she had been the one hit. She had never raised a hand against someone in her life. Komaeda fell back and hit the wall. His head bounced over it. It felt a little bit satisfying.   
  
“Don’t say things like that, that’s just running away. Does it make you feel better to act like there was nothing you could have done in the first place?”

   
“I don’t want to bother people… Abnormal failures should stay with abnormal failures, and degenerates should stay with degenerates.”   
  
“Abnormal… don’t call yourself that.” She grabbed him by the black sweater he wore. Suddenly she was the bully, and Komaeda was her friend trembling against the wall. And Komaru understood now. She used to think bullies were bad people, but they were just people. They were just caught up in the current. Komaeda and Toko had the same eyes, the eyes of a drowned child. “You’re not abnormal okay? You’re just saying that to make yourself feel bad. Hey, Komaeda to me, crying when something sad happens, getting mad when something bad happens, laughing when you’re having fun, being happy when you fall in love, being lonely when you’re by yourself, and getting along with others is what it means to be human.”   
  
“...”   
  
“Even if you call yourself dysfunctional, I don’t think you are. You’re really smart, aren’t you? I don’t understand why someone so smart is always acting like this I think you could do better if you believed in yourself a little-”   
  
“Shut the hell up!” 

Komaeda was always polite, always gentle. Komaru thought he was a scary person, but, did he ever raise his voice? She had never seen him with any malice in his eyes no matter how poorly everyone treated him. Like he was trying to be kind to everyone. Like he wanted to be soft.   
  
“Don’t talk like you know me! Stop looking down on me! The hell is no-good talentless trash like you pitying me for, do I look that pathetic? You don’t know a thing about me! This wasn’t supposed to happen, it’s messed up! It wasn’t supposed to happen, and I don’t know why it happened either! But it happened, there’s nothing I can do!”   
  
Ahh.   
  
Komaeda was so, so angry.   
He wanted to tear her apart.   
Tear her into pieces and break her.   
Someone can live a perfectly normal life.   
Then get stabbed by a mugger on the way home and bleed to death in an alleyway.   
A normal life didn’t mean a happy life.   
He wanted to be the misfortune that tore apart her normal life.   
He wanted to hear her say _why did this happen to me?_

He wanted her to ask it over and over again just like he did.   
Are you angry because of Komaru?   
Yeah. Of course.   
Not because Kazu-kun died.   
Not because Kazu-kun died.   
  
“I’m glad that Kazu-kun is dead! I hated how clingy he was! I just played with him a little bit when we were kids, and he somehow got the idea that we were friends. I always hated an idiot like that got called talented and not me! I don’t care about him anymore.”   
  
“You shouldn’t say that about a friend-”   
  
“And then there’s you. You’re always telling people how they should act, you always act like you understand how they feel. If you really knew what I was thinking you wouldn’t say something so insensitive! Do you think people like Fukawa-san and I will be grateful if you’re nice to us? What have you done for anyone? Don’t give hope to people in despair? Are you going to take responsibility for feeding me hope!? It’s gross!” 

He spat it out. He vomitted. Everything he had been holding back.   
He thought if he swallowed poison every day since he was a little kid he would get used to the taste, but his stomach was too weak.   
  
He thought because he had watched a plane fall out of the sky he could handle it. He could handle anything, because he had already been through the worse. But, he never once handled it. He never once even tried to process. He never once tried to cry.   
  
His eyes were swelling up, he made an ugly choking noise. He looked like a child who just did not know how to cry. His tears would not come. He laughed when he didn’t want to, but when he wanted to cry he could not.   
  
He felt an urge to laugh.   
Is that all it is?   
Relationships between people.   
Connections.   
Consideration. Kindness. Compassion.   
Wanting to help. Wanting to protect.   
Being believed in. Being trusted.   
What a joke.   
Clinging to things like that is a complete joke. It spoils the mood. It ruins everything.   
Eve ate the apple to be loved. 

 It was a spoiled apple. It was rotten fruit. It would make you sick to your stomach. 

He had emetophobia. He hated dirty things. He needed to stop all of this vomiting. He could not stop.   
  
“It’s gross! It’s gross! It’s like walking on glass barefoot. I’m going to get tetanus. Failures are always going to be failures, and so long as they don’t hope for anything they won’t fall any further into despair, so why won’t you let me give up, isn’t this enough? Why do you and Makoto keep telling me there’s hope?”   
  
Komaeda looked sick. He was sweating. His whole body overheated from some disease.   
She felt like if she touched him the disease would spread.   
If he was going to make other people sick.   
He should just go mad and die on his own.   
  
He lived alone his entire life. He decided to live alone. People can live on their own. If he got close to anyone, they would be dragged down with him. If anyone reached a hand out to help him, they would just be hurt. That was why he decided to live alone, but no he had been clinging to people all this time. That was the reason people around him kept dying. No matter how many times it happened he never learned, in the end he always tried to take their hands.   
  
“Believing in someone, believing in myself.”   
  
“That’s normal. Everyone does that, everyone has someone who cares about them-”   
  
“I wanted to do that, I really did. But I can’t. It’s impossible.”   
  
“No it’s not.”   
  
“Don’t be unreasonable. Can’t you see how much I’ve tried? I’ve tried so hard.   
Just let me give up.”   
  
“N-no, the way you’re acting right now it’s not good-”   
  
“You should praise me.” Komaeda smiled. Komaru thought for a moment she saw several rows of teeth, like he was a shark. He was so bright. That smile was glaring at her. White. White. White. She was snowblind. Komaeda fell on his knees in front of her, his fingers gripping her legs in worship of her. He looked so ashamed, to be dirtying the statue in front of him with his hands. “I won’t be able to do it again. Never again, in all time. So just praise me. Isn’t this enough?” 

Komaru neither pulled him close or pushed him away. All she could do was stand there, trembling. 

『Jeez, are you going to do anything other than sit there making that sad puppy face?』

Kumagawa kicked Komaeda away from her. Komaeda fell down. He was marked _fragile, handle with care_ and Kumagawa was still always so rough with him.

He had broken everything.   
Nobody with him had ever been happy.   
Nobody can be with him.   
  
He couldn’t breathe. Don’t touch me Kumagawa. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Kumagawa let go of him. Ahhh. He felt regret. Kumagawa gave up. Kumagawa abandoned him. No. He hated this. He hated being looked down on but he hated being abandoned even more. 

『Why would someone praise trash like you?  You want to be handed a trophy just for effort, so lame. What are today's parents even thinking? All these kids are going to grow up to be spoiled and entitled little brats.』  
  
He knew that.   
It was easier when he said that, he was actually sensitive, it hurt to be called trash by other people.   
But Kumagawa’s voice was his own voice. 

『So sorry for being so mean to you in the trial, Nagito-chan! Don't feel bad that you can't cry like a normal person. I'm sure if I beat the shit out of you you'll eventually start crying.』Kumagawa’s eyes were like two pools of water that were absolutely bottomless. Komaru did not want to know what kind of creatures were swimming around in the water of his eyes at the place where no light reached.『Hey, remember when I tried to killed you Nagito? You didn't cry then.  Were you happy? Tell me, were you happy to be killed by me? You loved it didn't you, you dirry little bitch.』

“That time... “ Kumagawa was like a spear falling from the sky pushing his way inside of him, but he was happy to have any part of Kumagawa inside of him. “I wanted to be your first time. I wanted you to kill me in a way I couldn’t recover from. I wanted to be the one regret you couldn’t recover from. I wanted to be your greatest regret, I wanted you to live on, hating yourself, and thinking of me.”   
  
Kumagawa’s whole body was wrapped around him. His stench was so heavy. Normally Komaeda hated strong smells, they were an ugly color. Now that he thought about it he hated colors too. I find colors disgusting. Go for monochrome over color. Kumagawa, speckled with all sorts of colors getting all jumbled up like mud, just how dirty can he be? How could anyone call him beautiful, let alone blue?   
  
But whatever hands that had taken their bodies and shaped them from dirt must have carefully sculpted the curves of their bodies to line up together. Nobody could be with him, nobody could but Kumagawa. Kumagawa held him so close. In a death grip. So close his vital organs were being vulerable. He could easily slice open his stomach, and stick his fingers inside the boy, and maybe he would finally be warm. 

『Nagito-chan, it’s okay. We’re connected. If you beat me. If you hate me, we’ll be connected by that pain. I’m sure, you were connected to Soda-chan the same way too.』  
  
“Hm…”

『Even parents who beat their children are connected to them by their fists and the bruises they leave on their skin. So you’re not alone, okay? This pain means you're not alone.』

Komaru knew what Kumagawa was saying was wrong, and yet she could not raise her voice to stop Kumagawa. She had no idea what to do.  
  
 _It was always like that. Studies, clubs, I never took anything seriously. I didn’t prepare for the future at all._   
  
Komaru read so many manga, where an ordinary girl suddenly became the main character. She always dreamed about that kind of escapist fantasy. There were plenty of stories of normal girls repairing brooding damaged boys with her love. Komaru thought everybody was holding her back, she was holding herself back, if she had the chance she would be able to do something.   
  
_I… I did nothing worth being proud of._   
  
If she were the one who were to die this round of the killing game.   
  
_Who would care?_ _  
_ _I sure wouldn’t._   
  
Did she have a single friend who had ever held her close like that when she cried. All she could remember was listening to other people, and when it came time to comfort people saying empty words that anyone else could say.   
  
_Who would care?_ _  
_ _I sure didn’t._   
  
Neither hope nor despair.   
All she could feel was.

 _I don’t care._   
She thought she was a kind person, but she was simply benign. She was simply influenced heavily by the mood around her. She could easily have become one of those bullies, but she had no idea if she could still try to be kind like Kumagawa even after other people had been unkind to her.   
_I don’t care what happens to me anymore._   
  


As she wandered away, she suddenly saw Enoshima Junko standing in the hallway in front of her.   
  
“Haha wow! You’re jelling aren’t you? You’re totally jelling about Kumagawa? What, do you want a tragic backstory so you’ll be a more interesting person? Wow. That sucks. You suck. I think I love you.” 

“You should stop Kumagawa-san. He’s doing something dangerous. He shouldn’t hit Komaeda-san.” Komaru said, she felt like a robot was talking instead of her.   
  
“You’re really judgy for a Naegi you know- like god, murder a bunch of people and suddenly you’re a bad person. People are too sensitive these days.”   
  
“That’s what I call a bad person.”   
  
“That’s what I call an interesting character!” Junko said, and there was a layer of unreality, like a thin mucus film over her eyes. 

“I just want Kumagawa-san to stop hurting people-”  
  
“Then why don’t you do something? Lazy. Only I make being lazy look good, but that’s because I’m an effortless beauty. You see this, all of this, the kind of looks girls cry and cut themselves over takes me about five minutes in the morning.”   
  
Komaru tuned out most of what Junko said. She noticed that girl’s eyes. They were dull eyes. They were eyes that did not care about anything. Komaru saw herself reflecting in those eyes, she saw herself being destroyed in the center of those eyes.   
  
“Why do you always pick on me? I didn’t ever do anything to you…” Komaru muttered, a wimpy reply.   
  
“Your problem is that you’re just shallow.” Junko just continued to talk over her as if she didn't hear Komaru.

Junko walked past her. She might as well have walked through her. Komaru was not standing there in the hallway, she was an invisible girl hiding somewhere. She had lots of friends but nobody looked at her, and she didn’t want to be looked at.   
  
“You just do what others tell you to, you act how others want you to act. Do you want to hear my secret? I’ve always wanted to be a normal girl, but I definitely don’t want to be a normal girl who acts like you.”  
  
"What..."  
  
"But, I like Misogi. I know I'm perfect exactly as I am, in fact I'm more perfect than most people but I kinda wanna... be like... him."   
  
“What… what did I do?”   
  
“Nothing.” Junko asked with a click of her tongue. “God, you don’t even have a thing. Everybody has a thing? Why are you here? The author should give you some kind of gimmick already.”   
  
Komaru walked past her. It was a miracle she did not fall down the stairs when her legs were so shaky. She felt bad with what she had done to Komaeda and Toko and yet she did not know what else she could have done.   
  
Komaru shut the door to the library behind her.   
How often did Toko run away to this place all alone to hide herself?  
Toko flinched at the smallest touch.   
Was she expecting to be hit?   
Toko always assumed everything she did made people hate her.   
Did she live in a household where she was hated?   
Komaru didn’t understand, how could someone hate Toko?  
  
No matter how unpleasant that girl was, no matter how many times she insulted Komaru, she could not bring herself to hate Toko. Toko might hate her, but Komaru would never hate her back.   
  
“Scary…”  
  
Komaru muttered to herself, hiding her face behind a book that she had pulled off the shelf.   
  
“I’m scared. I’m scared. Someone help me. I don’t know what to do. Somebody else tell me what to do. I’m scared. I can’t do anything on my own. I’m scared so please.”   
  
Komaru looked up at the ceiling.  
She saw something that had not been there before.  
The dead body of a boy was hanging there.   
He swayed in the breeze.  
Komaru realized she was as helpless at that boy just hanging there. 

 


	95. The Outsider

Monaca’s mother had never so much as held her. The moment she was born, she was handed off to a nurse, and then that mother of hers prostrated herself at the feet of her illegitimate father to take that child in. Monaca wondered then why she had so many dreams of riding on her mother’s back. In those dreams her mother never had a face, because she had never seen that woman’s face, but she had hair like hers, and her cheeks were also round like hers. Monaca deduced she must have resembled her mother because she did not look remotely like her father and her half brother. They were stupid dreams. There must have been some part of her brain that was stupid enough to dream.   
  
Despite being abandoned by her Monaca never once felt angry at her mother. She thought it was pointless to hate stupid people, it’s not their fault they were stupid. If anything she pitied her mother for believing a married man would love her.   
  
Monaca did not quite understand love. That too was stupid, or rather it was illogical. Her father had a lot of love for the son he had with his wife. Even though Haiji had no talent at all for running a business, no matter how many expensive schools that her father sent him to, her father never stopped loving her older brother. She wished love was a merit based achievement, at least then it would make sense. Her brother no matter what expensive schools he was kicked out, her father would always tell him it was alright and pat him on the head. If her brother caused a scandal, her father would bow his head and beg the person that Haiji had hurt not to press charges because Haiji was a good person deep down. 

No matter what Haiji did he was a good son, but before Monaca even entered that household it was already decided that she was a bad child. Monaca had no idea what this ‘love’ thing was, but she definitely felt its absence. Her father was capable of loving a child to the point of spoiling him, she was just unlovable. 

Sometimes she wished she was stupider. If she had born a stupid child maybe she could get along with this idiotic family, the few times she pretended there was something unusually pleasant about being stupid. There were a few times that she thought she could be happy being nothing more than a member of a family full of dummies. But she was the only one who felt that way. Her attempts to try to appease others and act like nothing more than a happy, and innocent child always left others uneasy, her brother even told her once that when she smiled it made him want to pull all of her teeth out one by one.  
  
When he said that to her he could hear the pop of a tiny bubble bursting. 

She blamed her own moments of stupidity on the blood running through her veins. No matter how much they did not want her around, and no matter how much she wanted to deny them, at the end of the day that blood was pumped around her body underneath her skin like crude oil. 

Those stupid thoughts she could not get rid of, like a tumor in her brain pressing on the back of her forehead, sometimes they made her wonder about her mother. What was she doing now? What had she done after leaving Monaca?   
  
Monaca sometimes fantasized about her mother having killed herself out of remorse. Her greatest regret was that she could not raise Monaca, and the weight of the little girl she refused to hold clung to her back for years like a possessed monster child from a folk tale, until she finally tied the rope around her own neck to make her body weightless. She fantasized in detail about the way the rope would be frayed from her mother’s weight, the color her bruised neck would turn, the way corpses bloat when they die of suffocation. 

Her mother was still alive. Her father told her. Monaca stopped dreaming of death. She kept having the dream. She was held on that woman’s back, until she slowly fell asleep. But nobody had ever held her like that, even the maids in this house were afraid to touch her. She had no idea where those memories came from.   
  
That was when Monaca began to fantasize about doing something that would justify her mother’s abandonment of her. There were plenty of examples in history of children committing crimes that people assumed only adults were capable of. Monaca had to admit looking them up she was the tiniest bit impressed - once in awhile one of the idiots comes up with an interesting idea. 

All she needed to do was kill someone. Then the media would swarm her. Everyone would be trying to psychologically profile her, to make her check some boxes on a piece of paper. As the hoards of insects, silver grasshoppers with wings made of plastic, in otherwise people that were no different from mechanical bugs multiplying and glitching up the system all she needed to say was:   
  
“My mother gave me the idea.”   
  
When a murder is committed, some of the attention will always go to the motive of the murderer. In japan murder is considered a shame on the entire family, parents will even bow their heads in apology for the sake of their children. 

Monaca wondered if it was possible to get the death sentence as a child. Perhaps if she committed a particularly heinous crime, she could make history as the youngest case ever to be tried as an adult. She could imagine the public outcry would cause her mother to finally come out of hiding. That woman might even say she was sorry, and then hold her in her arms and….Nononononono. She didn’t want that. This wans’t about that.   
  
Monaca’s green eyes the exact shade of fungus that grew on a long dead corpse. Eyes that were rotting, rotten. She could not wait to see what they said about her, they would call her a born psychopath, she wanted to become the bad child they always treated her as. 

 

🧸  
  
Last Round the Ultimate Cosplayer Lab opened without much ceremony. Nobody in particular seemed to care about Tsumugi’s lab or her talent (even I didn’t care that much and I am Tsumugi). This round the Ultimate Robot Lab, the Ultimate Lucky Student Lab, and the Ultimate Artist lab had all opened up.   
  
Which was strange because no one in this game had a talent for ‘The Ultimate Artist’. Monaca stood in the center of the lab. Due to Mukuro and Maki’s lab exploding, nobody had explored much of the school last around. The evidence of that explosion still remained in this lab a floor above theirs. The shelves upon shelves of paint cans had been knocked over and the floor was covered with many different colors of paint all sloshed together.   
  
Monaca hated the sight of so many colors all at once. It bothered her the way some people were irrationally bothered by their food touching. The way colors touched one another just gave her the impression of food being mashed together and mixed with bile in a stomach, before becoming colorful vomit. Whenever she saw color she fought an intense urge to paint it over in black and white. 

_Anyway, I need to think of someone to switch bodies with fast._ Monaca said, overcoming her nausea. She wielded a paint knife, and played with it like it was a toy. Well, a knife became a toy when you put it in the hands of a child. Even if she killed someone, she would just be playing.   
  
Monaca had already decided to commit a murder this round. “Spoiler alert, Monaca-chan is the killer. If I don’t get to have any fun with my life then Monaca-chan won’t let the readers have any fun either.” Monaca dipped the knife into a paint can and raised it up into the air, and red paint fell from it like a freshly bleeding wound.

She wanted to kill someone but it was difficult to as a child, for one she was short. She would need to switch bodies with someone taller. That meant Kokichi was out. “Monaca-chan just wants somebody to play with, she’s a lonely girl after all.”   
  
She already knew the perfect target. Maybe she was a broken child, but this whole school was the island of misfit toys, there were plenty of people for her to play with. The idea that this may be the one place in the whole world where someone like her might fit in, made her want to laugh.   
  
“You want to switch bodies with me?” Mukuro said with a tilt of her head. “But why me, I’m so ugly.”   
  
She hated Mukuro Ikusaba for not being Enoshima Junko, but it was nothing personal.   
Monaca hated everyone for not being Junko.   
Junko was the one person she could never hate.   
Even if she was thrown away.   
Even if she was abandoned.   
Even if she was just being used.   
No, none of those things could possibly make Monaca hate Junko because she was used to them.   
  
“No, Monaca-chan thinks you’re cute. Submissive doormat girls with no personality are the cutest. It’s absolutely adorable the way you revolve your entire life around Naegi because he was nice to you once.”

  
“Umm…”   
  
“You always act like you’re different from other people, but Monaca-chan thinks you’re a normal girl. You’re ugly, and stupid, so that makes you the same as everybody else in Monaca-chan’s world.”   
  
“Your world?”   
  
“Yes, this is my world. Monaca-chan is a powerful tyrant, nobody can defeat me.”   
  
“How did you get so strong?”   
  
“Because Monaca-chan is cute, and that’s the most terrifying power of them all.” If Mukuro was a wolf who ripped animals apart until they were chunks of meat lodged in her teeth, then Monaca was a cute puppy who made pathetic eyes until somebody protected her.   
  
Mukuro was so used to Junko none of Monaca’s eccentricity seemed to bother her. “Mm, of course you’re cute. Did you have an older sibling Monaca-chan, you kind of give me a cute younger sister vibe like…” Mukuro’s eyes suddenly terrified Monaca like a predator watching her from behind the grass. “A good little sister like Komaru.”   
  
Monaca suddenly picked up the can of red paint and dumped it all over her head. Mukuro rushed over to see what was wrong and was now standing over the girl who had fallen to the floor of the art studio.   
  
“Hey, I’m about the same age as them, aren’t I?”   
  
“Them…?”   
  
“The children you killed.” Monaca spread her arms out on the ground. She was a little kid playing in the snow, making snow angels. Want to make an angel? Just kill an innocent child. “H...help me.” 

Monaca suddenly gave a pained cry and then grabbed her head as she curled up into the smallest ball she could. “Someone please help, please make it stop.” She had experience begging like this, her brother usually only stopped hitting her when she played the pathetic prey begging her big bad wolf of a brother not to hurt her.   
  
To be honest even when her brother hit her it didn’t hurt. She just got bored. It was so boring to sit there and watch her brother work out his petty little inferiority complex on her. She hated being alone with her brother for hours, so it was easier to cry and whine and pretend to be the little girl she looked like, but she had never been a little girl, not even for a moment, not even on the inside.   
  
Monaca’s eye spun around in her head unnaturally like it was broken, before it focused on Mukuro. “Do you think they begged for help just like that?”   
  
The smell of expended gunpowder burnin her nostrils. A child was standing there, then his insides exploded and were blown out, and there was nothing but a hole in the middle of him. His legs could no longer hold him up and he fell on the ground in front of her. 

 _I love you Junko._ She slit a child’s throat. The boy try to call out for help, but he made a sound with his mouth like he was gargling liquid. His throat bubbled, and bloody red bubbles popped. _I love you Junko._

She hated the way the eyes of a dead body looked. A child’s body was twisted and their neck wrenched in their last moment as they tried to get a look at Mukuro. Those rotten eyes looked so much like her own. _Love Junko._   
  
Blood pooled on the ground like water. She stepped on it, and it rippled. When she looked down she saw her own reflection on the surface of the blood, and then a moment later she saw her sister’s. Aaah blood rain. She was getting covered in blood. She was getting absolutely wet. She dipped her fingers in the fresh blood and painted it over her lips. She smiled for the first time. She wondered if this was what it felt like to dance. She wondered if this was singing in the rain. _Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you._

Mukuro gripped the sides of her own face, her eyes racing around in paranoia as if all the children might come alive at that mount. As if those bodies were something other than dead meat.   
  
“Upupu…” 

Mukuro heard the sound of her sister laughing at her in the back of her ears. No, she was the one laughing. Mukuro was laughing, just like her sister. _Because you’re no better than her._   
  
“Upupupuhahahaha, that’s not…. That’s not funny.” She said to Monaca as she bit her tongue to make it stop.

“Oh, now the reformed school shooter is going to preach to me.” Monaca sat up from the ground. “Monaca-chan doesn’t get why you killed so many people. All along you only wanted to kill one person, right?”  
  
“Myself…?”   
  
“God, you’re really depressing. How do you get along with that boy who vomits sunshines and rainbows exactly when you’re such a total bummer? Well whatever, the person you really wanted to kill was your sister right?”   
  
“Don’t tell me my feelings.”   
  
“So just switch with Monaca-chan. You can use Monaca-chan’s body to kill her.”   
  
“No way I can’t do that. You’re too short to kill anybody,” Mukuro said thinking of the logistical issues first. “With your stature I’d have to take somebody completely by surprise, which means I’d have to rely on poisons, or ranged weaponry both of which Junko-chan would see coming.”   
  
“You’ve clearly thought about this before, huh-”   
  
“N-no, it’s just my hobby to size up everyone I meet and think about how I would take care of them on a battlefield. I’m the strongest one here, after that I would rank Maki as number two, and Hitoyoshi-kun as number three.” Mukuro seemed a little bit embarrassed as she started to ramble on about her hobby. “Makoto is the weakest of course, but he’s cute so I’ll always protect him.”   
  
“Disgusting military Otaku.” Monaca felt like they were getting off topic. “If Junko kills someone else aren’t you responsible? The same way you’re responsible for your big brother getting locked in that room?”   
  
“Don’t…”   
  
Monaca smiled knowing she had won. A girl who was stupid enough to believe that Junko loved her, was not really much of an opponent in the first place-   
  
“Don’t tell me what to do. You’re not Junko-chan.”   
  
Monaca’s smile dropped off of her face. It was so dramatic, in her mind she pictured that her lower jaw had been ripped off and she just sat there with an empty hole in her face, skin ripped off and hanging there, completely unable to make an expression. 

Monaca spun around the paint knife in her hand. She caught it and raised it in the air. Before she could someone grabbed her hands from behind. She turned her head to see Kokichi standing right there.   
  
“Let’s play, Monaca-chan. If the two of us shorties combine our powers, we can become one giant. Then we’ll look down on all those idiotic giants. I’m pretty sure the only way to be the leader is to be the tallest. When I’m the tallest everyone will have to listen to me when I tell them to buy me candy.”   
  
Kokichi was an explosion of pixie dust. 

He was sugar that melted directly on the tongue.   
He was sweet, and dangerous, like candy from a stranger.   
  
“I don’t want to play with you.”   
  
“Awe, why not? Is it because you don’t like me? It can’t be because you don’t like me, right? Let me list off all of my likable qualities, I’m short, I have a great smile, I have a charming smile, I’m so clever, nope no matter how much I think about it you don’t have a single reason not to like me.”   
  
“It’s because I don’t like you.”   
  
“Awe, why did you go and say that? What about my precious self esteem?”   
  
To be released from the dull routine, escapism, eighth grade disease, peter pan syndrome. It doesn’t matter what you call it, it doesn’t matter where. It was clear Kokichi wanted to go to an unknown place.   
  
With the way he was dancing around he looked like he could take off and fly at any moment his feet were so light on the ground. He wanted to be free of gravity and everything else that weighted him down.   
  
Monaca spun around and stabbed the paint knife forward towards his gut. She was fast but, she was still just a kid. Kokichi easily grabbed her arm, and redirected the blow over his shoulder, spinning her entire body around him. Monaca grabbed at his hair, and pulled at it as hard as she could.   
  
She was like a reluctant kitten being picked up. She scratched at his scalp with her red nails. Kokichi did not seem bothered by the cool blood running down his forehead at all, it only widened his smile. 

Why were they fighting?   
Well, no explanation was needed.   
This was simply a case of one warrior soul calling out to another.   
Monaca was an old soul in a cute young body. He could hear the metallic sounds of the samurai armor that her soul wore. They must have met each other in a past life, and fought to the death. In every life since the two of them had hated each other at first sight. There was no one he despised more, there was no one he respected more as a rival.   
She was still too weak, she could not hurt him. It was just a difference of battle experience. When she crawled on top of his shoulders and started to grab at his face, Kokichi let his body fall forward and slammed her to the ground.   
  
When she fell off of him Kokichi stood in triumph. “You fool, did you think a middle schooler could beat up a high schooler? You stupid infant baby!”   
  
Mukuro just stared at him.   
In that moment Kokichi Ouma had become a true villain.   
  
“Allow me to defend myself.” Kokichi said holding a hand to his chest.   
  
“Go ahead.”   
  
“I got nothing.” 

Mukuro closed the distance between them and put a hand on top of Kokichi’s head. “You should be gentler with your little sister.” Mukuro said, apparently she had mistaken their scuffle for a childish fight between siblings.   
  
Kokichi smiled.   
He just thought of something really funny. “I don’t think Mon-chan said anything wrong though… as long as you let everyone else decide everything for you, how can you say you’ve changed.”   
  
“...”   
  
“Doing everything Naegi-chan says, is the same thing as doing everything Enoshima-chan says. I bet if he were to turn into a snake tomorrow, you’d become the poison in his mouth and start killing again.” 

  
All Mukuro could think of was how much Kokichi looked like her big brother. It was like Kumagawa hated her. The one person who continued to love her unconditionally was telling her-   
  
“You haven’t changed at all from the girl who killed children like it was nothing.”   
  
🧸

 

Monaca was lucky she was a gifted child. She could do things no child was capable of. At school she was kind and friendly, super cheery and social. Even though she had no idea what happiness eve looked like, neither the taste nor the texture, she acted like a kid who never gave up or stopped smiling no matter what hardship she faced.   
  
Monaca was always the center of the room. The moment her intelligence was discovered she started to outshine her talentless older brother. Sometimes Monaca wondered if from an outsider’s perspective she looked desperate. Like she wanted to become some kind of wunderkind all for the sake of her mother who threw her away.   
  
_See, Mother?_ _  
_ _I have so much energy now._ _  
_ _I’m so cheerful._ _  
_ _I can do anything._ _  
_ _All of my teachers praise me for how smart I am._ _  
_ _I’m so._ _  
_ _I’m so…._   
  
Twisted.   
  


Monaca threw herself into her studies and she became a genius heir to the Towa Company because that was a part of her plans, she could care less if that foolish woman noticed her.   
  
She whipped herself, the weak body she had, into the perfect child all without a mother. She grew up faster than her manchild of an older brother without any parents. But, the more perfect she became, the more she warped in the eyes of other people.   
  
And for Monaca too she had no idea what her mother looked like because her father had burned all her images out of disgust for the woman who ruined his marriage. She sometimes imagined her, but even in her dreams the image of her mother stretched, was pulled flat, and wobbled, becoming more and more twisted. 

That’s why she wanted to be the twisted offspring of that twisted woman. Perhaps her eyes were green because she was always a bad seed, put in the earth to become a poisonous flower.   
  
Then one day, her mother unexpectedly turned up back in her life. Monaca expected she would have to sit through hours of apologies, crying and hand wringing. How annoying. When adults cried like children they were so annoying, especially since she never cried like that. 

She was meeting with a scientist on behalf of Enoshima Junko’s request, when she saw by accident a woman in a portrait, standing with the man together. The woman who was smiling so happily was clearly… her mother.   
  
Monaca knew because Enoshima Junko had sent her a photo. Oh, this entire situation must have been set up for her. Junko was so brilliant. But, what could this mean?   
  
The man seemed to have noticed Monaca staring at the photo, and laughed bashfully. “That was taken on our honeymoon.”   
  
“Honeymoon?”   
  
“I think you’re too young to understand that kind of thing, but we were married last Autumn. I’m about to become a father for the first time. Strange, isn’t it?”   
  
“A father?”   
  
She was repeating the words like an idiot.   
Hey, hey, what was happening. A bubble popped. It exploded and splashed ugly colors everywhere. Bubbles popping one after another.   
  
“Your wife… is the lady in that picture, isn’t she?”   
  
“Yes… do you know her?”   
  
Monaca noticed she had started trembling. She didn’t care. She didn’t care. All the bubbles were popped and she was covered dripping wet with paint, and painted over in such ugly colors. She hated her green hair. She hated her green eyes. She didn’t care. She wanted to laugh.   
  
She had pictured her mother miserable for so many years. She had imagined in detail her suicide, of her mother slitting her wrists the way Monaca wanted to every single night. Instead she’d married, found a better mate, had another child she actually wanted, and was living happily elsewhere. Monaca had convinced herself she did not care. Whether that woman was happy or sad she did not care.   
  
It had been eleven years, but Monaca finally realized the truth. It wasn’t a “child” that she couldn’t take care of. She didn’t abandon Monaca because she could not be a mother, or love a child. It was her, Monaca, that she abandoned. She drove her mother away. 

Just like she always thought she really was… a bad kid.

  
  
🧸

 

Rantaro Amami saw a boy with a broken neck hanging from the ceiling. For some reason his plan of not sleeping all night had somehow made the delusion he was seeing even worse. That boy had stopped dreaming a long time ago, all he had were the delusions he saw when he was awake.   
  
He sat alone in his bed. His shirt was thrown off of him and onto the floor. His blankets were half off of him. Just sitting there Rantaro looked like he was posing for some artist’s masterpieces, blankets hanging off of him like they were drapery.   
  
He looked like a lost boy. He had been kidnapped by fairies when he was young. He spent all his time playing and dancing with them as he disappeared from the real world. He disappeared behind the greenery, the leaves, the thickets. His eyes peered out from behind the forest.   
  
Vines grew around his body like he had physically become part of the forest. The vines tightened around his neck, and he looked up to see Korekiyo still hanging there. Except Korekiyo wasn’t there anymore. He was nowhere. Because he was dead and Rantaro killed him.   
  
“Whatcha looking at?” Monaca asked him.   
  
“A ghost.”   
  
“You know, we don’t get called to God’s side.”   
  
“What did you say?”   
  
“God doesn’t exist.”   
  
“Haha, what’s up with that…”   
  
“I’ll tell you. You know, Rantaro-niichan. When you die. It’s over.” Monaca was suddenly sitting on the bed next to him. She must have snuck into his room while he was spaced out. “So it doesn’t matter if you feel bad about killing him or not, you can’t reach him, or your sisters.” 

“Lemme guess you’re doing the creepy ghost child routine. Nice, nice…”  
  
“No, it’s nice. Monaca-chan is trying to be mean to you, you’re just too stupid to realize.” Monaca leaned towards him. “You know Monaca-chan doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t have a big brother. Monaca-chan doesn’t really care when people die, but she’s also being fail because nobody would care if she died.”   
  
“Yep, that’s a normal thing kids say.”   
  
“So, you could sacrifice Monaca-chan if you wanted. Kill me so you can escape this game. Monaca-chan can play with your dead sisters in the afterlife. I’m sure they were all good kids-”   
  
Monaca had no idea what was happening. Rantaro who had manipulated Korekiyo without remorse, suddenly threw his arms around her. Then it occurs to her an actual human being is holding her. A flood of reality. She had an odd feeling. It was painful. A pain of something tightening inside her. As if the scars left from her brother were being reopened. For a moment what Rantaro did was so unexpected, she almost felt herself dazzled and moved. Like the day Enoshima Junko fell onto her life, and became the falling star even a dreamless, dull, girl like her could wish on. A star that fell out of the sky and crushed the heads of both her parents. She thought she might have the capacity to accept, through not return, love. She wondered if Rantaro saw the darkening clouds behind her eyes, if he felt the cold clamminess of her skin she always felt and never left her like a persistent sweat of guilt, if he could tell even now with all his weight pressed against her she was still numb and always would be. If he knew all of that and decided to throw his arms around her so suddenly. Rantaro’s kindness didn’t change anything. 

And yet she imagined what it would be like if she had been his younger sister. She might not hate her green eyes, and her green hair in that case.   
  
But she’s so used to slurping down sewage, that that clean, pure water makes her sick. Monaca was overcome with a sudden need to vomit from such closeness. She pushed him away with all of her strength. She felt hives break out on her skin, and started to scratch. Itch, itchy, her clothes were so itchy.   
  
She ripped her shirt off and showed him. “I’m grown up! Look, I’m grown up! Big brother wanted this body too, so don’t treat me like I’m one of your stupid little sisters!” 

Monaca screamed. She wasn’t cute, she wasn’t cute at all.   
Seeing her naked upper half, the cuts on her arm, she must have been quite ugly.   
  
Rantaro picked up his shirt, and quickly pulled it over her head. He ignored her screaming and her tantrum, he probably had experience with this.   
  
“You're not bad. There's no such thing as a bad kid. All my sisters, they were really good girls. They didn't deserve that, and neither did you." 

Monaca would prefer lies. SHe would prefer to be hated. She did not want his kind words, his sincerity. She didn’t want his warm sweater, she was a child who had been abandoned in the snow who had no choice but to freeze to death.   
  
Why was everyone treating her like a little girl all of a sudden?   
Why were people being kind to her?   
If she wasn’t just a hatable child then why did she go through all that.

  
Monaca’s fingers reached out for the necklace around Rantaro’s neck, and she pulled it hard to strangle him. Before she could though, suddenly someone had grabbed her wrist from behind. Monaca looked up to see Kokichi standing behind her again.   
  
He must have been following her around. Even a cornered rat like her could still bite. She dug her teeth into his hand, biting until the skin broke, and even then she refused to let go. It would be better if she went insane. It would be better if she acted like some feral child locked in a basement for ten years that acted no differently from an animal.   
  
Kokichi screamed in pain and wrapped both of his arms around her waist lifting her up in the air. Rantaro watched the both of them in confusion. “Everything okay, man?”   
  
“Be quiet. I’m trying to suplex this child.” Kokichi said in the most serious voice he could muster.   
  
And now a battle had begun. Kokichi lifted her in the air to try to get her to let go of his hand. When she finally did, there was blood falling from her mouth and she spit out a chunk of his flesh. She immediately wrapped herself around him again like a snake coiling.

He spun her around and around until she got dizzy, and then threw her. There were pillows everywhere in Rantaro’s room. His motto was _anywhere can be a good enough nap spot if you try hard._ He was the human embodiment of a human cat. Monaca bounced uselessly off of a pile of pillow.   
  
“Heh, what an empty thing it is. Nothing will ever feel as good a smy first victory.”   
  
There stood, a high schoool boy acting like a dispassionate nihilist for having defeated a middle schooler. Who was this terrifying stranger? 

Wait, that was Kokichi.   
Kokichi did not need Kumagawa to teach him to be a villain, he already had what it took to be an awful human being. 

“Whoa! I can see my bones! I can’t believe there’s a skeleton hiding inside of me, how spooky!” Kokichi said as he looked at the torn off flesh in his hand. 

“Do you have any siblings, Kokichi?” Rantaro suddenly asked him, and instead of answering that question Kokichi froze. Rantaro decided to back off. “Nevermind, any answer you give me will probably be a lie.”  
  
“Aren’t you the one lying?”   
  
“Eh? No way, no way, I’m too stupid to tell a good lie-” 

“My sisters, my sisters, you keep saying that but is it really the truth? I think you just want to let go of the burden you’re carrying. That’s why you keep doing risky things, if you die while trying to save your sisters that’s the easiest way to throw that burden away.”  
  
Rantaro said nothing.   
  
“Maybe everyone will feel sorry for you and say you did your best as a consolation prize.”

“Haha, you're kind of cute when you get mad like that. LIke you're trying to make yourself bigger.”  
  
“Look, my cuteness is all a lie. I’m a master crimminal manipulating you all so you’ll never suspect me. I pretend to be a harmless jokester, and then slit your throats in your sleep-” 

“Ah... that's right. You said you hate murderers, does that mean you hate me?” Rantaro suddenly asked him.  
  
Kokichi’s smile never seemed so forced.   
  
“Yeah, losers like you are no fun to play games with.” 

 

🧸

Monaca the alien, Monaca the outsider. Food tastes disgusting when she has to eat at her family. When she smiles, everyone looks at her like she’s sick. When she’s beaten she doesn’t feel any pain at all she just keeps smiling. 

A splendid family. The attitude they had towards her the outsider was far too obvious. She wished they would be a little more subtle. Some parents pretended to love their children while beating them. They sometimes clung to their children and cried asking for apology. Her parents could not even bother to play. When she tried to laugh it off, they made a face like “You don’t deserve to laugh.” They’re so amazing. So splendid! So splendid she wanted to die.   
  
Just kidding! No seriously, she was kidding. Just a joke. She was just a joke.  

_I love you big sis Junko._ Monaca thought there were two types of people in the world, Enoshima Junko, and everybody else. She loved Enoshima Junko, and hated the others, and of course she was not Enoshima Junko so she also hated herself. Monaca will do anything it takes to be closer to Junko. Junko who looks like she wanted to die. She would cut her wrists, she would drink posion. Monaca didn’t have eyes, ears, nose, or a mouth. Monaca was just invisible, an invisible child. 

She did bad things. She did painful things. She colored her skin in such awful colors, but they still did not look at her. _I love you, so I’ll lick you all over. It’s going to feel really good. You’ll be clean if you get licked all over._ Disgusting, digusting, disgusting. Licked and licked and licked and licked. And there was swamp water inside of her body. Her stomach acid leaked out of her stomach and melted the inside of her body, and now her bones, and her organs were all melted together in a soup. And she was filthy, and her filthiness was inside of her, and that’s why her eyes were so rotten. They had replaced all of her insides with black mud, and she could feel swamp water dripping out of her eyeballs, and coming out of her nose, and mouth.   
  
Memories aren’t like words, they’re soft and gooey, and they cling to her skin. Monaca can’t change. Monaca can’t be anything then the child who’s older brother shaped out of the mud and demanded she love him. Monaca feels lonelym and sad, and empty, and she just wants to die because as long as she lives she won’t be anything other than mud.   
  
That’s why she feels hatred. That’s why she wants to kill them all so bad. If she can feel hatred inside of her that’s something to hold onto, that’s something other than formless mud beaten into shape, loved into shape, by the hands of other people.   
  
She never expected her mother would abandon her to her father. She never thought something like that could happen to her, meow. If this were a fairy tale, the main character would tie the knot with a prince from somewhere. But her mother was the one who got the fairy tale ending.   
  
She wanted to kill her two. So Monaca built teddy bears and then stuffed bombs into them, and she was going to make it all go off at once. But then when she pressed the button nothing happened. She pressed it again, nothing. A boy watched her. A boy with a black and white scarf, raven hair, who laughed like a drowning bird. That boy was laughed at her.   
  
“Pressing buttons is super fun right? Whenever I see a button I want to press it. But don’t you think using a big red button to set off a bunch of bombs is kind of a cliche? You need to be more creative. Lame, this is lame I say! As the napoleon of crime I won’t stand for this!”   
  
“Are you just calling yourself the napoleon of crime because you’re short.”   
  
“No, that’s not it at all! You ruined it! You ruined my big omment. Okay, let’s have a do-over. I’m going to come through the door again and you pretend you didn’t see me. It’s like when I walk into the bank multiple times to break the one candy per person rule, I’m a crimminal mastermind!”   
  
“Ugh, this is coming from a literal neglected child but attention hungry much? Monaca-chan get it your parents didn’t love you.”   
  
“Why do you want to kill all these people.”   
  
“Despair.”   
  
“But you haven’t even been happy once yet? How do you know what despair is?” 

Towa Monaca was a terrible child.  
She was the worst child who was ever born, but she had never killed anyone.   
She never killed anyone because Oma Kokichi stopped her.   
  
She opened her eyes and saw she was being carried on his back. Gross.   
  
Enoshima Junko appeared at the top of the staircase. Huh, they were talking about something. They were talking about something without her. Look at me Junko. I’m right here. I’m miserable. Are you jealous? You wish you could be this ugly, but no matter what you do you’re beautiful. I’ll step on your face again and again and again and again but I’m sure even if there was just a hole there where your face would be it’d still be pretty. 

Enoshima Junko shrugged, carelessly. “I’m just saying, if you love games so much you sure do suck at playing them.”   
  
Kokichi scoffed. “Like I want to play with a cheater like you. You’re worse than a terrorist who killed a bunch of people, you’re a big meanie.” 

“You know, I’m sure the mastermind of this game thought you and Senpai would play off each other well. You’re just so similiar but really I don’t see it.” Junko came from behind and wrapped her arms around him, like they were a loose rope she was inviting him to hang himself on. “Kumagawa likes people, and you don’t. Don’t you think that makes you more like me?” 

“Don’t touch me I don’t want cooties-”   
  
“Momota-kun, Harukawa-san, you already have all the pieces you need to win the game. You better start using them better or else you won’t have aaaaaaaany fun.”   
  
“They’re not…”   
  
“Oh, do you like them? Man, I wanna laugh. I seriously wanna laugh. This is fthe first time in my life I’ve ever felt like genuinely laughing, you’re like soooo funny.” 

Kokichi said nothing.   
  
Junko gave him the peace sign. “Just play house. Just go on and on about the power of friendship and wait for something good to happen like Makoto. You can make friends for the first time in your life, and then they can all die. See if I care. I’m outtie.” 

 _Junko look at me._   
Monaca wanted to call out.   
_If you’re not looking at me then I’m invisible._

She thought Junko was just incapable of seeing other people. She thought Junko could not love anyone. That’s why Enoshima Junko was so comforting to her. But then, Enoshima Junko did start to love someone. 

It just wasn’t her.  
It was never her, because no one saw her.   
  



	96. I am the Villain

“Kiyo?”

Komaru gasped.  
  
“Is that really you?” 

“What an interesting question. What constitutes the self, Jung believed the self was divided into two parts, that which we perform for others and-”  
  
“I know this is pretty insensitive to say because you’re dead but you’re as annoying to talk to as when you were alive.” 

His face like a white noh mask.  
His two yellow eyes like lanterns glowing in a pitch black night.  
The moment she breathed in the smell of roses filled her.  
  
She could feel them growing inside of her, the thorn vines tangling around her insides like rotes tightly pulled into an intricate pattern of knots. She was bound and when the ropes pulled tighter she felt the thorns plunge deeper into her insides. It was as if her entire body had become the frame for an elegant display of roses.  
  
She was full of that feeling, but looking at Korekiyo he was empty.  
There was nothing there, because there was nothing there.  
She didn’t see anything, she didn’t see anything, she didn’t see anything. 

Komaru put her hands in front of her eyes. “You’re not the real Kiyo, you’re a fake.” 

“I’m a fake? That’s a rather rude thing to say.”  
  
“Well, it’s fine if I’m rude because you’re just a hallucination so you don’t have feelings.” Komaru said, looking away from what was directly in front of her. “W-what are you doing?”  
  
“Would you get angry at me if I said I was just hanging out?”  
  
“Yes, I would!” 

Korekiyo’s hands seemed to appear out of the darkness, as he reached for the rope around his throat. He pulled at it until it broke. Even then the boy did not fall down. He kept floating there. His feet would not touch the ground. “I have a question.Since you’re the only one so far who can see me-”  
  
“I can’t see you!” 

“Yes, yes, of course. But, could you answer me this: Who am I?” 

“Ugh, more philosophy.”  
  
“No, it was a genuine question. I have no idea who I am, or what I am. You looked at me and called me Kiyo. How does that name define me? Am I really just a product of your imagination? How strange, to be the dream rather than the dreamer-”  
  
“Stop saying all the crap trying to sound deep!” 

“My apologies. It seems I’ve made you angry.” 

“Y-you… you died.” Komaru finally said turning to face him. Then she saw. Underneath his mask there were no lips only the exposed jaw of a skelton with the flesh from his upper face still sticking to his skull. The bandages around his hands were unraveled slightly showing the the pure white bones of his fingers underneath. “You were my friend, but then you turned out to be a serial killer, and then you died so why are you here?”  
  
“I died. How dramatic of me.” 

“That’s right you’re not here. I’m not seeing this, because I’m a normal girl.”  
  
He tried to hold her face, but his fingers slipped through her. “Don’t put yourself down like that, there’s no such thing as a normal person, every person is unique.”  
  
“No you’re wrong I’m normal. I am a normal, rational person who is talking to herself by pretending to talk to a ghost.”  
  
She didn’t know what to say.  
So, she was just loud. She wanted to drown him out.  
  
“That doesn’t sound very normal to me.” 

 

“What would you know about that you big weirdo?”  
  
“I suppose ‘being normal’ is outside of my area of expertise.” 

  
Normal people only had one talent. They were able to adjust to anything. If an experience repeated for them enough times it would become normal for them.  
  


  
  


  
She stayed up all night arguing with him, but the next day she had to get up like normal. Even without sleep she had to go to breakfast like normal. Her hair was such a mess she looked like she was imitating her brother, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but she sat down like normal. 

 

Then, she held a spoon up in the air. 

 

“Do you want some cereal with milk and hot peppers, Kiyo?”  
  
She stared at the silent void in front of her for a moment.  
  
“Oh, I guess not because you’re a ghost. Hey, hey don’t get mad at me. I just discovered that ghosts exist yesterday how was I supposed to know? I don’t have a copy of the ghost rule book.”  
  
Toko and Togami adjusted their glasses at the same time.

That damn glasses couple, Komaru thought.  
  
“So, she finally lost it, huh?” Toko asked. “Just stay away from me. Crazy people like you are dangerous, you never know when they’re going to get violent.” 

  
“I told you Toko, poor people have weaker minds than us. It was inevitable.”  Togami affirmed.

"I am a sane and rational woman who is arguing with a ghost." 

 

Komaru said, only to get stared at by the glasses couple.   
  
“Hey, how about you two talk to each other instead of making fun of me together! What are you the popular couple in the school that bullies everyone else? Except you can’t be, because you two don’t have any friends!”  
  
Both Toko and Togami looked at each other.  
“W-well, Naegi-”  
“There is that fool Naegi.”  
  
“You both know my brother doesn’t count.” Komaru stood up suddenly letting her seat fall behind her. “Stop pretending like you don’t read Fukawa-san’s books. It wouldn’t kill you to show some affection to the girl with the world’s lowest sense of self esteem.”

  
Komaru stormed off.  
She tried to make a show of storming off. 

The person she wanted to be, bold, always speaks her mind, always herself regardless of what others think.  
The person that she wasn’t.  
Kokreiyo saw, he knew.  
And the problem was, the problem was, the problem was.  
She couldn’t see herself because she didn’t know.  
Who was that girl?  
  
“Stop staring at me, you pervert.”  
  
“My apologies I was trying to read the mood.Even though ‘Kiyo’ spent his life observing others, apparently I’m very bad at it.” 

  
“You read my books?” Toko asked. She looked like a child waiting to be praised.  
“No, I can’t read. You hate people who can’t read so you don’t love me anymore, right? Too bad, I was seriously thinking about marrying you for a second there. What a short tragic love.”  
“It’s fine! I’m an author so I’ll rewrite our love story from tragedy to a fairy tale! You’re not stupid just because you don’t know how to read!”  

“I suddenly feel like you’re discriminating against Kumagawa.”

 

“Those two, even though they spend all their time together, and yet they somehow manage to keep avoiding each other. That’s almost impressive.”  
  
Kiyo seemed so detached from the situation it might as well have been a drama on tv.  
He was literally detached, just floating.  
Just living, but not living.  
Not metaphorically, but quite literally dead. 

  
“Quit pretending you understand people, you’re not a person.”  
  
“Then. what am I?”  
  
“You’re a Kiyo.”  
  
Komaru had been ignoring Toko and Togami’s conversation for a moment and saw Toko suddenly storm away. She looked back to the table, where Togami refused to go after her. “Prince jerk must have made her cry again.”  
  
“Yes, he seems to be good at that.”  
  
“Stop commenting on everything!” Komaru said. She hit him in the face but her hand went straight through. Haha, that was kind of fun.  
  
“Well what am I supposed to do? Just float here being quiet?”  
  
“Yes. Ghosts of dead children should be seen and not heard. No wait they shouldn’t even be seen!”  
  
“But that’s so boring,” Kiyo whined. 

Komaru opened the door to the bathroom. 

Unpleasant. Foul.   
It was like a hand had reached down Toko’s throat, and dragged the mud that lined the bottom of her stomach, along with everything she had swallowed over the years. She was bent over the clean porcelain toilet, holding it as desperately as starving people held onto altars of god.  
  


“Um, are you okay?”  
  
Komaru asked.  
  
“Do I look okay? No, don’t answer that I don’t want to hear what you think of me because you’ve already made up your mind to hate me. I hate people who decide to hate other people without even giving them a chance that’s why I’ve decided I hate you and nothing can change my mind.”  
  
“I feel like if I answered that it would hurt your feelings.” 

“If you say it like that my feelings are going to be hurt either way!”

“Umm, I feel like in general you kind of turn everything I say into an insult whether I mean it or not.” 

As if in response to that, Toko’s head turned back to the toilet. Komaru contemplated putting her hand on Toko’s back, but stopped herself. Her feelings may as well have been see-through like Kiyo’s. She felt like she would pass straight through the girl if she tried to touch her.  
  
“Umm, you shouldn’t push yourself okay? If you’re sick you should tell someone. You’re not all alone here-” 

Komaru wondered if she was the one talking. Anybody else could be standing in this conversation. Words anyone could say came out of her mouth. She wrote poetry with no special meaning and no elegance. 

Toko wiped her lips with her own sleeve.  
Toko was usually cranky, but at least it was in a funny way. This was the first time that Komaru saw her serious gaze. Komaru had not faced the reality, she just didn’t think of Toko as a murderer.  
  


But those eyes,  
In that moment Toko seriously looked like she could kill someone.  
  
“Komaru, have you ever had a real feeling in your life?”  
  
“...”  
  
“Or do you just care because that’s what you’ve been told you’re supposed to do?” 

No more fake sympathies.  
I’d rather be hated.  
Because at least that hate is real. It’s me. 

"No matter how many times I’m nice to you, you just keep sticking your nose up at me.  Why can’t we just like each other? We can laugh together and cry together.”  
  
“That sounds like a nightmare. Why would I ever want to share my feelings with some dumb girl when I can write a lengthy novel about them?”

She would write her own tragedies.  
She would write herown fairy tales.  
When she wanted to cry.  
She spilled ink instead.  
Because if there wasn’t a pen in her hand she wasn’t in control.  
  
"N-no, it’s fun.” Komaru’s voice cracked. 

Don’t say that.  
Don’t cut me to pieces.  
Don’t cut us apart like those paper dolls that hold hands. 

Toko looked so sick she was barely able to stand on her own. But, she stood and walked on her own out of the bathroom, and when she was left alone Komaru crumbled. 

 

🧸

Sickness. 

It felt like a bug had crawled down his throat. His skin was covered in spider bites. His insides were melting. They were so warm. He could feel his blood boiling. The only color on his face was the flush of his fever.

  
Yet, strangely he was also cold.  
He was burning but he shivered. He flexed his arms to suppress the shaking but he couldn’t make it stop. He was not strong enough.  
  
He heard that some people who froze to death experienced a sensation like they were burning. When people were pushed to the brink of death they could no longer make sense of their own sensations, the brain did not know if it was freezing or burning.  
  
Fire or Ice.  
Which one was he again?  
  
Kaito Momota didn’t know anymore. He could hardly believe that there was anything contained within this body so fragile pushed to the point of breaking.  
  
He saw at the corner of his eyes.  
White.  
The sound of laughing bones.  
A doll-like, lifeless beauty.  
He wasn’t lonely.  
He didn’t feel any pain.  
The reaper was his only friend.  
  
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Stay back ghost, I’ve seen a lot of action movies. That’s basically the same thing as knowing how to fight!” 

 

Kokichi sighed.  
Everytime Kaito opened his mouth it was so disappointing.  
  
“I wish I was a ghost! I could prank people so much easier if I was invisible! And I would be able to see people’s surprised faces! Momota-chan, you have to kill me right now so I can become a ghost.”  
  
Kokichi said with mock excitement.  
He just made fun of, he just laughed, he didn’t know how to do anything else.  
He didn’t know what to say to a sick person.  
  
“No way. If I kill you that’ll just make more ghosts!”  
  
“Momota-chan, it’s fine ghosts aren’t real.”  
  
“You saw Komaru at breakfast today! She was talking to a ghost.”

“No, she was just afraid like the rest of us.”  
  
“H-hey, I’m not afraid. Once you become manly enough you simply stop feeling fear didn’t you know that?”  
  
“Then why are you afraid of ghosts?”  
  
“Sssh, don’t say it out loud. The ghosts can hear you.”  
  
Kaito suddenly put both of his hands clumsily over Kokichi’s mouth and pushed him over until they were both on the ground. Kaito over him, he looked so much thinner and frailer when he was this close. Kokichi felt every movement of Kaito, like it was his own, and for every shiver his body trembled in response.  
  


Kaito’s hands were so rough. Kokichi thought of that, as he bit Kaito’s hand to make him let go. He would think about those same fingers tracing the contours of his lips later. “Fine, it’s time for Kokichi wastes his genius explaining the obvious because you’re too much of an idiot to realize - you’re dying Kaito.”  
  
“...N-no, I’m not. I just got in a fight.”  
  
“You’re way too much of a coward to actually fight anyone. I love lies, but you’re stupid macho act is the most boring kind of lie. Uggggh, I’m so tired of it already. You’re so stupid you’ve ruined lying forever way to go.”  
  
“Um. Sorry?”  
  
“I’ll never tell another lie again because lies aren’t fun anymore. I’m going to tell everyone the truth - that you’re dying.”  
  
“No you can’t tell. They’re all-”  
  
Kokichi laughed.  
His laughter more sick then whatever illness made Kaito cough blood. 

 

“You really thought they were all relying on you?”  
  
“They were.”  
  
“You just wanted one person to believe your lies didn’t you?”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Pretending to believe in others. Pretending to be strong. Begging, someone, someone please buy it. God, you’re the worst liar on earth - everybody already knows how worthless you are.”

  
Kokichi reached forward and eased Kaito’s hands away from his mouth. Carefully, he removed the scarf from his own neck and started to clean away the fresh blood. Kaito did not think, Kokichi was capable of holding anyone so softly. His thumb lingered on Kaito’s mouth, he trying to wipe away a pink stain in the corner.  
  
“But you’re not worthless to me.” 

 

“Is that a lie?”  
  
“Jeez, think for yourself for once. You big idiot.” Kaito always assumed Kokichi was a bad person. That inside his heart he held something like poison. His emotions were volatile things, meant for hurting others. But, Kokichi was like a soft warm light shining on him. His touch was the one thing that did not burn right now.  
  
Why did he hide such tender feelings?  
Why did he try to hide flowers from the light?  
Flowers could not grow in the dark, and Kokichi could not let himself be kind.  
  
“I won’t tell anyone, but in return you have to be my slave.”  
  
“No…”  
  
“Hey, I’m pretty good at keeping secrets. I’ve never told anybody my real feelings once in my life.”  
  
“You’ll get sick if you’re near me. What if this is contagious…”  
  
The extent to which Kaito pretended to be good was so frustrating. Kokichi noticed he was still holding Kaito’s face, which meant he could not escape. He saw the blood that dribbled down his chin, and his shirt wet with his own sweat almost completely see-through. When he held Kaito like this he could not escape.  
  
Kokichi leaned up and kissed him with an open mouth. He was so far away even now, even pressed against each other he was reminded they were separate. Awkward, and clumsy, and completely unaware what he was doing.  
  
His first kiss tasted like iron, and his lips were cold.  
  
Kokichi laughed at fairy tales.  
But nobody would ever know that from the bottom of his heart he wished they were true.  
Nobody understood him.  
He didn’t want to be understood.  
But he didn’t think he was so complicated a person.  
He was just a kid who loved disney movies too much.  
 _But I’m not like the heroes in those stories._  
  
Kokichi kissed Kaito’s bloody mouth. He loved his illness.  
He drew back finally.  
  
“There…”  
  
“W-what just happened?”  
  
“Now we’re both sick. So we’re in this together.”  
  
The one game piece he would not let go of.

Chess pieces were colder than human hands, but they were easier to hold onto. 

 

🧸  
  
“Okay, stop hugging your Medaka body pillow it’s time to get up.” 

 

Zenkichi was the one who refused to leave his room this morning. Now it was Junko who had kicked his door down and was trying to drag him out.  
  
Did somebody get the roles in the script all mixed up?  
Heroes can’t start acting like villains while villains act like heroes. 

And since were there ghosts? Why is there a ghost?

  
Nothing makes sense anymore. I didn’t know I was writing such a surrealist novel. 

 

“I’m useless like Kumagawa said.I should just go be useless on my own and stop getting in the way…” 

  
Zenkichi’s collections of photographs and motivational posters on the wall had been torn and collected  The only thing that was spared his wrath was the picture of Medaka. As if she could not bring himself to physically harm her, like she was some untouchable idol.  
  


Junko dug her heel into the corner of Zenkichi’s hip as he lay sprawled out on the ground. It was not an effective strategy, unless she was just trying to hurt him. “Yeah, so is Kumagawa but he doesn’t let that stop him? God, happy people are so whiny. This is why hope is so useless.”  
  
Zenkichi said nothing.  
  
Junko just sat on him. Junko didn’t empathize with those feelings of his at all, in fact nothing annoyed her more than other people’s feelings. She was like a kid who could not see anything outside of her own tiny and limited perspective.  
  
She knew the exact reason Zenkichi felt so weighed down. She knew he was tired of it all. But no matter how hard she tried, she could never feel the same way he did, so she just didn’t bother.  
  
“Hey, Hitoyoshi-kun what’s genius to you?”  
  
“Distance.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“Like, someone far away.”  
  
He ran after one girl his entire life. He was just tired.  
He really thought…  
She would want him.  
If he kept running one day she would turn her head and look back at him.  
All that he wanted.  
Was to be wanted.  
He told himself he was doing it for Medaka’s sake, so she would not be alone.  
He didn’t want that girl alone.  
No, he didn’t want to be the one left behind.

 All he had left with her memories, and the memories were lost long ago. Even in his memories he was outside of the frame. Every picture of them together, he was just outside of the frame trying and failing to be near her. 

A beautiful ghost. That was the Medaka he knew. That was the one he wanted to embrace. He just wanted what wasn’t there. He just wanted her and she was gone. 

Of course Junko didn’t care about any of that. “What a lonely response. It must suck to be an unlovable loser. I don’t know how that feels at all but it’s like bad right?”  
  
“Mmf.”  
  
“You know, I like Kumagawa-senpai.”  
  
“No you don’t, you just like yourself.”  
  
Junko had her back turned to him and nobody would see what feeling she wore on her face at that moment and because of that she could be a little bit more honest. “This morning I asked can I kiss you? Then he was like stop treating my like a person, it’s creepy. Then I was like all pouty and stuff, and then Kumagawa said there was something he wanted to ask me. Then he stared at me with those stupid puppy dog eyes and asked can I kiss you? And l said nothing he says ever makes sense.  Then he was like wow I’m surprised someone as self absorbed as you even listens when other people talk. Then he said, I don’t want you to kiss me, but I want to kiss you. Why won’t you leave me alone? And he kissed me.” 

 

“You’re an amazing storyteller.”  
  
“Awe, did the baby just learn what sarcasm was?” Junko said. She stood up, and spun on her boots. She gave Zenkichi no time to recover at all, because she was grabbing his face and pinching at his cheeks, making his face make whatever expression she wanted. “You’re too dumb to understand my genius storytelling style so I’ll just tell you the answer. God, if people just did what I told them to do we’d already be out of this game already. Can’t peeps tell how much smarter I am then them?”  
  
“For a girl so smart you can’t tell what other people are feeling at all, like how annoyed I am right now.”  
  
“Oh, I know what your feelings are. You’re just wrong. Your feelings are wrong. They’re rejected. You’re not allowed to have feelings without my permission, kay?” Junko said, patting him on the cheek with her trademark condescension.  
  
“Are you just telling me to not have feelings?”  
  
“Yuh? I don’t get what the big deal is.” Junko rolled her eyes and then dragged Zenkichi up from the floor, pressing her forehead against his. Being this close to other people meant nothing to her at all. Junko just did not know that feeling. There was not a single moment of her life she was not wanted. “I liked him. That’s what I thought, I liked Kumagawa and his dumb jokes.”  
  
“So, Medaka will like me if I have a good sense of humor?”  
  
“God, you are obsessed pretty boy. It’s not a good look on your, but who knows Medaka loves feeling like a good person, maybe she finds a charity case attractive.” 

 

Junko dropped him right then. Apparently five seconds of attempting to comfort someone had been too much for her. “Look, your thing is you can’t do anything unless a really hot girl tells you what to do right? If you’re useless then just let me use you.”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“The entire fucking world, but what does that matter?”  
  
“I may have average intelligence but I’ve noticed the people involved with you tend to go mad and die.”  
  
“Whoa, that makes you smarter than the entirety of those class 77-B Dweebs. Haha suck it Komaeda-senpai, Hitoyoshi-kun is smarter than you.”  
  
“Don’t be mean to Komaeda,” Zenkichi said softly.  
  
“Fine I want something from you. I manipulate people, kind of my thing, kay? I’ll teach you how not to be a loser and you make up with Kumagawa-senpai, okay?”

 

“No.” 

 

Junko kicked him again. People were so frustrating to deal with, dolls were so much easier to play with.  If she told Zenkichi she was just a lonely girl who wanted someone to build a sandcastle would he sympathize with her? Probably not.  
  
The idea of someone else hating Kumagawa. The idea of some small part of him belonging to someone that was not her. She hated that Kumagawa had been hurt in the past where she could not see it. She wanted to be his misery. 

 

“God, what is your deal? I mean I already know, because you’re basic but let’s pretend I don’t for a second.” 

 

“I just don’t like him. I get that you’re obsessed with your own misery but not everything needs to be because of some tragic backstory-”  
  
“But Medaka likes him.”  
  
“...”

  
  
“It doesn’t matter how hard you work. It doesn’t matter how much you nearly get killed, what danger you throw yourself into for her sake, how many nights you spend the entire night studying, how often you practice until you vomit Medaka doesn’t see any of that. But Kumagawa’s pain is so obvious.”  
  


“Quit talking to people like you know their feelings. You only see the absolute worst in people.”  
  
“Um, no duh? People suck. Have you met people?” 

 

“Look, I just can’t like that guy…” 

 

A rooftop.  
Idiots like high places.  
Zenkichi heard the sounds of crows in the distance.  
Whenever he was near that boy he was convinced the crows were laughing at him.  
  
Kumagawa always averted his eyes. It was like he was afraid to look people directly in the face. Zenkichi thought bad people should have sharp teeth, and red eyes. He had no idea why Kumagawa looked like a trembling little boy from so close. It was impossible to believe this was the person bullying Medaka. 

  
His most distinctive feature were his hands. They were small and his fingers curled around each other with trepidation when he spoke. The Kumagawa he knew was a loud idiot. He laughed in other’s faces, and spit blood at them.  
  
Kumagawa barely raised his voice above a whisper now. Zenkichi noticed something, when he was next to Kumagawa, the boy watched him the entire time. He was a bit jumpy, like a rabbit who would run away at the smallest noise. Medaka never looked at him the same way. She never looked at him. He just kept waiting for the day she would look his way.  
  
“Medaka got into a fight with an actual member of the self defense force. He pointed a gun at her, it was scary as hell. She should know idiots aren’t immune to bullets.”  
  
“Did you get shot and die?”  
  
“Obviously not idiot, I’m still here talking to.”  
  
“Awe.”  
  
“Quit trying to kill off my character! Anyway, I wish she’d stop running ahead like that. She’s always like _it’s fine if I get hurt,_ but I’m not fine with it. Medaka always says that everybody’s feelings are important, but what about my feelings?” 

“I mean, we both really like troublesome woman, huh?"   
  
“We have nothing in common. Medaka-chan's a good girl, and I shouldn't be complaining about her I'm just... no good."   
  
“ I’m sorry Medaka-chan won’t listen to you Hitoyoshi-kun, but I’ve got nothing better to do. I’m a loser with no friends so you can just complain to me all you like.”  
  
“I don’t want to be seen with you.”  
  
“Then, we’ll just lie to everyone and pretend we’re not friends.”  
  
Zenkichi punched the wall.  
The framed picture of Medaka fell to the ground.  
The glass broke.  
The idol was destroyed.  
  
“I just can’t like that guy. No matter how hard I try, I’m no good.”


	97. You Are My Bad Luck

The first time Makoto laid eyes on that silver hair, he never thought they would be a part of each other’s lives at all.    
  
The majority of the school thought the same way as him. He never strayed from the flock. He only felt secure when others agreed with him. Everything about Komaeda Nagito was a rejection of others, and his overbearing attitude, it seemed like the more he wanted to be friends with you the more you felt an instinctual need to push him away.    
  
Now that he thought about it, even though Makoto would have liked to meet the only other Ultimate Lucky Student in the school with him to have at least one normal person to talk to among all the talented weirdoes, Makoto had no memory of ever having a long conversation with Komaeda. It was almost like Komaeda was avoiding him.

But that couldn’t be, right?   
Because they were friends now.    
  
Makoto had a bad memory. That’s what it was like when one day was exactly the same as the next and his normal days continued to pile on top of each other. In his memories people were blurry, distant, as if he was farsighted. 

“Naegi-kun, right? I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something strange about you.” A carefree smile. A casual mood. “Oh, I shouldn’t just come out and say that. I really don’t know how to talk to people, huh?” 

He remembered. They talked once before this. Before hope. Before despair. Before Enoshima. Before Kumagawa. They talked. That was the first thing Komaeda ever said to him. Even so, Makoto believed he meant to be friendly.    
  
Komaeda wore this smile like he really enjoyed talking to other people from the bottom of his heart. He had no idea why Komaeda kept apologizing. Makoto could never hate someone like that.    
  
“I’m just here by a lucky little accident. It’s probably bad luck actually for this school actually. I don’t think anything good will happen to this school because I’m here. Haha, talking about myself too much again. I tend to do that, yes…” Komaeda’s hair was as thick as sheep’s fleece. He twirled his finger around the white threads like he was spinning wool. “But you, you’re special, or maybe you’re just different. I’ve figured that out after a year of observation.”   
  
“You were watching me for a year? It must have gotten boring…”   
  
For some reason Makoto did not find the idea of the other boy following him around in secret that creepy.

“It’s like you’re floating somehow.”   
  
“Floating?” 

The words make no sense in context just like everything Komaeda says.   
  
“It’s like you’re watching us all from somewhere slightly above. You are where you are, but deep down, you’re maintaining a certain distance. Everyone likes you, but you’re not part of the group, or outside of it, you’re just… above it.” 

If Komaeda doesn’t make waves.   
Makoto isn’t hit by the waves. No matter what waves other people make they will just wash over him.    
  
Makoto didn’t understand. He didn’t parse the meaning. The words did not reach his ears.    
  
“And yet, you’re still so normal. No matter what happens to you, no matter who you’re surrounded by you just reset back to normal again.”   


“I’m just a little optimistic that’s all. It’s no use being down when bad things happen. Everybody tries to be hopeful for the future when times get tough. I’m just doing what everybody else does.” 

“Don’t make me laugh.”   
  
Komaeda’s eyes and mouth aren’t smiling.    
Too bad, he had such a nice smile Makoto thought.    
  
“If that’s true then do you have some hope for yourself? Is there something you want…”   
  
“Of course I do, I…” 

Of course he does. He has something he wants.    
But for some reason he can’t say it.    
If he thought about tomorrow he would just want it to be the same as yesterday. He wanted to tease Togami again, try to talk to Ikusaba, get dragged around by Kirigiri, but what after that? What about when they all graudated? If it meant being apart from them did he really want that to happen?    
  
When he was in middle school, he didn’t even think of what high school he wanted to go to, he just wanted to remain around the same people. Now that his daily life was getting pushed around by talented weirdos he did not want that to change either. He just wanted it to stay today, the sun didn’t need to rise again, he didn’t need to face tomorrow. 

_ Why am I so obsessed with acting like everything is normal?  _   


He saw someone standing in front of him. It’s a person, but he can’t tell who it was through the haze. He did not know who the blurry form belonged to. Komaeda was just there a moment ago, but he had disappeared behind the heat haze. He didn’t know who he was seeing now.  _ I don’t? … No, if I’m being honest I would recognize that silhouette through all the fog in the world, wouldn’t I?  _ The image rippled. It was like staring at his reflection in the water. He was no longer looking at Komaeda but rather himself. 

_ All I care about is keeping my life normal? _ _   
_ _ If so then… _   
  
“What if you were expelled from this school tomorrow what would you do?”   
  
“I don’t really want to think about that.”    
  
“What if someone blew up this school tomorrow?”    
  
“That wouldn’t be nice of them.”    
  
“If I said I already planted the bomb, and had the trigger in my pocket. Now I’m opposing your happy school life with all of your friends. What are you going to do?”   
  
He had no idea what Komaeda was talking about, but if Komaeda was going to throw his life into chaos then, just meeting him was bad luck.    
  
“You know the answer, right?”   


Makoto reached forward a put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to try to calm him down. It was like trying to hold a wisp of a cloud in your hands, Komaeda evaded and slipped away from him.   
  
“In that case - I’m your enemy.” 

_ I’d rather be friends.  _ _   
_ _   
_ Makoto tried to say it but the words would not leave his mouth. If all he clung to was his normal life, he would never understand someone as abnormal as Komaeda. That would be too radical a change for him. What if he could never go back?    
  
It was a strange conversation, and Makoto quickly forgot about it and returned to his normal life after Komaeda was suspended.   
  
  
🧸  
  


What if he were to talk to the roof of the school and walk off?   
  
It would hurt, yes.   
His body would break upon impact, that was obvious. 

  
Komaeda would hit the ground like one of those crash dummies. His joints would break. His head would roll off of his shoulders. It would hit the ground like a ball, but it would not bounce. His head would break open like an egg. The grey matter would spill out, and solid chunks of his brain would still float in it like hunks of meat in a soup. 

Blood would fall out of his eyes, his nose, his mouth and start to pool on the ground. His limbs would be bent backwards and in the wrong direction from the impact. In some areas, his skin would be torn along with the muscle underneath until his bones were showing. His ribs would poke out straight through from his chest. You could see his heart hanging there, suspended, between the broken cage of his ribs. 

A painful way to die, yes, but what would hurt even more is if that body was somehow able to stand up. He would walk back home dragging his dislocated leg behind him, only to stand on the school rooftop the next day and walk off once more.    
  
If he were to jump off every day for a week. If he were to dump his brains over and over again.    
  
No, wait, maybe he did not need to make such a mess spilling his organs all over the ground. If he were to stand against a wall and hit his head against it. Bang. Then hit his head again. Bang. His brain would shake a little at first but nothing bad would happen. Bang. If he were to keep it up for an hour he would start to get a headache.    
  
Eventually the skin on his forehead would break and he would bleed so heavily that he had to close his eyes to keep the blood on him. If he kept hitting his head against the wall his skull would split open first. Then he could just keep pounding, like he was taking a mallet to his own brain matter. With every hit he heard a wet sound. The sound got farther and farther away because all he could hear was a hammer hitting hard against his eardrums, and it was impossible for him to see what was happening in front of his face. 

That was roughly what it felt like to be in Komaeda’s body at the moment. He wanted someone to call him strong for being able to smile still, but he probably just looked creepy as he stood there smiling for no particular reason.    


He wiped his glasses but his glasses were not the problem, it was his eyes. His eyesight was getting worse again. So bad, he almost ran straight into Komaru as he was walking to the Ultimate Lucky Student room. 

 

🧸

 

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset.” 

Kiyo said.    
He was hanging upside down from the ceiling this time, probably because he had gotten bored. He swayed back and forth moved by nothing but the wind, until he was next to Komaru’s face. It was the perfect position for an upside-down kiss, but Komaru just punched the useless ghost.    
  
“What do you mean you don’t understand?”    
  
“It seems like a waste of time - the emotions I mean. I don’t understand your reason for being upset.” 

  
“Of course it makes me sad when someone doesn’t like me, you wouldn’t understand because nobody liked you even when you were alive!” 

“It feels like you were trying to insult me-” Kiyo said as he pulled down his mask to reveal his jaw bones. He looked like he was smiling with those cracked and rotten teeth that looked about to fall out from his jawbone. “But being dead worries me more then whether or not people like me.”    
  
“Can you talk like a real person for just five minutes? That’s all I’m asking.”   
  
“I’m not a real person, I’m a ghost. Though, I wonder how I should be classified. I don’t match any yokai legends I’m aware of… there are plenty of stories depicting ghosts of dead children who haunt schools.”    
  
“I am going to stuff you in a locker, you nerd.” 

 He pulled his mask up once more. He looked like a high class lady trying to be polite and hide his snickering with his hand. “It’s cute how you think taking an aggressive attitude means I won’t notice how scared you are.”    
  
“Hey, don’t do that.”   
  
“Don’t do what?”   
  
“Don’t analyze my personality when I’m sitting right here. It’s like being under one of those thingies that detectives have-”   
  
“A magnifying glass? Fine, I’ll stop looking. There’s not much to look at anyway.”    
  
“Hey! Don’t talk about me like I’m the human equivalent of the color beige… I’ve got spunk.”    
  
“Yes, like an actor that’s trying too hard. You're chewing up the scenery. It’s quite spirited… And humorous. Oh, I’m sorry do people not like it when you laugh at them to their faces? I’m used to observing from a distance.” 

“Ugh…”    
  
“You’re scared of me, yes?”    
  
“Yeah, because you were going to kill me.” 

  
“I was? I was so passionate when I was still alive.”    
  
“You should at least apologize!”    
  
“So sorry for being so spirited.” Kiyo seemed to like saying the word spirited now. Maybe because he was a ghost.    
  
“It’s fine. I just hope we can still be friends-UGH, DAMN THIS NAEGI BLOOD.” She just wanted to forgive him and forget it already. “Why do my genes make me into a human doormat? How did the Naegi Clan even survive this long without evolving a spine.”    
  
“But you were never scared of Toko, that’s because you never confronted what she did.”    
  
“Yeah, but for some reason now…” Komaru hid her face. If she was trying to play hide and seek with a ghost this would quickly turn into a horror scene. “Even if Fukawa-san were to kill someone right in front of me, I don’t think I’d hate her.”

  
“I don’t think wanting to sympathize with your friend makes you a bad person.” Komaeda said, suddenly interrupting the conversation. Komaru paid so little attention to her surroundings on the fourth floor hallway that she did not even notice Komaeda about to trip over her until he spoke up.    
  
“...What do you want?”    
  
“I just wanted to say the way you talk about your friend is really beautiful.”    
  
“...Eh?” 

Komaru made a face like an insect had flown into her eyelid. There was so much disdain in the downturning of her eyes. He could hear the crinkling of an insect's wing. He was that bug waiting to be swatted.    
  
“I don’t know what I said wrong…” It was difficult to hear his own voice, like someone else was speaking. “You care a lot for your friend so I’m sure there’s hope. You just need to keep trying.”    
  
“It’s weird how you always talk about hope like that, like you’re not talking to the person in front of you cut it out already.” Komaru said, pushing him away. “The word hope sounds so dirty coming out of your mouth.” 

  
“Umm, I don’t know…”    
  
“You really don’t, do you? And stop sweating so much.”    
  
He was sweating?    
He just didn’t know.    
He couldn’t feel anything.    
He didn’t remove his hand from the burner.    
Because he didn’t feel pain.    
As his skin melted and his bones turned black.

“I um, think you’re kind because you’re trying so hard even if it doesn’t come easy to you-”    
  
“Do you even know what kindness is?”   
  
“Uh, like when you’re nice to people?” Komaeda pulled on one of his bangs as if he was trying to hide behind his bangs. “I’m sure you and your friend will come to understand each other.”   
  
“Yeah, but how does that apply to this situation specifically? You’re always just, think positive, think positive. Do you even believe what you’re saying?” 

“What’s wrong with being positive? I was just trying to help, jeez. Is it me? Have I always been this annoying? Why didn’t anybody tell me about it.” 

“Did you just now figure out why people don’t like you? Go figure.” Komaru huffed. “We try to tell you all the time you just don’t listen to other people.”    
  
Komaru left him behind.    
He was left behind.   
He was all that remained.    
White.    
Breathless.   
The chalky skin of a corpse.   
A porcelain doll.   
Komaeda Nagito, faded.    
  
“Jeez, where did she get that attitude from? Mom and dad didn’t raise her like that.”   


Naegi Makoto, in Komaeda’s body talked to himself. Because as long as he was Komaeda no one would listen to him. It was hard to listen to others when no one would listen to you. He was deafened by this lonely silence.    
  
🧸  
  
  
“Makoto.”   
  
Just seeing him, Mukuro was able to smile.    
  
“Hey, let me hug you.”   
  
“Why?”   
  
“I want to hide for a little bit.” She said, as she quickly pulled him into a hug. Her head pressed so close against his chest, she almost seemed shy. “This place is basically just a normal school now, it’s scary.”   
  
“Are you afraid of dying?”   
  
“No, I mean the part of school where you have to talk to people every day and stuff.”    
  
Makoto turned his head.    
Like he was looking away from her.   
Like he didn’t want to see her.   
Chasing his eyes she caught a glimpse of something different.    
Like the person behind those eyes was more distant..    
  
“So demanding. Are all parasites this clingy, or does being talented make you an extra special leech?”    
  
“A leech…”    
  
“You’re so clingy, too. Have you ever thought that I might need space from you? Oh, that’s right you don’t think for yourself. Parasites don’t need fully developed brains, just sharp teeth, to cling with. Do you know how heavy you are?”    
  
“Are you calling me fat?”    
  
“No, I mean heavy. You’re just - too much, - all of this is too much. Why are you putting it all on me?” Before Mukuro could answer him, Makoto just rambled on another question. “Seriously why me? I’m a waste of space. I can’t do anything to help out people who are much more  worthy and put-together than I am. I’m just a helpless normal guy, so why did you think I could be the one to help you?”   
  
“Because you’re kind, Makoto.” 

“You just tried to kill me yesterday, and now you think I’m going to talk to you like everything is normal? That’s not kind, that’s masochistic.”   
  
“N-no, it’s not. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”    
  
“Then why are you hurting me?”    
  
“I’m not.”   
  
“You hurt people just by being around them. You’re not some shy girl, you’re violent. Ask Maki her arm is still broken.”   
  
“But she was being mean…You’re not acting like yourself.”    
  
“Oh, that’s right because I’m nice. You latched onto me because I’m nice. You followed me around all that time because I’m nice. But that makes you no different than pavlov’s dog. All I need to do is wave a steak in front of your nose and you’ll keep following me forever. It’s not like you like me, it’s a conditioned response, you just start drooling when you see me.”    
  
Makoto Naegi smiled.   
But his smile did not reach his eyes.    
  
“But if that’s how you love people, then you’re just a bitch who wants attention. Why don’t you find somebody else to beg in front of? I’m sure if you lick them real good, they’ll throw you a bone.”    
  
“N-no, it can’t be anybody. You were the first person in class that became my friend, I wanted to make more friends, I wanted something for myself, I wanted you… all because of you.”    
  
“Is that how you feel? No thank you. I don’t exist for your character development.” 

“W-wait. I don’t care about character development, or redemption, I just want to live a normal life with you.”   
  
“My whole life? Wow, that’s a lot to put on a guy. Because I was nice to you a few times I have to spend the rest of my life putting up with you, and even marry you? Let’s say I was normal-” Makoto curled his fingers, and stared into the center of his hand like ther was a whole there. “I don’t even know what normal means, but let’s just say. Most normal boys only date a girl in high school for a few months, or they break up before they go to college. As far as I’ve heard, they do.”    
  
“So we-we’re breaking up?”   
  
“What are you going to do if I break up with you? Will you just go start killing people again?” 

_ I don’t know.  _   
  
She didn’t know how to do anything for herself. She had given up on herself a long time ago. Ikusaba Mukuro could not be forgiven, but she thought she could at least use her strength to help someone good like Makoto.    
  
She made a hiccuping noise. She took in a strained breath. That girl was trying to cry, but it was almost comical to watch because she could not cry. She kept looking like she was waiting for Makoto to embrace her, but she didn’t.    
  
“How boring…”   
  
Junko’s words came out of Makoto’s mouth.    
  
Makoto slouched his shoulders. He looked so tired. The act of living, breathing, just standing there, was too tiresome for him. He looked put-upon. The world on his shoulders, and he was just waiting to be crushed by it.    
  
His fingers dragged on the delicate skin of his face. If he pressed any harder he might pull that skin off. His skin, no his entire face, it suddenly had an artificial look to it.    
  
“Talented people should dance for me a little more, if they’re going to hog all the attention to themselves. Haha, I’m just kidding. I’d never be so presumptuous. But… every single one of them I meet is a disappointment, well I suppose as the kind of all disappointments I’m not one to talk.”    
  
Komaeda Nagito said with Makoto’s lips.   
He just proved it to himself, he could never be a kind boy like Makoto.   
Of course he knew this about himself all along but accepting it was a little bit sad.   
  


🧸  
  
  
The Ultimate Lucky Student’s room was a casino. It was decorated like a hidden room from prohibition era where people might follow a passageway underneath the bar to drink, and gamble to their heart’s content far away from the watchful eye of the police. 

  
There were slots along the walls, a roulette table, a table for cards. The entire room was decorated with a playing card motif. The wallpaper had a splash pattern of several playing cards, as if they had been thrown there and stuck to the wall suddenly.    
  
The entire room had a ritzy feel. This was definitely the most expensive room to build in the entire school. But the glimmer of gold just seemed to get into Komaeda’s eyes. He was glad he was in Makoto’s body, because he did not think he could handle the heavy smoke in the air, or the overpowering smell of alcohol.    
  
Monokuma kept showing up here to smoke and drink ‘just for the aesthetic’. He was a terrible example to the children.    
  
Makoto (in Komaeda’s body) was hunched over the bar as he sat on a barstool. Makoto still seemed so small. Even in a taller body, he looked like he was doing everything he could to make himself stand out less, feel smaller.    
  
“I told you, I’m not as kind as everyone thinks I am.”   
  
“The most annoying sound on earth is the sound of my voice whenever I start talking, so you’re already kinder and more tolerant than most people just for putting up with me-”   
  
“You’re not as hard to deal with as people say you are, Komaeda-kun. It’s okay, really.”    
  
Makoto’s voice was so soft and reassuring, even now. Makoto was even better at being Komaeda than him. Komaeda wanted to laugh, he was so inferior that he had even lost at being himself to another person. 

The roulletes continued to spin in the background.   
The slots turned spun again and again as if an invisible hand tugged on their lever. 

“All I ever do is wait and hope for things to get better. When it comes to anything that matters, I’m too stupid to do anything-”   
  
“That’s not true. Kumagawa-kun is the stupidest person on earth. When I compare myself to him I suddenly know what having self esteem feels like -  but he’s taken control of both class trials. Do you know how he does that?”   
  
“He was secretly super smart all along he was just hiding it?”   
  
“No, he’s not smart enough to hide anything. Kumagawa-kun is like a big kid playing pretend, I don’t know why the talented people have so much trouble seeing through him, he’s rather transparent.” Anyway, Komaeda said. “He didn’t know what the answer was to last trial. There’s no way he could have, he didn’t even see the scene of the crime for long. So like a kid he just cheated off of somebody’s test. He knew that I would know the answer, and used my feelings to get me to share it with anyone.” 

“I don’t think I can do that. I just… feel how other people feel, it’s not like I really think about why they feel that way.”    
  
“You just lack awareness. You need to see how great you are, you could move anyone here.”   
  
That sounded a little bit manipulative.   
Makoto thought, but did not say because he did not want to treat Komaeda with suspicion.    
Makoto knew there was no malice in Komaeda.   
He was surprisingly, white. He only ever had good intentions.   
But he was so dirtied by other people.   
He soaked up their feelings like they were more important than his own.    
And his good intentions, his pure white color was lost.    
  
“I’m already plenty aware. That’s how I know I’m not that great of a guy…”    
  
He saw a tearful face appear. The face of his first love, crying. Tears he tried to wipe away like ink stains, feelings he tried to completely blot out with mundanity.    
To him hope was…   
Not a happy ending like in a fairy tale.   
Not the kiss at the end of a love story.    
Do I really want things to be better, or do I just want them to be okay again?   
  
Maizono Sayaka. She was his classmate, the first girl he fell for - but he never confessed or told his feelings to her at all. When Mukuro clung to him afraid to let go, he thought they were alike and completely different. They were both girls with two sides to their personality. Everybody dreams of being famous, but even in middle school Makoto knew she was someone who could make those dreams to. Because when she smiled so sweetly, he knew that smile was just a performance.    
  
Sayaka took an interest in him one day. Apparently it was because he helped a crane with a broken wing, and nursed it back to health. Makoto never told her the only reason was because he was in charge of taking care of animals, and the teacher told him to do it. He thought she was scary, and to be honest, he tried to avoid her. 

She had this habit of saying  _ I’m psychic  _ and seeing straight through people. He had no idea how to act when someone was looking at him, he preferred to blend into the crowd. But she kept following him and kept trying to talk to him, and Makoto got the feeling that she wanted someone to pay attention to her.    
  
Makoto started talking to her after class.

As soon as he did, she revealed her true colors.    
Blue, the color of tears, the color of cold skin, the color of a deeply lonely girl.    
  
She started to become dependent on Makoto. The extent of her need was in a word, horrible. Whenever he agreed to hang out with her, she never left his side even for a minute. She once saw another girl talking to Makoto, and a knife was found in her locker the next day. Makoto did not even know Sayaka was capable of holding a knife.    
  
Makoto once casually mentioned he liked girls in long skirts, and she stopped wearing short skirts to school. He said he thought brown hair was a little boring, talking about himself, and she dyed her hair the same color as her eyes.    
  
Makoto always thought that that love was something tender, sweet, and affectionate   
It was light and fluffy. .    
He realized.    
That love was far heavier than that.   
Loving someone is an emotion heavier than the whole world.    
  
Apparently, her father was putting an intense amount of pressure on her to become a star. All of her friends around her saw her as a sweet and perfect girl. She could never cry, never feel frustrated. If she tried to talk about her real feelings, people always looked disappointed like she was not what they expected her to be.    
  
The only one who would listen to her was Makoto. That was why he became someone she could never lose. She was always paranoid of losing her one friend. He was her world, and she couldn’t bear it if he said or did anything she didn’t like. Even the most trivial remark or behavior hurt her terribly.  Sometimes she called him in the middle of the night sobbing. She would often drag him off somewhere away from the eyes of other people.    
  
Makoto could never bring himself to tell her no. He really did want to help her. He thought because she was always hurting, her own feelings came first before his. He wanted to be the one person who didn’t hurt Sayaka, who didn’t put too much pressure on her. 

Not wanting to hurt her, he just went along with her increasingly unreasonable demands. Sometimes she had him stroke her head, or hold her, or fall asleep next to her. Sometimes she asked things he was not comfortable with, but he was the only one she had, so he put up with it. 

“Do you really like me?” 

One day Sayaka asked him that.    
  
“I…”   
  
“Why are you doing all this for me, do you love me?” 

Makoto didn’t answer her.    
  
“Whenever I’m around you, it just feels like you’re putting up with me. Do you want to be my boyfriend? Do you just want to be friends? Do you pity me? Do you hate me? Hey, you’re not looking at me. You’re the only one who sees the real me, Naegi, so please look at me.”    
  
“I can’t see you anymore.”    
  
Sayaka never talked to him again after that day. Makoto blamed himself. It was his fault. It was all because he couldn’t support her enough. If he had thrown her away, or told her to leave him alone that might have been kinder. He hurt her with his indecision. She wanted to feel wanted, and he couldn’t want her, because he didn’t want anything or anybody.    
  
But as he went to school the next day, Sayaka and him went back to being classmates. She did not hate him, or spread rumors about him. Everything went back to normal. It was like all of their meetings with each other had never happened.    
  
Makoto realized what took over his heart more than guilt was emptiness. Each day was as flavorless as chewed gum stuck on the bottom of one of his desks. Makoto himself was insignificant as gum on the side of the road waiting to be stepped on.    
  
Even though he was not the person she needed. Even though he could not comfort a crying girl. Even though he had no idea what her feelings were until the end, his normal life persisted. Sayaka sometimes acted like if she lost him the whole world would ned, but that was all a lie. The world would keep going on without him, just like he kept going to school every day even when Sayaka no longer talked to him. 

He realized he had loved her, only after he had started to forget about Sayaka.    
  
“I’m a cold guy…” Makoto said, after he finished telling Komaeda his story. “I think about that a lot, but I can’t even tell that story to the girl I like. I can’t tell her about how much it worries me when she depends on me. I always say  _ let’s talk things out  _ but I don’t share my own feelings. Do you finally understand after switching bodies how pathetic it is to be me?” 

“But if you’re pathetic what does that make me, Naegi-kun?” 

  
  


🧸

 

When Makoto got back into his own body, and back to his room that night he looked to see Mukuro sleeping on the floor the moment he opened the door.    
  
All of that time in Komaeda’s body still left him with a sense of vertigo. 

“Hey, what are you doing down there?”    
  
“Dogs deserve to sleep on the floor.”    
  
He just assumed Mukuro was being weird again. It was a little unnatural how quickly he got used to other people’s eccentricities. It was like he was just going along with them. He fell on the ground next to her.    
  
She was laying down, and he was laying in the opposite direction, so when he turned to look he saw her from an upside down perspective.    
  
She was smiling - oh wait that meant she was frowning. Makoto was just about to ask her why she was making such a face, when suddenly Mukuro got on her knees. Her face was hanging over his, he could feel the ends of her hair tickling him.    
  
“Makoto, why is your face all wrinkly like that? You only make that face when you’re gonna cry.”   
  
“I’m not gonna cry.”    
  
“You’ve already started crying.”    
  
“Damnit, why can’t I look cool for one second?” Makoto said as he wiped his face.He blew his nose into the sleeve of his shirt. 

 When Mukuro was so close to him, he had no idea why she wanted him to hold her. Just like then, just like when he had no idea how to comfort Sayaka. All he could think about was how much pain Komaeda was in, how people didn’t even listen to him when he talked in Komaeda’s voice.    
  
“Why do you like me so much?”    
  
“Because you…”   
  
“I didn’t do anything. I can’t do things like Komaeda and Kumagawa. I’m just a crybaby.”    
Mukuro brought her face closer and closer.   
Her eyes shining.    
The light of the moon.    
  
“You shed tears for other people without holding back, and you worry about other people from the bottom of your heart. That’s who you are, Makoto.”   
  
And suddenly rain was falling indoors.   
And suddenly Makoto knew what falling felt like.   
Because he stopped trying to swim to the surface.   
He was drowning, but the mermaid rescued him and dragged him to the beach.   
She looked at him lovingly in the sand.    
  
“You’re not Misogi-chan. You’re not Komaeda, either. Makoto is Makoto. There’s nobody else, as cool as you.” 


End file.
